Washington Post reveals scandal

Murdoch wanted to bankroll Petraeus' presidential campaign; Fox News chief wanted to run it

The president of Fox News sent a reporter to Afghanistan with a message for Gen. David Petraeus shortly before he was appointed head of the CIA in 2011: News Corp. thinks you should run for president.

U.S. Gen. David Petraeus (AFP Photo / Alex Wong)



RT,
4 December, 2012



Both Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of parent company and media conglomerate News Corporation, were interested in seeing Gen. Petraeus toss his hat into the 2012 presidential race. The news comes courtesy of a just published recording of a conversation between Ailes and Fox News national security analyst Kathleen T. McFarland that was provided to the Washington Post.


Bob Woodward, a longtime Post journalist and one of the reporters credited with exposing the Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration, was given access to the audio and reports this week on a presidential ticket that may have almost been.


According to Woodward’s take on the tape, both Ailes and Murdoch floated the idea of endorsing Gen. Petraeus as a presidential contender, at least to some degree, and the Fox News chief urged McFarland to make their intentions known on the then-commander of US troops in Afghanistan during a Spring 2011 interview.


The “advice to you from Roger Ailes is. . . . He says that if you’re offered [JCS] chairman, take it. If you’re offered anything else, don’t take it; resign in six months and run for president,” McFarland says in the recording.


“I’m only reporting this back to Roger. And that’s our deal,” she told him, to which Gen. Petraeus responded that any answer “has to be off the record.”


“His deal with me was that I was only supposed to talk to you,” McFarland said. “And he is a little paranoid, so believe me, he doesn’t have anybody in that room.”


“Tell him if I ever ran,” Petraeus told her in a light-hearted tone, “but I won’t . . . but if I ever ran, I’d take him up on his offer.”


“He said he would quit Fox . . . and bankroll it,” the general told her


“Bankroll it?” McFarland asked.


“Or maybe I’m confusing that with Rupert,” Petraeus responded.


“I know Roger, he’s done okay,” McFarland countered, “but . . . no, I think the one who’s bankrolling it is the big boss.”


“Okay,” McFarland said, “the big boss is bankrolling it. Roger’s going to run it. And the rest of us are going to be your in-house.”


Since being provided with the audio recording of the encounter, the Post has reached out to all parties involved to find out if any of the matters discussed were seriously considered by either Petraeus or the president of Fox. Murdoch, who is no stranger to stirring up matters within US politics, did not respond to calls for comments by the Post.


Weighing in with Woodward, though, Fox chief Ailes says he thinks McFarland made more of a to-do with his request than he intended.


“It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have,” he said. “I thought the Republican field [in the primaries] needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate.”


Ailes added, “It sounds like she thought she was on a secret mission in the Reagan administration. . . . She was way out of line. . . . It’s someone’s fantasy to make me a kingmaker. It’s not my job.”


On his part, Petraeus never had to quite consider the offer, serious or not. Within weeks he was appointed the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, a post he held until just last month when he resigned amid a highly publicized sex scandal.

For the original Washington Post article GO HERE

Dial M for Murdoch

I can't keep up with all the details of the Murdoch phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry so I was pleased to hear this interview by Kim Hill of Radio New Zealand

TOM WATSON: MURDOCH AND BRITAIN

Radio New Zealand

MP for West Bromwich East in the UK, campaigner against unlawful media practices, and co-author of Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain.

Murdoch scandal

New Murdoch Scandal Emerges

Murdoch Private Eye Targeted US Hedge Fund Boss

Huffington Post,

25 May, 2012

A private detective working for Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers used a legally questionable tactic to obtain a hotel bill that a New York financier ran up at one of London's swankest hotels, records reviewed by Reuters show.

A database of business records compiled by British government investigators shows that some time before his arrest in March 2003, private investigator Steve Whittamore, or someone working for him, misrepresented themselves to obtain from Claridge's Hotel a copy of a bill belonging to Robert Agostinelli, an American who runs the Rhone Group private equity firm.

Whittamore was convicted of trading in illegally obtained information but did not serve jail time. He could not be reached for comment.

Agostinelli did not respond to messages left for him at Rhone Group offices in New York and London.

He is a former senior partner at Goldman Sachs and Lazard and ranks among the richest financiers in the world.

The Whittamore database entry on Agostinelli is one of the few pieces of evidence to surface from extensive U.K. investigations that Americans were targeted by operatives working for Murdoch's British newspapers, who used questionable investigative techniques.

