LONDON?? Scotland Yard?s arrest of a former personal assistant to Rebekah Brooks, a former chief executive of the British newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch?s News Corporation, appears to reflect the investigators? intensifying focus on the possibility of a cover-up by executives, editors and others of the extent of illegal phone hacking and other criminal wrongdoing at the The News of the World, which is now defunct.
After 10 hours of questioning on Friday, detectives assigned to a special unit investigating the affair released the assistant, Cheryl Carter, 47, on police bail pending further questioning. She was arrested at dawn at her home in Billericay, 25 miles east of London. Efforts to reach her for comment on Saturday were not successful.
Scotland Yard said she was the 17th person, most of them former employees of the The News of the World, to be arrested by officers assigned to Operation Weeting, established last year under special provisions intended to ensure the independence of the investigators.
The creation of that task force followed several years of faltering inquiries by Scotland Yard that upheld, until a torrent of disclosures last year, denials by News International that more than two people on the News of the World?s newsroom staff had been involved in the illegal interception of the cellphone voicemails of crime victims, politicians and celebrities.
Scandal rocks Britain
As the scandal grew last year, dominating headlines in Britain for months, the police inquiry, and hearings by a parliamentary committee, began to focus on allegations that executives, editors and others involved had conspired to cover up the extent of the wrongdoing, which Scotland Yard said last month had involved the hacking of the cellphones of at least 800 people.
One of the executives who has been under pressure is James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch?s son, who leads News Corporation?s European and Asian operations, and has long been considered a candidate to succeed his father as head of the company. The police investigation and testimony before a parliamentary committee identified a 2009 meeting in London attended by James Murdoch as crucial to unraveling the issue of whether senior executives conspired in the cover-up.
Under questioning at two sessions before the committee last year, James Murdoch denied having approved an out-of-court settlement of more than $1.4 million to buy the silence of a British soccer union executive who was suing News International and threatening to go public with documents pointing to a wider use of phone hacking than the company had then admitted. Two other senior Murdoch employees contested Mr. Murdoch?s denial, saying that they had informed Mr. Murdoch of the extent of the phone hacking, and cited that as a reason for approving the settlement. One of the two, Colin Myler, the former editor of the The News of the World, was appointed editor last week of The Daily News in New York, a rival of the Murdoch-owned New York Post.
Ms. Carter?s arrest drew attention for several reasons, including a Scotland Yard statement that said that she had been questioned on suspicion of trying to pervert the course of justice, a line of inquiry that has not been specified in police statements on most of the other arrests in Operation Weeting.
In addition, Ms. Carter appeared to have had a close personal and professional relationship with Ms. Brooks, the most senior executive in the Murdoch hierarchy to have been arrested in the affair. Former News of the World employees who spoke on condition of anonymity said Ms. Carter had worked as a personal assistant to Ms. Brooks for 19 years, starting when Ms. Brooks was deputy editor of The Sun, another Murdoch-owned tabloid in London, and continuing as Ms. Brooks became editor of the The News of the World, editor of The Sun, and later chief executive of News International, overseeing all of the Murdoch titles in Britain.
Ms. Brooks?s resignation in July followed closely the News Corporation?s abrupt decision to close News of the World, Britain?s highest-circulation Sunday newspaper, after 168 years of continuous publication.
Ms. Carter, who was described by those who worked with her as Ms. Brooks?s ?gatekeeper,? with close knowledge of Ms. Brooks?s schedule, e-mails and meetings, lost her job as personal assistant amid the storm of recriminations after the disclosure that one of those whose cellphones had been hacked was Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl who was abducted and murdered in an outer London suburb in 2002.
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News International?s acknowledgment that the The News of the World had hacked into the teenager?s phone at a time when there was still hope that she remained alive, and deleted messages left by her family and friends so as to make room for others, was a watershed in the scandal. Ms. Carter?s departure from News International closely followed that of Ms. Brooks, but Ms. Carter continued to write a weekly beauty column for The Sun until that, too, was discontinued in December.
E-mails probed
One of the issues under investigation by Scotland Yard is whether any documents or e-mails pertinent to the inquiry were deleted or destroyed as part of a cover-up. Although News International has provided investigators with an archive of 300 million e-mails, the company has been accused of having deleted e-mails and of providing former employees with lavish payouts on the condition of their silence. It has also been accused of making selective leaks to other sections of the news media that Scotland Yard suggested constituted a ?deliberate campaign to undermine the investigation.?
According to two former staff members who did not want to be named because they were discussing a topic that was the subject of an active police investigation, Ms. Carter was fiercely loyal to Ms. Brooks. A person who claimed to have been present on the day that Ms. Brooks cleared out her office at News International?s headquarters, and who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the two women were seen carrying items to a parked car.
Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting.
The article, "
Latest Hacking Scandal Arrest Suggests Focus On Cover-up," first appeared in The New York Times.
Copyright ? 2012 The New York Times
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45916148/ns/world_news-the_new_york_times/
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