Ex-Murdoch aide Brooks arrested; Police chief out

Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police com­mis­sioner Sir Paul Stephen­son poses as he leaves New Scot­land Yard in Lon­don, Sun­day, July 17, 2011. London’s police chief has quit over his links to a for­mer News of the World edi­tor caught up in the phone hack­ing scan­dal. Stephen­son has been crit­i­cized for hir­ing Neil Wal­lis, a for­mer News of the World exec­u­tive edi­tor arrested last week in the scan­dal, as a part-time PR con­sul­tant for a year until Sep­tem­ber 2010. (AP Photo/Sang Tan)

JILL LAWLESS

Asso­ci­ated Press

LONDON (AP) — An inten­si­fy­ing voice­mail hack­ing and police bribery scan­dal cut closer than ever to Rupert Mur­doch and Scot­land Yard on Sun­day with the arrest of the media magnate’s for­mer British news­pa­per chief and the res­ig­na­tion of London’s police commissioner.

Though the for­mer exec­u­tive, Rebekah Brooks, and the police chief, Paul Stephen­son, have denied wrong­do­ing, both devel­op­ments are omi­nous not only for Murdoch’s News Corp., but for a British power struc­ture that nur­tured a cozy rela­tion­ship with his papers for years.

Brooks, the ulti­mate social and polit­i­cal insider, dined at Christ­mas with Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron. His Conservative-led gov­ern­ment is now fac­ing increas­ing ques­tions about its rela­tion­ship with Murdoch’s media empire.

The arrest of the 43-year-old Brooks, often described as a sur­ro­gate daugh­ter to the 80-year-old Mur­doch, brought the British police inves­ti­ga­tions into the media baron’s inner cir­cle for the first time. It raises the pos­si­bil­ity that Murdoch’s old friend Les Hin­ton, who resigned Fri­day as pub­lisher of The Wall Street Jour­nal, or his 38-year-old son and heir appar­ent, James, could be next.

Until her res­ig­na­tion Fri­day, Brooks was the defi­ant chief exec­u­tive of News Inter­na­tional, Murdoch’s British news­pa­per arm, whose News of the World tabloid stands accused of hack­ing into the phones of celebri­ties, politi­cians, other jour­nal­ists and even mur­der vic­tims. In the tumul­tuous last two weeks, she had kept her job even as Mur­doch shut down the 168-year-old News of the World and tossed 200 other jour­nal­ists out of work.

On Sun­day she showed up for a pre­arranged meet­ing with Lon­don police inves­ti­gat­ing the hack­ing and was arrested. She was being ques­tioned on sus­pi­cion of con­spir­ing to inter­cept com­mu­ni­ca­tions — phone hack­ing — and on sus­pi­cion of cor­rup­tion, which relates to brib­ing police for information.

Brooks’ spokesman, David Wil­son, said police con­tacted her Fri­day to arrange a meet­ing and she vol­un­tar­ily went “to assist with their ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion.” He claimed that Brooks did not know she was going to be arrested.

Hours after Brooks’ arrest, Stephen­son said he was resign­ing as com­mis­sioner of London’s force because of “spec­u­la­tion and accu­sa­tions” about his links to Neil Wal­lis, a for­mer News of the World exec­u­tive edi­tor who was arrested last week in the scan­dal. Wal­lis worked for the Lon­don police as a part-time PR con­sul­tant for a year until Sep­tem­ber 2010.

Stephen­son said he did not make the deci­sion to hire Wal­lis and had no knowl­edge of alle­ga­tions that he was linked to phone hack­ing, but he wanted his police force to focus on prepar­ing for the 2012 Lon­don Olympics instead of won­der­ing about a pos­si­ble lead­er­ship change.

“I had no knowl­edge of the extent of this dis­grace­ful prac­tice and the repug­nant nature of the selec­tion of vic­tims that is now emerg­ing,” Stephen­son said. “I will not lose any sleep over my per­sonal integrity.”

Brooks’ arrest was the lat­est blow for Mur­doch, the once all-powerful fig­ure courted by British politi­cians of all stripes. Now Mur­doch is strug­gling to tame a scan­dal that has already destroyed News of the World, cost the jobs of Brooks and Hin­ton and sunk the media baron’s dream of tak­ing full con­trol of a lucra­tive satel­lite broad­caster, British Sky Broadcasting.

Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Nick Clegg said Mur­doch “needs to come absolutely clean about what he knew, about what his senior exec­u­tives knew, and why this cul­ture of industrial-scale cor­rup­tion — so it is alleged — appeared to have grown up with­out any­one higher up in the food chain tak­ing any real respon­si­bil­ity for it.”

Rupert and James Mur­doch are to be grilled by U.K. law­mak­ers Tues­day over the scan­dal. Brooks also had agreed to be ques­tioned before a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee, but her arrest throws that appear­ance into doubt.

“Obvi­ously this com­pli­cates mat­ter greatly,” said Wil­son, her spokesman. “Her legal team will have to have dis­cus­sions with the com­mit­tee to see whether it would still be appro­pri­ate for her to attend.”

Law­maker Adrian Sanders said if Brooks did not appear, “that is not going to go down very well with my fel­low com­mit­tee members.”

When Brooks stepped down Fri­day, she said she was going to “con­cen­trate on cor­rect­ing the dis­tor­tions and rebut­ting the alle­ga­tions about my record.”

She was edi­tor of News of the World between 2000 and 2003, when some of the phone hack­ing took place, but has always said she did not know it was going on, a claim greeted with skep­ti­cism by many who worked there.

At an appear­ance before U.K. law­mak­ers in 2003, Brooks admit­ted that News Inter­na­tional had paid police for infor­ma­tion. That admis­sion of pos­si­ble ille­gal activ­ity went largely unchal­lenged at the time and law­mak­ers are keen to ask her about it again.

Police pre­vi­ously arrested nine other peo­ple, includ­ing sev­eral for­mer News of the World reporters and edi­tors, over alle­ga­tions of hack­ing and bribery. Those include Andy Coul­son, a for­mer News of the World edi­tor who became Cameron’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions chief before resign­ing in Jan­u­ary. No one has yet been charged.

Even more senior fig­ures could face arrest, includ­ing James Mur­doch, chair­man of BSkyB and chief exec­u­tive of his father’s Euro­pean and Asian oper­a­tions. 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.

Hin­ton, too, could face ques­tion­ing over wrong­do­ing at the News of the World dur­ing his 12 years as exec­u­tive chair­man of News Inter­na­tional. But Hin­ton is an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen liv­ing in the U.S., so British author­i­ties would have to seek his extra­di­tion if he refused to come willingly.

Chan­drashekhar Krish­nan, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Trans­parency Inter­na­tional UK, said British pros­e­cu­tors seek­ing to prove that bribes that were approved at a high level would have to uncover strong evi­dence such as memos or min­utes of a meeting.

“That usu­ally proves to be very, very dif­fi­cult,” he said.

Rupert Mur­doch is eager to stop the cri­sis from spread­ing to the United States, home of 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. The FBI has already opened an inquiry into whether 9/11 vic­tims or their fam­i­lies were also hack­ing tar­gets of News Corp. journalists.

On Sun­day, Mur­doch took out full-page ads in British news­pa­pers promis­ing that News Corp. would make amends for the phone hack­ing scan­dal, with the title “Putting right what’s gone wrong.” News Corp. vowed there would “be no place to hide” for wrongdoers.

That fol­lowed a full-page Mur­doch ad Sat­ur­day declar­ing, “We are sorry.”

Murdoch’s crit­ics say that is not enough. Labour Party leader Ed Miliband said Sun­day that Mur­doch has “too much power” in Britain and his share of media own­er­ship should be reduced.

Mur­doch still owns three national British news­pa­pers — The Sun, The Times and The Sun­day Times — and a 39-percent share of BSkyB.

At Tuesday’s com­mit­tee hear­ing, which will be tele­vised, politi­cians will seek answers 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.

Police, mean­while, are under pres­sure to explain why their orig­i­nal hack­ing inves­ti­ga­tion sev­eral years ago failed to find enough evi­dence to pros­e­cute any­one other than News of the World royal reporter Clive Good­man and pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor Glenn Mul­caire. Detec­tives reopened the inves­ti­ga­tion ear­lier this year and now say they have the names of 3,700 poten­tial victims.

Records show that senior offi­cers had numer­ous meals and meet­ings with News Inter­na­tional exec­u­tives in the past few years.

Stephen­son, who became police chief in 2009, said he had “no knowl­edge of, or involve­ment in, the orig­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into phone hack­ing in 2006.” He said he was “unaware that there were any other doc­u­ments in our pos­ses­sion of the nature that have now emerged.”