New questions have been raised about relations between the Metropolitan Police and the News of the World.
It has emerged that the latest figure to be arrested - a former deputy editor at the paper - went on to work for the police.
Neil Wallis gave public relations advice to senior officers including the commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson.
Since his arrival in Britain to manage the phone-hacking crisis, just two words have been uttered in public by Rupert Murdoch.
His sole utterance came when he was confronted by camera crews as he emerged from his apartment in Mayfair with Rebekah Brooks, the embattled chief executive of News International. Asked what his first priority was, the octogenarian tycoon pointed at her and simply replied: "This one."
Otherwise he has only produced inscrutable smiles. All that changed last night when the News Corporation chairman spoke for the first time about the scandal that has paralysed his global media empire.
The investigation into criminal behaviour by journalists at Rupert Murdoch's News Corp crossed the Atlantic yesterday as the FBI opened an inquiry into claims that the News of the World tried to hack the phones of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
As News Corp's shares slid in New York and legal problems threatened to engulf the rest of his media empire, Mr Murdoch launched a vigorous defence of his own handling of the scandal and of the conduct of his son, James.
The FBI opened the inquiry after sustained pressure from both Republican and Democrat politicians, who expressed outrage at the claims that 9/11 victims could have been among the NOTW's targets. The FBI is following claims first made in the Daily Mirror at the start of this week that NOTW journalists contacted a former New York police officer, now working as a private investigator, and offered to pay him to retrieve the phone records of those killed in the 2001 terrorist attacks. Police sources said the investigation is at a preliminary stage.
