HACKERGATE PROBE: WHY WAS COULSON PAID AFTER HE QUIT?

New questions have arisen about why Andy Coulson was awarded a substantial severance package paid over several years after he resigned as editor of News of the World when the scandal over voicemail hacking first broke in 2007. Britain’s Guardian newspaper took note of a message left by David Yelland, a former editor of another News Corp newspaper, The Sun, saying that when he quit that newspaper, he “didn’t sign or have any compromise agreement. I just left.” The Guardian also notes that while Coulson was receiving payments from News Corp and was also being paid as David Cameron’s communications director when Cameron was heading the Conservative Party, a letter under Cameron’s byline appeared in The Sun criticizing the BBC, a longtime target of News Corp and its chairman, Rupert Murdoch, for overpaying executives and accusing it of becoming “oversized.” As prime minister, Cameron has gone on to force the BBC to scale back its operations and lay off hundreds of employees.