Rupert Murdoch used his political influence and contacts at the highest levels to try to get Labour MPs and peers to back away from investigations into phone hacking at the News of the World, a former minister in Gordon Brown's government has told the Observer.

The ex-minister, who does not want to be named, says he is aware of evidence that Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, relayed messages to Brown last year via a third party, urging him to help take the political heat out of the row, which he felt was in danger of damaging his company.

Brown, who stepped down as prime minister after last May's general election defeat for Labour, has refused to comment on the claim, but has not denied it. It is believed that contacts were made before he left No 10. The minister said: "What I know is that Murdoch got in touch with a good friend who then got in touch with Brown. The intention was to get him to cool things down. That is what I was told."

Brown, who became increasingly concerned at allegations of phone hacking and asked the police to investigate, had claimed that he was a victim of hacking when chancellor. He made Murdoch's views known to a select few in the Labour party.

In January, it was revealed Brown had written at least one letter to the Metropolitan police over concerns that his phone was targeted when he was still at the Treasury.

Suggestions that Murdoch involved Tony Blair in a chain of phone calls that led to Brown have been denied by the former prime minister. A spokesman for Blair said the claim was "categorically untrue", adding "no such calls ever took place". The allegation will, however, add to concerns about the influence Murdoch wielded over key political figures at Westminster and in Downing Street.

Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch 'urged Gordon Brown' to halt Labour attacks

The Royal Family has been pulled into the News International phone-hacking affair, dealing a blow to the latest desperate attempt by Rupert Murdoch's media giant to hide the true extent of the scandal, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice are suspected targets of the media empire's hacking activities, and their father, the Duke of York, has privately expressed exasperation at the apparent breach of his family's privacy. Suspicions that the princesses were targets arose after Eugenie was the subject of an attempted mugging while travelling in Cambodia with a friend two years ago. The attack, in Phnom Penh during the girls' gap year, was thwarted by bodyguards but details of the incident quickly found their way into The Sun newspaper and other News International (NI) publications.

This is the first instance of the Royal Family being drawn into the phone-hacking row since the conviction of Clive Goodman, the News of the World's royal editor four years ago. Goodman pleaded guilty to intercepting messages left on phones of aides to Princes William and Harry and was jailed for four months. Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator used to carry out the interceptions, was jailed for six months.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/exclusive-royals-pulled-into-phonehacking-scandal-2265869.html

from Crikey .....

Rundle: Wow. News of the World hacking scandal explodes

From London, Guy Rundle writes:

ANDY COULSON, GUY RUNDLE, NEWS OF THE WORLD PHONE HACKING SCANDAL, REBEKAH BROOKS, RUPERT MURDOCH

Private Eye has a joke it has done ohhh a couple thousand times of the form: Iraq an apology. Previous editions of this paper may have given them impression that Iraq was "a noble crusade that will be over in a week". This was a misprint. It should have read "disastrous quagmire graveyard of hubristic folly", etc, etc.

News Corp's announcement of an apology for the phone-hacking scandal, published in the UK this weekend was of that order.

"Following an extensive internal investigation" it began - five words, five lies - "and disclosures through civil legal cases, News International has decided to approach some civil litigants with an unreserved apology and an admission of liability in cases meeting specific criteria.

"We have also asked our lawyers to establish a compensation scheme with a view to dealing with justifiable claims fairly and efficiently.

"We will, however, continue to contest cases that we believe are without merit or where we are not responsible."

The announcement of an apology and an open-ended commitment to out-of-court settlements comes three days after two News of the World employees were arrested and their homes and offices searched, and at the same time as The Observer carried a story from an unnamed former Labour minister saying that Rupert himself approached Gordon Brown to try to have various Labour backbenchers dissuaded from attacking News Corp over the matter.

No date is given for the process (which allegedly tried to convince Tony Blair to advocate on News's behalf), but News turned on Brown pretty swiftly and spectacularly during the dying days of his regime.

News Corp's apology will initially extend to only eight people - the shiny Sienna Miller, inevitably features as first plaintiff in news stories, and seven other dweebs (former Labourista Tessa Jowell, etc, etc), and the planned fund has scope to pay out to another 20 or so.

But many say that News is being optimistic about the numbers who will be eligible for a payout, and the numbers who will accept one if offered. Many will take the money and run, especially celebs, but there are others who appear willing to take it all the way. Two in particular are of importance: former deputy PM John Prescott, and former MP George Galloway.

Prescott's phone was certainly hacked after he left office - it may have been so while he was incumbent, and that may have occurred with other cabinet members, including the PM (or his aides). If that's the case, and it can be established, then no amount of money will get News out of schtook.

And if it has hacked a government-issue mobile, rather than a private one, people will be going to prison for quite a while. But Prescott has been the man in the spotlight over this.

Seen as something of a buffoon during and after his tenure, his stature has risen during this scandal, because he has been the one person prepared to raise the rooftops about the scale of what has occurred. Interviews with him are shouty epics, but they need to be to establish the scale of what has occurred.

Galloway is another proposition. The ex-Labour MP, who then did a term in the interesting Respect group (Trots, Muslim activists, some Islamists and one Stalinist), has previously gone to the mat, and won, against The Sunday Telegraph after it ran with fabricated documents falsely implicating him in Iraq payoffs.

Galloway has had confirmation from the Met - eventually - that his phone was hacked, and he appears to be willing to take the matter all the way to court, as a political cause.

