Paul McCartney will meet with cops about being HACKED & his comments on 9/11 victims

Aug 052011

Paul McCartney: ‘Apparently, I have been hacked’

Rock star Paul McCartney said he expects to talk to British law enforcement authorities about phone hacking by British tabloids. (photo – Goodizen.com)

When I go back [to Britain] after this [U.S.] tour, I am going to talk to the police because apparently I have been hacked.

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Summer TV Press Tour 2011: Paul McCartney on Sept. 11, hacking scandal and Shea Stadium

Kennedy Center honoree Sir Paul McCartney via satellite from Cincinnati, where he’s on tour, Paul McCartney came to Summer TV Press Tour 2011 to plug his documentary “The Love We Make” chronicling the planning and performance of the benefit concert he staged at Madison Square Garden, “the Concert for New York City” which was staged less than six weeks after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Showtime will debut the docu, from documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles “Gimme Shelter,” “Grey Gardens”) on Sept. 10 at 9 p.m. ET.

One critic started to ask McCartney about having been one of the victims of the hacking scandal that recently brought down Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World newspaper.

“I promised Paul he would not get personal questions,” Showtime Entertainment chief David “It’s good business to push into taboo subjects, to be subversive, to be daring, to be a little bit scary” Nevins interjected.

“I’ve got to try,” the critic shot back and plowed ahead with her question to McCartney: how did he feel about having been one of the victims of the “apparent violation of privacy.”

“When I go back [to England] after this tour I’m going to talk to police because apparently I have been hacked, but they won’t tell anyone but the person themselves…it’s a horrendous violation of privacy and I do think it’s been going on a long time and more people than we know knew about it. I think I should just listen and hear what the facts are before I comment.”

Most of the questions were more mundane:

– Where was he on Sept. 11, 2001?

“I was on my way back to England. We were at JFK on the tarmac. The pilot suddenly said, “We can’t take off’ and out the window we could see the Twin Towers…first we see one plume of smoke and then two shortly thereafter…Then one of the stewardesses said, “something really serious has happened in New York and we’ve got to get you out of here’.”

– What does he remember of the historic Beatles concert in Shea Stadium, in ’65?

“Screaming. A lot of screaming…We couldn’t believe that we couldn’t hear ourselves..It was like a billion seagulls screaming.”

– Where do you get a collarless suit? (He’s wearing one – very early Beatles).

“Yeah, how out of touch can you be?!” McCartney shot back. “Honestly!”

“We’re TV critics,” one of them reminded him, apologetically.

“Everybody in Cincinnati is wearing these!” he chided. “You’re in Los Angeles? This has yet to arrive?”

– Do you watch a lot of television and what shows do you watch?

“My taste in TV sort of isn’t the greatest…I watch more sports; I like ESPN. I sometimes get completely hooked on the shopping channels. Where do you think I got this collarless jacket?”

As reported earlier …

Paul McCartney, addressing reporters at the Television Critics Association event live via satellite from a concert tour stop in Cincinnati, confirmed that he has been drawn into the UK hacking scandal that has enveloped News Corp. and led to the closing of the British tabloid News of the World.

“I’ll tell you that when I go back after this tour I’m going to talk to the police because I apparently have been hacked,” said the former member of the Beatles. “I don’t know much about it, but I do think it’s a horrendous violation of privacy, and I think it’s been going on for a long time and more people than we’ve heard about knew about it.”

Appearing at the press tour to discuss his upcoming Showtime special “The Love We Make: Paul McCartney and the Concert for New York City,” the musician also addressed more frivolous matters as well, such when a reporter teased him about the collarless suit jacket he was wearing.

“Man, how out of touch can you be?” he said with mock sarcasm. “Everybody in Cincinnati is wearing these, whereas you there in Los Angeles these are yet to arrive.”

Later, he addressed a burning question: What does Paul McCartney watch on television?

“My taste in TV is perhaps not the greatest,” he admitted. He said that he primarily watches sports — but sometimes indulges in a guiltier pleasure.

“I hate to say, I sometimes get completely hooked on the shopping channels,” McCartney said. “Excuse me, where’d you think I got this collarless jacket?”

“When I go back [to Britain] after this [U.S.] tour, I am going to talk to the police because apparently I have been hacked,” Mr. McCartney said.

