Three Men Arrested in Connection with Prince Charles` Investigation on Spying
GRACE: And now to "Headline Prime`s" Glenn Beck. Hi, Glenn.</s>GLENN BECK, HOST: Tonight, I want to put out an APB for those Egyptian students who failed to show up for their English class out in Montana. Sound sort of familiar, kind of like 9/11 familiar? FBI already has caught a couple of them, but why won`t they let us help? Give us the pictures. We`ll show you these students. Let me tell you, if those were students from Sweden, we`d have the pictures plastered all over the place. What`s wrong with this country? We`ll try to figure it out, next.</s>GRACE: Yes, Glenn, I`m waiting to see the "students," as well, that went missing here in New York City the moment they put their toe on the earth. Back to our next story, let`s go straight out to Rob Chilton, feature director with "OK" magazine. You know, if it can happen to the royals, it can happen to us.</s>ROB CHILTON, FEATURES DIRECTOR, "OK" MAGAZINE: Yes, our phones could be tapped. Who knows? Right now my voicemail might be tapped by people. Who knows?</s>GRACE: What exactly happened?</s>CHILTON: Well, back in December, three members of Prince Charles` staff in London were suspicious that their mobile phone messages may be being tapped, so they approached the British police who launched an investigation, which has been going on for about seven or eight months now. And three men have been arrested in connection with that investigation.</s>GRACE: And I want to go to Dickie Arbiter who is joining us from London. Dickie is a former royal press officer. What does this mean that the phones have been hacked into?</s>DICKIE ARBITER, FORMER ROYAL PRESS OFFICER: Well, what it actually means is that one man is being released on bail and two have been charged. They`ve been charged with conspiring to intercept communications, voice mail, on eight occasions between January and August. And what it appears to happen -- and these are allegations, because they appear in court next Wednesday to face these charges, though we`re talking something that is subjudicy (ph) at the moment. But what had happened is that they allegedly managed to get into conversations or voice mails that only two or three people knew about. And they were published in the "News of the World." Now, the "News of the World" is the largest circulation newspaper in the United Kingdom out of ten newspapers. It`s published every Sunday. At one stage, the circulation was near four million. It`s been dropping rapidly. It`s now under three million. And what it means is that you get a sensational story, you sell newspapers. You sell newspapers, you get advertising. You get advertising, you keep the shareholder happy. So it`s all about circulation. But what is now being suggested is, was this done with the agreement of the editor, Andy Coulson, or this is a rogue newspaper reporter? Now, Clive Goodman has been on the newspaper for a long time, over 20 years, so he is a fixture there. So what is being asked is, was there a conspiracy within the organization that the editor knew about it or not?</s>GRACE: To Rob Chilton with "OK" magazine, how are Prince William and Harry involved in this?</s>CHILTON: Well, there`s nothing actually linking them specifically to this investigation yet.</s>GRACE: But was it their phone conversations that were heard?</s>CHILTON: Well, yes, that`s -- nothing has come out about that yet. It`s more about Prince Charles at the moment. But there are great fears that Harry and William may also have been affected by this leak. There was a TV reporter who met -- had a private meeting with William, very hush-hush, and the meeting actually got leaked somehow, that the time and the place -- it got leaked into the "News of the World." So people were then asking, well, how did that happen? So the conclusion was, from Prince William and this TV reporter, that their mobile phones must have been tapped.</s>GRACE: So to Brian Reich, what happened is not so much a tapping of phone conversation, but hacking into the phone messaging system? Is that how it worked?