News International phone hacking scandal the new allegations, along with high-ranking officers of the Metropolitan Police Service. News International's legal manager Tom Crone left the company on 13 July. As part of his role at the publisher, Crone had served as the "News of the World" chief lawyer and gave evidence before parliamentary committees, that he had uncovered no evidence of phone hacking beyond the criminal offences committed by the royal editor Clive Goodman. He maintained that he did not see an internal report suggesting that phone hacking at the paper went beyond Goodman. On 15 July, Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International,
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