What lies beneath the ruins of the News of the World?
Does rolling out 16,000 policemen in London dent the investigation into the antics of the Murdoch empire? Here in America – basking in the unusual experience of observing someone else’s riot misery, the US authorities have no such diversion to prevent them from getting on with the task in hand.
The FBI is now well on with its investigation into whether offences have been committed under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. This is a draconian piece of legislation which precisely targets matters such as bribery, phone hacking, and the rest, that may have been committed by US based corporations overseas.
Frank Rich, one of the most respected journalists in the US – formerly of the New York Times, now of New York Magazine, has penned a blitz of a piece on the ‘empire’ for which he once worked. He reports a great deal from the ‘inside’ that he knew. It is a gripping read.
Two incidents stand out in Rich’s account. The first is a multi million dollar corporate phone hacking case involving what he states was a payout of $29.5 million to settle. The second, during 9/11, involved the then serving News York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik and a News Corp executive, Judith Regan who conducted an affair in an apartment intended for rescue workers, overlooking the still smouldering ruins of Ground Zero. It’s worth noting that Kerik only just failed to get Congressional approval to become George Bush’s head of Homeland Security in the period after the worst mainland attack on America in modern history.
The FBI investigation has a canvas very much larger than anything we have yet seen in Britain. I will confess that from the narrower confines of London, I had wondered at times whether competitive instincts and the rest had over-egged the Murdoch scandal. Seeing it all now here in America, one is forced to ask, was what happened at the News of the World merely the tip of the iceberg? The question now is whether the will seriously exists in America to reveal what may exist beyond.