A tense and sometimes confrontational Piers Morgan stood his ground before a British, judge-led inquiry Tuesday, denying any connection to illegal phone hacking that resulted in the closure of the newspaper he once edited and the arrest of friends and former colleagues.
But Morgan, now a celebrity interviewer for CNN, refused to answer questions about the most damning link between himself and scandal -- his 2006 acknowledgment that he had once listened to a poignant phone message left by former Beatle Paul McCartney for his ex-wife, Heather Mills. Mills has charged that there was no honest way Morgan could have heard the deeply personal message. Morgan refused to go into any detail about it. "I'm not going to discuss where I heard it or who played it to me," he told the London inquiry via videolink from the United States.
Pressed by inquiry chief Lord Justice Brian Leveson as to whether he could say anything to substantiate that he had obtained the message legally, Morgan said he could not. "I can't start any trail that leads to the identification of a source," he said.
The stakes are high for Morgan, who edited the News of the World Sunday tabloid in 1994-1995 before moving on to the Daily Mirror, where he stayed until 2004.
More than a dozen journalists have been arrested as part of a still-expanding investigation into the News of the World -- including Morgan's friend Rebekah Brooks, who eventually succeeded him as editor there. Several other executives with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. media empire have stepped down in disgrace.
Morgan's defense Tuesday was part denial, part apology, and a healthy helping of "I don't recall."
Morgan also dismissed his own interviews about phone hacking in which he'd said, among other things, that "loads of newspaper journalists were doing it." He said those statements were based on nothing more than hearsay and the newspaper industry's "rumor mill."
Old news: Lange, Shepard have splitActress Jessica Lange, 62, and her longtime partner, playwright and actor Sam Shepard, 68, ended their relationship almost two years ago, People.com reports. The couple, who had been together since 1982 before the breakup, "are pursuing independent lives," a source told the magazine. A rep for Lange confirmed the split. The couple spent much of their lives in Minnesota, away from the Hollywood glare. Lange stars as Constance in FX's hit series "American Horror Story."
