London:
The phone hacking scandal in Britain brought down another high-profile figure on Monday when John Yates, the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in London and the country's most senior counter-terrorism officer, resigned his post. His departure came a day after the country's top police officer quit and Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of Rupert Murdoch's News International, was arrested on suspicion of illegally intercepting phone messages and bribing the police.
Such is the severity of the crisis swirling around the Murdoch empire and Britain's public life that Prime Minister David Cameron cut short an African trip on Monday and, bowing to opposition pressure, called a special parliamentary session on Wednesday to debate the widening scandal.
The scandal also took a grim turn on Monday when Sean Hoare, a former reporter for The News of the World, the tabloid newspaper at the center of the scandal, was found dead in his home in a London suburb, according to British news outlets and the Associated Press.
Mr. Hoare was one of the first to go on record saying that "phone hacking," as the practice of breaking into private voice mail is known, was widespread at the News of the World and that a friend, Andy Coulson, was aware of it and actively encouraged it as editor of the paper. Mr. Coulson later left to work as Mr. Cameron's spokesman.
The Hertfordshire police said in a statement that they had found the body of a man but would not confirm his identity. They said they were not viewing the death as suspicious.
Mr. Yates, who was the police official in charge of counterterrorism, was asked in 2009 to determine whether to reopen an investigation into allegations that the News of the World, had regularly hacked the cellphone messages of celebrities, politicians and other public figures. He decided against reopening the inquiry, a decision that he admitted last week was the wrong one. The company shut down the News of the World earlier this month.
Shortly after the Metropolitan Police announced his resignation, Mr. Yates made a defiant public statement: "I have acted with complete integrity," he said. "My conscience is clear."
He said a "huge amount of inaccurate, ill-informed and on occasion downright malicious gossip" had caused his resignation. "This has the potential to be a significant distraction in my current role as the national lead for counterterrorism," he said in a statement, as the fallout from the scandal continued to shake British authorities and institutions.
Speaking in South Africa, Mr. Cameron said Parliament would stay in session beyond the scheduled start of its summer recess for an emergency session on Wednesday. Mr. Murdoch, his son James and Ms. Brooks are set to testify before a parliamentary inquiry into the scandal on Tuesday.
The prime minister made the announcement hours after Sir Paul Stephenson, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly known as the Met or Scotland Yard, said that he had decided to step down because "the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met's links with News International at a senior level" had made it difficult for him to do his job. News International is the British newspaper subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
The home secretary, Theresa May, said on Monday that the country's Inspectorate of Constabulary, a police oversight body that reports to her, would investigate possible corruption in the links between the police and journalists. The BBC also reported that a separate inquiry by an independent panel, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, would look into the relationship between Mr. Yates and Neil Wallis, a former News of the World deputy editor who had become a public-relations consultant for the police after leaving the paper.
When Sir Paul, the police commissioner, resigned on Sunday he, too, said that he had done nothing wrong. He said that because he had not been involved in the original phone-hacking investigation, he had had no idea that Mr. Wallis was himself suspected of phone hacking, as the unauthorized accessing of voice mail is known.
Mr. Wallis, 60, was arrested last Thursday.
Boris Johnson, the London mayor, said on Monday that Mr. Yates decided to resign after police authorities informed him that he would be suspended while his ties to Mr. Wallis were being investigated. At a news conference, Mr. Johnson said Mr. Yates had told him last year that he did not believe there was "anything at the end of the rainbow" to justify reopening the phone hacking inquiry.
Mr. Yates has been criticized for his decision not to reopen the investigation even though the police under his command possessed some 11,000 pages of largely unexamined evidence. "I'm not going to go down and look at bin bags," Mr. Yates said, using the British term for trash bags to refer to the protective plastic bags in which evidence is kept.
He also has acknowledged public contacts with Mr. Wallis, telling a parliamentary committee in March that he could not remember exactly when he last had lunch with Mr. Wallis, but that it "may well" have been in February.
