Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

See post #77 in this thread here for more details of the Murdoch Empire hacking of a "rogue" or "double rogue" British military intelligence agent with knowledge of some of the filthiest secrets of Britain's dirty war in the island of Ireland.

Then this from March this year:

The News of the World phone-hacking scandal is set to reach a new peak of embarrassment for the paper and for Scotland Yard with the naming of the sixth and most senior journalist yet to be implicated in illegal news-gathering.

A BBC Panorama programme claims that Alex Marunchak, formerly the paper's senior executive editor, commissioned a specialist snooper who illegally intercepted email messages from a target's computer and faxed copies of them to Marunchak's News of the World office.

The embarrassment is heightened by the fact that the target was a former British army intelligence officer who had served in Northern Ireland and was in possession of secrets which were deemed so sensitive that they had been suppressed by a court order.

Rupert Murdoch's News International, which owns the News of the World, has claimed repeatedly that only one of its journalists the former royal correspondent, Clive Goodman was involved in illegal news-gathering. When Goodman was jailed in January 2007, Scotland Yard chose not to interview any other journalist or executive on the paper.

And Panorama reports that the illegal interception of emails happened in July 2006, when the prime minister's former media adviser Andy Coulson was editing the paper.

Coulson has given evidence to a parliamentary select committee and on oath at a criminal trial, denying that he knew anything of any illegal activity during his seven years at the News of the World.

Panorama obtained details of a fax sent to the office of Marunchak on 5 July 2006, apparently containing copies of emails which had been written by Ian Hurst, a former army intelligence officer. Marunchak was then based in the News of the World's Dublin office, editing the Irish edition. Hurst was believed to be involved in writing a book titled Stakeknife, eventually published under the pseudonym Martin Ingram, which details the alleged involvement of British intelligence in assassinations in Northern Ireland. Hurst had been the subject of court orders obtained by the Ministry of Defence.

Panorama traced Hurst and showed him the fax. He confirmed on camera that the emails had come from his computer. "The hairs on the back of my head are up," he told them. Hurst then contacted a specialist hacker who he suspected was responsible, met him in a local hotel and confronted him, while the BBC secretly filmed the exchange.

The hacker whose name cannot be revealed for separate legal reasons confessed his role and added: "It weren't that hard. I sent you an email that you opened, and that's it ... I sent it from a bogus address ... Now it's gone. It shouldn't even remain on the hard drive ... I think I programmed it to stay on for three months."

Hurst then asked the hacker who had commissioned him to do this. The hacker replied: "The faxes would go to Dublin ... He was the editor of the News of the World for Ireland. A Slovak-type name. I can't remember his fucking name. Alex, his name is. Marunchak." Marunchak declined to answer questions when the BBC confronted him.

The BBC claim that Marunchak was introduced to the specialist hacker by Jonathan Rees, the private investigator whose involvement with corrupt police officers was detailed by the Guardian on Saturday. Internal News International records show that Marunchak regularly employed Rees from the late 1990s, and that during 2006, the News of the World paid Rees more than £4,000 for research relating to Stakeknife, the codename for the British intelligence mole inside the IRA whose activities were known to Ian Hurst.

Marunchak is the sixth News of the World journalist to be implicated in the affair. Documents published by the Guardian in 2009 include an email containing the transcripts of 35 illegally intercepted voicemail messages, sent by a junior reporter, Ross Hindley, for the chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck. Paperwork disclosed in court cases suggests that Clive Goodman, Ian Edmondson and Greg Miskiw commissioned phone-hacking. Goodman was jailed; Edmondson has been sacked but not charged with any offence; Miskiw is believed to have been interviewed by police in 2005 but never charged with any offence.

And here it is suggested that Murdoch Empire contractors hacked Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell, top cops Stevens & Yates, and the governor and deputy governor of the Bank of England.

Firstly, they all deserve to be hacked, each and every one, so :monkeypiss:


Secondly, and more seriously, hacking the PM and senior politocos, two of the most senior police officers in the land, and the country's top central bankers MUST be a national security matter.

And yet it is not being so treated.

In the thread here, the British govt is effectively declaring non-violent protest and strike action against austerity cuts as national security matters. And yet Murdoch editors can hire PIs to hack the messages of some of the most powerful people in the country and not even be asked to account for their actions!!!!!

I call :moon2:

I further note that Murdoch hack Andy Coulson, NOTW editor during some of these incidents, was subsequently hired by Prime Minister David Cameron, who knew all this history, as his top spin doktor.

Or Head of the Tory Propaganda Ministry.

According to journalists and investigators who worked with him, Rees exploited his position as a freemason to make links with masonic police officers who illegally sold him information on targets chosen by the News of the World, the Sunday Mirror and the Daily Mirror. One close contact, Det Sgt Sid Fillery, left the Metropolitan police to become Rees's business partner and added more officers to their network. Fillery was subsequently convicted of possession of indecent images of children.

