By PAUL SONNE, JEANNE WHALEN and BRUCE ORWALL
LONDON—New evidence given to Parliament by former News Corp. executives and legal advisers undercut the company's account of phone hacking at its News of the World tabloid and contradicted News Corp.'s longstanding assertion that it had conducted a thorough internal investigation.
The new documents sharply escalated the battle unfolding between News Corp. and a cast of combatants including a former law firm, a disgraced reporter and several former high-ranking executives.
The evidence shows how a once tight-knit group of News Corp. executives and advisers have begun trading blame over responsibility for the now-defunct tabloid's sins. The debate is likely to drag on for months.
With the new evidence in hand, the U.K. Parliament select committee probing the matter said Tuesday it would call four former News Corp. officials for questioning in September. It also indicated that top executive James Murdoch may be recalled for oral testimony again.
One damaging document is a March 2007 letter from Clive Goodman, the former News of the World reporter who pleaded guilty to phone-hacking charges and went to jail in 2007. In that letter, sent by Mr. Goodman to Daniel Cloke, then head of human resources at News International, the company's U.K. newspaper unit, Mr. Goodman said he was wrongfully fired because he wasn't alone: phone hacking was "widely discussed" in the paper's newsroom, practiced by others and approved by editors.
Mr. Goodman, who sent the letter to News International as part of an appeal against his firing, also said the paper's top editor and lawyer had promised him his job back if he didn't implicate anyone else at the tabloid when pleading guilty.
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