Sir Paul and Mr. Yates have been asked to appear on Tuesday before Parliament's home affairs committee investigating police behavior in the scandal. Mr. Yates testified before the committee last week, but was asked on Monday to return to clarify some points.
On Sunday, Sir Paul tried to deflect attention from his own role by implicitly criticizing Mr. Cameron's decision in 2009 to hire Andy Coulson as his spokesman. At least Mr. Wallis had not resigned from the paper under a cloud, as Mr. Coulson had, the commissioner said. The crisis has exploded in the two weeks since reports surfaced that the newspaper had ordered the hacking of the cellphone of a 13-year-old girl who had been abducted and murdered in 2002.
The prime minister, who has come under repeated attacks over his relationship with Mr. Coulson, defended himself on Monday.
"In terms of Andy Coulson, no one has argued that the work he did in government was in any way inappropriate or bad," he said, speaking at a news conference in South Africa alongside President Jacob Zuma.
"The situation in the Metropolitan Police Service is really quite different to the situation in the government, not least because the issues that the Metropolitan Police are looking at, the issues around them, have had a direct bearing on public confidence into the police inquiry into The News of the World and indeed into the police themselves," Mr. Cameron said.
Under pressure from the Labour opposition, the prime minister said Parliament would be called to a special session on Wednesday to "answer any questions that may arise" and "so I can make a further statement."
Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party and a persistent irritant to Mr. Cameron throughout the crisis, repeated his attacks on Monday on what he called the prime minister's "spectacular error of judgment" in hiring Mr. Coulson, despite warnings about Mr. Coulson's possibly murky past.
"It is of great concern," Mr. Miliband said in a speech, "that the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was unable to discuss vital issues with the prime minister because he felt that David Cameron was himself compromised on this issue because of Andy Coulson."
He added: "It is also striking that Sir Paul Stephenson has taken responsibility and resigned over the employment of Mr. Coulson's deputy, while the prime minister hasn't even apologized for hiring Mr. Coulson."
Mr. Miliband also accused the prime minister of picking a poor time to leave the country.
Perhaps sensitive to such criticism, Mr. Cameron announced on Monday that he would cut short his African trip, canceling plans to visit Sudan and Rwanda, and instead return home to take charge after a brief halt in Nigeria. "Just because you are traveling to Africa doesn't mean you've lost contact with your office," he said.
Ms. Brooks, 43, was the 10th and by far the most powerful person to be arrested so far in the phone-hacking scandal. On Monday, it emerged that she had spent about nine hours after her arrest on Sunday being questioned by the police. She was released around midnight and ordered to reappear for further questions in the fall, standard practice in such cases.
Ms. Brooks has not yet been formally charged, but it is significant that she was questioned in connection with two separate investigations. One, called Operation Weeting, is examining allegations of widespread phone hacking at The News of the World, the tabloid at the center of the scandal, where Ms. Brooks was editor from 2000 to 2003. The other is Operation Elveden, which is looking into charges that News International editors paid police officers for information.
A lawyer acting for her, Stephen Parkinson, said on Monday that Ms. Brooks was "not guilty of any criminal offense" and that the police were wrong to arrest her, given the damage to her reputation.
Ms. Brooks has always maintained that she was unaware of wrongdoing at The News of the World, which was summarily closed by Mr. Murdoch a week ago in an unsuccessful attempt at damage control.
Her arrest was a shock to the News Corporation and the other properties in Mr. Murdoch's media empire, which is reeling from the traumas: the forced withdrawal of its cherished $12 billion takeover bid for British Sky Broadcasting and the resignations not only of Ms. Brooks but also of Les Hinton, a longtime Murdoch ally and friend who was the chairman of Dow Jones and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
No formal charges have yet been brought against Ms. Brooks, or indeed against any of the others - mostly former editors and reporters at The News of the World - arrested in the phone-hacking case so far. These include Mr. Coulson, who resigned as the paper's editor in 2007, was then hired by the Conservative Party, and most recently worked as the chief spokesman for Mr. Cameron's government.