Some police contacts are said to have been blackmailed into providing confidential information. One of Rees's former associates claims that Rees had compromising photographs of serving officers, including one who was caught in a drunken coma with a couple of prostitutes and with a toilet seat around his neck. Rees claimed to be in touch with corrupt Customs officers, a corrupt VAT inspector and two corrupt bank employees.

An investigator who worked for Rees claims he was commissioning burglaries of public figures to steal material for newspapers. Southern Investigations has previously been implicated in handling paperwork which was stolen by a professional burglar from the safe of Paddy Ashdown's lawyer, when Ashdown was leader of the Liberal Democrats. The paperwork, which was eventually obtained by the News of the World, recorded Ashdown discussing his fears that newspapers might expose an affair with his secretary.

The Guardian has confirmed that Rees also used two specialist "blaggers" who would telephone the Inland Revenue, the DVLA, banks and phone companies and trick them into handing over private data to be sold to Fleet Street.

One of the blaggers who regularly worked for him, John Gunning, was responsible for obtaining details of bank accounts belonging to Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex, which were then sold to the Sunday Mirror. Gunning was later convicted of illegally obtaining confidential data from British Telecom. Rees also obtained details of accounts at Coutts bank belonging to the Duke and Duchess of Kent. The bank accounts of Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, are also thought to have been compromised.

The Guardian has been told that Rees spoke openly about obtaining confidential data belonging to senior politicians and recorded their names in his paperwork. One source close to Rees claims that apart from Tony Blair, Straw, Mandelson and Campbell, he also targeted Gaynor Regan, who became the second wife of the foreign secretary, Robin Cook, the former shadow home secretary, Gerald Kaufman; and the former Tory minister David Mellor.

It is not yet known precisley what Rees was doing with these political targets, although in the case of Peter Mandelson, it appears that Rees obtained confidential details of two bank accounts which he held at Coutts, and his building society account at Britannia. Rees is also said to have targeted his brother, Miles Mandelson.

Separately, for the News of the World, Glenn Mulcaire was hacking the voicemail of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, Straw's successor as home secretary, David Blunkett, the media secretary, Tessa Jowell, and the Europe minister, Chris Bryant. Scotland Yard has repeatedly refused to reveal how many politicians were victims of phone hacking, although Simon Hughes, Boris Johnson and George Galloway have all been named.

The succesful hacking of a computer belonging to the former British intelligence officer Ian Hurst was achieved in July 2006 by sending Hurst an email containing a Trojan program which copied Hurst's emails and relayed them to the hacker. This included messages he had exchanged with at least two agents who informed on the Provisional IRA Freddie Scappaticci, codenamed Stakeknife; and a second informant known as Kevin Fulton. Both men were regarded as high-risk targets for assassination. Hurst was one of the very few people who knew their whereabouts. The hacker cannot be named for legal reasons.

There would be further security concern if Rees's paperwork confirmed strong claims by those close to him that he claimed to have targeted the then Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir John Stevens, who would have had regular access to highly sensitive intelligence. Sir John's successor, Sir Ian Blair, is believed to have been targeted by Glenn Mulcaire, although it has not been confirmed that Mulcaire succeeded in listening to his voicemail. Assistant commissioner John Yates was targeted by Rees when Yates was running inquiries into police corruption in the late 1990s. It appears that Yates did not realise that he himself had been a target when he was responsible for the policing of the phone-hacking affair between July 2009 and January 2011.

Targeting the Bank of England, Rees is believed to have earned thousands of pounds by penetrating the past or present mortgage accounts of the then governor, Eddie George, his deputy, Mervyn King, who is now governor, and half-a-dozen other members of the monetary policy committee.

According to police information provided to the Guardian in September 2002, an internal Scotland Yard report recorded that Rees and his network were engaged in long-term penetration of police intelligence and that "their thirst for knowledge is driven by profit to be accrued from the media".

Operation Weeting has been investigating phone hacking by the News of the World since January. The paper's assistant editor, Ian Edmondson, chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, and former news editor James Weatherup have been arrested and released on police bail.

So, after all that, Scotland Yard's finest rozzers come up with the lame motive that all this hacking was simply driven by the profit motive.

That might be the case with some of the celebrity hacking, which demonstrably led to salacious scoops designed to sell more papers.

The notion that hacking prime ministers, police commanders and central bank governors was driven by the profit motive is risible.

Unless profit motive is used as a synonym for political and commercial leverage, aka blackmail.

I think we should be told.

I know we won't be.

So, :monkeypiss::monkeypiss::monkeypiss: on all their houses.