LONDON — Britain’s phone-hacking scandal entered a new and expanded criminal phase Tuesday, with charges brought against two former members of Prime Minister David Cameron’s inner circle over a campaign of illegal espionage that has rocked the country’s establishment.
The Crown Prosecution Service announced Tuesday that Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks — both former editors of Rupert Murdoch’s now-shuttered News of the World tabloid — were among eight people being charged with conspiring to intercept the communications of at least 600 people between 2000 and 2006. The alleged victims included everyone from a murdered teenager to Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
Coulson and Brooks, who had previously been charged in related cases, have both denied any wrongdoing and vowed to fight the charges.
The charges may further embarrass Cameron, who hired Coulson as his chief communications adviser and once counted Brooks and her horse training husband Charlie in his circle of friends. The prime minister is Brooks’ neighbor in the well-to-do Cotswolds town of Chipping Norton, and would swing by the News Corp. executive’s house for Christmas parties, go horseback riding with her husband, and text her weekly.
The developing criminal investigation will shortly be overshadowed by the long-awaited London Olympics, but the prospect of having Cameron’s former associates in the dock during lengthy trials could prove an unwelcome sideshow as the prime minister battles to get Britain’s recession-scarred economy back on track.
“Of course we don’t yet know what the outcome of these trials will be, but the fact that this is rumbling along is deeply unhelpful for a prime minister who is in some trouble,” said Stephen Fielding, the director of the Center for British Politics at the University of Nottingham.
The long running scandal has spread beyond the Murdoch’s News Corp., damaging the reputation of British journalists as well as politicians and police suspected of getting too cozy with the press.
Phone hacking first came to public attention in 2006, when police arrested private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and the News of the World’s then-royal editor Clive Goodman on suspicion of hacking into the voicemails of members of Britain’s royal household. Coulson quit as the tabloid’s editor after the pair was convicted, but insisted he’d had no inkling of their wrongdoing.
Still, it wasn’t until the Guardian revealed that the News of the World had hacked into the voicemail of 13-year-old Milly Dowler — a school girl whose 2002 disappearance and murder transfixed the nation — that the scandal really exploded. Britons who might’ve shrugged off intruding on celebrities’ lives were horrified by the news that reporters had violated the privacy of a dead girl to hunt for scoops about her whereabouts.
Three of Scotland Yard’s top officers have resigned over their failure to get to grips with the scandal; dozens of journalists, media executives, and public figures have been arrested or resigned.
Among those charged Tuesday were some of the News of the World’s best-known and most senior journalists. Prosecutors named Stuart Kuttner, Greg Miskiw, Neville Thurlbeck, James Weatherup and Ian Edmondson. Mulcaire, whose extensive notes have long been at the center of the scandal, is also being prosecuted.
Some of the alleged victims of the hacking
On Tuesday, British prosecutors announced charges against eight people alleged to have been involved in a phone-hacking scheme with more than 600 targets. The following are some prominent alleged victims:
Amanda “Milly” Dowler: The 13-year-old girl was abducted on March 21, 2002, in a case that drew national attention. She was found murdered on Sept. 18, 2002. Journalists from the Sunday tabloid News of the World were alleged to have hacked her mobile phone, listened to her voicemail messages, and deleted some of them in order to make room for more. The deletions gave investigators and Dowler’s family hope that she was still alive. An exhaustive investigation did not uncover any proof that the News of the World deleted Milly’s voicemails, but the case remains the most emotive example of tabloid intrusion. The claims led Rupert Murdoch to close the newspaper and prompted a renewed police investigation which produced the latest criminal charges.
Paul McCartney: In 2006, the former Beatle was engaged in an acrimonious split from his second wife, Heather Mills. The criminal charges relate to the period shortly after they announced their separation in May of that year.
Heather Mills: She is also described as a target of a conspiracy to intercept communications. Mills has accused CNN interviewer Piers Morgan, who has not been charged in the current case, of accessing a message which McCartney left on her phone in 2001 when he was a newspaper editor in London.
Angelina Jolie: The charges relate to the period between the actress’s adoption of an Ethiopian infant, named Zahara Marley, in July 2005, and the birth of Shiloh Nouvel, her child by Brad Pitt, on May 27, 2006.
Brad Pitt: The actor is listed as an alleged victim in the same period as Jolie.
Jude Law: The film star (below) won a settlement of 130,000 pounds in January in his civil suit alleging that News Group Newspapers hacked his telephone. The charge relates to the period between July 2005, when Law publicly apologized to his fiancé, actress Sienna Miller, for having an affair with a nanny, and May 2006. Law and Miller separated in November 2005.
The Associated Press
