New York Rep. Peter King (R) has called on the FBI to investigate allegations that journalists working for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. hacked into the phones of victims of the September 11th attacks.
“It is revolting to imagine that members of the media would seek to compromise the integrity of a public official for financial gain in the pursuit of yellow journalism,” King said in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller. “The 9/11 families have suffered egregiously, but unfortunately they remain vulnerable against such unjustifiable parasitic strains.”
According to the U.K.’s Daily Mirror, a former New York City police officer who now works as a private investigator claims that News Of The World reporters asked him to get the phone records of dead victims of 9/11, from the days leading up to the attacks. “[The investigator’s] presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the Ârelevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the U.K.,” a Mirror source said.
Earlier this week, Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington called on Congress to investigate the allegations.
Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV), who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee, was the first to call on regulators to investigate the allegations on Tuesday.
Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) have also called for investigations into whether the phone hacking, which targeted murder victims and public figures, stretched to News Corp.’s holdings in the United States.
