NEW YORK TIMES: For nearly four years, six overstuffed plastic bags containing possible evidence of phone hacking by the British tabloid, The News of the World, collected little more than dust in the evidence room of Scotland Yard.
During that time, British police officials assured Parliament, judges, lawyers, potential hacking victims, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the paper. But that assertion has been reduced to tatters in the last week, torn apart by an avalanche of contradictory evidence, admissions by newspaper executives that the hacking was more widespread, and a reversal by police officials who now admit to mishandling the case.
In an article in the Sunday New York Times, Don Van Natta Jr. explains how the British police agency and News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and the publisher of The News of the World, became so intertwined that they shared the goal of containing the investigation… (more)
