Rebekah Brooks was due to answer bail this week for her previous (prearranged) arrest for phone hacking and suborning police officers. This time the raid was much more brutal. It's speculation at the moment, but the fact her husband, the race horse owner Charlie Brooks, was arrested too, suggests it might have something to do with this strange incident of the binned laptop last July, on the night of the Lulzsec hack of The Sun. But apparently one has to be careful speculating here, because of British Contempt of Court Act 1981. I draw no inferences and will remove any quotations. But I wonder if linking to the many easily accessible reports about this is also a breach. Seeking more advice. In the meantime, paras 35-36 of this legal submission from the phone hacking victims who have settled are also very interesting in terms of a potential coverup.

This is very significant, not just because of the gravity of the charges, but because it now puts the hackgate scandal right into the highest circles of power. Charlie Brooks is one of David Cameron's oldest and closest friends, and their riding trips together on an old police horse leant out from the Met, source of the Horsegate hilarity - one of the funniest ever newspaper live threads on the subject at the Telegraph website.

By cruel irony, Charlie Brooks' horseracing column, celebrating the opening of the Cheltenham races, was published this morning. The title and subhead is some somewhat unfortunate.

 

Cheltenham Festival 2012: this meeting is a war of attrition on many fronts The happiest moment of my year is about three hours before the first race at Cheltenham on Tuesday;

 

Rebekah Brooks was until July, Chief Executive of News International. Also arrested is Mark Hanna, head of security at News International. Both were answerable to News International's Chairman, James Murdoch.

 

The Dynasty Falling

 

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But by far the biggest news would be the arrest of James Murdoch. Over the weekend I heard that a senior Fleet Street editor thought this was on the cards. There is also the intriguing fact that one of the six arrested this morning was 39 year old man in Hampshire. Several people online noticed James was 39. My valiant co-reporter Ceebs managed to track down several James Murdochs in Hampshire. According to Reuters:

 

 

One of the descriptions of those arrested - police declined to name them - also fitted the description of James Murdoch, but two sources said he was currently in the United States.

 

News Corp declined to comment on the arrests.

 

But even if he's not arrested yet, as the Chair of News International, he is now powerfully in the frame.

This is not only a personal catastrophe for James, but for the Rupert himself. The whole strategy of News Corp (James still sits on the board there and at BSkyB) was to sacrifice anyone (proteges like Brooks, old retainers like Les Hinton who had served Murdoch for 50 years) to protect the family. But though he wasn't chair of News International when Mulcaire's hacking was at its height, he was during the huge cover up at News International, which implied attempts to delete huge swathes of email evidence, not to mention legal threats, and even surveillance and intimidation of lawyers, police officers and members of Parliament.

James is a victim here of his legacy. By all accounts, he was a more enlightened chairman at BSkyB than his father, and - though inevitably arrogant and entitled - still a better manager. The truth is, he would probably never be in this position, for good and ill, without the family name.

Live by inheritance. Die by inheritance. In every gift there is a curse.

The hackgate scandal has, like the Dreyfus scandal in France 100 years ago, shone a torch beam into the collusions and corruptions of British society, as an overweening media monopoly inserted itself in public life, and suborned the Met police, cowed journalists, and crept its way into the heart of government. The arrest of senior News International, apart from symbolising the Fall of the House of Murdoch, finally proves that some people aren't beyond the law, and encourages everyone who has been intimidated and silenced by Murdoch's money and influence can now speak out, without fearing press intimidation and police collusion.

Whether crimes have been committed or not, is for a judge and jury to answer once charges have been brought. But some very powerful people are now subjected to the full scrutiny of the law. For this alone, it's a great moment for British society, and I hope gives Americans who object to the perverting nexus of money, media power and politics, to hope for more justice there.

 

6:51 AM PT: LibDemFop has more details in an excellent diary on the rec list

http://www.dailykos.com/...

8:07 AM PT: The Labour Shadow Minister for Culture and Media has now asked the Leveson inquiry to investigate the full relationship between Rebekah and Charlie Brooks, and the Prime Minister David Cameron

It is important that the police are continuing to pursue the investigation into phone hacking.

