Ex-News International In-House Legal Adviser Arrested

The ongoing News of the World phone-hacking scandal hit a landmark 25th arrest Thursday, a dubious distinction belonging to former News International in-house legal adviser Tom Crone.

According to BBC News, Crone was arrested at his London home “on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications contrary to Section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977” and was being questioned by members of the city’s Metropolitan Police. The arrest is the latest in Operation Weeting, the department’s investigation into phone hacking at the Rupert Murdoch-owned media company.

The U.K.’s Guardian described Crone as “News International’s go-to man on legal issues” in a July 11, 2011 profile, which appeared shortly before his resignation from the company. The newspaper reported on July 13 that Crone was stepping down, “after Crone’s boss, James Murdoch, implied that the lawyer and the former editor of News of the World, Colin Myler, may have misled him about the reasons for making a £700,000 payment to football chief Gordon Taylor in 2008.”

Crone’s 2009 testimony before a Parliamentary investigating committee had him denying his involvement in either the phone hacking or any subsequent cover-up of such activity at the News of the World. The ex-legal adviser was responsible for the initial internal investigation into the phone hacking, and he told the committee that he only found evidence of misconduct by NOTW royal editor Clive Goodman and investigator Glenn Mulcaire:

I tasked myself with finding out what exactly had happened; what was known, who knew what other documents there might be. At no stage during their investigation or our investigation did any evidence arise that the problem of accessing by our reporters, or complicity of accessing by our reporters, went beyond the Goodman/Mulcaire situation.

Subsequent investigation by the government and the police have led to allegations of more widespread phone hacking.

British tabloid The Daily Mail noted that when Rupert Murdoch gave his testimony to Parliament in 2012, he seemed to imply that Crone was behind a cover-up of the phone hacking: “Mr. Murdoch claimed a ‘clever lawyer and drinking pal of the journalists’ had stopped employees from talking about the alleged hacking and had kept the truth from senior executives.”

Following that testimony, Crone shot back with a public statement against Murdoch:

His assertion that I “took charge of a cover-up” in relation to phone hacking is a shameful lie. The same applies to his assertions that I misinformed senior executives about what was going on and that I forbade people from reporting to Rebekah Brooks or to James Murdoch.