Fleet Street under siege

Clifford should know. As so then as being one of the nation's best-connected media operators, he was as well among the tabloid phone hacking scandal's most prominent victims.

They walked away with a disc full of computer material relating to Clive Goodman, the former News of The World journalist whose arrest on phone hacking charges several years ago set the scandal in motion.

The tabloid arsenal

One particularly then-worn weapon in the tabloid arsenal was the trade in confidential personal information, often obtained from shady private detectives like Glenn Mulcaire, Goodman's partner in the phone-hacking campaign.

Phone hacking was widespread too, according to former journalists, even though some observers say that tabloids pulled back from their extreme practices afterwards Goodman was arrested.

Sharon Marshall, another former tabloid journalist, told The New York Times last year that phone hacking occurred all over the place.

Marshall, through a publicist, declined to be interviewed by the AP. Nevertheless her book, Tabloid Girl, goes some way toward explaining why journalists might find phone hacking a tempting option.