A Guardian executive admitted hacking telephone messages â and getting a âvoyeuristic thrillâ from it. 
 
 Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has said that ‘any intrusion must be authorised at a sufficiently senior level’ (Picture: PA) 
 
 Assistant editor David Leigh said he intercepted voicemails in an article written in December 2006 in order to investigate and expose âbribery and corruptionâ â not âtittle tattleâ. 
 
 âIâve used some of those questionable methods myself over the years,â said Mr Leigh in an article written for Media Guardian after News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman pleaded guilty to phone hacking. 
 
 âI, too, once listened to the mobile phone messages of a corrupt arms company executive â the crime similar to that for which Goodman now faces the prospect of jail,â said Mr Leigh. 
 
 He said he accessed the message when the businessman left his Pin code on a print-out. 
 
 âThere is certainly a voyeuristic thrill in hearing another personâs private messages,â he added. 
 
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 Mr Leigh also used a number of blags â pretending to be someone else â to get stories. He said: âAs for actually breaking the law? Well, it is hard to keep on the right side of legality on all occasions.â 
 
 The Guardian has been at the forefront of exposing the phone hacking at the News of the World which led to the newspaperâs closure last month. 
 
 Editor Alan Rusbridger has called for transparency in newspapers and has heavily criticised News International executives for claiming they had no knowledge of phone hacking. A Guardian spokeswoman said yesterday: âThe Guardian does not and has not authorised phone hacking.â 
 
 Asked if Mr Rusbridger knew Mr Leigh had boasted about hacking phones in a Guardian article she added: âWe donât have anything further to add and will be providing all information necessary within the proper context of the judicial inquiry set up by Lord Leveson.â 
 
 Last month, Mr Rusbridger said: âAny intrusion must be authorised at a sufficiently senior level.â 
 
 Tory MP Louise Mensch, who grilled the Murdochs in parliament last month, has called for all papers to come clean about their methods. 
 
 She said: âThis underlines the need for all responsible newspaper groups, including broadsheets, to be completely open about the extent of hacking and blagging in their newsrooms in the past. This is the only way that the press can move forward to a healthier outcome.â ||||| Mr Morgan, a former News of the World and Daily Mirror editor who is now a high-profile television presenter in the US , has spent the past week categorically denying ever printing material derived from phone hacking . 
 
 He spoke out after being accused by a Conservative MP and political bloggers of being involved in the phone hacking scandal that has engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, for which he used to work. 
 
 “For the record, in my time at the News of the World and the Mirror, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone,” he said last week on CNN, where he now hosts a talk-show. 
 
 But it has emerged that Mr Morgan gave a notably different response when asked during an interview with the BBC about his potential involvement in covert "gutter" journalistic practices during his time as a tabloid editor between 1994 and 2004. 
 
 “What about this nice middle-class boy, who would have to be dealing with, I mean essentially people who rake through bins for a living, people who tap people’s phones, people who take secret photographs, who do all that nasty down-in-the-gutter stuff,” he was asked on BBC's Desert Island Discs in June 2009. “How did you feel about that?" 
 
 Mr Morgan replied: “To be honest, let’s put that in perspective as well. Not a lot of that went on. A lot of it was done by third parties rather than the staff themselves. That’s not to defend it, because obviously you were running the results of their work. 
 
 "I’m quite happy to be parked in the corner of tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to, and I make no pretence about the stuff we used to do,” he told the programme's host, Kirsty Young. 
 
 “I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide, and certainly encompassed the high and low end of the supposed newspaper market.” 
 
 Piers Morgan on BBC Radio 4 Desert Island Discs - 7 June 2009 (mp3) 
 
 The discovery of Mr Morgan’s comment, first hinted at by the Guido Fawkes political blog, came after Trinity Mirror, the parent company of The Daily Mirror, announced it had opened an investigation into editorial standards at its newspapers in light of the phone hacking scandal. 
 
 Clive Goodman, a reporter for The News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator employed by the newspaper, were jailed in 2007 for illegally hacking mobile phone voicemails. News International, the paper's parent company, initially said the scandal was limited to a "rogue reporter" but in recent weeks conceded it was in fact widespread. 
 
 The News of the World was shut down and several more arrests have been made, including Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor hired by David Cameron to be the chief spokesman at 10 Downing Street and Rebekah Brooks, Mr Murdoch's former British newspaper chief. But News International has made clear it believes hacking was widespread among other tabloids. 
 
