Hiding in plain sight

Graham Bowley has an article in The New York Times about the British hacking case:

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, 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 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 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 11 September victims.
The editor who emerged in Florida, 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.
Miskiw was at The News of the World when Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of the paper’s parent company, News International, and Andy Coulson, who later worked for Prime Minister David Cameron, were its editors. Brooks and Coulson are among the people linked to the Murdoch newspapers who have been arrested in the scandal. Miskiw left The News of the World in 2005 and had been living in Manchester, England, but his recent location had not been known. The Palm Beach Post said he was living in an apartment in Delray Beach. The revelation caused members of the British news media to descend on Delray Beach, eager to hear what Miskiw had to say about the hacking at Murdoch’s newspapers.
Speaking in front of his apartment, he said: “I am returning to the UK voluntarily. My solicitor has been talking to the police for some time now so I have effectively been in touch with the police. They know where I am and they know I am returning. That is all I have to say.”
A former reporter for The News of the World told The New York Times that Miskiw had helped him find the location of a source he was seeking by using a cellphone number. He and another reporter said this was part of a practice known as “pinging”, in which technology reserved for the police was used to pinpoint locations based on cellphone towers. The reporter said each request cost five hundred dollars.
Scotland Yard said it was considering looking into the accusations following a request by Jenny Jones, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, the London police oversight body.
Miskiw did not answer calls for comment. Mulcaire, the private investigator at the heart of the scandal, broke his long silence a few hours after the News Corporation said it was terminating its arrangement to pay his legal fees in the 37 lawsuits over phone hacking claims that he now faces. His appearance before the television cameras outside his home in a southern London suburb raised questions about whether he, too, might soon provide more details about whether executives at the News Corporation had covered up the hacking, although he refused to provide immediate comment. He made another statement through his lawyer, Sarah Webb of the firm Payne Hicks Beach. Mulcaire indicated that he was cooperating with the police but that he would not speak publicly to say what he knew about the extent of the hacking until after the police inquiry had ended.
News International, the British newspaper division of the News Corporation, paid Mulcaire’s legal fees in the civil cases because he had been under contract with the company and it had accepted liability for him. His legal fees in the original criminal case over the hacking of the phones of members of the royal family, which ended with his going to jail in 2007, had been paid by legal aid. The payments in the civil cases are now due to end, although usually there is a notice period for such contracts.
Several former News of the World employees said the person fired by the News Corporation was Matt Nixson, the features editor of The Sun who had worked until recently for The News of the World. Nixson was fired “because of something found in his emails,” the former employees said.
Citing the News Corporation, the BBC reported that he had been fired over allegations of phone hacking. Nixson has told friends that he did nothing wrong, the former employees said.
The program Newsnight on the BBC reported that three lawyers representing some of the phone hacking victims had themselves been News of the World targets. One of the lawyers, Mark Lewis, said that Newsnight had informed him he was a target during the first three months of this year.

Rico says it's funny to watch all this, even if you can't tell the players without a scorecard...