A 2nd London police official quits in scandal

CASSANDRA VINOGRAD, JILL LAWLESS

Asso­ci­ated Press

LONDON (AP) — Scot­land Yard’s assis­tant com­mis­sioner resigned Mon­day, a day after his boss also quit, and fresh inves­ti­ga­tions of pos­si­ble police wrong­do­ing were launched in the phone hack­ing scan­dal that has spread from Rupert Murdoch’s media empire to the British prime minister’s office.

Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron called an emer­gency ses­sion of Par­lia­ment on the scan­dal and cut short his visit to Africa to try to con­tain the widen­ing cri­sis. Law­mak­ers on Tues­day are to ques­tion Mur­doch, his son James and Rebekah Brooks, the for­mer chief exec­u­tive of Murdoch’s U.K. news­pa­per arm.

In a fur­ther twist, a for­mer News of the World reporter who helped blow the whis­tle on the scan­dal was found dead Mon­day in his home, but it was not believed to be suspicious.

Mur­doch shut down the News of the World tabloid after it was accused of hack­ing into the voice mail of celebri­ties, politi­cians, other jour­nal­ists and even mur­der victims.

The cri­sis has roiled the upper ranks of Britain’s police, with Monday’s res­ig­na­tion of Assis­tant Com­mis­sioner John Yates — Scot­land Yard’s top anti-terrorist offi­cer — fol­low­ing that on Sun­day of police chief Paul Stephen­son over their links to Neil Wal­lis, an arrested for­mer exec­u­tive from Murdoch’s shut­tered News of the World tabloid whom police had employed as a media consultant.

The gov­ern­ment quickly announced an inquiry into police-media rela­tions and pos­si­ble corruption.

Home Sec­re­tary Theresa May said that peo­ple were nat­u­rally ask­ing “who polices the police,” and announced an inquiry into “instances of undue influ­ence, inap­pro­pri­ate con­trac­tual arrange­ments and other abuses of power in police rela­tion­ships with the media and other parties.”

The Inde­pen­dent Police Com­plaints Com­mis­sion also said it was look­ing into the claims, includ­ing one that Yates inap­pro­pri­ately helped get a job for Wal­lis’ daugh­ter. Wal­lis, for­mer exec­u­tive edi­tor of News of the World, was arrested on sus­pi­cion of con­spir­ing to inter­cept communications.

Yates said he had done noth­ing wrong.

“I have acted with com­plete integrity,” he said. “My con­science is clear.”

In another devel­op­ment, police con­firmed that a sec­ond for­mer News of the World employee was employed by Scot­land Yard. Alex Marun­chak had been employed as a Ukrain­ian lan­guage inter­preter with access to highly sen­si­tive police infor­ma­tion between 1980 and 2000, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police said.

Scot­land Yard said it rec­og­nized “that this may cause con­cern and that some pro­fes­sions may be incom­pat­i­ble with the role of an inter­preter,” adding that the mat­ter will be looked into.

The prime min­is­ter is under heavy pres­sure after the res­ig­na­tions of Stephen­son and Yates, and Sunday’s arrest of Brooks — a friend and neigh­bor whom he has met at least six times since enter­ing office 14 months ago — on sus­pi­cion of hack­ing into the cell­phones of news­mak­ers and brib­ing police for information.

Cameron’s crit­ics grew louder in Lon­don as he vis­ited South Africa on a two-day visit to the con­ti­nent already cut short by the cri­sis. He dropped stops in Rwanda and South Sudan as his gov­ern­ment faces grow­ing ques­tions about its cozy rela­tion­ship with Murdoch’s media empire dur­ing a scan­dal that has taken down top police and media fig­ures with breath­tak­ing speed.

Par­lia­ment was to break for the sum­mer on Tues­day after law­mak­ers grilled Mur­doch, his son James and Brooks, in a highly antic­i­pated pub­lic air­ing about the scan­dal. Cameron, how­ever, said law­mak­ers should recon­vene Wednes­day “so I can make a fur­ther statement.”

Cameron insisted his Conservative-led gov­ern­ment had “taken very deci­sive action” by set­ting up a judge-led inquiry into the wrong­do­ing at Murdoch’s now-defunct tabloid News of the World and into the over­all rela­tions between British politi­cians, the media and police.

