Tag: criminal investigation

U.S. Attorney General Opens Investigation Of Murdoch As Top News Corp Executives Quit

One day after Rupert Murdoch tried to tell the Wall Street Journal that the phone-hacking scandal that had engulfed his worldwide media empire and scuttled his planned $12 billion purchase of a British satellite company involved only “minor mistakes,” two of his top executives quit and Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he was opening a criminal investigation into News Corp, the parent company of Fox News.

Rebekah Brooks, the CEO of News International (Murdoch’s politically influential British newspaper group) and the editor of the now-defunct News of the World tabloid when it reportedly hacked into the voice mail message inbox of a missing thirteen-year-old murder victim, resigned earlier in the day, while Les Hinton, an old Murdoch lieutenant who ran News International and is now the CEO of Dow Jones, stepped down this afternoon. Hinton had overseen a 2007 internal investigation into widespread phone-hacking at News of the World which failed to publicly unearth now-discovered evidence that the paper had broken into the private inboxes of more than 4,000 people, including Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Gordon Brown, along with scores of prosaic celebrities. (Internal emails from that probe are now the center of a possible obstruction of justice investigation by British officials.)

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed today that the investigation had spread to this side of the pond after members of Congress — including the Republican chair of the Homeland Security Committee — asked the FBI to look into allegations that the News of the World had tried to break into the voice-mails of relatives of 9/11 victims. “There have been members of Congress in the United States who have asked us to investigate those same allegations and we are progressing in that regard using the appropriate Federal law enforcement agencies,” Holder said from Australia, which coincidentally is Murdoch’s native land.

Members of Congress have also requested that the Securities and Exchange Commission look into behavior at the company. There have also been reports that News Corp. Deputy COO James Murdcoh, the heir to the company and a supervising executive in Britain when many of the privacy invasions took place, could be prosecuted for bribery because of reports that News Corp. newspapers authorized payments to the British police. As an officer of an American company, either Murdoch could be held to account.

Rupert Murdoch also explicitly apologized to the parents of Millie Dowling, the parents of the 13-year-old girl who was kidnapped and murdered. All of these moves came shortly after News Corp. hired Edelman, a PR and crisis management firm.

CIA Director “Welcome[s] The News” That Only Two Detainee Deaths Will Be Investigated

US Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that the Justice Department will open “a full criminal investigation” into the deaths of Manadel al-Jamadi and Gul Rahman, both of whom died while being held as prisoners by the CIA. Holder added, though, that investigation of hundreds of other CIA interrogations “is not warranted” and will be not pursued.

The announcement comes after the conclusion of a preliminary investigation into CIA abuse by John Durham, a Connecticut prosecutor. Durham investigated charges that the CIA illegally destroyed videotapes of interrogations in 2008, and was more recently assigned by Holder to investigate allegations of CIA abuse of detainees. Durham did not investigate whether CIA interrogators tortured prisoners, but only whether they engaged in “unauthorized interrogation techniques” not approved by the Bush administration.

Civil-liberties groups such as the ACLU expressed concern that the investigation was too narrow, focusing only on extraordinary cases of abuse rather than the Bush administration’s systematic approval of torture. “We continue to believe that the scope of Mr. Durham’s mandate was far too narrow,” said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “The central problem was not with interrogators who disobeyed orders, but with senior officials who authorized a program of torture.”

In a statement released on his last day as Director of the CIA, Leon Panetta emphasized that the fear of a major Justice Department investigation was finally over. He informed the CIA of Durham’s conclusion “that no further law enforcement was necessary,” save for the small matter of “two discrete cases…each involving a detainee fatality.”

Many questions surround the deaths of Jamadi, who died while being interrogated by CIA officer Mark Swanner in Abu Ghraib, and Rahmann, who died of hypothermia in a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.

Investigations by NPR and the New Yorker reveal that Jamadi was captured in Baghdad in 2003 by Navy SEALs, who transferred him to the infamous Abu Ghraib prison. While being interrogated by Swanner in the prison, Jamadi had his arms stretched behind his back and shackled to a high window. During the interrogation, he was discovered to have died, possibly of asphyxiation due to the “crucifixion-like” position he had been placed in. Although medical examiners ruled the death a “homicide,” prosecutors in Virginia (home of the CIA) decided not to press charges.

Rahmann was captured in Islamabad, Pakistan, before being flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan. While at the prison, he was stripped from the waist down and left inside a cold prison cell, where temperatures were reportedly as low as 36 degrees. He died of hypothermia during the night. An AP investigation found that the CIA officers responsible were never disciplined; in fact, the chief CIA officer in Kabul, Afghanistan later received three promotions. Until yesterday, there had been no criminal investigation of the death.