News of the World and the victims of 9/11

For some accountable reason, when I checked late last night the front page of this morning's Daily Mirror was not included among Tomorrow's Front Pages on the Sky News site.

The headline on the Mirror's front-page story runs: Phone hacking: 9/11 victims 'may have had mobiles tapped by News of the World reporters'

The details of the claim about 9/11 come some way down the story:

a former New York cop made the 9/11 hacking claim. He alleged he was contacted by News of the World journalists who said they would pay him to retrieve the private phone records of the dead.

Now working as a private ­investigator, the ex-officer claimed reporters wanted the victim’s phone numbers and details of the calls they had made and received in the days leading up to the atrocity.

A source said: “This investigator is used by a lot of journalists in America and he recently told me that he was asked to hack into the 9/11 victims’ private phone data. He said that the journalists asked him to access records showing the calls that had been made to and from the mobile phones belonging to the victims and their ­relatives.

“His presumption was that they wanted the information so they could hack into the ­relevant voicemails, just like it has been shown they have done in the UK. The PI said he had to turn the job down. He knew how insensitive such research would be, and how bad it would look.

“The investigator said the ­journalists seemed particularly interested in getting the phone records belonging to the British victims of the attacks.”

It is all a little tenuous, but if this story turns out to be true, Murdoch will have more to worry about than whether he manages to take over BSkyB.