Clive Goodman Letter Crushes NOTW Phone Hacking Alibi

by NowPublic Staff | August 16, 2011 at 09:45 am

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Phone Hacking Scandal: Clive Goodman Says Entire Staff Knew

A four-year-old letter written by disgraced News of the World Royals correspondent Clive Goodman has torpedoes NOTW's claim that the senior staff didn't know about the ongoing phone hacking.

The surfacing of this letter, written in protest of Goodman's being fired from NOTW, in which he said that “the actions leading to this criminal charge were carried out with the full knowledge and support” of NOTW's editors.

This would suggest that Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks lied to Parliament in their respective testimonies, not that the public took them at their word anyway. They may be called in for an encore, though one presumes that the Pie Police will also be present.

Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed in 2007 over hacking into the mobile phone accounts of the Royal Family's staff. It proved to be only the tip of the iceberg.

Evidence released by Parliament shows that phone hacking was openly discussed in News International editorial meetings.

The claims are acutely troubling for the prime minister, David Cameron, who hired Coulson as his media adviser on the basis that he knew nothing about phone hacking. And they confront Rupert and James Murdoch with the humiliating prospect of being recalled to parliament to justify the evidence which they gave last month on the aftermath of Goodman's allegations.

Meanwhile, media law firm Harbottle & Lewis said that the Murdochs were not being truthful when they said that the law firm had advised them that the phone hacking was limited to a single staffer. According to Harbottle & Lewis, the legal advice given was narrow in scope, and based on extremely limited information.