McCartney ex-wife: Mirror journalist hacked my phone (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) – Heather Mills was quoted on Wednesday as saying a journalist at British publisher Trinity Mirror, owner of the Daily Mirror tabloid newspaper, had hacked her phone before she was married to former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney.

The accusation widens a scandal over phone hacking by British newspapers that has so far center on titles owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, with the furor also threatening to embroil U.S. talk show host Piers Morgan.

The BBC said the messages were left by McCartney, whom Mills married in 2002. The couple separated four years later.

Mills said the journalist had confronted her with details of sensitive messages left on her phone.

"He started quoting verbatim the messages from my machine, and...I'd wondered why they had already been heard, listened to, when it says 'heard messages'," Mills told the BBC.

The BBC said the journalist worked at the Mirror group, although Mills does not mention the journalist's employers in the audio clip provided by the BBC.

"I said you've obviously hacked my phone and if you do anything with this story, because they were obviously very private conversations about issues we were having as a couple, I said then I'll go to the police," she added.

She went on to say the journalist admitted hacking her phone and agreed not to use a story based on the messages.

"All of our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC code of conduct," said Nick Fullagar, Trinity Mirror's director of corporate communications, referring to Britain's Press Complaints Commission industry watchdog.

PIERS MORGAN

Allegations of phone hacking at the News of World Sunday newspaper, owned by News Corp's British newspaper arm News International, last month prompted the newspaper's closure and the resignation of News International chief Rebekah Brooks.

CNN talk show host Morgan, who once edited the News of the World and later the Daily Mirror until 2004, has repeatedly denied any role in the phone hacking scandal.

In a 2006 article for Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, Morgan said he had listened to one of Mills' phone messages.

"Stories soon emerged that the marriage was in trouble - at one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone," he wrote.

The BBC said Morgan was not the journalist who had contacted Mills with details of her phone messages.

Morgan said in a statement the BBC had confirmed to him that the journalist, whom Morgan refers to as a senior executive, was not employed by the Daily Mirror. He also said he had no knowledge of conversations any other executive at Trinity Mirror may have had with Mills.

"Heather Mills has made unsubstantiated claims about a conversation she may or may not have had with a senior executive from a Trinity Mirror newspaper in 2001," he said, describing her claims as "somewhat extravagant."

"To reiterate, 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," he added.

Mark Lewis, lawyer for victims of phone hacking by the News of the World, on Monday confirmed that he had instructions to take legal action against Trinity Mirror on behalf of other unnamed phone hacking victims.

(Additional reporting by Olesya Dmitracova and Georgina Prodhan)

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Heather Mills: Journalist told me I'd been hacked (AP)

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press – 2 hrs 38 mins ago

LONDON – Model Heather Mills on Wednesday accused a senior newspaper journalist of boasting that his colleagues had intercepted her voicemail messages, a potentially explosive allegation that could widen the scope of Britain's phone hacking scandal.

In an interview with BBC's "Newsnight" program, the ex-wife of former Beatle Paul McCartney claimed that in 2001 she was called by a senior editorial figure with the Trinity Mirror group of newspapers about a fight she'd had with McCartney, her then-boyfriend.

Mills quoted the journalist as telling her: "Oh, I hear you've had a big argument with your boyfriend.

"And I said: 'Why would you know this?' And he started quoted verbatim the messages from my machine."

Mills said that when she accused the journalist of hacking into her phone and threatened to call the police, the journalist admitted that the story had been obtained by eavesdropping and pledged not to publish it.

Mills named the journalist in her interview, but the BBC bleeped out his name, citing legal reasons. It was left unclear exactly which newspaper the journalist worked at — the Trinity Mirror PLC publishes about 165 titles across the country, including Britain's left-leaning Daily Mirror, its sister-paper, the Sunday Mirror, and The People, a sports-and-celebrity oriented tabloid.

Neither was it clear why Mills was making the accusations now, 10 years after the alleged incident and a month after the phone hacking scandal first began making headlines across the world.

Attempts to reach Mills for further comment were unsuccessful. Her office said the 43-year-old was traveling and couldn't be contacted.

Trinity Mirror PLC has consistently refused to answer questions about the past conduct of its journalists, saying only that its employees follow the law and the British press watchdog's code of conduct. Mirror spokesman Nick Fullagar said Wednesday that the group was sticking to its statement.

Although the scandal over allegations that journalists routinely spied on public figures by intercepting their voicemails had its genesis at the now-defunct News of the World, media-watchers have long suspected that its competitors were in on the practice as well.

The Trinity Mirror's papers have come under growing scrutiny following allegations aired by unnamed former journalists quoted by the New York Times and the BBC that hacking was rife at some of its titles, and shares in the company have dropped by nearly 20 percent in the past week.