Murdoch's News Corp newspapers in Britain are among the principal targets of a judicial inquiry, created by British Prime Minister David Cameron and chaired by Sir Brian Leveson, a senior English judge, into the practices and ethics of the British press.

A spokesperson for News International, Murdoch's London-based newspaper publishing arm, said: "The information you refer to was the subject of a report by the Information Commissioner's Office in 2006 and has been examined extensively by the Leveson Inquiry in recent months. News International has given detailed evidence on these matters."

Allegations have surfaced that Murdoch journalists or investigators may have used similar tactics on celebrities visiting the United States, but so far those allegations relate to journalists and targets based in Britain.

An FBI investigation so far has turned up no evidence to substantiate allegations, originally made by a British newspaper which competes with Murdoch properties, that victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. may have been targeted for intrusion by Murdoch journalists or investigators.

The Whittamore database was put together by the office of Britain's Information Commissioner, a government privacy watchdog, from records seized in a police raid on the private detective's office.

The database indicates that Whittamore's inquiry regarding Agostinelli was commissioned by Murdoch's now-defunct Sunday tabloid, the News of the World. The database shows an address for Agostinelli on Fifth Avenue, New York City. It describes Whittamore's assignment as a "Claridges blag".

"Blag" is a British slang word meaning that a private detective adopts a false identity in order to con information out of a targeted organization or individual.

In the United States, blagging is known as "pretexting". According to the website of the Federal Trade Commission, pretexting is illegal under federal law if the purpose is to obtain "customer" or financial information.

In Britain, media industry sources said, blagging is usually illegal. But newspapers can defend themselves against legal complaints by asserting that the use of the practice in a specific case was in the "public interest."

The Whittamore database records show that as a result of the "Claridges blag", information was obtained about a four-day Agostinelli hotel stay, in a room which cost 411.25 British pounds per night. The total bill was 3,433.98 British pounds. The records show that the hotel stay in question was in the month of July, but do not specify a year.

Searches through media databases do not indicate that stories about Agostinelli appeared in the News of the World in the period before or soon after the police raid during which Whittamore's records were seized.

Some years later, British press articles did mention Agostinelli as a member of a group which was interested in buying the Liverpool soccer team, but ultimately lost out to another American bidder.

Agostinelli appeared as No. 19 in the 2011 edition of an annual "rich list" published by Murdoch's Sunday Times of London. The paper said Agostinelli was now "London-based", with estimated wealth of 625 million British pounds, and counted former French President Nicholas Sarkozy as a friend.

The journalist named in the Whittamore database as having commissioned the private detective to investigate Agostinelli, who now works for a different newspaper, said he had never heard of Agostinelli and maintained that the database entry referring to him was inaccurate.

A spokesman said Claridges had no comment.

The News International spokesperson added: "There is a public interest defence available for any potential breach of the Data Protection Act and you do not have the information necessary to make any judgement on specific cases. We are not in a position to comment on a specific case."

Murdoch empire unmasked

News Corp accused of sabotaging rivals

Media giant News Corp has been accused of sabotaging its rivals by distributing pirated pay-TV smart cards to millions of customers around the world, adding pressure to the Rupert Murdoch-owned empire already under fire over hacking claims in Britain.

A four year investigation by Australia's Financial Review newspaper found that the company set up a secret unit to crack the codes of its competitors.

The pirated cards were then sold on the black market, costing rival broadcasters tens of millions of dollars.

The Australian government said on Wednesday allegations of any criminality should be investigated by police.

Al Jazeera's Gerald Tan reports.

The Rupert Murdoch empire

-- I'll say it again, the mainstream media is currently the most-vulnerable body part of TPTB. And David Cameron is in deep trouble. Mass popular support for a fearless investigation, expressing outrage at the blatant criminality involved works to the advantage of all seeking freedom from tyranny because Rupert Murdoch is one of the powers that be. Take down one God on Olympus and they all become aware of their vulnerability. -- MCR

Rebekah Brooks and husband arrested in new twist in phone-hacking inquiry

Pair released after facing day of questioning by detectives on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice

the Guardian,

Tuesday 13 March 2012 21.43 GMT

Rebekah Brooks, Rupert Murdoch's long-time confidante and a personal friend of David Cameron, was arrested at dawn on Tuesday alongside her husband, the racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, as Scotland Yard's investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World struck out in a new direction.

