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. 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 Advertisement 
 
 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 ||||| 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. 
 
 ___ 
 
 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 ||||| First, a prosecutor would need to appeal to – perhaps exploit – Stone’s natural sense of self-preservation. For all the trouble he has been mixed up in over his long career, Stone has never been at any real risk of serving time behind bars. Friday’s indictment might change his bearing a bit. It’s one thing to rail publicly against the possibility of a theoretical future indictment, but another to see seven federal criminal charges, carrying a total maximum sentence of 50 years, in black and white. As a practical matter, Stone isn’t looking at anything close to 50 years, but he easily could be facing five years or so if convicted on all counts. For a 66 year-old man like Stone, that could mean most or all of the rest of his life, which has to be at least a bit sobering. And the evidence laid out in the indictment seems locked in; over and over again, the indictment quotes Stone’s lies and then cites hard proof – typically Stone’s own texts – to prove that he lied. A good prosecutor could make a compelling case that cooperation offers Stone his best and most realistic chance to get through the case without having to serve time. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Second, as much as we don’t like to acknowledge it in our quest for pure justice, money matters. It is expensive to defend yourself in federal court, and it is jaw-droppingly costly to go to trial. Stone has flashed vulnerability on this, declaring that he faces legal fees of $2 million – not an outrageous estimate, if a trial is involved – while noting that he is “not a wealthy man” and begging for crowdfunded donations. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Third, Stone is nothing if not ego-driven. We all are, of course, but Stone’s in his own league. A prosecutor might therefore make a pitch to Stone along these lines. You can stay quiet, you can be a “stand-up” guy, you can fight the government and maybe even go to trial. Trump will send nice tweets about you, you’ll have a heavy media following for a couple years, but ultimately you’ll be a strange footnote in history. Or you can flip and be John Dean.
– 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.