Sir Paul, who took over the top police job in 2009, stepped down in large part because of a furor over his contacts with News International officials. The New York Times reported over the weekend that he met for meals 18 times with News International executives and editors during the phone-hacking investigation, and that other top other police officials had had similar meetings.
Such is the severity of the crisis swirling around the Murdoch empire and Britain's public life that Prime Minister David Cameron cut short an African trip on Monday and, bowing to opposition pressure, called a special parliamentary session on Wednesday to debate the widening scandal.
The scandal also took a grim turn on Monday when Sean Hoare, a former reporter for The News of the World, the tabloid newspaper at the center of the scandal, was found dead in his home in a London suburb, according to British news outlets and the Associated Press.
Mr. Hoare was one of the first to go on record saying that "phone hacking," as the practice of breaking into private voice mail is known, was widespread at the News of the World and that a friend, Andy Coulson, was aware of it and actively encouraged it as editor of the paper. Mr. Coulson later left to work as Mr. Cameron's spokesman.
The Hertfordshire police said in a statement that they had found the body of a man but would not confirm his identity. They said they were not viewing the death as suspicious.
Mr. Yates, who was the police official in charge of counterterrorism, was asked in 2009 to determine whether to reopen an investigation into allegations that the News of the World, had regularly hacked the cellphone messages of celebrities, politicians and other public figures. He decided against reopening the inquiry, a decision that he admitted last week was the wrong one. The company shut down the News of the World earlier this month.
Shortly after the Metropolitan Police announced his resignation, Mr. Yates made a defiant public statement: "I have acted with complete integrity," he said. "My conscience is clear."
He said a "huge amount of inaccurate, ill-informed and on occasion downright malicious gossip" had caused his resignation. "This has the potential to be a significant distraction in my current role as the national lead for counterterrorism," he said in a statement, as the fallout from the scandal continued to shake British authorities and institutions.
Speaking in South Africa, Mr. Cameron said Parliament would stay in session beyond the scheduled start of its summer recess for an emergency session on Wednesday. Mr. Murdoch, his son James and Ms. Brooks are set to testify before a parliamentary inquiry into the scandal on Tuesday.
The prime minister made the announcement hours after Sir Paul Stephenson, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, commonly known as the Met or Scotland Yard, said that he had decided to step down because "the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met's links with News International at a senior level" had made it difficult for him to do his job. News International is the British newspaper subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
The home secretary, Theresa May, said on Monday that the country's Inspectorate of Constabulary, a police oversight body that reports to her, would investigate possible corruption in the links between the police and journalists. The BBC also reported that a separate inquiry by an independent panel, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, would look into the relationship between Mr. Yates and Neil Wallis, a former News of the World deputy editor who had become a public-relations consultant for the police after leaving the paper.
When Sir Paul, the police commissioner, resigned on Sunday he, too, said that he had done nothing wrong. He said that because he had not been involved in the original phone-hacking investigation, he had had no idea that Mr. Wallis was himself suspected of phone hacking, as the unauthorized accessing of voice mail is known.
Mr. Wallis, 60, was arrested last Thursday.
Boris Johnson, the London mayor, said on Monday that Mr. Yates decided to resign after police authorities informed him that he would be suspended while his ties to Mr. Wallis were being investigated. At a news conference, Mr. Johnson said Mr. Yates had told him last year that he did not believe there was "anything at the end of the rainbow" to justify reopening the phone hacking inquiry.
Mr. Yates has been criticized for his decision not to reopen the investigation even though the police under his command possessed some 11,000 pages of largely unexamined evidence. "I'm not going to go down and look at bin bags," Mr. Yates said, using the British term for trash bags to refer to the protective plastic bags in which evidence is kept.
He also has acknowledged public contacts with Mr. Wallis, telling a parliamentary committee in March that he could not remember exactly when he last had lunch with Mr. Wallis, but that it "may well" have been in February.
Sir Paul and Mr. Yates have been asked to appear on Tuesday before Parliament's home affairs committee investigating police behavior in the scandal. Mr. Yates testified before the committee last week, but was asked on Monday to return to clarify some points.
