MANHATTAN — Family members of 9/11 victims have asked to meet with the FBI amid allegations that reporters from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation tried to hack into the cell phones of victims and their relatives.
A lawyer representing the families, Norman Siegel, sent a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller requesting a meeting regarding the investigation the FBI reportedly launched last week.
In the letter, which was released to the press, Siegel commended the FBI for initiating an investigation but demanded more answers. A copy of the letter was also sent to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Department of Justice, and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) of the House Judiciary Committee.
"The 9/11 families have already suffered through the most horrific tragedies. It is upsetting that there now exists an allegation that a newspaper would seek to illegally obtain information about their love ones, and perhaps even their own personal lives, and exploit it for profit," Siegel wrote in the letter, dated July 18.
Meeting with the FBI would help 9/11 families work with investigators, and would inform families about the scope, goals and timetable of the investigation, the letter said.
British tabloid The Daily Mirror — which was a rival of the now-shuttered Murdoch paper News of the World — reported that NOTW reporters tried to bribe a former NYPD officer to turn over private phone records of people who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg denied Monday at an unrelated news conference that any claims of phone hacking in the U.S. had been made.
“As far as I know, there’s no allegations, so far, of any improprieties here in the United States and I assume we won’t have any, although the federal government has the right to investigate,” he said.
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said Wednesday that there had been no indication that 9/11 victims' phone messages had been hacked.
