(Newser)
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The News of the World phone hacking scandal is increasingly hitting Britain's famed Scotland Yard, as the depths of the organizations' interconnectedness comes to light, reports the New York Times. The police had six garbage bags full of 11,000 pages of notes about 4,000 celebs who had their phones hacked by NotW, but no one bothered to catalog the evidence or inform the victims for four years—even as senior Scotland Yard officials assured Parliament and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking.
“It’s embarrassing, and it’s tragic,” said one retired police officer. “And there is a major crisis now in the leadership of the Yard.” Top Scotland Yard officials apparently had rather cozy relationships with leading executives at News International, dining together regularly, even while the paper was under investigation. A new inquiry has led to the arrest of 10 NotW reporters and editors—including Rebekah Brooks—with more expected, and now the police are under investigation as well. “I still don’t think we know the extent of what the police did and did not do because we are only about halfway down into the murky pond,” said one member of Parliament.
