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Why Assign the Met’s Counterterrorism Squad to Investigate Murdoch?

The NYT has a long article exploring why Scotland Yard allowed bags and bags of evidence showing News of the World’s widespread hacking to sit unopened for four years. One reason, it explains, is because Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism unit led the investigation, rather than the special crimes unit. Since the counterterrorism unit was so busy investigated alleged terrorism, it had no time to investigate Murdoch.

The police have continually asserted that the original investigation was limited because the counterterrorism unit, which was in charge of the case, was preoccupied with more pressing demands. At the parliamentary committee hearing last week, the three officials said they were working on 70 terrorist investigations.

Yet the Metropolitan Police unit that deals with special crimes, which had more resources and time available, could have taken over the case, said four former senior investigators. One called the argument that the department did not have enough resources “utter nonsense.”

Another senior investigator said officials saw the inquiry as being in “safe hands” at the counterterrorism unit.

The NYT further explains how often key police figures and NotW figures socialized together.

Executives and others at the company also enjoyed close social ties to Scotland Yard’s top officials. Since the hacking scandal began in 2006, Mr. Yates and others regularly dined with editors from News International papers, records show. Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, met for lunch or dinner 18 times with company executives and editors during the investigation, including eight occasions with Mr. Wallis while he was still working at The News of the World.

[snip]

Andy Hayman, who as head of the counterterrorism unit was running the investigation, also attended four dinners, lunches and receptions with News of the World editors, including a dinner on April 25, 2006, while his officers were gathering evidence in the case, records show. He told Parliament he never discussed the investigation with editors.

And it shows how much money exchanged hands between the police and Murdoch’s empire.

But that still doesn’t explain how the counterterrorism unit would ever have been the appropriate entity to investigate illegal wiretapping by a newspaper.

Meanwhile, I can’t help but think, in addition to all the ways Murdoch’s empire has corrupted journalism and politics in the US and UK, its other great sin: making torture (and Dick Cheney’s absolutist approach to counterterrorism) popular. It did so with its news programs. But even more so, it did it with 24.

For all its fictional liberties, “24” depicts the fight against Islamist extremism much as the Bush Administration has defined it: as an all-consuming struggle for America’s survival that demands the toughest of tactics. Read more