News of the World registry. In 2006, reporters at the paper used private investigators to illegally gain access to hundreds of mobile phone voicemail accounts held by a variety of people of interest to the newspaper. In 2007 the paper's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, pleaded guilty to illegal interception of personal communication and was jailed for four months; the paper's editor, Andy Coulson, had resigned two weeks earlier. In 2009/2010, further revelations emerged on the extent of the phone hacking, and how it was common knowledge within the "News of the World" and its News International parent. According to a former reporter at the
Metropolitan Police role in the news media phone hacking scandal into phone hacking, something it had declined to do since 2007. The renewed Met investigation was titled Operation Weeting and began on 26 January 2011. It was led by Sue Akers, a Deputy Assistant Commissioner with the Metropolitan Police, and was focused on the illegal interception of voicemail. Between 45 and 60 officers began looking over the 11,000 pages of evidence seized from Mulcaire back in August 2006. By mid-April, Thurlbeck, Edmondson, and James Weatherup, a senior "News of the World" journalist, had been arrested. In May 2011, News International's law firm, Hickman & Rose, hired former Director of Public