E-Mail on ‘Rife’ Hacking Deleted From James Murdoch Computer, Lawyers Say

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An e-mail to Rupert Murdoch’s son James that referred to “a nightmare scenario” of legal repercussions from widespread phone hacking at the News of the World tabloid was deleted from his computer less than two weeks before the police opened their current investigation into phone hacking, lawyers said.

The deletion was part of an “e-mail stabilization and modernization program” in which accounts were “being prepared for the migration to a new e-mail system,” said Linklaters, a law firm representing News International, the British newspaper arm of the Murdoch media empire. The e-mail was a chain of messages sent June 7, 2008, to James Murdoch, head of News Corporation’s European and Asian operations, warning that the potential legal fallout from hacking at The News of the World was “as bad as we feared.”


E-Mail on ‘Rife’ Hacking Deleted From James Murdoch Computer, Lawyers Say Hacking Email Was Deleted (WSJ)