Rebekah and Charlie Brooks are, on the prime minister's own account, close friends of his.

The Leveson Inquiry – when looking into the relations between the press and politicians – will need to investigate the full extent of the relations between the prime minister and senior News International executives at the time when hacking was rife and at the time his government was considering News Corp's bid for BSkyB.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/...

12:24 PM PT: Great compliment from the great Heather Brooke

Can't wait to read this MT @peterjukes: After today's arrests, my book (pub in July) Fall of the House of Murdoch unbound.co.uk/books/the-fall…

— Heather Brooke (@newsbrooke) March 13, 2012

1:02 PM PT: I appear here briefly on a Channel 4 package around 1.40, but check out the video of Charlie Brooks that follows

http://bcove.me/...

 

Original posted on Daily Kos

6:36 AM PT: You'll probably find better analysis of this breaking news in the comments rather than my constant updates

6:38 AM PT: Just had to share this tweet from Owen Jones

James Murdoch gone. If this was Lord of the Rings, that's Saruman down. Still Sauron to go

6:44 AM PT: And another keeper

Don't panic everyone. In a few short weeks he'll be relaunched as James Murdoch on Sunday.

7:07 AM PT: And another

James Murdoch has now been lent to Rebekah Brooks, having reached the end of his working life.

A reference to the police horse the Met loaned to Rebekah, which was returned in poor condition.

7:29 AM PT: Off to appear on Sky News about this - UK viewers wish me luck

9:27 AM PT: About to appear on CNN international, and apparently will be interviewed for Wolf Blitzer's situation room too 

2:20 PM PT: CNN international interview

http://edition.cnn.com/...

2:39 PM PT: Since the Guardian, with help from the NYT, has been the main force exposing this, let me share their brilliant new video

2:49 PM PT: And this is what the leading commentator for the Conservative Daily Telegraph is now saying

Until now, it is only the lesser people who have carried the can for the culture of criminality that flourished inside News International, with the buck stopping with editors such as Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks. The time has come to look higher up – and I am not thinking of hapless James Murdoch, who belatedly resigned as the chairman of News International yesterday afternoon.

Rupert Murdoch, the company’s founder, insists that he never had any knowledge of wrongdoing, and no doubt that is true. But he was the man at the top. He took a very keen interest in the way his British newspapers were run (a newspaperman to his fingertips, last weekend he could be seen hard at work in the newsroom as the Sun on Sunday was launched) and it was he, and nobody else, who set the culture.

We learn more about this culture practically every day. It was a culture of bullying and intimidation, where facts were distorted and lies told. It was a culture which merged the boundaries between police, media and the political class. Though brilliant in many ways, it also did a great deal to debase and even to destroy our public life. Now Rupert Murdoch, an American citizen of Australian heritage, is promoting the break-up of Britain through an alliance with Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party (they met yesterday).

Murdoch’s culture, we now know for a fact, included the criminal culture at the News of the World. We have also heard the corruption allegations from Sue Akers concerning the Sun. Of course nothing has been proved, but if even half of what she says turns out to be true, then it is time to ask whether Rupert Murdoch is a fit and proper person to run not just a newspaper, but any British public company.

As I've discovered through writing my book, Rupert set the culture. In the US he did this with the Summer of Sam scandal of 'celebrity killer' in his New York Post in the 1970s. Hackgate is the logical extension of his modus operandi.

3:40 PM PT: One last comment about the Daniel Morgan Murder, and the relationship between the former prime suspect and our prime minister

the Marunchak business takes us deep down into a bloody gutter.

Rees, having been investigated several times for Daniel Morgan's murder, the last one scuppered by NoW intervention, was rehired by Coulson after prison

The same Coulson who was media supremo at No 10, with security clearance to read the most sensitive secrets of state

It beggars belief. The corruption rose from the gutter to the heights of the political establishment.

 

Originally posted on Daily Kos