Murdoch aides alerted to hacking in 2008

AIDES to Rupert Murdoch were warned as far back as 2008 that there was a culture of illegal voicemail hacking at the News of the World tabloid, according to documents released in Britain yesterday.

The warnings by a senior legal adviser to the British newspaper arm of Murdoch’s empire cast doubt on the company’s insistence at the time that it only knew of a single rogue reporter involved in hacking.

A Commons committee investigating the scandal that led to the closure of the tabloid in July released a copy of legal opinion by top barrister Michael Silverleaf that was given to the company and its lawyers.

In the document dated June 3, 2008, supplied by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, he warned that there was a “powerful case that there is (or was) a culture of illegal information access” at the News of the World.

Silverleaf wrote that there was “overwhelming evidence of the involvement of a number of senior NGN [News Group Newspapers] journalists” in “illegal enquiries” into an individual, whose name is redacted in the published opinion.

He said the allegations would be “extremely damaging to NGN’s public reputation”.

Documents also show how the News of the World tried to keep the Gordon Taylor phone hacking case under wraps

Correspondence between the tabloid’s then legal chief Tom Crone and editor Colin Myler details their efforts to achieve a “confidential settlement” with the chief executive of the Professional Footballers’ Association.

In a memo on May 24 2008, Crone advised: “Our position is very perilous.”

Taylor had obtained a “damning email” containing transcripts of his private voicemails as well as evidence from the Information Commissioner of other illegal activities by News of the World journalists, Crone said.

“Amongst the documents from the Information Commissioner is a list of named News of the World journalists and a detailed table of Data Protection infringements between 2001 and 2003 (this is based upon evidence seized in a raid on another private investigator who was subsequently prosecuted).”

The revelations come just days ahead Murdoch’s son James’s appearance on November 10 before the committee in his second grilling by lawmakers.

James Murdoch is expected to be quizzed over allegations that he misled the committee during a highly- charged hearing with his father in July, when he denied knowledge that hacking was widespread at the tabloid.

He insisted he had not seen an email that suggested the practice went beyond the paper’s royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who were jailed for hacking into the voicemails of members of the royal household in 2007.

But Myler and Crone contradicted him at a later committee hearing, saying they discussed the email with James Murdoch.

Labour MP Tom Watson, who is on the committee, said these were “explosive revelations”: “Here is a very important, leading barrister telling them their house was not in order and nobody did anything about it.”