High-Up Cop 'Like Clouseau' as '06 News of World Probe Fizzled; Was Ex-Prime Minister Hacked?
Multiple police leaders in charge of a botched 2006 investigation of alleged widespread telephone hacking by the News of the World were grilled today by members of a British Parliamentary committee.
But one in particular was on the hot seat. Former Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman of the Metropolitan Police Service of London, who headed the 2006 probe, was “like Clouseau rather than Columbo” in his approach to the investigation, said Labour MP Keith Vaz, who serves as chairman of the committee, the Daily Mail reports.
When it was pointed out to Hayman that he himself is on the list of some 12,000 names and numbers that may have been hacked by the British tabloid, he responded “Am I?”
However, he protested a suggestion by Vaz that he had gone easy on the investigation after he was photographed leaving a bar with a married blond woman.
Meanwhile, a former British prime minister has accused investigators at another United Kingdom newspaper owned by a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. of employing “known criminals” to access his bank account, legal files and other material, reports the New York Times.
The article quotes Gordon Brown as telling the BBC News that “I think that what happened pretty early on in government is that the Sunday Times appear to have got access to my building society account, they got access to my legal files, there is some question mark about what happened to other files—documentation, tax and everything else.”
Brown was serving either as Labour prime minister or as chancellor of the Exchequer at the time, he said.
Additional coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “‘Adult Supervision’ Lacking in UK Paper’s Phone-Hacking, Del. Suit Says, Blaming Board”
