The FBI is investigating reports that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation sought to hack the phones of victims of the 9/11 terror attacks, reports say.
Reports of a criminal probe follow calls from a growing number of senators and a senior Republican congressman for an investigation.
An FBI official told the BBC that reports of probe were “credible”.
An FBI inquiry would be mean that the phone hacking scandal has crossed the Atlantic, analysts say.
In Washington, a spokeswoman for the US justice department, which oversees the FBI, declined to comment.
“The department does not comment specifically on investigations, though anytime we see evidence of wrongdoing, we take appropriate action,” Tracy Schmaler told the BBC.
News Corporation, based in New York, is the parent company of News International, the UK firm at the centre of a growing scandal over phone hacking and payments to police officers.
News International has already closed tabloid newspaper the News of the World and pulled out of a huge takeover bid for the UK’s largest pay-TV operator, BSkyB.
In addition, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has set up a judge-led inquiry into the allegations.
In Washington, senators this week asked authorities in the US to investigate amid allegations that the phones of victims of the September 11 attacks may have been hacked into by News of the World journalists. News International has not commented on the claims.
Democratic senators Jay Rockefeller and Barbara Boxer urged the attorney general and the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether US laws had been broken.
Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who wrote to the attorney general separately, said claims that newspapers had sought to “exploit information about… personal tragedies for profit” needed to be investigated.
Republican Congressman Peter King – who is chairman of the House homeland security committee and represents a constituency in New York that lost more then 150 people in the 9/11 attacks – called on Wednesday for an FBI inquiry.
See the original post here:
FBI ‘to open 9/11 hack inquiry’