</s>REICH: Well, depending on the type of phone that they have -- a lot of people have these Bluetooth, everybody is walking around with the Bluetooth earpiece in your ear. And, Nancy, I`ve got to tell you, it is more prevalent than you think. It`s not very difficult at all to hack into somebody`s Bluetooth device. Every Bluetooth device, especially the ear pieces, if you know the make and the model, the type the Bluetooth device they have, and if you knew the PIN number of that, which is just a code to get you access into it, you can hack right into that and talk to that person. You could listen to their phone conversation. Not only could you listen to their phone conversation when they`re on the phone, but even if their Bluetooth device phone is not activated, you can hear them talking or a conversation, even if they have it on a table. The fortunate thing with Bluetooth, that it`s only good for about 10 years. So when you`re in a crowded area and you`re using that Bluetooth device in your phone, you really need to be careful about what you`re talking about, because there may be someone that`s tapping in listening to you.</s>GRACE: Were the royals hacked into, their phone conversations, for monetary gain to the tabs, the tabloids? Here is the editor of "The Guardian."</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anecdotally this sort of things has been going on for a long time. It`s very widespread. Tabloid newspaper journalists engage in all sorts of activity to get the story, because it is ultimately about selling newspapers. And there`s a lot of pressure on tabloid journalists and their editors to get the best stories. Tabloid journalists have worked and have got many tactics of getting their stories, some aboveboard and a lot of them rather below the belt. And I think that, in many cases, the pressure to get good stories is so great and the competition amongst tabloid newspapers for sales is so intense that there is a great deal of pressure to get stories by whatever means.</s>GRACE: ... therapist Lauren Howard, it`s hard to understand, with a nation that loves the royals so very much -- I mean, the world loves the royals -- that someone would want to destroy them and tear them down, get into their phone conversations, and print it?</s>HOWARD: You know, it`s a cottage industry. We are obsessed with celebrity, with fame, with fortune. This is a big -- this is a big, money- making, obsessive, rubber-necking -- people are obsessed with famous people. I mean, that`s -- we have magazines, television shows, gossip columns. We love gossip; that`s what this is. I don`t think it`s so much to tear them down as much as it is to sort of catch a little of their glamour.</s>GRACE: To Leslie in Ohio. Hi, Leslie.</s>CALLER: Hi, Nancy. I wanted to just tell you, I love your show.</s>GRACE: Thank you, dear.</s>CALLER: And my question is, I`m just wondering, with all of the financial resources that the royal family has, I`m just wondering how it is that they always seem to be having these problems with people, you know, getting access to tapping their phones and why their security is not better?</s>GRACE: You know, you`re right. You`re right. To Dickie Arbiter, former royal press officer, why is that? They`ve got all of the money in the world. The queen is sitting on a nest egg of millions and millions of dollars. And they can`t protect their voicemail?</s>ARBITER: It`s not a question of money. You can have all of the money in the world. But if somebody wants to hack into your telephone system, they can do so. As we heard from your expert just now, it`s very easy. You can go one better. You can pick up a phone in your office, and if you know the access code from the particular network, and you take a guess at the PIN number, what is the most common pin number? Well, you`re usually given a 0000. Then you say, "Well, what`s the PIN number, 1234, your birth date year?" Most people go for the easy option. And you just take a gamble and you punch in those numbers, and you can hear voicemail messages. All of the money in the world is not going to stop that.</s>GRACE: Take a look at the times that security has been breached with them before, with Princess Diana, James Gilbey, Michael Jackson, Mark Geragos, Michael Jackson, Marc Schaffel, Amber Frey, Scott Peterson. This is not the first time that the royals` security has been breached. Back to Dickie Arbiter, remember when queen woke up and there was a guy sitting at the foot of her bed?</s>ARBITER: Yes, well, that is a different kind of security lapse. That is a lapse, a physical lapse of the police not being observant and not being vigilant, and somebody getting into the building. But you`re quite right. You mentioned Diana. You mentioned Charles. Now, in 1992, there was the Squidgygate tape, conversations between Diana and James Gilbey. We had analog telephones and not digital in this days. In 1993, there was an intimate conversation between Prince Charles and then Camilla Parker-Bowles. It was a very embarrassing conversation. It was very intimate, but it was published. Now, how did they get that? Well, it was a radio ham who was surfing...