Top Tabloid Editors Endorsed Hacking, Letter Says

By: Sarah Lyall, Ravi Somaiya and Alan Cowell | The New York Times

LONDON — A high-profile parliamentary panel investigating phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct News of the World tabloid released new allegations Tuesday suggesting that, despite assertions to the contrary by the newspaper’s owners and editors, the practice of intercepting voice mail was “widely discussed” at the newspaper.

The allegation was made in a four-year-old letter released for the first time from Clive Goodman, the News of the World’s former royal correspondent who served a jail term for hacking the mobile phones of members of the royal family, to a senior human resources executive who had informed him that he was being dismissed.