Letter Says Bosses Knew About UK Phone Hacking
A 2007 letter written by a former editor for the UK-based tabloid News of the World has come to light, revealing that perhaps the higher-ups knew quite a bit more about the phone hacking scandal than they’ve led us to believe.
According to the four-year-old letter, Clive Goodman (photo above,) former Royal Editor for the now-closed paper, was dismissed for activities related to intercepting phone messages belonging to members of the royal family. Goodman’s letter, addressed to Human Resources Director Daniel Cloke, appeals the decision to fire him based on the grounds that illicit phone hacking activities were “pervasive” and “widely discussed” at editorial team meetings.
Goodman ultimately served four months in jail for the 2007 incident.
The News of the World paper shut its doors following a widely-covered phone hacking scandal. It was found that in 2002, a private investigator working for the News of the World had retrieved phone messages sent to a missing teenager, Milly Dowler, by her worried parents. The investigator wanted to make room for any other messages coming in, so he deleted some of Dowler’s older cell messages. This action was discovered by Dowler’s parents, who then took heart that perhaps their daughter was still alive. Milly Dowler, however, had been murdered by this time.
After the Dowler story broke, an almost 10-year pattern of hacking-related activities were exposed, with victims going as high up as the royal family itself. Even victims of the 9-11 terrorist plane crashes in New York allegedly had their cell phones hacked, in order to obtain breaking stories for the paper. Officials within the News of the World have been tied to these activities, as well as even members of Scotland Yard and Prime Minister David Cameron’s own press secretary.
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