Rebekah Brooks, who was chief executive of News International until July last year, was one of six people seized between 5am and 7am on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. It was the largest single batch of arrests in Operation Weeting so far. Previously only three of the 22 people arrested in the News of the World phone-hacking investigations had been held on a similar basis.

Charlie Brooks, an Old Etonian contemporary of the prime minister, had been looking forward to attending the Cheltenham racing festival . Writing in a column published in the Daily Telegraph, he said that "the happiest moment of my year" was about three hours before the first race "queuing behind Alan Brazil for my, but not his, first pint of Guinness of the meeting".

Instead the couple spent at least 12 hours being questioned by detectives in different police stations, in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, regarding an offence that carries a theoretical maximum prison term of life imprisonment. In practice, however, nobody found guilty has received a jail term of greater than 10 years for it in the last century. The two were released on bail until a date in April. Three others were also released on bail until a date in April.

Police said that a 43-year-old woman and a 49-year-old man had been arrested at their home farm in Oxfordshire, which is a few miles away from Cameron's constituency home. Two weeks ago, the prime minister admitted that he rode on a former police horse, Raisa, which had been stabled with Charlie Brooks – his friend of "30 years standing" – sometime before the 2010 general election.

Rebekah Brooks was the high flying journalist who was appointed as editor of the News of the World by Murdoch in 2000 aged 32, then was promoted to become editor of the Sun in 2003, before finally becoming chief executive of News International in 2009 just as it was being reported by the Guardian that phone hacking was widespread at the Sunday tabloid.

Her gifts for networking at the highest levels meant that she was close to Tony and Cherie Blair, before deftly switching tack to become close to Cameron as the Sun switched its support to the Conservatives. But she was forced to resign in July of last year after it emerged that News of the World had targeted the mobile phone of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler in 2002, triggering a wave of revulsion that led to the closure of the Sunday title. That week she was also arrested by appointment at a London police station on suspicion of conspiring to hack into mobile phone voicemails and also on suspicion of corruption of public officials.

News International has faced repeated allegations that it concealed the true extent of phone hacking after the 2007 jailing of News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and Glenn Muclaire, the £100,000 a year private investigator used by the title. In January of this year, a group of public figures, including actor Jude Law, forced the company to concede what the presiding judge Mr Justice Vos was an "admission of sorts" in that unnamed "senior employees and directors" of News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers had "sought to conceal" wrongdoing by putting out false public statements and "destroying evidence" including emails and computers.

Another of the six arrested was Mark Hanna, the director of group security at News International, the publisher of the Sun, the Times and the now closed News of the World. A second, unnamed "non-editorial" employee of News International, was also held by police from the Met Police's Operating Weeting team; the identities of the other two individuals held was not confirmed.

Police said that the arrests followed "consultation with the Crown Prosecution Service," and not from information passed to supplied by News Corporation's management and standards committee (MSC). The legal advice received was given by Alison Levitt QC, who is the principal legal adviser to the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer. Levitt and her team are overseeing the CPS's involvement with the Met's various hacking and bribery investigations.

The Met said that the other four individuals held were a 39-year-old man, who was arrested at his home address in Hampshire, a 46-year-old man arrested at his home address in west London, a 38-year old man arrested at his home address in Hertfordshire and a 48-year-old man arrested at a business address in east London. All six of those held were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Separately it also emerged that Rupert Murdoch has told Sun journalists that the investigation by News Corporation's management and standards committee into alleged corrupt payments and other acts of illegality at the tabloid has almost concluded. In an email sent to reporters and seen by the Guardian, the media tycoon said he had been told "by the MSC that its work on the Sun is substantially complete" – and, reinforcing repeated claims made by the MSC, added that any company emails handed over to the police "has at all times been strictly confined to evidence of possible illegal acts".

Murdoch's note was aimed at shoring up a demoralised Sun newsroom, which has endured the arrest of 11 journalists on suspicion of making corrupt payments to public officials, including police, prison officers and military personnel. He also responded to press reports last week that two Sun reporters who had been arrested may have contemplated suicide.