Attention has also focused on Piers Morgan, a former Daily Mirror editor who now stars as a celebrity interviewer on CNN's prime time lineup. Critics have unearthed a string of past statements in which Morgan seems to suggest that phone hacking was widespread and that he was well-aware of it at the time.

In particular, Morgan's opponents point to a 2006 article in which he claims to be have been played a tape of a message Paul McCartney had left on Mills' cell phone.

Morgan described the tape as "heartbreaking."

"The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back," Morgan wrote. "He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone."

Morgan has not explained who got a hold of the tape for him or how, although he has said he never ordered phone hacking while working at the Mirror. In a statement issued Wednesday, Morgan described the Heather Mills' claim as "unsubstantiated," adding he knew nothing about any conversation anyone at the Trinity Mirror "may or may not have had" with her.

"To reiterate, 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," the statement said.

Mills isn't the first to go public with a phone hacking allegation against the Mirror. Late last month James Hipwell, a former Mirror journalist, claimed that his colleagues used the practice routinely. But Hipwell's credibility was clouded by the fact that he used his business column at the paper to hype stocks which he had purchased and then sell them, reaping the profits in an illegal market manipulation scam for which he was convicted in 2005.

Mills too has a credibility problem. After her contentious divorce from McCartney in 2008, the judge in the case said that Mills had an "explosive and volatile character" and was prone to make-believe, adding in his judgment that Mills' testimony had been inconsistent, inaccurate, and "less than candid."

___

David Bauder in New York contributed to this report.

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'Hacked off' celebrities lead war on British tabloids (AFP)

LONDON (AFP) – It took the hacking of a murdered girl's phone to make the News of the World scandal explode, but British celebrities have wasted no time in using the row to press their own agenda against the tabloids.

Actor Hugh Grant has led the charge by becoming an investigative reporter himself for a day -- one newspaper joked that it was his best role yet -- and taping a former News of the World journalist saying the practice was widespread.

The recent launch of a "Hacked Off" campaign calling for greater press regulation meanwhile attracted figures including socialite Jemima Khan and former world motorsport chief Max Mosley, himself the victim of a tabloid sting.

Grant "has been eloquent, he has been able to talk about it in such a way that people have been interested and taken notice," Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust and coordinator of the Hacked Off group, told AFP.

The petition now has more than 8,300 signatures.

Yet there was little real outcry in Britain about phone hacking until July 4 when it was reported that Rupert Murdoch's News of the World had hacked and deleted the messages of Milly Dowler, a murdered 13-year-old schoolgirl.

The paper has since shut down.

Before that, the jailing of two people in 2007 over the hacking of British royals, and various lawsuits by celebrities including British actors Jude Law and Sienna Miller, attracted relatively little interest from the public.

"Their attitude is, 'Max Clifford and Sienna Miller use the media and do very well from it, so I won't lose too much sleep over it,'" publicist Max Clifford told the BBC.

Since the Dowler hacking emerged, however, showbiz figures have found the scandal a useful stick with which to beat their tabloid foes.

Grant, who starred in the 1994 film "Four Weddings and a Funeral", has toured the TV studios in the past fortnight telling how he secretly recorded a conversation with Paul McMullan, a former News of the World journalist.

During the encounter -- which Grant wrote about in the New Statesman magazine in April with relatively little fanfare -- he said McMullan admitted "industrial scale phone-hacking" at the paper.

On talk shows Grant has since had colourful exchanges with McMullen and other journalists, at one point denying he was bitter about the press after the coverage he received during his 1995 arrest with a Hollywood prostitute.

"If you don't want to get in the paper keep it in your trousers," said John Gaunt, a British radio talk show presenter, referring to the incident.

"Cheap and pathetic," Grant replied.

Another vocal celebrity has been comedian Steve Coogan, who plays the inept chat-show host Alan Partridge on television and has starred in Hollywood movies including "Around the World in 80 Days."

A victim of phone hacking himself, he also appeared on a television panel show with McMullan, angrily accusing him of being "morally bankrupt".

McMullan hit back by noting that Coogan had received money for appearing in films including "Night at the Museum" made by 20th Century Fox, owned by Murdoch's News Corp.

Meanwhile Khan, who is Grant's former girlfriend, wrote a lengthy account in The Independent newspaper describing the "long, painful process of trying to find out the truth" about how she was hacked.

"The press, police and Parliament have all colluded on the issue of phone hacking," Khan wrote.

Moore, of the Hacked Off campaign, says he wants "transparency" in the press and a change in the culture of tabloid newsrooms to one that "doesn't encourage hacking."

Meanwhile new celebrity lawsuits are coming in. Jude Law on Friday sued The Sun, what is thought to be the first such legal action against Rupert Murdoch's best-selling daily tabloid.

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