 At the weekend James Hipwell, a Daily Mirror financial columnist between 1998 and 2000, said that illegal phone hacking was “endemic” during Mr Morgan's editorship. "You know what people around you are doing,” he said. 
 
 Last week Mr Morgan was accused in a parliamentary committee by Louise Mensch, the Tory MP for Corby, of publishing an article in 2002 about an affair between Sven Goran Eriksson, the England football coach, and Ulrika Jonsson, the television presenter, which he knew had been obtained via phone hacking. He denied this and demanded an apology during a nine-minute row on live television. 
 
 Sources close to Mr Morgan said that he was referring to the tabloid industry in general. In a statement, he said: “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. I am not aware, and have never seen evidence to suggest otherwise, that any Mirror story published during my tenure was obtained from phone hacking.” ||||| The Sunday tabloid hired an ex-police officer to follow the future King while he was in Gloucester for a period of days in 2006, according to documents obtained by BBC Newsnight. 
 
 The programme has spoken to Derek Webb, a former police detective, who says he was paid to follow high-profile targets on behalf of the newspaper. 
 
 Other people targeted by Mr Webb included Prince Harry’s former girlfriend Chelsy Davy, the Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe’s parents and the former attorney general Lord Goldsmith. 
 
 While not illegal, the industrial scale on which the covert surveillance was carried out raises further ethical questions about the newspaper’s conduct in light of the phone hacking scandal. 
 
 The following of members of the Royal Family is extra controversial in the wake of the death of Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash while being chased by paparazzi. 
 
 The initial investigation into phone hacking was prompted following a complaint from Clarence House in 2005 that Prince William’s voicemails had been hacked. 
 
 A police investigation was launched in November 2005 and in August 2006 Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire were arrested. They were sentenced in January 2007. 
 
 It means that Mr Webb was commissioned to follow Prince William while the newspaper was under police scrutiny for hacking his voicemail 
 
 Last night Mr Webb told the BBC that he was employed by the tabloid paper from 2003 until its closure earlier this year. He said: “Because I kept getting results for them, they employed my services more and more. I was getting work from them and they were very satisfied with the work.” 
 
 The timing of the revelations comes just a day before James Murdoch is due to appear in front of MPs to answer questions about his knowledge of phone hacking and other malpractice at the newspaper. 
 
 He is certain to be questioned about the hiring of private investigators after it emerged that two lawyers who represented clients in phone hacking cases were put under surveillance. 
 
 Mark Lewis, one of the lawyers, yesterday revealed that he planned to sue News International for the invasion of privacy. 
 
 He also plans to report Julian Pike to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Mr Pike is a solicitor at Farrer & Co who allegedly suggested putting the lawyers under surveillance while working on behalf of the newspaper. 
 
 Mr Pike is already subject to an investigation by the SRA over his role in the phone hacking scandal. 
 
 The Duke of Cambridge has been informed that he was followed by the private eye. 
 
 Royal sources said he has been "following the proceedings carefully" since the phone hacking scandal broke in 2006, but St James's Palace declined to comment on the latest development. 
 
 One royal insider said: "Given that the News of the World bugged the phones of members of the Royal household, nothing about what they were up to surprises us any more." 
 
 A spokesman at Clarence House refused to comment. 
 
 A News International spokesperson said: “We are not able to make any comment around the specific work carried out by Derek Webb. As is well known, The News of the World was closed by News International during the summer.”
– In a sort of odd pot-meets-kettle situation, a Guardian investigations editor who was on the team that helped blow the lid on the News of the World scandal himself admitted to hacking ... in 2006. Following NotW royal editor Clive Goodman’s guilty plea, David Leigh wrote that he had hacked phones on the job, though his goal was to catch out "bribery and corruption," not "tittle tattle." "I’ve used some of those questionable methods myself over the years," he wrote. "I, too, once listened to the mobile phone messages of a corrupt arms company executive—the crime similar to that for which Goodman now faces the prospect of jail." “There is certainly a voyeuristic thrill in hearing another person’s private messages,” he continued, saying the man he was investigating had left his PIN on a document. Yesterday, a rep for the paper said that “the Guardian does not and has not authorized phone hacking," the Metro reports. Meanwhile, the scandal continues to spread: A number of alleged hacking victims are preparing to sue another newspaper group, Trinity Mirror PLC, where Piers Morgan used to work, the AP reports. Click through for more on Leigh's admission.