"We have all been shocked and saddened by recent reports concerning the health and welfare of a number of our colleagues," Murdoch wrote, noting as the newspaper was enduring "difficult and stressful times" that nobody could "simply wish it all away". Indicating that he was personally involved in the welfare of the two staff, which has divided the company between the Sun newsroom and company's MSC, Murdoch wrote that he was "doing everything I can to see that our colleagues are looked after and that they get the very best care and help". But there was no comment from Murdoch, away in New York, on the arrest of Brooks, who he once described as his "number one priority" at the height of the hacking crisis last July. News International did not comment yesterday, nor was their any comment from a spokesperson for Rebekah Brooks

News International 'deliberately' blocked investigation

All-party home affairs committee report into phone hacking to be published in time for David Cameron's statement

the Guardian, 20 July

Rupert Murdoch’s News International company has been found by a parliamentary committee to have "deliberately" tried to block a Scotland Yard criminal investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World.

The report from MPs on the all-party home affairs committee will be released on Wednesday morning and its publication has been moved forward in time for today's statement by prime minister David Cameron on the scandal.

The report's central finding comes a day after Rupert and James Murdoch testified before the culture, media and sport committee. The home affairs committee report marks an official damning judgment on News International's actions.

For more of the article GO HERE

Murdoch's legal, financial woes escalate

US probe, shareholder lawsuit add to pressures of UK hacking scandal

Cartoon - Steve Bell - the Guardian

The legal and financial troubles for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. are escalating on the eve of the media tycoon’s showdown appearance before a House of Commons committee Tuesday morning....

...In the two weeks since the scandal has erupted, News Corp’s stock has dropped 21 percent, an $8 billion plunge in market value that has personally cost Murdoch and his family more than $1 billion, according to an analysis by the Financial Times.

For the entire article GO HERE

How the phone-hacking scandal unmasked the British power elite

The close ties between politicians and the media mean that if Murdoch's empire falls, the political establishment will suffer

This article from the Guardian gives background as to how this exposes the connection between Rupert Murdoch and the political elite of Britain.

Apparently the odds of David Cameron being forced from office have gone from 100:1 to 8:1.

Don't expect this issue to go away soon.

James Murdoch and David Cameron in 2007

For the rest of the article go here.

Murdoch's 'Sun' site hacked; claims Murdoch died of overdose

From Wired

They're back. The hacker gang LulzSec, after declaring retirement last month, cracked the Rupert Murdoch–owned New Times on Monday and used it to host a fake news story declaring that the embattled media mogul had been found dead at his home.

The web defacement took the form of a mock article from Murdock’s The Sun, with the headline “Media moguls body discoverd” [sic]. The text goes on to claim falsely that Murdoch “ingested a large quantity of palladium before stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last 

Readers are redirected to LuizSec's twitter account

For more go to; http://www.oilfreefun.com/2011/07/murdochs-sun-website-hacked-reports.html

UPDATE:

All News International website are now offline after the rampant attacks by hacking group Lulzsec. Websites for The Sun, The Times and News International are all inaccessible after the hacking spree.

What began with the redirection of The Sun’s homepage to a false report of Rupert Murdoch’s death has resulted in News International seemingly being forced to shut down its servers after being unable to handle the relentless attacks from the group.

A Twitter account from a member of the Anonymous group, who have been working closely with Lulzsec, confirms the servers have been shut down.

As further proof, DNS lookups for every News International site reveals a server failure.

Source: http://thenextweb.com/media/2011/07/19/all-news-international-websites-now-offline-servers-shut-down/

Rupert Murdoch

There seems to be a battle of the titans going on at the moment and Rupert Murdoch and his empire are being brought down.  Why is this important? Murdoch controls much of the world's media - much of the US and UK print media as well as Fox News.  It looks as if one part of the financial - political elite is in battle with another part (the Israeli lobby).


This opinion piece is from George Galloway, a retired British Labour MP who gained notoriety for his opposition to the Iraq war.

Murdoch empire sinking beneath the sands

George Galloway

al-Jazeera

A phone-hacking scandal is exposing shady ties between the UK's political elite and a right-wing media baron.

"Look on my works, ye mighty; and despair!" So said the base of the statue of Ozymandias of Egypt - Ramasses the Great, Pharaoh of the 19th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt - discovered deep under the desert sands in Shelley's epic poem Ozymandias.

The poet's point being of course that though undoubtedly great, in his day, ultimately Ozymandias and his empire went the way of all flesh, and all empires. So it seems is going the empire of Rupert Murdoch, once the greatest media conglomerate the world has ever known.

Absolute carnage is currently being caused in British public life by the fall-out from the illegal phone hacking carried out by Murdoch's servants. In a story transfixing the country, there are often developments several times daily including arrests of powerful people and resignations from some of the best known public figures in the land.

