The Justice Department is readying subpoenas as part of a probe into allegations that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. attempted to hack into phones of Sept. 11 victims, the .
The paper, citing a government official, said the subpoenas still required approval by senior department leadership. The Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp.
The FBI opened an investigation into the allegations last week, a law enforcement official .
Also last week, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., told NBC News that he and his colleagues were seriously considering summoning media mogul Murdoch to Capitol Hill to testify about the allegations.
James Murdoch's 'mistaken' testimony?On Friday, British opposition Labour lawmaker Tom Watson said police should investigate claims that James Murdoch, who is head of News Corp.'s Europe and Asia operations and son of the owner, gave "mistaken" testimony to a parliamentary committee about his involvement in a $1.1 million phone-hacking cover-up.
Former News of the World editor Colin Myler and Tom Crone, former senior legal officer for News Corp.'s British newspapers, have disputed Murdoch's claim that he was unaware of an email that suggested that wrongdoing at the tabloid went beyond one rogue reporter.
"If their version of events is accurate, it doesn't just mean that parliament has been misled, it means the police have another investigation on their hands," Watson, part of the media committee, told the BBC, adding he would refer the matter to London police.
When the Murdochs addressed a parliamentary hearing Tuesday, James Murdoch addressed "astronomic sums" paid secretly in 2008 to hacking victim Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association.
The payoff was a confidential, out-of-court settlement and was cited in legal papers that also referred to a "for Neville" email about News of the World reporter Neville Thurlbeck, the paper's disgraced chief reporter, according to The Guardian newspaper of London.
Police had given Taylor's lawyers a copy of the email, which contained transcripts of Taylor's hacked voicemails, the Guardian said.
The existence of the "for Neville" email was uncovered by the Guardian in 2009 and represented a challenge to News International's defense at that time that the phone-hacking was the work of one "rogue reporter," former royal correspondent Clive Goodman, The Guardian said.
On Tuesday, James Murdoch told the Parliament committee that the email had been concealed from him by two company executives when he was persuaded to sign off the secret deal, The Guardian said.
Murdoch defends statement
James Murdoch, in a statement released by News Corp., said he stood by his statement to the Parliament committee.
John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons select committee, told the Guardian he will recall James Murdoch to explain the statement by Myler and Crone.
"We as a committee regarded the 'for Neville' email as one of the most critical pieces of evidence in the whole inquiry," Whittingdale told the Guardian. "We will be asking James Murdoch to respond and ask him to clarify."
At the parliamentary hearing, Rupert Murdoch said he had never heard of Thurlbeck, who was arrested in April an allegations of hacking into voice mails. He is free on bail and has refused to answer reporters' questions.
The Evening Standard newspaper reported that Thurlbeck led a double life as a police informant for Scotland Yard, enabling him to get sensitive police data on a serving lawmaker and threats against the queen.
Scotland Yard said it never discusses police informants.
