If true, this is is seriously pushing the limit. Hacking into the phone of the Metropolitan (London) police chief? They were begging for trouble.
A top BBC executive and the former Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair were targeted by the News of the World's phone hacking operation, it was claimed today.
Blair was named in a report in the Sunday Times, part of Rupert Murdoch's News International, which also owns the News of the World. However, tonight police sources denied his name was on the list.
The names emerged as the Met said it had begun to contact people who allegedly had been the subjects of hacking by the tabloid newspaper, but warned that the process could take some time to complete. "We are not discussing who we are contacting at all," a spokeswoman said.
BBC sources said that the corporation did not know which of its executives had been affected by the scam at the paper, which led to Clive Goodman, then News of the World royal correspondent, and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, going to jail in 2007.
