Police find secret phone at centerof Murdoch's "News International" phone hacking

News International is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox "News".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/exclusive-met-finds-secret-phone-at-centre-of-ni-hacking-2375996.html

James Cusick and Cahal Milmo
Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Specialist detectives from the Metropolitan Police have discovered the existence of a secret mobile phone within News International's east London headquarters that was used in more than 1,000 incidents of illegal hacking.

The Independent has established that the phone, nicknamed "the hub", was registered to News International and located on the News of the World's news desk. Operation Weeting, the Metropolitan Police's hacking inquiry, has evidence that it was used illegally to access 1,150 numbers between 2004 and 2006.

Weeting officers regard the extensive use of the phone over two years as significant new evidence, showing that phone hacking was carried out within the paper's newsroom.

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A former journalist on the NOTW confirmed the existence of the "hub phone" saying that, inside his former newspaper's offices, it was controlled by a nucleus of individuals on the newsdesk, leaving reporters to operate "like IRA cells who were assigned stories, given precise information, but never told where this information actually came from".

The former reporter claimed that the newsdesk executives at the tabloid "kept their cards close to their chests". He said reporters "would be told precisely where a person would be at a given time, so we could go and intercept, photograph and question them. That person would be surprised at how we had discovered their whereabouts. In retrospect the obvious explanation is that a voicemail was left somewhere in which the person had declared their intention to be at a specific location at a specific time." The "hub" was described by the ex-reporter as being "at the heart of the NOTW newsroom". He said that it had been used to conduct hacking "on an industrial scale".

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