hehhehheh
From the Graun blog again:
'James Murdoch's account to the Commons culture select committee about his involvement in agreeing the out-of-court settlement with the former head of the Professional Footballers' Association, Gordon Taylor, was "mistaken", according to a statement issued by former News of the World editor Colin Myler and former News international legal manager Tom Crone.
The statement says:
Just by way of clarification relating to Tuesday's CMS Select Committee hearing, we would like to point out that James Murdoch's recollection of what he was told when agreeing to settle the Gordon Taylor litigation was mistaken.
In fact, we did inform him of the "for Neville" email which had been produced to us by Gordon Taylor's lawyers.
The Neville referred to in the statement is Neville Thurlbeck, the paper's former chief reporter. In 2009, documents passed to the culture committee revealed that he read transcripts of 35 hacked telephone messages between Gordon Taylor and Jo Armstrong, a legal advisor at the PFA.
They were sent in an email to the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire by an unnamed junior reporter on the paper on 29 June 2005. In the email, the reporter says "Hello, this is the transcript for Neville". The committee was told by Guardian reporter Nick Davies this was Neville Thurlbeck.
At the select committee hearing on Tuesday, James Murdoch told Labour MP Tom Watson that he was not aware of the email when he signed off the payment to Taylor:
Mr Watson: James ? sorry, if I may call you James, to differentiate?when you signed off the Taylor payment, did you see or were you made aware of the full Neville e-mail, the transcript of the hacked voicemail messages?
James Murdoch: No, I was not aware of that at the time.
Mr Watson: But you paid an astronomical sum, and there was no reason to.
James Murdoch: There was every reason to settle the case, given the likelihood of losing the case and given the damages?we had received counsel?that would be levied.'