Coulson threw himself on the sword so that Murdoch might conduct his crimewave in America

[kpete]

Stacy Summary: Most are going to say Alistair McWho? But I mention this only because in August or September of 2003, I had lunch with a freelance journalist who worked for UK tabloids. At the time I had lunch with her, she had been working for News of the World for several months. When she arrived at lunch, she was very frazzled. She went on to explain that she had just come back from a meeting at which Andy Coulson and one other male employee of NoTW was in the room. The reason she was so shocked was that one of the stories she was pursuing involved an entertainer in the UK named Alistair McGowan. If I recall, they thought he (though single) was having an affair with someone else that was famous. Anyway, she had reported that she couldn’t find anything and she alleged that Andy Coulson responded with something along the lines of, “Don’t worry we have a tap on his phone.” She was so shocked and mortified that he was doing this but so openly stating this. She wondered why a man in such a powerful position needed to bother doing this to someone so relatively unimportant. As I said, she worked for other tabloids as well and said she had never seen anything like working for News of the World. At the time, I didn’t really understand who Andy Coulson was but I certainly didn’t forget the conversation. Cut to eight years later and Coulson is due to be arrested tomorrow.



Note that Coulson threw himself on the sword so that Murdoch might conduct his crimewave in America where he is now able to throw elections and propagandize the population unfettered:

Coulson’s resignation in effect prevented a thorough investigation of the Goodman affair by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), and ensured Rupert Murdoch would not have to answer difficult questions about the activities of his British newspapers at a time when he was under intense scrutiny in the United States.

http://maxkeiser.com/2011/07/07/hey-david-cameron-ask-your-friend-andy-coulson-what-he-knew-about-the-tap-on-alistair-mcgowans-phone/
http://100gf.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/david-cameron-on-andy-coulson-how-could-i-have-known/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/the-goodman-affair-victims-of-frenzy-fed-by-hitech-434190.html

Ex-No 10 chief Coulson arrested
http://www.chad.co.uk/news/national/ex_no_10_chief_coulson_arrested_1_3560581

[brooklynite]

1. Um, there is that little unpleasantness about being ARRESTED...

I think both the Government and the Police will be doing some serious investigations; suggesting that this was a coverup for Murdoch seems like a stretch.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. I think they're talking about Coulson's resignation in 2007

Goodman was convicted in 2007 of paying the PI to hack the voicemail of royal aides; they claimed it was limited to just those 2. Coulson resigned, then, as editor of the News of the World, saying he hadn't known about it, but should have had better control of his reporter. Their point is that the toothless PCC accepted this as true, and since Coulson had resigned, didn't bother digging any deeper into the affair. And the police, although they had evidence that literally thousands of people might have been targets of similar hacking, told on-one (a good reason to suspect someone at News International was either bribing or blackmailing them).