LONDON – John Yates was long seen as "a safe pair of hands" in Britain’s police service, a thoroughly reliable investigator who was handed the country’s most sensitive cases.
As assistant commissioner in the Metropolitan Police Service, he led efforts to combat terrorism in London and nationally and was regarded as a strong candidate to one day lead the force.
But recently his judgment has been questioned as the inquiry into phone hacking by the scandal-scuttled tabloid News of the World has spiraled to take down senior officials in the police and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Yates resigned Monday, apparently after learning he had been suspended.
Yates, 52, endured prolonged, hostile questions last week from a parliamentary committee over his one-day review in 2009 that concluded that there was no evidence to justify a further investigation. A previous one had determined that the eavesdropping on the voicemails of famous people was a rogue operation by one reporter and one private investigator.
Yates blamed the newspaper, and alleged a coverup.
"It is a matter of great concern that, for whatever reason, the News of the World appears to have failed to co-operate in the way that we now know they should have with the relevant police inquiries up until January of this year," Yates told the committee.
Committee chairman Keith Vaz told Yates that his evidence was not convincing, and that he could expect to be recalled.
Yates reportedly was also the officer who reviewed the hiring of Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive editor, as an adviser to the police force. Wallis was arrested last week as a suspect in the phone-hacking scandal, and his former role with the force led Sunday to the resignation of the department’s chief, Sir Paul Stephenson.
Yates joined the force in 1981 and made an early mark by leading an internal inquiry that resulted in six narcotics detectives going to jail for drug conspiracy.
Other high-profile cases included the perjury investigation of Jeffrey Archer that ended with the thriller writer going to jail for perjury, and the failed prosecution of royal butler Paul Burrell for allegedly stealing items belonging to the late Princess Diana.
Yates also led the department’s response to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, who was mistaken for a terrorist suspect in 2005.
The following year he was in charge of investigating whether political leaders, including then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, had handed out seats in the House of Lords in return for donations, an investigation that ended with nobody charged with an offence.
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