In the latest developments in the phone hacking trial against ex-News Corp employees, one of the accused has testified in a London court today about the extent of the use of phone hacking at the British unit of News Corp, Bloomberg said.
Clive Goodman, who is the shuttered News of the World's former royal reporter, recounted in court the many incidents that reporters and journalists of the New York-based company's UK newspapers had abused privacy laws by tapping phones of people, including of each other.
Goodman, who was already convicted of phone hacking charges in a 2006 case, said that he had discussed phone hacking with his then-editor Andy Coulson as far back as the year 2005. Coulson is among the seven who is charged in the current phone hacking and bribery of public officials trial, the news agency said. Goodman, on the other hand, is only being charged of bribery with Coulson to acquire a phone directory of the royal family and their aides. Coulson, said Bloomberg, had served as the media aide of Prime Minister David Cameron.
According to Goodman, Coulson agreed initially to conduct a test in 2005, which involved the hacking of the phones of two of the three aides to the royal family. Both allegedly agreed to pay private investigator Glenn Mulcaire 500 pounds or $830 a week for the two-month test. Among the messages that were recorded by Mulcaire was of Prince William for his future wife, Kate Middleton.
Goodman also told the court that the phone hacking was not only focused on the royal family or for other big stories for News of the World. Goodman claimed that even employees hacked phones of their co-workers in the newsroom to check on them, which corroborates the competitive nature co-accused and former editor Rebekah Brooks of News Corp's Sun tabloid had stated earlier.
