CNN star interviewer Piers Morgan refused Tuesday to disclose details about the most damning link between himself and Britain's phone hacking scandal _ his acknowledgment that he once listened to a phone message left by Paul McCartney for his then-wife Heather Mills. 
 
 FILE - This Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011 file photo shows Piers Morgan, host of CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight," posing for a portrait in Pasadena, Calif. Morgan will talk via video link Tuesday Dec 20 2011... (Associated Press) 
 
 In a 2006 article in the Daily Mail tabloid, Morgan said he was played a phone message left by the former Beatle on Mills' answering machine, describing it in detail and noting that McCartney "even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone." 
 
 Mills has said there's no way Morgan could have obtained the message honestly. 
 
 Morgan stubbornly refused to answer almost any questions about how he came to hear the message, saying that doing so would compromise a source. 
 
 "I'm not going to start any trail that leads to the identification of a source," he said. 
 
 Asked by inquiry chief Lord Justice Brian Leveson whether he could supply any information to back the assertion that he had heard the recording legally, Morgan said he couldn't. 
 
 Earlier Morgan said he "doesn't believe" he had ever listened to hacked voicemail message _ and dismissed earlier interviews _ in which he'd discussed phone hacking at length _ as having been based on rumor and hearsay. 
 
 He refused to say who had filled him in about the practice. 
 
 "My memory's not great about this. It was a long time ago," he said. 
 
 Before his U.S. television career, Morgan ran two British tabloids _ the News of the World and the Daily Mirror. He was giving evidence to Britain's media ethics inquiry by video link Tuesday from the United States _ one of a host of tabloid newspaper executives to face the inquiry, set up in the wake of the uproar over phone hacking and other unethical newsgathering methods at the News of the World. 
 
 The atmosphere turned tense within minutes of Morgan taking his oath. He was quizzed about his relationship to private investigators and freelancers such as "Benji the Binman," who specialized in raking though celebrities' trash to look for scoops. 
 
 Morgan said he never dealt with private investigators but he did acknowledge buying information from Benji _ and said he'd had some qualms about it. 
 
 "Did I think he was doing anything illegal? No. Did I think he was doing anything on the cusp of unethical? Yes," Morgan said. 
 
 The stakes are high for Morgan. More than a dozen journalists have been arrested, senior executives with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. media empire have lost their jobs, and top U.K. police officers have resigned over their failure to tackle the scandal. 
 
 Witnesses at the inquiry have exposed the seamy side of British journalism, with reporters accused of cooking up stories, blackmailing subjects, hacking phones and paying bribes to police officers to secure tips. 
 
 Separately, Rupert Murdoch's News International announced settlements with seven more prominent figures in the wake of the phone hacking scandal at the now-shuttered News of the World. 
 
 The company said in a statement Tuesday it had settled claims brought by Princess Diana's former lover James Hewitt, ex-Liberal Democrat lawmaker Mark Oaten, TV presenter Ukrika Jonsson, model Abi Titmuss, and Paul Dadge, who helped rescue victims of the 2005 London transit bombings. Theatrical agent Michelle Milburn and Calum Best, the son of soccer legend George Best, rounded out the settlement list. 
 
 At least one more settlement _ with former England soccer player Paul Gascoigne _ appeared imminent, according to lawyer Jeremy Reed. 
 
 The terms of the new payments announced Tuesday were not disclosed but they are likely to be substantial. Sienna Miller received 100,000 pounds (nearly $157,000) in damages when she settled with News International; the family of murdered British schoolgirl Milly Dowler were awarded 2 million pounds ($3.1 million) plus 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) from Murdoch himself, which was earmarked for charity. 
 
 Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old News of the World in July after the full hacking scandal broke. 
 
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 Online: 
 
 Leveson Inquiry: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/ ||||| FILE -- Heather Mills clutches a cellphone as she leaves the High Court in London, in this Thursday March 1, 2007 file photo, following a preliminary hearing in her divorce case against Pail McCartney.... (Associated Press) 
 
 Several alleged victims of tabloid phone hacking in Britain will soon file lawsuits against a second newspaper group, Piers Morgan's former employer Trinity Mirror PLC, their lawyer said Friday. 
 
 Mark Lewis said the claims would be filed in "a few weeks," but would not disclose identities of his clients or say precisely when the papers would be lodged at court. 
 
 Lewis represents the family of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered by a pedophile in 2002. The revelation a month ago that her voicemail messages had been accessed by the News of the World while she was still missing outraged British opinion, and triggered a crisis for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. 
 
 The phone hacking scandal centers on allegations that journalists eavesdropped on private phone messages, bribed police for information and hacked email accounts. 
 
 So far the crisis has centered on Murdoch's media empire, leading him to shut down the News of the World tabloid and abandon a bid to take over British Sky Broadcasting. Several former executives of the newspaper have been arrested by police investigating the eavesdropping. 
 
 But there have also been allegations of hacking by other newspapers. This week Paul McCartney's ex-wife, Heather Mills, claimed in a BBC interview that she was hacked by a Trinity Mirror journalist in 2001. 
 
 McCartney said Thursday that he planned to contact police over the claim. 
 
