LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron’s former communications chief and an ex-royals reporter were arrested Friday in a phone-hacking and police-corruption scandal that has already toppled a major tabloid and rattled the cozy relationship between British politicians and the powerful Murdoch media empire.
The 168-year-old muckraking tabloid News of the World was shut down Thursday after being engulfed by allegations its journalists paid police for information and hacked into the phone messages of celebrities, young murder victims and the grieving families of dead soldiers. Its last publication day is Sunday.
The hacking revelations horrified the nation and advertisers, who pulled their ads en masse. Many expressed astonishment that 43-year-old Rebekah Brooks, who was editor of News of the World when some of the hacking allegedly occurred, was keeping her job while the paper’s 200 staff were laid off.
The police investigation into the phone hacking drew uncomfortably close to the prime minister Friday with the arrest of Andy Coulson, Cameron’s once-powerful communications chief and a former editor of News of the World.
Coulson, 43, was taken into custody Friday morning on suspicion of corruption and “conspiring to intercept communications.” Hours later, he was released on bail until October. He refused to answer questions from reporters as he left a police station.
Police also arrested Clive Goodman, the former News of the World journalist who served a jail term in 2007 for hacking into the phones of royal aides. This time the arrest was on suspicion of making illegal payoffs to police for scoops. He was also later released on bail.
Detectives searched Coulson’s house in London and Goodman’s home south of the city in Surrey on Friday, as well as the newsroom of a second tabloid, the Daily Star Sunday.
Late Friday, police announced that a third suspect, a 63-year-old man from Surrey, had been arrested over alleged payments to police and they were searching his home. His name was not released.
Allegations of phone hacking by the News of the World first surfaced more than five years ago, but the original police investigation — which saw Goodman and another man jailed — has now been criticized as incomplete and compromised by new bribery allegations.
The Metropolitan Police reopened the hacking inquiry earlier this year and say they are looking at the names of more than 4,000 people as possible victims.
Cameron, realizing that the crisis was knocking at his 10 Downing St. door, moved quickly to distance himself from it. Like predecessors, including Labor Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, Cameron courted the powerful Murdoch empire, whose endorsement is considered capable of swinging elections.
Online interactive.
