Colin Myler tells Leveson inquiry of mood after Clive Goodman's jailing over phone hacking and Andy Coulson's resignation
Colin Myler, the former editor of the News of the World, has said he felt there were "bombs under the newsroom floor" when he arrived to take over from Andy Coulson in 2007.
Myler was parachuted in from Rupert Murdoch's New York Post to take over from Coulson after he resigned in the wake of the jailing of royal editor Clive Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire on phone-hacking charges.
He told the Leveson inquiry into press ethics on Thursday that he knew then that practices at the paper had to be tightened up.
"I felt there could have been bombs under the newsroom floor and I didn't know where they were and I didn't know when they were going to go off."
He said it was evident after the police had removed three binliners of documents and notes from Mulcaire's home that something could explode at any moment.
Myler said the "for Neville" email – the first indication that phone hacking was not limited to one rogue reporter – was one of those potential bombs.
"You mentioned bombs under the newsroom floor," counsel for the inquiry Robert Jay asked: "This was creating a tendency for one or more of those bombs to explode, would you agree with that?"
Myler agrees, and said: "There was no appetite to go back to that place."
The former editor was also asked if he knew if the "for Neville" email was handed over to James Murdoch at a meeting on 10 June 2008, when the Taylor settlement was being discussed.
Myler said he could not recall but that if the paper's legal chief Tom Crone testified that he did, he believed that would have been the case.
"I can't remember if he did that," he said. "I am aware that Crone said in his testimony and I have no reason to disbelieve that he did what he said he did."
Myler also revealed that he had not seen copies of internal emails that proved he and the paper's former legal chief Tom Crone had communicated the extent of the hacking until they were released by the culture committee this week.
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/dec/15/news-of-the-world-editor
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