How a U.K. Tabloid Got Its Royal Scoops

How's this for a breach of journalistic ethics? An upcoming piece in The New York Times Magazine details how two News of the World staffers—a reporter and a private investigator employed by Britain's largest paper—hacked into the phones of British royal family aides. Clive Goodman, a reporter, and Glenn Mulcaire, an investigator working for the paper, obtained PIN codes to access the voicemail inboxes of royal aides. Aides grew suspicious when messages were marked as listened to and saved when nary a person had checked them. In 2006, News of the World ran a story about Prince Harry's wild night out at a strip club, and later that year ran a followup exclusive chronicling his girlfriend's heartache over the issue in which is printed verbatim a voice message that had been left on Harry's phone. A Scotland Yard investigation has revealed that Mulcaire has potentially hacked into the phone messages of more than thousands of people. A search of his apartment turned up 91 mobile PIN codes. Scotland Yard for its part, however, has decided to stick solely to investigating the pair's involvement with the royals.