LONDON — In an abrupt reversal, News Corp. said Thursday afternoon that Rupert Murdoch and his son James would testify next week before a British parliamentary panel looking into phone hacking. They will appear along with Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of the company’s British newspaper group.
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Earlier in the day, the Murdochs had sent letters to the panel, the Commons Culture Select Committee, refusing an invitation to appear.
The panel responded by formally summoning them to testify. The panel said it had “made clear its view that all three should appear to account for the behavior of News International and for previous statements made to the committee in Parliament, now acknowledged to be false.”
Murdoch and his son agreed to testify shortly after the summonses were issued, putting off the question of whether, as U.S. citizens, they could have been compelled to do so. Brooks, who is a British subject, said in a separate letter earlier Thursday that she would appear before the panel Tuesday, although she warned that she might not be able to answer detailed questions.
The moves in Parliament coincided with an announcement by Scotland Yard that officers had arrested Neil Wallis, 60, a former editor of News of the World, the Murdochowned tabloid at the heart of the phone-hacking affair. The crisis for Rupert Murdoch flared early last week with news reports that News of the World had ordered its investigators to break into the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old who had been abducted and was later found murdered. The Murdoch family shut down the 168-year-old Sunday newspaper after a final edition Sunday.
By agreeing to testify, the Murdochs avoided possible parliamentary repercussions. George Young, the leader of the House of Commons, said lawmakers can impose penalties, including imprisonment, if it rules that people who refuse to testify are deemed to be in contempt of Parliament. But such measures had “not been used for some time,” he said.
The developments came after Murdoch’s News Corp. stunned the British political establishment Wednesday by acceding to demands to abandon - at least for now - a $12 billion bid that would, if approved, have enabled it to assume full control of British Sky Broadcasting, Britain’s leading satellite television operator.
Even after the withdrawal of the broadcasting bid, politicians maintained pressure Thursday for Murdoch to appear before the parliamentary inquiry to answer what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg called “big questions” about his companies’ fitness to own British media outlets, which still include The Times of London, The Sunday Times and the top-selling Sun tabloid.
Pressure seemed to be mounting in particular on Brooks, the chief executive of News International, the British newspaper subsidiary of News Corp., who was editor of News of the World at the time of the hacking. A separate lawsuit was filed this week alleging that a second episode of hacking took place while she was editor of News of the World, as she was when a private investigator working for the newspaper purportedly helped journalists hack into the phone of Milly Dowler.Brooks has issued an apology to the Dowler family but said she was on vacation when the resulting story ran and knew nothing about the hacking.
The new lawsuit, involving Guy Pelly, a friend of Princes William and Harry, predates that incident. The claim, based on evidence seized from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire’s home, was filed by Pelly and alleges that his phone may have been hacked in early 2002. News International did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
So far, Murdoch has staunchly defended Brooks and vowed to stand by her in the face of calls for her resignation from the prime minister on down.
In a letter to the parliamentary panel released by the committee, Brooks said she “welcomed the opportunity” to give evidence. But she said that she might refuse to answer some questions to avoid prejudicing a criminal inquiry by the police into the phone-hacking matter.
“This may prevent me from addressing these matter in detail,” the letter said.
James Murdoch had earlier said that he was “fully prepared” to appear before the committee but not Tuesday, the day the panel has called him and his father to attend. He offered to appear Aug. 10 or 11.
9/11 VICTIMS’ RECORDS
In response to requests from members of the U.S. Congress and to at least one news report, the FBI in New York opened a preliminary inquiry Thursday into allegations that News Corp. journalists sought to gain access to the phone records of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks,according to several people briefed on the matter.
The investigation is in its earliest stages, two of the people said, and its scope is not yet clear. It also is unclear whether the FBI has identified possible targets of the investigation or possible specific criminal violations.
The inquiry was prompted in part by a letter from U.S. Rep. Peter King, a Long Island Republican, to Robert Mueller, the FBI director, in which King asked that the bureau immediately open an investigation of News Corp., citing news reports that journalists working for News of the World had tried to obtain the phone records of 9/11 victims through bribery and unauthorized wiretapping, the people said.
The investigation was expected to be handled jointly by two FBI squads in the bureau’s New York office, one that investigates cyber-crimes and another that focuses on public corruption and white-collar crimes, one of the people said. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case.
It was not immediately clear whether federal prosecutors in the Manhattan borough were involved in the case; they would most likely have jurisdiction over any prosecution because the 9/11 victims and their cell phones were in Manhattan when they died.
Ellen Davis, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, also declined to comment.
Laura Sweeney, a Justice Department spokesman in Washington, said: “The department does not comment specifically on investigations, though anytime we see evidence of wrongdoing, we take appropriate action. The department has received letters from several members of Congress regarding allegations related to News Corporation, and we’re reviewing those.”
Jack Horner, a spokesman for the company, declined to comment.
King said in his letter Wednesday that he was requesting the investigation not only as the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security, but also as a congressman whose district lost more than 150 people in the 9/11 attacks. “It is my duty to discern every fact behind these allegations,” he wrote.
He cited recent news reports, apparently referring to an article first published Monday in The Daily Mirror, a chief competitor to News of the World. The article said reporters working for the newspaper had contacted a private investigator, a former New York police officer, and offered to pay him to retrieve the phone numbers of 9/11 victims and get details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading up to the attacks.
“If these allegations are proven true,” King wrote, “the conduct would merit felony charges for attempting to violate various federal statutes related to corruption of public officials and prohibitions against wiretapping.Any person found guilty of this purported conduct should receive the harshest sanctions available under law.”
It is not clear whether the person referred to in the Daily Mirror article was a police officer at the time of the attacks.
At least five Democratic lawmakers, who all had previously been critical of News Corp., spoke out about the matter this week. King was the first Republican to call for an investigation into the activities of the company, whose chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, is a longtime supporter of conservative causes and Republican politicians.
Meanwhile, in comments published on the News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal’s website, the 80-year-old Murdoch said he and others in management had handled the crisis “extremely well in every way possible” with just a few “minor mistakes.”
He said any speculation that he may sell off the rest of the company’s British newspapers is “pure rubbish.” Information for this article was contributed by Jo Becker, John F. Burns and William K. Rashbaum of The New York Times and by The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/15/2011