Naomi Campbell, the BBC ... Is There Anyone Piers Morgan Didn't Tell About Hacking?

The more CNN host and former London tabloid editor Piers Morgan is linked to the phone hacking scandal, the lengthier and more shrill Morgan's denials become. Doth he protest too much?

Morgan was the editor of the News of the World from 1994 to 1996 and the editor of The Mirror from 1996 to 2004. Since the phone hacking scandal blew up and forced Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. (NWS) to shutter the NOTW, more and more sources have stepped forward to demonstrate that Morgan was familiar with tabloid phone hacking years before the current controversy. Consider:

• He wrote a column for the Daily Mail claiming he'd listened to the voicemail of Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's ex-wife. (Blogger Guy Fawkes dug this up, and although the piece is oddly unbylined Morgan's claim to have introduced the couple is well established.
• Trinity Mirror PLC has launched an internal review of whether any of The Mirror's stories were obtained through hacking. The probe will focus on one of Morgan's biggest scoops at The Mirror, the news that England football coach Sven-Goran Ericksson was having an affair with TV presenter Ulrika Jonsson.
• Former Mirror journalist James Hipwell told the Guardian in 2006 that he got the Ericksson story from a voicemail on Jonsson's phone. Hipwell also said he used to delete the Spice Girls' voicemails to prevent News Corp. tabloids like The Sun from getting the information.
• Hipwell's account dovetails with the blogger Guido Fawkes' claim that Daily Mirror's showbiz reporter James "Scottie" Scott assisted with the Ericksson scoop by getting a Mirror secretary to translate the voicemail from Swedish to English.
• Morgan himself recounted how the scoop was based on a voicemail in a column in the Daily Mail (also unearthed by Fawkes).
• In 2009, Morgan told the BBC's Desert Island Discs -- a show in which celebrities describe the songs they would take with them if stranded -- that "the net of people doing it was very wide," when asked about tapping phones:
  

  To be honest, let's put that in perspective as well. Not a lot of that went on. A lot of it was done by third parties rather than the staff themselves. That's not to defend it, because obviously you were running the results of their work.

  I'm quite happy to be parked in the corner of tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to, and I make no pretense about the stuff we used to do.

  I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide, and a lot encompassed the high and low end of the supposed newspaper market.

• Earlier this year, GQ published an interview in which Morgan told Naomi Campbell it was "well-known" that reporters would hack phones:
  

  Campbell: What do you think of the News Of The World reporter who was recently found guilty of tapping the Royals' phones? Did you ever allow that when you were there?

  Morgan: Well, I was there in 1994-5, before mobiles were used very much, and that particular trick wasn't known about. I can't get too excited about it, I must say. It was pretty well-known that if you didn't change your pin code when you were a celebrity who bought a new phone, then reporters could ring your mobile, tap in a standard factory setting number and hear your messages. That is not, to me, as serious as planting a bug in someone's house, which is what some people seem to think was going on.

  Campbell: It's an invasion of privacy, though.

  Morgan: It is, yes. But loads of newspaper journalists were doing it. Clive Goodman, the NOTW reporter, has been made the scapegoat for a very widespread practice.

  Campbell: So you're defending him?

  Morgan: Not defending him, just expressing sympathy for someone who has been made a scapegoat.

  Campbell: Would you like it if someone listened to your messages?

  Morgan: Oh, they used to do it to me. And no, I didn't like it. But with new technology comes new temptation and new issues. And this has brought the practice out into the open and it won't happen any more -- celebrities get a lot more privacy now than they used to.

  
• And, of course, it's now a matter of public record that the Mirror paid private eye Steve Whittamore for 681 instances in which he obtained information illegally for the Mirror and that Mirror paid Jonathon Rees, a private investigator who was taped selling information to the Mirror during Morgan's reign.
• Last but not least, Morgan wrote in his 2005 book that he knew how to hack a phone.

There is no contradiction between my comments on Kirsty Young's Desert Island Discs show and my unequivocal statements with regard to phone-hacking. Millions of people heard these comments when I first made them in 2009 on one of the BBC's longest-running radio shows, and none deduced that I was admitting to, or condoning illegal reporting activity. Kirsty asked me a fairly lengthy question about how I felt dealing with people operating at the sharp end of investigative journalism. My answer was not specific to any of the numerous examples she gave, but a general observation about tabloid newspaper reporters and private investigators. As I have said before, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone.

... I have never hacked a phone, told anybody to hack a phone or published any story based on the hacking of a phone.

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• Did James Murdoch Lie? These 5 Execs Know the Truth
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• Wolves Circle Piers Morgan as CNN Stays Silent on Phone Hacking Links
• CNN's Piers Morgan Linked to Phone Hacking Scandal