 "I will be talking to them about that," McCartney told the U.S. television journalists by videolink from Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 The BBC did not identify the journalist cited by Mills, but said it was not Piers Morgan, who was editor of the group's flagship tabloid, the Daily Mirror. between 1995 and 2004. 
 
 Morgan has repeatedly denied ordering anyone to spy on voicemails or knowingly publishing stories obtained through hacking. 
 
 But in an article published by the Daily Mail in 2006, Morgan said that he had been played a tape of a message McCartney had left on Mills' cell phone in the wake of one of their fights. 
 
 "It was heartbreaking," Morgan wrote. "He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang 'We Can Work It Out' into the answerphone." 
 
 Questions over how Morgan came to hear the message have led several British lawmakers to call on him to return to the U.K. and explain himself. 
 
 Lawmaker John Whittingdale, chairman of a parliamentary committee that is investigating hacking by the News of the World, said Thursday that Morgan "absolutely should" come to Britain to answer questions. 
 
 Whittingdale said "there is evidence to suggest that other newspapers were involved in phone hacking" _ and that police should investigate. 
 
 Both Trinity Mirror and the publisher of Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, keen to stop the scandal spreading to them, have announced reviews of editorial procedures in the wake of the revelations about the scale of wrongdoing at the News of the World. 
 
 Meanwhile, an activist who hit Murdoch with a shaving foam pie as the mogul testified to British lawmakers last month was appealing Friday against a six-week jail sentence. 
 
 Jonathan May-Bowles was sentenced Tuesday for assaulting the 80-year-old media tycoon as he gave evidence to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. 
 
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 Frazier Moore and Noaki Schwartz in Los Angeles and David Stringer and Raphael G. Satter in London contributed to this report. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Jill Lawless can be reached at http://twitter.com/JillLawless ||||| So now it's Piers Morgan vs. Heather Mills in the latest phone-hacking controversy. 
 
 Mills, the former wife of Paul McCartney, told the BBC this week that when she was dating the ex-Beatle in 2001, a senior reporter from Britain's Mirror Group of newspapers called her up and read verbatim from a message McCartney had left on her voicemail. At the time, Morgan was the editor of the Daily Mirror tabloid. Mills insists there's no way the journalist could have acquired the message without illegally hacking into her phone. 
 
 Of course, a furor over alleged hacking into celebrity phones has over the last few weeks engulfed Rupert Murdoch's tabloid empire, where Morgan once plied his trade. Morgan -- now the host of a nightly CNN talk show as well as a judge on NBC's "America's Got Talent" -- has sworn that he was never involved in hacking phones during his time as a journalist. A member of British Parliament accused Morgan of hacking but later apologized. 
 
 The Mills claim might be a little harder to shake, even if there's not quite a smoking gun that directly implicates him in the affair. Morgan in a 2007 column wrote that an unspecified person had once played him the McCartney message. He even noted that the singer-songwriter had crooned "We Can Work It Out," one of his old Beatles hits, into the phone. Mills says hacking was the only means by which Morgan could have heard that tape. 
 
 Company Town: The News of the World scandal 
 
 Responding to the latest twist in the case on Wednesday, Morgan called Mills' story "unsubstantiated" and said the BBC told him that the unnamed reporter in question had not worked for Morgan's paper. He then noted that McCartney later accused Mills herself of hacking into his phone messages and leaking information to reporters. "No doubt everyone will take this and other instances of somewhat extravagant claims by Ms. Mills into account in assessing what credibility and platform her assertions are given," Morgan wrote in a prepared statement. His statement carefully sidestepped who played him the McCartney tape or whether he knew how it had been obtained. 
 
 The latest twist has an extra fillip of intrigue. Morgan claims to have been the matchmaker who introduced McCartney to Mills at the Mirror's Pride of Britain Awards in 1999. Although he says he was an early admirer of the land-mine activist, Morgan later turned on Mills, calling her a "vengeful, shameless, ghastly woman." 
 
 Hacking or no, sounds like this pair still have some unfinished business. 
 
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 CBS opens up on Ashton Kutcher's 'Two and a Half Men' 
 
 -- Scott Collins 
 
 Twitter.com/scottcollinsLAT 
 
 Photo: Paul McCartney and Heather Mills in happier times in 2001. Credit: Darko Bandic /Associated Press.
– Piers Morgan was in the hot seat today in Britain's phone hacking inquiry, but the CNN host refused to play along. He got grilled via video from the US on one point in particular, notes AP: If he didn't engage in phone hacking, how did he manage to hear a voicemail left by Paul McCartney on Heather Mills' answering machine? Morgan, who wrote about the voicemail in detail in 2006, refused to say how he came to hear the tape. "I'm not going to start any trail that leads to the identification of a source." Morgan served as editor of two British tabloids years ago, the News of the World and the Daily Mirror after that. It's his stint at the Daily Mirror that seems to be drawing the most attention, notable because that tab is not owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International, reports the New York Times. The scandal to date has largely been confined to Murdoch-owned papers. Morgan has steadfastly denied hacking a phone, asking anyone to do so, or knowingly publishing any story based on hacking.