It's Gonna Be a Knock-Down Drag-Out

In a highly damaging broadside, two former News of the World senior executives claimed the evidence [James] Murdoch gave to the committee on Tuesday in relation to an out-of-court settlement to Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, was "mistaken".

  UKGuardian

How “mistaken?”

Colin Myler, editor of the paper until it was shut down two weeks ago, and Tom Crone, the paper's former head of legal affairs, said they had expressly told Murdoch of an email that would have blown a hole in its defence that only one "rogue reporter" was involved in the phone-hacking scandal.

This contradicts what Murdoch told the committee when questioned on Tuesday.

[...]

John Whittingdale, the chairman of the culture, sport and media select committee, said: "We as a committee regarded the 'for Neville' email as one of the most critical pieces of evidence in the whole inquiry. We will be asking James Murdoch to respond and ask him to clarify."

UPDATE – just for clarification:

"Just by way of clarification relating to Tuesday's Culture Media and Sport Select Committee hearing," they said in a statement, "we would like to point out that James Murdoch's recollection of what he was told when agreeing to settle the Gordon Taylor litigation was mistaken. In fact, we did inform him of the 'for Neville' [Thurlbeck] email which had been produced to us by Gordon Taylor's lawyers."

If Thurlbeck was involved and Murdoch knew about it, it would undermine much of the Murdochs' -- and News International's -- defense that they thought the phone hackings were only the work of reporter Clive Goodman. It would additionally imply that the Taylor settlement was an effort to cover up the extent of the scandal by keeping revelations about Thurlbeck out of court.

  TPM

Implications well founded, may I suggest?