Hoare not suspicious eh? Was he hacked to death?

Dictionary.com defines suspicion as follows:

1.

Tending to cause or excite suspicion; questionable: suspicious behavior.

2.

Inclined to suspect, especially inclined to suspect evil; distrustful: a suspicious tyrant.

3.

Full of or feeling suspicion.

I was really considering e-mailing the MET today with this in order to help police with their enquiries over the unexplained death of whistleblower Sean Hoare, the least “suspicious death” to splash our media pages since police discovered Iraq WMD whistleblower Dr David Kelly perhaps?

Before his death, Hoare was the first journalist to go on record claiming every journalist he worked with at NOTW (he was fired six years ago for drug and drink problems, according to the Guardian), including Coulson, was aware of phone hacking, in his words “everyone was doing it.” He conceded to a US reporter that: “Everyone got a bit carried away with the power that they had. No one came close to catching us.”

Until Hugh Grant came along that is. Is it just me, or is this story getting darker and darker? If the authorities conclude that Hoare did indeed die of natural causes, and was not hacked to death as most truly suspect, what conclusions can we come to?  Hopefully not the same ones that Piers Morgan came to on Monday’s installment of Piers Morgan Tonight.

Up until now Morgan, the NOTW editor from 94-95, has kept tight-lipped concerning the scandal, but he more than made up for it by defending his old boss saying he was the victim (ah, poor Rupert) of a “huge witch hunt going on to bring him down personally. I don’t accept that he himself would be party to illegal activity. ”

He went on to say, “For the record, I do not believe that any story that we published in either title (he also edited the Daily Mirror from 1994 to 2004) was ever gained in an unlawful manner.”

Quite the character reference from a man who, by his own admission, said forms of hacking might have been involved in one of his biggest scoops at the reign of the Daily Mirror.  Not like Piers to contradict himself, is it? Yes, of course it is.

He defended the 80-year old Murdoch by saying. “Having been one of his editors, I know that whenever we tripped up over what are, by these standards, relatively minor indiscretions, in terms of breaching the Press Complaints Commission Code or whatever, he was always incredibly quick to be publicly censorious of me or whoever the editor was … and remind us forcefully, personally, ‘You’ve got to abide by the rules of the game.”

Not quite the impression you get from Morgan in his memoirs of Fleet Street, when he states quite clearly that Murdoch is privately dismissive of all of the rules, saying:  “He doesn’t really give a toss about it.”

Does Murdoch really give a toss about anything, except not getting caught? According to the Forbes catalogue of the rich and aimless, Murdoch is thought to be 13^th most powerful man in the world. Did he get there by being charitable and helping old ladies across the street? No, predominantly he got there by selling newspapers, which essentially is what the NOTW scandal is all about.

One thing Morgan did say that made sense on his TV defense of the media mogul was: “I wouldn’t want this to become a valedictory ‘he’s perfect’ kind of segment because the reality is, of course, he’s not. He’s a ruthless, tough businessman.”

Indeed.

A man is dead, one woman arrested. Thousands upon thousands of people have been the victims of countless invasions of privacy. Police investigations into murder have been tampered with, and families destroyed. Hundreds of people have lost their jobs and some have been forced to resign.  Why? So Rupert Murdoch could make money.

As I write this Rupert Murdoch has gone on record by saying “this is the most humble day of my life so far…” It’s truly incredible how far some people have to go.