Former Editor in Hacking Case, Found Living in Florida, Says He Will Return to Britain

By GRAHAM BOWLEY
NYT

LONDON — A key figure in Britain’s widening phone hacking scandal who had worked as an editor at The News of the World surfaced in Florida on Thursday, saying he was preparing to return to Britain and was talking to the British police.

The editor, Greg Miskiw, could provide more details about which executives might have known about the illegal hacking at the Murdoch-owned tabloid and how widespread it was.

Separately, the News Corporation on Thursday announced that it had fired a staff member at The Sun, another newspaper in Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire. The company said the editor was fired for his previous work at The News of the World. And in another sign of the pressures faced by News Corporation, one of its papers, The Wall Street Journal, reported Thursday that the United States Justice Department was preparing subpoenas as part of its investigation into the company involving alleged foreign bribery and accusations of hacking into the voicemails of Sept. 11 victims.

The editor who emerged Thursday in Florida, Mr. Miskiw, worked on the news desk of The News of the World. His name appears on a contract with Glenn Mulcaire, identified by a pseudonym, the private investigator who worked for the newspaper and was sent to jail in 2007 for hacking the voice mail messages of members of the royal household. The contract has been of great interest to the parliamentary committee investigating the phone hacking.

(More here.)