First there was the rogue reporter, then the rogue executive, and by last Thursday, an entire rogue newspaper.

Even that, though, seems to have been subsumed by a new strategy on the part of News International, after warnings emerged that some senior executives knew about a 2007 internal inquiry that concluded hacking was more widespread than the activities commissioned by the jailed former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman.

The intent of the plan seems pretty clear: to insulate NI's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks – whose closeness to Rupert Murdoch was underlined by an all-smiles dinner trip in front of the cameras in London on Sunday night – but above all to protect Murdoch's son James, the News Corp chairman in Europe, and the man marked out as the heir to Rupert, at a business that for all its size is a family firm in which the patriarch has done deal after deal to protect his personal control.

But the risks of the strategy are considerable – pitting executive against executive at an organisation already in a state of civil war and full of journalists dismayed by the sudden closure of the News of the World.

It may look like a new development, but the new strategy has it roots as far back as January. Brooks has gradually been building a team loyal to her – starting with the arrival of Will Lewis, the former Daily Telegraph editor, as her deputy last September. It was Lewis who "had the ear of key people" and began to argue that the company should concede that hacking was more widespread than the old rogue reporter defence that had held since 2007.

The approach began to take shape in January with the suspension and then dismissal of the News of the World's assistant editor (news), Ian Edmondson.

Lewis also stiffened up his team with the appointment of the former Chelsea FC spin doctor Simon Greenberg – a close personal friend – at the beginning of the year.

Meanwhile, tensions within News International had been brewing throughout 2011. Relationships deteriorated between Brooks and her team and Colin Myler, the News of the World editor, and the paper's chief lawyer, Tom Crone, both of whom were no longer involved in internal inquiries relating to phone hacking.

A different lawyer, Jeff Palker, sits with Lewis and Greenberg on News International's management and standards committee, whose job it is to deal with the hacking allegations, the police criminal inquiry into phone hacking and the range of civil actions that beset the UK arm of Murdoch's News Corp.

Until last week that body reported to Brooks, but in the wake of the Milly Dowler hacking allegations, which date back to Brooks's editorship of the News of the World, she is no longer at the head of the committee, which would in theory be investigating her.

Despite that setback, the new power group felt emboldened to break with the previous regime as they discovered the existence of the 2007 inquiry and emails that appeared to show evidence that £130,000 worth of payments were made to police officers in the middle of the last decade, in order partly to buy phone numbers of members of Buckingham Palace staff that may in turn provide the details needed to hack into their phones.

Information about payments to police emerged last week – as revealed by Lewis's longtime friend and former colleague, the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston.

Over the weekend, more information emerged from Wapping, suggesting that knowledge of the 2007 inquiry was more widespread, and in so doing suggesting other executives have questions to answer about what they knew, including Myler and Crone, and in particular the former News International executive chairman Les Hinton, who was Brooks's boss and on-the-ground adviser during the time she edited both the Sun and the News of the World.

Hinton remained tight-lipped yesterday, declining to comment. But the new power group's manoeuvre increases the possibility that any under-pressure executive could brief against those currently in the driving seat.

Meanwhile, there remains endless speculation as to why Rupert Murdoch is so keen to protect Brooks. Those close to Brooks say simply that she is focused on the clean-up operation, but the argument advanced by outsiders is that she is effectively a "firebreak".

If she were to resign now, attention would rapidly move to James Murdoch, and in particular his role in signing off a £700,000 settlement payment in the Gordon Taylor phone-hacking case in 2008; her presence gives public anger and external criticism a focus that helps protect the eventual succession.

Others at News International are clearly unhappy with the new briefing strategy, whose risks were underlined yesterday when the Metropolitan police said: "It is our belief that information that has appeared in the media today is part of a deliberate campaign to undermine the investigation into the alleged payments by corrupt journalists to corrupt police officers and divert attention from elsewhere."

But those pointing with satisfaction to the Met's rebuke know that for the moment it is not they who are driving the company's response to the hacking crisis, which seems determined to protect those currently in charge with an eye to the company's long-term future.