He claimed this weekend that the apology was just a way for News Corp to try to stop the scandal reaching Rebekah Brooks, the UK News Group CEO. The ultimate victory would be to put Brooks behind bars, and she may have set herself up for this when she told a Commons committee that News "paid police for stories if it was in the public interest".

The footage is worth watching, if only to see her-then boss Andy Coulson, sitting beside her, go green and interject that News acted "within the law" - which, of course, paying cops for information is not.

The whole scandal has blown up mere weeks after News was given the go-ahead to take a controlling interesting in Sky Broadcasting, the UK's largest cable TV outfit - with the fig-leaf of hiving off Sky News to an "independent" body of owners.

The broadcasting regulator and the government have refused to open the matter, saying its entirely separate - a decision that may prove excruciating for them if News Corp's operating secrets are laid out before the world, in a series of court cases. There are more than 50 police going through the trove of News's emails that they could no longer avoid re-opening the inquiry.

Wow. Wow. Right up to this weekend, News Corp looked like it was in control of the process. Now the matter has acquired a life of its own, and no one really knows where it will end. Wow. Wow.

.................

It has obviously come as a tremendous shock to Rupert Murdoch and his senior executives to discover his company's biggest-selling newspaper, the News of the World, has been systematically and illegally hacking the private voicemails of public figures for years.

Not least because it suggests the absence of a vital piece of equipment Murdoch and his News Corporation executives have for decades steadfastly maintained they use on an everyday basis in running their global media company.

Crikey understands the search for the missing device is now a matter of high priority within the Murdoch empire. James Murdoch, son and heir apparent, is said to be masterminding the international search for the vital piece of equipment, assisted in Australia by his brother Lachlan, who developed a familiarity with the devices when he studied ethics at Princeton University.

The big concern within News Corp, according to company insiders, is that failure to immediately locate the instrument will create a disastrous impression that the company has been operating - possibly since its inception in the early 1950s - without it.

The pursuit coincides with another News Corp derby - the race to keep hundreds of potential litigants whose phones have been hacked (including a former deputy prime minister) out of the British courts.

May we suggest a much more straightforward approach - a metal detector could be just the thing to find that missing moral compass.

from Crikey .....

NoW phone hacking scandal: third arrest in a week

Glenn Dyer writes:

BSKYB, JAMES MURDOCH, NEWS OF THE WORLD

A week ago in the US, News Corp London refugee, James Murdoch boasted that the company had been able to put the sticky story ("the problem", as he called it) about the News Of The World phone hackings "into a box".

That was after News International had apologised for the phone hacking and offered to settle a limited number of cases.

Overnight in London, News Corp's hopes and that boast from the refugee blew up when British police arrested a third senior News of The World executive. The arrest damages News' leaked confidence that it has the situation under control.

With only a couple of weeks to the final decision by the UK Government on the News Corp bid for the rest of BSkyB, the Murdoch empire is under renewed pressure on the phone hacking story that just won't be controlled by the usual application of money, influence and political blackmail and abuse in print.

"Executives clear desk of news editor James Weatherup hours before police arrive", The Guardian reported.

Weatherup was news editor at the News of the World between 2004 and 2006 under then-editor Andy Coulson, which means the scandal is now getting very serious as the next one to go could be even higher up the food chain at the paper.

British papers reported that after his role as news editor, Weatherup went back to being a senior reporter on the tabloid newspaper but kept his job title. A bit like the retired majors and colonels who are scattered across the English landscape.

Now the toll at the paper reads the former royal reporter, Clive Goodman (and the external private detective, Glenn Mulcaire), both jailed. Plus, former assistance news editor Ian Edmonson, chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck and now Weatherup arrested. Then there's the former editor, Andy Coulson, who resigned as David Cameron's media adviser in January, and senior journalist, Greg Miskiw, who has been implicated by documents police took from Glenn Mulcaire.

Remember that up until the start of this year News Corp and News International had insisted the scandal was caused by firstly a "rogue reporter" and the private eye (Goodman and Mulcaire) and then a "small cabal" after Edmonson was stood down.

Now there's an apology, but the words 'sorry' and 'we were wrong' were nowhere to be seen. That apology has been exposed as a legal stratagem by News management and their lawyers to try and corral would-be complaints towards a settlement by raising the prospect of huge legal costs if they go on with their cases.

British newspapers reported that not only was Mr Weatherup's house in Romford, Essex, searched by police but the contents of his desk are now being examined by police. The Guardian pointed out: "What is also significant about yesterday's arrest of a hitherto relative unknown is that the police have worked at such intensity and speed."

Apparently Weatherup's arrest shocked even those at News of the World. But The Guardian also asked a good question: "News International insists it is cooperating with police and trying to root out anyone who was involved in hacking, so why did it bag up evidence from the desk of James Weatherup, the executive arrested yesterday, and remove it from the building?"

Yes, did the paper hand over all the stuff on Weatherup's desk, or did they and their lawyers go through it to make sure there was no dynamite?

And then there's the very curious case of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, who this week corrected evidence she had given to a UK parliamentary committee back in 2003 when she said the News Of The World (she was editor) paid police. Surely that is a record for uncorrected evidence?

Now The Guardian asks: "When she was editor of the News of the World between 2000 and 2003, was Rebekah Brooks (then Wade) aware of the activities of Jonathan Rees, a private detective who the paper paid to buy information from police officers and obtain data by other illegal means?"

Doesn't seem like the issue has been put "into a box" yet.