Wolves Circle Piers Morgan as CNN Stays Silent on Phone Hacking Links

The wolves are circling CNN host Piers Morgan, a former editor of News of the World and friend of Andy Coulson, one of nine people arrested in the News Corp (NWS) phone hacking scandal.

Russia Today anchorman Max Keiser alleged on Twitter that Morgan knew about the hacking while he was at the NOTW and that Morgan is named in a Scotland Yard complaint about a U.S. victim of hacking.

CNN is maintaining an uncomfortable silence on Morgan's many connections to the scandal. It has not mentioned him once in its 100-plus segments on the crisis in Rupert Murdoch's meda empire. It's odd because although Morgan has denied he knows anything about phone hacking, he's probably the best expert CNN could hope to have for commentary on the story. And he's on the channel every night.

Both Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs -- the two parties are in a coalition government in the U.K. -- have called for Morgan to be questioned in parliament under oath. CNN's figleaf excuse for not mentioning Morgan's name is because he has not yet been called to testify.

Morgan admitted in his 2005 book The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade that he knew how to hack a celebrity phone:

Apparently if you don't change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don't answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages. I'll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick.

Morgan himself is maintaining a studiously oblivious approach. His Twitter stream contains nary a mention that his colleagues and friends have spent time sitting in police stations in London after the paper that made him famous imploded. Instead, he's tweeting about Charlie Sheen and Hugh Hefner. The motto under his tweetstream could prove prophetic:

One day you're the cock of the walk, the next a feather duster.

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