Re. the News Corp scandal(s): The thing about corruption is that it's so, um, corruptational

by Ken

If there was any thought that the decision of News International -- the tentacle of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp that controls the British holdings that have become the subject of such mountingly embarrassing (not to mention quite likely prosecutable) disclosures -- to shut down the once-massive-circulation News of the World, which has been at the center of the scandals, would lessen the heat on the company, so far it isn't working out.

Their best hope at this point is that so many people in authority are being incriminated -- not just News Corp execs who've been promoted to lofty positions, including in the U.S., but the Metropolitan Police (i.e., Scotland Yard), British pols like now-PM David Cameron, parliamentary "overseers" -- that there may be enough nabobs with enough power to keep some of the mess safely swept under the rug. Is it any wonder that one of the free "newspapers" circulated to weary New York commuters, Metro New York, had as its front-page head this morning: "Is Murdoch's empire crumbling?"

It's important to remember that the "signature" booboo of the case, that enterprising News of the World reporter's clever stung in hacking into the cell phone of a kidnapped teenage girl and deleting phone messages during the investigation, is not only the proverbial tip of the iceberg but, more importantly old news; there are already NOTW creeps in prison for it.

ASST. COMMISSIONER YATES: IT'S NOT MY FAULT
NEWS INT'L DIDN'T, YOU KNOW, TELL US STUFF

In one form or another the scandal goes back to 2005. In fact, John Yates, the Met's assistant commissioner for terrorism, who in 2009, as assistant commissioner in charge of specialist operations had the mess dumped in his lap, and totally bungled it, reminded us of the timeline in his testimony today before a Home Affairs select committee of the House of Commons:

Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner John Yates: "Please do not take that admission as in any way accepted, I accept responsibility for what News International have not done with regard to this case from 2005 to 2006 to 2009 to 2010 and even up until yesterday." (You can watch Commissioner Yates try to maintain a shred of dignity on the Guardian website.)

Yates, according to the Guardian team's account, "acknowledged in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph that his decision not to reopen an investigation in 2009 was 'pretty crap.'" However, in his opening statement to the select committee today, he set the tone for his testimony, "Had I know then what I know now, I would have made different decisions."

Yates's people are currently poring over "11,000 pages of material containing nearly 4,000 names of possible hacking victims," which "he conceded" he hasn't seen, and whose contents . . . well, apparently our guess is as good as his. Also in the course of his testimony, according to the Guardian account, "Yates said he had 'never, ever, ever' received payment from journalists for information but admitted it was 'highly probable' that some of his officers did."

Well, that's OK then.

In case you hadn't heard, one of the directions well beyond phone hacking into which the case has slithered is police, er, "cooperation" with "inquiring" reporters. And it's not just News of the World that's involved. Suspicious glances are being cast at the other News International papers in London -- the surviving tabloid, the Sun, and even the Times and Sunday Times. The question rightly raised, it seems to me, concerns an entire culture of corruption.

After all, the editor of NOTW from 2000 to 2003, when the first illegal hackings took place, was Rebekah Brooks, who went on to edit the Sun from 2003 to 2009 and is now chief executive of News International! And the man whom Rupert M installed as CEO of Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal after he took control of them in December 2007, Les Hinton, came to these august journalistic positions from 12 years as executive chairman of . . . oh my, News International! (His Dow Jones bio adds that "Mr. Hinton is chairman of the Dow Jones Foundation, which supports the promotion and defense of journalism as well as literacy and education." Roger that.)

Somebody (I wish I remembered who) made the excellent point is that the most frightening thing about this whole still-emerging stinkpot is that the practices being uncovered seem to have become standard practices -- for so-called journalists (in search of money-making headlines) whose bosses hobnob with the coppers' bosses and the political elites. (And are we to believe that it's only News International journos who behave in such dastardly fashion. How about their American counterparts? Fox Noise, anyone? And are News Corp minions the only ones playing these games?)