Like all good scandals follow the money is the maxim. And the question made famous by Watergate - "What did he know and when did he know it?" is the one on everybody's lips. The "he" in question is, increasingly, the prime minister himself.

David Cameron is slowly sinking into the Murdoch quicksands for several reasons. His relations with Murdoch's top-brass, now under investigation, have turned out to be almost comically close. He was a "riding partner" of Rebekah Brooks, Murdoch's British CEO, who was arrested by police on Sunday.

Since becoming prime minister just fifteen months ago, Cameron has had 26 meetings with Murdoch's executives. Cameron's wife was likely the only person to get more meetings with the PM than Murdoch's executives.

Cameron, against the advice of his deputy prime minister, employed former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications director. Coulson, who has been at the centre of the hacking probe, was arrested on July 8, while his deputy was detained last week.

This has snowballed, causing the resignation of Britain's top two policemen and several other senior Murdoch executives.

Two months after Coulson was finally pushed out of his official position as communications director, and was under criminal investigation for phone hacking, Cameron invited him to spend the weekend at Chequers, the British prime minister's country home.

Such is the turmoil in London that respected commentators - on Monday for example Professor Roy Greenslade, the pre-eminent media pundit - are calling on Cameron's deputy Nick Clegg to table a motion of no confidence in the PM.

Last week, that would have been a joke. Today it doesn't seem so funny, or unlikely.

I declare an interest. I was one of the first people to be informed by Scotland Yard - London's Metropolitan Police - that my phone was being hacked by a private investigator working for Mr Murdoch. They visited me in my office in parliament and told me this, so I began a legal action which is set to come before the courts in December.

It didn't surprise me all that much in the light of my role as a leader of Britain's anti-war movement, a champion of the Palestinian cause for over 35 years, and a defender of Muslims both at home and abroad. Even Mr Murdoch wouldn't dispute the fact that these are causes far from his own heart. This throws up a contradiction now coming more clearly into focus.  

Prince Walid bin Talal bin Abdelaziz Al-Saud, the second biggest shareholder in News Corporation after Murdoch, recently gave an interview, on his yacht, to the BBC flagship programme Newsnight. The Saudi prince declared himself "a good friend" of Rupert Murdoch and his son James Murdoch (probably the next executive to be charged by the police in the scandal).

He defended both men briskly, but in doing so drew attention to the fact that he is the second biggest shareholder in the Murdoch empire, and that the Murdochs were major shareholders in his own Rotana media empire in the Middle East.

An unholy alliance, surely? Mr Murdoch is the co-owner, with Prince Walid, of Fox News - one of the most virulently anti-Muslim television stations in the world. The station gives a megaphone to the likes of Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin. In the US, Fox's role was to throw gallons of petrol on the flames Islamophobia which were leading to the burning of the Holy Quran by vigilantes.

Then there is the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. The planned building was, of course, not at Ground Zero. It was not a mosque but an Islamic centre. The centre was partially funded by Prince Walid, the co-owner with Murdoch of Islamophobic media fire-raisers including Fox News and the New York Post.

Prince Walid it will be recalled was roundly insulted by the government of New York City when they returned the cheque he donated to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. A glutton for punishment no doubt.

Murdoch's newspapers in Britain are little better than their US-counterparts and include photographs and sexualised images which would never see the light of day in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. As a whole it is safe to say that Murdoch's nearly 200 newspapers - and his television stations in so far as he can compel the latter which are more tightly regulated - are bastions of fanatically pro-Israel, anti-Muslim bigotry.

Yet they are co-owned by a member of the Saudi Royal family who not only approves of these practices, but regards the mogul Murdoch as his "good friend".

Murdoch's plans to take 100 per cent ownership of British Sky Broadcasting now lie in ruins like Ozymandias's broken statue. Aged 80, he may, at the pace we are moving, be ousted by his own shareholders before long.

His dream of a Sky Arabia, however, remains a clear and present danger. Like the tobacco manufacturers, the more they are run out of towns in the west the more they concentrate on selling their addictive poison in the east. NewsCorp, with Prince Walid, may be sailing your way.


 Beware of pirates ye Arabs.

George Galloway is a British politician, author, journalist and broadcaster who was a Member of Parliament in the UK from 1987 to 2010.

and finally

A Visual Representation Of MurdochGate's Toxic Spiderweb

Business Week