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
News International phone hacking scandal the World" letting slip the group's standards of journalism. Murdoch also alleged that the group's legal advisers, Harbottle & Lewis, had made "a major mistake" in its part in the internal investigation into phone-hacking in 2007. On 18 July, Harbottle & Lewis issued an open letter outlining its position, and appointed Luther Pendragon to handle PR issues relating to the affair. On 16 and 17 July, News International published two full-page apologies in many of Britain's national newspapers. The first apology took the form of a letter, signed by Rupert Murdoch, in which he said sorry for the "serious wrongdoing"