During his testimony today, Commissioner Yates was asked by select committee chair Keith Vaz whether he has given any consideration to resigning. The commissioner seemed quite adamant that there was no reason for him to consider such a step. After all, how could it be his fault that News International didn't turn over all that information that if only he'd known he wouldn't have made the same "crap" decision he made in 2009?

Apparently police work in the U.K. goes something like this:

SCOTLAND YARD [shaking fist]: We demand that you turn over any information you have that would tell us how naughty you've been.
NEWS INTERNATIONAL: Information? Information? We have no information.
SCOTLAND YARD: Well, that's all right then, because otherwise we might have to, like, do something. Cheerio!

[CURTAIN]

Select committee chairman Vaz, by the way, pronounced himself dissatisfied with Yates's testimony, giving rise to the Guardian head: "Met officer John Yates's evidence on phone-hacking inquiry 'unconvincing.'"

WHAT DOESN'T GET LOST EN ROUTE TO MUMBAI?

Meanwhile, I have to say my favorite episode in all of this mess goes way back to when those Met bulldogs were still trying to shake information loose from NOTW, in particular several zillion e-mails that were mysteriously unaccounted for. We Yanks recall when we had our own missing e-mail scandal, back when the thugs of the Bush crime regime were wiping out everything they could get their zappers on. Our brave American thugs know how to tough it out. "E-mails?" they said. "Nah, they're all gone. Close the door on your way out." And that was pretty much the last we heard of it.

British investigators, however, are more tenacious, and insisted on an answer. Not necessarily a good answer, but an answer nevertheless. Here's the Friday Guardian account:

NI originally claimed the archive of emails did not exist. Last December, its Scottish editor, Bob Bird, told the trial of Tommy Sheridan in Glasgow that the emails had been lost en route to Mumbai. Also in December, the company's solicitor, Julian Pike from Farrer and Co, gave a statement to the high court saying it was unable to retrieve emails more than six months old.

The first hint that this was not true came in late January when NI handed Scotland Yard evidence that led to the immediate sacking of its news editor, Ian Edmondson, and to the launch of Operation Weeting. It was reported that this evidence consisted of three old emails.

Three months later, on 23 March, Pike formally apologised to the high court and acknowledged News International could locate emails as far back as 2005 and that no emails had been lost en route to Mumbai or anywhere else in India. In a signed statement seen by the Guardian, Pike said he had been misinformed by the NoW's in-house lawyer, Tom Crone, who had told him that he, too, had been misled. He offered no explanation for the misleading evidence given by Bird.

What can I say except that I am in awe? Lost en route to Mumbai! But of course! That happens all the time! Why, just last week my watch went missing, and as soon as I read about Bob Bird and his breakthrough in uninvestigation, I knew immediately that the darned thing must have been lost en route to Mumbai.


Now editor Bird could just have said that his dog ate those millions of e-mails. But apparently with that image of e-mails wafting off course en route to Mumbai, his interrogators were charmed into complaisance. Nobody in Scotland seemed to wonder how the e-mails came to be en route to Mumbai. Or for that matter just what was en route to Mumbai. Was the idea that those millions of e-mails had been dumped into a really, really big old steamer trunk and dragged to the post office? Really now, even in my state of technical innocence I know that you can't crate a batch of e-mails up for shipping to India or anywhere else. Maybe the e-mails were on a server that somehow got crated up and somebody slapped a label with a Mumbai address on it?

I like to think that editor Bird didn't even crack a smile when he broke the news about the grief to which the Mumbai-bound e-mails had come. When you come up with a story like that, you really have to sell it.

Hey, I'm sold. I don't even have a dog to accuse of eating my homework. In any case, the "lost en route to Mumbai" story is so much classier, more elegant. As it happens, I found the missing watch this morning, so apparently it wasn't lost en route to Mumbai after all. However, if my DWT post tomorrow should happen not to appear on schedule . . . well, you know where it is.

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