Popular talk show host Piers Morgan flatly rejected on Tuesday accusations that he was involved in phone hacking incidents while serving as editor of the UK-based Daily Mirror more than a decade ago.

In his testimony before a committee investigating the phone hacking scandal that led to the shutting down of the century-old 'News of the World', the CNN host insisted that his actions during his days as tabloid editor were free of any wrongdoing.

While hinting that the practice of breaching the privacy of subject personalities for news stories may have been committed by some of his colleagues in the profession, Morgan stressed that the details of such activities were beyond his pay grade.

He admitted though that "the average editor is aware of about five percent of what his journalists are up to at any given time," as reported on Wednesday by Yahoo News.

Morgan revealed too that in conducting deep probes for stories to be carried by the papers he edited, his company employed private investigators to supply them the required information, which "was dealt with through the news desk or features desk."

The celebrity journalist also rebuffed suggestions that his 2006 book titled 'The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade' documented hacking incidences that were conducted under his direct knowledge.

Morgan stressed that the book that does not represent pure historical facts.

He reiterated too that never in his career that he intruded into the private lives of celebrities without their knowledge, vehemently denying that his staff had intercepted the private messages that former Beatle Paul McCartney had sent to his former wife, Heather Mills.

Morgan, however, admitted that he was able to hear the purported messages but refused to discuss the circumstances of how the taped messages came to his possession.

"I listened to a tape of a message, yes. I'm not going to discuss where I heard it or who played it to me," Morgan was reported by Yahoo as saying during his testimony.

He also denied that he pressured his reporters to regularly provide hot news for the papers that he headed but conceded that he prodded staff under his wings to excel.