“I don’t know much about it because they won’t tell anyone except the person themselves. So I will be talking to them about that.

“I do think it’s horrendous violation of privacy. I do think it has been going on for a long time and I do think more people than we know knew about it. But I think I should just listen and hear what the facts are before I comment,” Mr. McCartney told reporters gathered in Los Angeles for a bi-annual meeting of television critics.

Mr. McCartney’s ex-wife British model Heather Mills told the BBC earlier this week that a journalist working for a British newspaper had confronted her with details of a message left by Mr. McCartney on her phone in early 2001 following an argument with the singer.

The claim by Ms. Mills appeared to widen the hacking scandal from News Corp-owned British newspapers to rival publications in the Daily Mirror group.

It also put pressure on Piers Morgan, who edited the Mirror from 1995-2004 and who is now a talk show host for CNN. Mr. Morgan has repeatedly denied any involvement in phone hacking.

The former Beatle did not say what paper he thought had hacked into his phones. His former wife Heather Mills told the BBC that she had been told that a reporter from the Mirror Group, parent of the Daily Mirror, had listened to her mobile phone messages.

The Mirror is owned by Trinity Mirror, one of Europe’s biggest newspaper publishers.

Most of the hacking scandal has focused on News Corp.’s News of the World tabloid, which was shut down by its parent company after revelations of widespread phone hacking by operatives for the paper. Besides eavesdropping on voice mails of celebrities and members of the royal family, News of the World was found to have done the same to victims of crime as well.

McCartney said the hacking is a “horrendous violation of privacy,” and he suspects that the people at the parent companies of these newspapers were aware of the practice.

“More people than we know knew about it,” McCartney said.

British police are conducting a wide-ranging inquiry into claims that journalists and private detectives seeking gossip for stories illegally intercepted voicemail messages on the phone of people ranging from celebrities and politicians to murder victims.

Ms. Mills and the famously private Mr. McCartney were married from 2002 before their relationship ended in a bitter and messy divorce in 2008.

Hey Jude – Paul McCartney

Meanwhile,

Piers Morgan taunts MPs who want him to face hacking questions

Piers Morgan edited British tabloid the Daily Mirror, between 1995 and 2004, and has denied any involvement in phone hacking – Toronto Star

CNN star interviewer Piers Morgan woke up early in Los Angeles on Thursday to start taunting British MPs who want him to answer questions in the phone-hacking scandal.

“So heart-warming that everyone in U.K.’s missing me so much they want me to come home,” the prolific Twitter user said.

Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror tabloid in Britain, is facing mounting accusations of involvement in stories obtained by Trinity Mirror PLC newspapers based on electronic eavesdropping on voice-mail messages.

The latest came Wednesday when Heather Mills, the ex-wife of Paul McCartney, told the BBC that a seniorMirror journalist called and said “I heard you had an argument with your boyfriend.”

Mills said he “quoted me verbatim the messages from my machine” and she replied, “You’ve obviously hacked my phone.”

When she threatened to go to the police if a story was published, she said, he admitted, “Yeah, we did hear it on your voice messages. We won’t run it.”

Mills’ interview appears to corroborate Morgan’s own account in 2006, in a piece written for the Daily Mail, in which, as the Mirror editor, he described listening to a “heartbreaking” voice mail of McCartney begging Mills to come home.

Morgan responded to the Mills allegations Wednesday night in a statement issued by CNN:

“I have no knowledge of any conversation any executive from other newspapers at Trinity Mirror may or may not have had with Heather Mills.”

But three British MPs demanded that Morgan return to the U.K. to answer questions about the Mills incident.

“I think it would help everybody, including himself and this investigation, if he was able to say more about why he wrote what he did in 2006,” Tory MP Therese Coffey said.

She is a member of a member of a parliamentary committee examining the scandal, which has forced the tabloidNews of the World to close and two top police officials to resign.

Committee chair John Whittingdale told Sky News he agreed with Coffey.

The committee so far won’t call Morgan to testify because its mandate is limited to the NOTW, it said Thursday.

Morgan has been forced to defend himself against a series of previous statements that appear linked to phone hacking. In a 2009 interview with BBC Radio 4, he suggested that most British newspapers had used questionable tactics to get stories.

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