LONDON (World News) - Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Monday contradicted testimony by Rupert Murdoch to an inquiry into press ethics in which the media tycoon said Brown had threatened war against his company.
Murdoch had told the government-sponsored inquiry that Brown phoned him in September 2009 after the Sun newspaper switched its allegiance to the Conservative Party. Brown responded by vowing to wage war on Murdoch's company in revenge, Murdoch said.
"This conversation never took place. I am shocked and surprised that it should be suggested," Brown, who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2010, told the Leveson inquiry. "This call did not happen. The threat was not made."
"I find it shocking," Brown said, adding that Murdoch's claim was damaging the tycoon's company. "This did not happen. There is no evidence that it happened other than Mr Murdoch's, but it didn't happen."
A former British leader accusing Murdoch of misleading the inquiry under oath could further tarnish the reputation of the world's most powerful media tycoon in a country which is home to some of his biggest newspaper and broadcasting interests.
When pressed on how a serving prime minister could make such a threat, Murdoch had told the inquiry: "I don't think he was in a very balanced state of mind."
"We were talking more quietly than you or I are now - he said, 'Well, your company has declared war on my government and we have no alternative but to make war on your company,'" Murdoch told the inquiry in April.
Following Brown's evidence, a News Corp spokeswoman said: "Rupert Murdoch stands behind his testimony."
Brown said that Murdoch was wrong about both the date and the contents of the phone call. Statements submitted to a media watchdog by five of Brown's advisers, and seen by World News, show none of the five heard Brown threaten Murdoch on the call.
Aides to Brown, including his special adviser, director of strategy and deputy chief of staff, said in statements submitted to the Press Complaints Commission last year that Brown made no such threat on the call, which took place in November, not September as Murdoch had said.
"I listened to the phone call between Mr Brown and Mr. Murdoch in November 2009," Stewart Wood, special adviser to the Prime Minister's office, said in a statement dated October 2011 that World News has seen.
"At no point in the conversation was threatening language of any sort used by either Mr Brown or Mr Murdoch," Wood said.
A British parliamentary committee which investigated allegations of illegal phone-hacking by Murdoch publications has already deemed the Australian-born tycoon unfit to manage a major global company.
BROWN'S SON
During his testimony, Brown also challenged a version of events given by Murdoch's lieutenant, Rebekah Brooks, about a Sun report that Brown's four-month-old son Fraser had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.
Brooks, who was charged last month with interfering with a police investigation into the phone hacking scandal, told the inquiry the Browns had given their backing to the story.
"I have never sought to bring my children into the public domain," Brown said. He denied his consent had been given to publish the story. "I find it sad that even now in 2012 members of the News International staff are coming to this inquiry and maintaining this fiction."
Analysts said the Sun's treatment of Brown's son would likely garner sympathy for the former prime minister but they said the issue of who was telling the truth between Murdoch and Brown was s till unclear. "I think there is also a question about Brown's credibility on this," media consultant Steve Hewlett, who has covered the inquiry closely, told World News.
The former prime minister had questioned whether the paper hacked into his son's medical records to get the story. Brooks has denied this and Murdoch has said the story was broken when a father of another child tipped off the newspaper.
Brown said a local National Health Service branch in Fife had apologized to his family because information about his son came from NHS staff. "There were only a few medical people who knew that our son had this condition," Brown said.
He said the NHS in Fife "now believe it highly likely that there was unauthorized information given by a medical or working member of the NHS staff that allowed the Sun through this middle man to publish this story," Brown said.
Murdoch described a relationship with Brown - whose political career effectively ended when he lost an election to incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010 - that included meals which their wives attended and conversations on topics ranging from charity to the war in Afghanistan.
Brooks told the Leveson inquiry she formed a friendship with Sarah Brown and that they had had a "pyjama party" at the prime minister's official country residence, Chequers, with Murdoch's daughter, Elisabeth, and his wife, Wendi.
But Murdoch said their relationship worsened after his media companies opposed Brown ahead of the 2010 election.
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