Officers from Surrey Police are "likely" to have fallen victim to phone hacking as detectives investigated the disappearance of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, a seminar has heard.
The force admitted earlier this month that it had known the teenager's phone was hacked by someone working for the News of the World in 2002.
Counsel for Surrey Police said a "number" of officers were also likely to have had their voicemail intercepted during the same period.
Addressing a seminar ahead of Lord Justice Leveson's inquiry into media ethics and hacking, John Beggs QC, for Surrey Police, said: "My instructions are that it is likely that a number of Surrey Police officers themselves were victims at the time of the launch of the Milly Dowler investigation, in March nine years ago - were themselves victims of hacking."
Mr Beggs's comments came as he made an application for Surrey Police to become a "core participant" in the inquiry which begins next month.
Lord Justice Leveson agreed to consider the request on the basis that the force may be subject to criticism over alleged failings during the Milly Dowler investigation.
Surrey Police have drawn increasing scrutiny in recent months after it emerged publicly in July that officers were aware Milly's phone messages had been hacked into shortly after she went missing as she made her way home from school in March 2002.
Chief Constable Mark Rowley said the now-closed Sunday newspaper made a call to the police operation room co-ordinating the inquiry into the schoolgirl's disappearance in April of that year which made it apparent it had accessed her voicemail.
But officers merely "focused on retrieving any evidence the NoTW had that could assist in the investigation into Milly Dowler's disappearance" as that was the priority, he said.
No criminal investigation was launched into how the News International newspaper came by the information it provided and Surrey Police neither arrested nor charged anyone in connection with the hacking. The force also failed to pass this information on to the Metropolitan Police's original phone hacking investigation in 2006, it later admitted.