Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News television channel had a “black ops” department that may have illegally hacked private telephone records, a former executive for the station has alleged.
Dan Cooper, who helped launch Fox News as managing editor in 1996, said that a so-called “brain room” carried out “counter intelligence” on the channel’s enemies from its New York headquarters, and that he was threatened after it found out he spoke to a reporter.
Another former senior executive told The Telegraph that the channel ran a Soviet-style spying network on staff, reading their emails and making them “feel they were being watched”.
‘Fair and balanced’ … Controversial Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. A former executive claims hacking may have occurred at the network. Photo: YouTube
The channel, which has come under pressure amid allegations that outlets owned by Mr Murdoch may have attempted to hack the voicemail messages of 9/11 victims, firmly denies all the allegations.
Mr Cooper, who left Fox News soon after its launch, provided a quote for a 1997 article about Roger Ailes, Fox News’s president, by journalist David Brock in New York magazine.
The quote was not going to be attributed to him, but he alleges that, before the article was published, Mr Cooper’s agent received a telephone call from Mr Ailes threatening to withdraw Fox’s business from all his clients.
“There are only two possible ways Ailes found out,” Mr Cooper said.
“Either Brock told him or they got hold of Brock’s phone records and saw I spoke to him.”
He first alleged that the records were obtained by researchers in the “brain room” in 2005 in an article on his website about the launch of the channel.
“Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News,” he wrote.
“I knew it also housed a counter intelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie.”
Mr Cooper yesterday said he helped to design the high-security unit. “It was staffed by 15 researchers and had a guard at the door. No one working there would engage in conversation.”
Mr Cooper said he was “willing to consider the possibility” that Mr Brock named him, but added: “I assume he operates under journalistic ethics and protected a confidential source. Brock told me at the time that Ailes told him he would never work again if he wrote the article.”
Mr Brock now runs Media Matters, a Left-leaning American media watchdog. A spokesman for the group said: “He declines to comment.”
Another former Fox News senior executive, who did not wish to be named, said staff were forced to operate under conditions reminiscent of “Russia at the height of the Soviet era”.
“There is a paranoid atmosphere and they feel they are being watched,” the former executive said.
“I have no doubt they are spying on emails to ensure no one is leaking to outside media.
“There is a unit of spies that reports up to the boss about who was talking to whom. A lot of people are scared that they’re going to get sidelined or even that they’re going to get killed.”
A Fox News spokesman said: “Each of these allegations is completely false. Dan Cooper was terminated six weeks after the launch of the Fox News Channel in 1996 and has peddled these lies for the past 15 years.”
The FBI is investigating allegations that journalists on a British newspaper may have tried to have 9/11 victims’ phones hacked.
Both former Fox News executives said they thought Mr Ailes would never have let his reporters do likewise.
The Telegraph, London
BOSTON (AP) — A former employee of a website content delivery company has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of foreign economic espionage for providing company trade secrets to an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
Elliot Doxer, 42, will admit to providing trade secrets from Cambridge-based Akamai Technologies Inc. over an 18-month period to the agent, whom he believed was an Israeli spy, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts said in a statement. A plea hearing is scheduled for Aug. 29.
Doxer’s attorney, Thomas J. Butters, did not return messages left after business hours Thursday.
Doxer, of Brookline, worked in Akamai’s finance department at the time he committed the alleged offenses. Prosecutors said he sent an email to the Israeli consulate in June 2006 and offered to provide any information he had access to in order to help that country in exchange for $3,000.
Doxer said his main goal was “to help our homeland and our war against our enemies,” prosecutors said.
Israeli officials contacted U.S. authorities about the offer. An FBI agent went undercover and posed as an Israeli agent in September 2007, and arranged to use a “dead drop” location to exchange information with Doxer to avoid detection. From then until March 2009, Doxer visited the drop location at least 62 times and provided an extensive list of Akamai’s customers and employees, including their full contact information, and contract details, according to prosecutors.
He also allegedly described Akamai’s physical and computer security systems and said he could travel to Israel and support special operations in his local area if needed.
Akamai previously said that it had cooperated with the FBI. The firm also noted that there is no evidence that Doxer actually gave information to a foreign government.
Authorities arrested Doxer in August and charged him with one count of wire fraud. That charge will be dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
The espionage charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, a three-year term of supervised release and a $500,000 fine.
BOSTON
– A former employee of a website content delivery company has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of foreign economic espionage for providing company trade secrets to an undercover FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer, federal prosecutors announced Thursday.
Elliot Doxer, 42, will admit to providing trade secrets from Cambridge-based Akamai Technologies Inc. over an 18-month period to the agent, whom he believed was an Israeli spy, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts said in a statement. A plea hearing is scheduled for Aug. 29.
Doxer’s attorney, Thomas J. Butters, did not return messages left after business hours Thursday.
Doxer, of Brookline, worked in Akamai’s finance department at the time he committed the alleged offenses. Prosecutors said he sent an email to the Israeli consulate in June 2006 and offered to provide any information he had access to in order to help that country in exchange for $3,000.
Doxer said his main goal was “to help our homeland and our war against our enemies,” prosecutors said.
Israeli officials contacted U.S. authorities about the offer. An FBI agent went undercover and posed as an Israeli agent in September 2007, and arranged to use a “dead drop” location to exchange information with Doxer to avoid detection. From then until March 2009, Doxer visited the drop location at least 62 times and provided an extensive list of Akamai’s customers and employees, including their full contact information, and contract details, according to prosecutors.
He also allegedly described Akamai’s physical and computer security systems and said he could travel to Israel and support special operations in his local area if needed.
Akamai previously said that it had cooperated with the FBI. The firm also noted that there is no evidence that Doxer actually gave information to a foreign government.
Authorities arrested Doxer in August and charged him with one count of wire fraud. That charge will be dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
The espionage charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, a three-year term of supervised release and a $500,000 fine.
London: Jude Law is suing The Sunover alleged interception of his voice mails for stories about his private life, dragging another tabloid of Rupert Murdoch’s shaking media empire into the phone hacking scandal that has rocked Britain.
Law’s action pertains to the time when Rebekah Brooks was the editor and is believed to be the first such legal action against Murdoch’s best-selling daily title.
The group’s largest selling tabloid News of the World was closed down last week after the scandal engulfed it amid revelations that the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler was hacked, among others.
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Secret information contained on the police national computer would be like gold to foreign intelligence agencies, and highly valuable for espionage purposes, says investigative journalist and SIS expert Nicky Hager.
“You’ve got potential names you could steal and use, you’ve got all their backgrounds. You’ve got this fantastic resource on another country,” he said. “If you’re an intelligence agency that would be a very high-value thing to seize.”
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