LONDON — Two former News International executives publicly contradicted James Murdoch’s testimony to a parliamentary committee, saying Thursday that they told him of evidence in 2008 that suggested that phone hacking at the company’s tabloid newspaper was more widespread.
The former executives said they informed Murdoch at the time that he was authorizing an unusually large secret settlement of a lawsuit brought by a hacking victim.
Murdoch told the committee Tuesday that he had agreed to pay 725,000 pounds (about $1.2 million at the current exchange rate) in the case because it made financial sense. He testified that he was not aware of the evidence at the time, which most likely would have become public had the case proceeded and undermined the company’s assertion that hacking was limited to “a lone, rogue reporter.”
But Colin Myler, the former News of the World editor, and Tom Crone, the former News International legal manager, said Murdoch was “mistaken” in his testimony delivered to the committee. They said he knew when settling the lawsuit brought by the soccer union leader Gordon Taylor about a crucial piece of evidence that had been turned over to the company: an e-mail marked “for Neville” containing the transcript of a hacked cellphone message, apparently a reference to the paper’s chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck.
The New York Times
