Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s UK company, took a “deeply concerning interest” in the phone-hacking campaigner Tom Watson while one of her journalists wrote that he “must die”, according to claims in a newly disclosed court document.
Referring to a potential place for Watson on a parliamentary committee looking into unlawful behaviour, Brooks allegedly told Will Lewis, the then general manager of News Group Newspapers (NGN) – who is now the chief executive and publisher of the Washington Post – in June 2011 to pass on a message that the company would “go for broke if watson on – and downing street need to be warned”.
