Wall Street Journal Publisher, Les Hinton, Resigns

Those who worked with her and for her said Brooks would do anything for a story -- and do anything to further her own career. One-time boss Piers Morgan said in his memoir, "The Insider," that Brooks once dressed as a cleaning lady for the Sunday Times and hid in the paper's bathroom to get a freshly-printed issue of the paper back to her offices at The News of the World. She then used the Times' material about a Prince Charles biography, Morgan wrote, running it in her paper, verbatim.

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The New York Times quoted a former supervisor on Brooks' art of "befriending upward" in the newsroom.

"When she was a secretary and wanted to become a writer, she took up horseback riding because the editor liked riding, a former supervisor recalled," the paper wrote. "Another editor played golf, so she learned that, too. Next came sailing lessons. 'Who sailed?' the former supervisor said. 'The Murdochs, that's who.'''

ABC News' Jeffrey Kofman and The Associated Press contributed to this report.