{"id":5800,"date":"2011-09-07T00:26:56","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T07:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5800"},"modified":"2011-09-07T00:26:56","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T07:26:56","slug":"was-grassley-covering-up-for-murdoch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/07\/was-grassley-covering-up-for-murdoch\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Grassley Covering-up for Murdoch?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five years ago a whistle blower came forward to expose the criminal hacking and other illegal practices here in the US.  The report he presented to a Senate staffer could have brought the scandal into the the public eye, at the time Rupert Murdoch was trying to acquire the Wall Street Journal.  Had the scandal broken then, the acquisition might never taken place.  But Robert Emmel, the whistle blower, made one mistake.  The staffer, to whom he entrusted the material, worked for Chuck Grassley (R-IA).  The report was buried.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"GrassleyHat\"A top investigator for the Senate Finance Committee, working under Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), may have had smoking gun evidence of News Corp\u2019s hacking activity<\/strong>. While News Corp\u2019s British subsidiaries have received the most media attention for systematically hacking the cell phone and personal records of private citizens, the public still has heard little of allegations relating to similar conduct perpetrated by News Corp against its American competitors<\/strong>. ThinkProgress has learned that not only did a sensitive tip come to Grassley\u2019s office about News Corp\u2019s cyber attacks against other American companies<\/strong>, but authorities may have failed to look into the matter partially because a staffer named Nick Podsiadly allegedly never <\/strong>followed through<\/strong><\/a> on his promise to the whistleblower<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

In December 2006, Robert Emmel, an account executive in News Corp\u2019s profitable marketing division called News America Marketing, mailed<\/a> Grassley\u2019s office a 58-page document detailing News Corp\u2019s unfair business practices<\/strong>. News America Marketing had won incredibly lucrative contracts away from a New Jersey-based firm called Floorgraphics not too long after Floorgraphics caught someone with a News Corp I.P. address illegally accessing password-protected information on the company\u2019s computer system. As critics have pointed out, the alleged hacking attempts by News America Marketing seem to mirror<\/a> information-stealing tactics used by News Corp\u2019s British newspapers, including the now-defunct News of the World tabloid. <\/p>\n

In 2006, Grassley was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Emmel had gone to the committee looking for help. According to court filings<\/a>, Grassley investigative staffer Nick Podsiadly had spoken with Emmel and told him that the committee would consider its own inquiry into the matter or he would refer the documents to the Justice Department. Podsiadly was Emmel\u2019s best hope<\/strong>\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>] <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

Murdoch forced Emmel into bankruptcy.<\/font><\/p>\n

I find it impossible to believe that a matter so explosive was not brought to Grassley\u2019s attention, and consider it highly probable, given his track record for disingenuous subterfuge, that Grassley made the decision to bury the report, perhaps to assist Murdoch in acquiring the Wall Street Journal.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Five years ago a whistle blower came forward to expose the criminal hacking and other illegal practices here in the US.  The report he presented to a Senate staffer could have brought the scandal into the the public eye, at the time Rupert Murdoch was trying to acquire the Wall Street Journal.  Had the scandal […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}