On Sunday, Sir Paul tried to deflect attention from his own role by implicitly criticizing Mr. Cameron's decision in 2009 to hire Andy Coulson as his spokesman. At least Mr. Wallis had not resigned from the paper under a cloud, as Mr. Coulson had, the commissioner said. The crisis has exploded in the two weeks since reports surfaced that the newspaper had ordered the hacking of the cellphone of a 13-year-old girl who had been abducted and murdered in 2002.
The prime minister, who has come under repeated attacks over his relationship with Mr. Coulson, defended himself on Monday.
"In terms of Andy Coulson, no one has argued that the work he did in government was in any way inappropriate or bad," he said, speaking at a news conference in South Africa alongside President Jacob Zuma.
"The situation in the Metropolitan Police Service is really quite different to the situation in the government, not least because the issues that the Metropolitan Police are looking at, the issues around them, have had a direct bearing on public confidence into the police inquiry into The News of the World and indeed into the police themselves," Mr. Cameron said.
Under pressure from the Labour opposition, the prime minister said Parliament would be called to a special session on Wednesday to "answer any questions that may arise" and "so I can make a further statement."
Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party and a persistent irritant to Mr. Cameron throughout the crisis, repeated his attacks on Monday on what he called the prime minister's "spectacular error of judgment" in hiring Mr. Coulson, despite warnings about Mr. Coulson's possibly murky past.
"It is of great concern," Mr. Miliband said in a speech, "that the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was unable to discuss vital issues with the prime minister because he felt that David Cameron was himself compromised on this issue because of Andy Coulson."
He added: "It is also striking that Sir Paul Stephenson has taken responsibility and resigned over the employment of Mr. Coulson's deputy, while the prime minister hasn't even apologized for hiring Mr. Coulson."
Mr. Miliband also accused the prime minister of picking a poor time to leave the country.
Perhaps sensitive to such criticism, Mr. Cameron announced on Monday that he would cut short his African trip, canceling plans to visit Sudan and Rwanda, and instead return home to take charge after a brief halt in Nigeria. "Just because you are traveling to Africa doesn't mean you've lost contact with your office," he said.
Ms. Brooks, 43, was the 10th and by far the most powerful person to be arrested so far in the phone-hacking scandal. On Monday, it emerged that she had spent about nine hours after her arrest on Sunday being questioned by the police. She was released around midnight and ordered to reappear for further questions in the fall, standard practice in such cases.
Ms. Brooks has not yet been formally charged, but it is significant that she was questioned in connection with two separate investigations. One, called Operation Weeting, is examining allegations of widespread phone hacking at The News of the World, the tabloid at the center of the scandal, where Ms. Brooks was editor from 2000 to 2003. The other is Operation Elveden, which is looking into charges that News International editors paid police officers for information.
A lawyer acting for her, Stephen Parkinson, said on Monday that Ms. Brooks was "not guilty of any criminal offense" and that the police were wrong to arrest her, given the damage to her reputation.
Ms. Brooks has always maintained that she was unaware of wrongdoing at The News of the World, which was summarily closed by Mr. Murdoch a week ago in an unsuccessful attempt at damage control.
Her arrest was a shock to the News Corporation and the other properties in Mr. Murdoch's media empire, which is reeling from the traumas: the forced withdrawal of its cherished $12 billion takeover bid for British Sky Broadcasting and the resignations not only of Ms. Brooks but also of Les Hinton, a longtime Murdoch ally and friend who was the chairman of Dow Jones and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.
No formal charges have yet been brought against Ms. Brooks, or indeed against any of the others - mostly former editors and reporters at The News of the World - arrested in the phone-hacking case so far. These include Mr. Coulson, who resigned as the paper's editor in 2007, was then hired by the Conservative Party, and most recently worked as the chief spokesman for Mr. Cameron's government.
Sir Paul, who took over the top police job in 2009, stepped down in large part because of a furor over his contacts with News International officials. The New York Times reported over the weekend that he met for meals 18 times with News International executives and editors during the phone-hacking investigation, and that other top other police officials had had similar meetings.
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