“We have helped to ensure a large and prop­erly resourced police inves­ti­ga­tion that can get to the bot­tom of what hap­pened, and wrong­do­ing, and we have pretty much demon­strated com­plete trans­parency in terms of media con­tact,” Cameron said.

Oppo­si­tion leader Ed Miliband, how­ever, said Cameron needed to answer “a whole series of ques­tions” about his rela­tion­ships with Brooks, James Mur­doch and Andy Coul­son, the for­mer News of the World edi­tor whom Cameron later hired as his com­mu­ni­ca­tions chief. Coul­son resigned that post in Jan­u­ary and was arrested ear­lier this month in the scandal.

“At the moment, he seems unable to pro­vide the lead­er­ship the coun­try needs,” Miliband said of Cameron.

Rupert Mur­doch, too, faces a major test Tues­day in his bid to tame a scan­dal that has already destroyed the News of the World, prompted the res­ig­na­tions of Brooks and Wall Street Jour­nal pub­lisher Les Hin­ton, and sunk the media baron’s dream of tak­ing full con­trol of a lucra­tive satel­lite broad­caster, British Sky Broadcasting.

At the tele­vised hear­ing, politi­cians will seek more details about the scale of crim­i­nal­ity at the News of the World. The Mur­dochs will try to avoid incrim­i­nat­ing them­selves or doing more harm to their busi­ness with­out mis­lead­ing Par­lia­ment, which is a crime.

Mean­while, a group of Inter­net hack­ers took aim at the media mogul late Mon­day, defac­ing the web­site of his other U.K. tabloid.

Vis­i­tors to The Sun web­site were redi­rected to a page fea­tur­ing a story say­ing Murdoch’s dead body had been found in his garden.

Inter­net hack­ing col­lec­tive Lulz Secu­rity took respon­si­bil­ity for the hack­ing attack via Twit­ter, call­ing it a suc­cess­ful part of “Mur­doch Melt­down Monday.”

“We have owned Sun/News of the World,” the group posted on its Twit­ter account, later adding what it claimed were details of hacked inter­nal staff data from The Sun and even­tu­ally redi­rect­ing the paper’s web­site to its own Twit­ter feed.

Lulz Secu­rity, which has pre­vi­ously claimed hacks on major enter­tain­ment com­pa­nies, FBI part­ner orga­ni­za­tions and the CIA, hinted that more was yet to come, say­ing “This is only the beginning.”

The web­site breach came just hours ahead of Murdoch’s tes­ti­mony to British law­mak­ers and as James Mur­doch — chair­man of BSkyB and chief exec­u­tive of his father’s Euro­pean and Asian oper­a­tions — appeared increas­ingly iso­lated fol­low­ing the depar­ture of Brooks.

James Mur­doch did not directly over­see the News of the World, but he approved pay­ments to some of the paper’s most promi­nent hack­ing vic­tims, includ­ing 700,000 pounds ($1.1 mil­lion) to Pro­fes­sional Foot­ballers’ Asso­ci­a­tion chief Gor­don Taylor.

James Mur­doch said last week that he “did not have a com­plete pic­ture” when he approved the payouts.

Rupert Mur­doch is eager to stop the cri­sis from spread­ing to the United States, where many of his most lucra­tive assets — includ­ing the Fox TV net­work, 20th Cen­tury Fox film stu­dio, The Wall Street Jour­nal and the New York Post — are based.

News Corp. on Mon­day appointed com­mer­cial lawyer Anthony Gra­biner to run its Man­age­ment and Stan­dards Com­mit­tee, which will deal with the phone hack­ing scan­dal. It said the com­mit­tee will coop­er­ate with all inves­ti­ga­tions on hack­ing and alleged police pay­ments, and carry out its own inquiries.

Mean­while, one of the first voices to blow the whis­tle on the phone hack­ing — for­mer News of the World jour­nal­ist Sean Hoare — was found dead Mon­day in Wat­ford, about 25 miles (40 kilo­me­ters) north­west of Lon­don. Police said the death was being treated as unex­plained but was not con­sid­ered sus­pi­cious, accord­ing to Britain’s Press Association.

Hoare was quoted by The New York Times say­ing that phone hack­ing was widely used and even encour­aged at the News of the World under Coulson.

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Posted by AP News on Jul 18 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.