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
2009–2011 News of the World phone hacking scandal investigations World" had rehired a private investigator shortly after his release from a seven-year prison sentence for blackmail. The "News of the World" had used the investigator prior to his imprisonment, at a time when Coulson was deputy editor. In February 2010, "The Guardian" could not name Jonathan Rees as he was involved in a new criminal trial. In September 2010 "The Guardian" revealed that in 2009 plans by the Home Office to ask Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary to review the police investigation into the phone hacking scandal were cancelled "after intense internal lobbying", with a senior Home Office official