New Arrest Amid Inquiry on Hacking
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Version 0 of 1. LONDON — Police officials investigating phone hacking by journalists at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers arrested a man on Thursday who was identified in news reports as Tom Crone, a former senior lawyer for the newspapers. Scotland Yard said in a statement that officers in London were questioning a 60-year-old man “on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications.” The police did not release the man’s name, but he was widely identified by British news outlets. The arrest brings the scandal over allegations of illegal interceptions of voice mail messages and other improprieties at the newspapers — especially The News of the World, the tabloid that Mr. Murdoch shut down last year — closer to Mr. Murdoch’s son James. He headed the British newspaper business until recently, and has been locked in a public dispute with Mr. Crone and with Colin Myler, the former editor of The News of the World. In testimony before public inquiries and in statements to reporters, the two men have insisted that in the summer of 2008, when they were facing a lawsuit claiming that phone hacking was widespread at the paper, they informed James Murdoch at a meeting and in an e-mail that criminality in the newsroom was not limited to one or two rogue employees. Mr. Murdoch has said that he did not read the e-mail, and he disputes the men’s account of their meeting. He has said that he agreed to settle the lawsuit by authorizing a large payment to the plaintiffs only because it made financial sense to do so, not as part of a cover-up. When a wave of additional phone hacking allegations emerged last year and stoked public outrage, Rupert Murdoch shut down The News of the World. A spokeswoman for News International, the British newspaper arm of the Murdoch empire, said Thursday that it had no comment on the arrest. Scotland Yard said in a statement that the man it arrested Thursday — the one that British news outlets said was Mr. Crone — was not accused of obstructing justice, a charge leveled at some other former Murdoch executives. But a former colleague, who did not want to be named discussing a continuing police investigation, said that the arrest would probably cause concern within Mr. Murdoch’s companies. “He was at the middle of every meeting and discussion,” the former colleague said of Mr. Crone. “He’s the last person you’d want to start talking if you wanted this all to go away.” Mr. Crone did not immediately respond to a voice mail message seeking comment. |