UPDATE: Paul McCartney's Ex Heather Mills Accuses Journalist of Phone Hacking
Posted by Chad Webb on 08.03.2011
Many feel that Piers Morgan is lying about his knowledge of the phone hacking claims...
UPDATE: Many believe Piers Morgan has been caught in a lie about his involvement with the Heather Mills/ Paul McCartney phone hacking claims.
One site, Gawker, posted the following, including an excerpt from a 2007 essay from Morgan:
Now Heather Mills has come forward to claim that a reporter for the Mirror's parent company confessed to her in 2001 that the paper had surreptitiously gained access to a voicemail message Paul McCartney left for her after the couple had a fight. The trouble for Morgan is that he openly admitted to having listened to that very voicemail message—recounting it in detail—in 2007.
Mills told the BBC that the reporter in question wasn't Morgan. And since the Mirror Group owns several newspapers other than the Daily Mirror, it's not clear that it was one of Morgan's reporters doing the hacking. But it's abundantly clear that Morgan listened in on the voicemail in question, with glee.
"[A]t one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone.
It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone."
Piers Morgan did release the following statement: "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. The BBC has confirmed to me that this executive was not employed by the Daily Mirror. I have no knowledge of any conversation any executive from other newspapers at Trinity Mirror may or may not have had with Heather Mills. What I can say and have knowledge of is that Sir Paul McCartneyasserted that Heather Mills illegally intercepted his telephones, and leaked confidential material to the media. This is well documented, and was stated in their divorce case. Further, in his judgment, The Honourable Mr. Justice Bennett wrote of Heather Mills: "I am driven to the conclusion that much of her evidence, both written and oral, was not just inconsistent and inaccurate but also less than candid. Overall she was a less than impressive witness."
ORIGINAL: Heather Mills, ex-wife of Paul McCartney, has claimed that a journalist from Mirror Group in the U.K. has admitted to hacking a voicemail on her phone left by McCartney.
The story goes that McCartney left Mills a voicemail in 2001 after they had an argument. Mills claims the journalist called her and started quoting the voicemail verbatim. When she accused the journalist of hacking and threatened to phone the cops, the journalist supposedly admitted this and promised not to use any of McCartney's voicemail in a story.
Mirror Group's parent company, Trinity Mirror denied the allegation in a statement: "Our position is clear. All our journalists work within the criminal law and the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] code of conduct."
Furthermore, Piers Morgan, the former heritor of the Daily Mirror (current host of Piers Morgan Tonight) says he heard the voicemail: "At one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone. It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone."
Mills says Morgan was not the journalist who called her. Morgan has denied any phone hacking.
