Rupert Murdoch - Like his son, the News Corp. chief faces new accusations that he misled Parliament in his July testimony. The evidence provided by Harbottle & Lewis claims that News Corp. hired them not to investigate Goodman's claims thoroughly, but rather to provide the guise of an investigation in order to insulate the company from further scrutiny. Nick Davies at The Guardian reports:

Harbottle and Lewis say they find it "hard to credit" James Murdoch's repeated claim that News International "rested on" their letter as part of their grounds for believing that Clive Goodman was a "rogue reporter". They say News International's view of their role is "self-serving" and that Rupert Murdoch's claim that they were hired "to find out what the hell was going on" was "inaccurate and misleading", although they add that he may have been confused or misinformed about their role.

Regardless of whether he was confused or not, Parliament will likely ask Murdoch to explain the law firm's accusations.

Les Hinton - The Goodman letter was an appeal to the leadership of News International not to fire the former royal correspondent for gross misconduct. At that point in time, Hinton was in charge of News International and had been copied on the letter. Parliament now wants to know why Hinton did not take the condemning letter to the police. Labour MP Tom Watson said on Tuesday:

Let me be clear, if what Goodman says is accurate, then it's very, very serious for Andy Coulson and Tom Crone the lawyer. If it's not accurate, the central question is why did Les Hinton, the Chief Executive of News International at the time, on receiving this letter not mention it to a Parliamentary inquiry that he gave evidence to only days afterwards and why did he not immediately call in the police? After all there had been an allegation of widespread criminality in the organisation in 2007 and he didn't want to clear it up. That contradicts what Rupert Murdoch told us which is he takes a zero tolerance policy to wrongdoing in News Corp.

Andy Coulson - The Goodman letter directly accuses Coulson, then editor of News of the World, of broader phone hacking knowledge. Goodman claims that Coulson had promised him his job back after the prison sentence in exchange for his silence. Davies reports:

Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named.

Coulson later became the press secretary for Prime Minister David Cameron who--like everyone implicated--at best faces further embarrassment from the set of accusations.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

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