06.12.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes at 4:03 am by Administrator
Oh my, there’s not much to say about Chuck Philips unmonitored jailhouse interview with Anthony Pellicano except, “Oh my!” How did the Men’s Detention Center (MDC) in Downtown Los Angeles ever allow an unmonitored telephone call with one of their incarcerated wards, on a no-bail status no less, with anyone other than their attorney? In Mr. Pellicano’s case that would have been Steven Gruel.
According to a source in law enforcement some folks are none too pleased:
DMC does NOT allow third party calls from an inmate to his lawyer to a third party. Was the call legal? Did Gruel break the rules for Pelllicano? Did someone at MDC look the other way as a favor or for a payoff? I cannot believe that MDC or the prosecutors would allow Pelicano an unmonitored call? If so, he could very well have ordered a hit along with his chat with his pal Phillips.
Well, big “Oops” on someone’s part. Perhaps Mr. Gruel thinks this is one of those Grade B movies where he’s worked as an extra and he’s gotten a bit over involved with fuzzy boundaries there.
In terms of any other comments about Mr. Philips ethically challenged pseudo-journalistic writing, some readers of this blog said it best in their emails today. There were the visceral reactions:
Wow. The Phillips article is really a piece! A mouthpiece for Pellicano!
Felt as though I was reading some sort of poorly encrypted message from Antonio to Hollywood with Love. LOL. With Phillips amplifying the point: “Pellicano’s vow of silence is not lost on…future indictments depend on…”
When did Pellicano become a juvenille deliquent jailhouse counselor in addition to his other heroic feats for society? …What a MAN! And his advice to the downtrodden youth that everyone has to “pay for their mistakes… .” It’s eerie. Chuck Doll, brrrrrr.
Ummn, “vow of silence” makes one wonder is there really something else here that we don’t know about that is keeping Pellicano from talking? Unfortunately, Mr. Philips never quite brings up this salient point. As another reader succintly noted:
Good Grief! Philips is at it again.
As for a literary critique there was the statement:
I’m still reeling over the Philips article. It’s so transparent to professional writers or anyone who knows the real story but to the Average Joe it may be oblique.
And then there was the philosophical commentary:
This will all sort itself out.
Nuff said for sure and by many others, especially Nikki Finke in her terse review with special attention to our favorite incarcerated private dick wanting out of the slammer to chase Osama for good old George W. .
Anthony Pellicano indicated that the feds should stop investigating him and go after Al Queda. “Chasing terrorists is what the FBI is supposed to be doing. I’ve got to tell you, if instead of keeping me behind bars here, they gave me the job of finding Osama bin Laden, I guarantee you I would find him.”
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06.11.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, crimes, mass media at 12:11 am by Administrator
Hollywood has become the City of Slander and Character Assassination, and it’ll stay that way until someone has the courage to place integrity and decency before self-interest. Anthony Pellicano, the Man in Question, has not only revealed his true nature, he’s shown the true face of the entire movie industry. Why wouldn’t we use this as a teaching moment?
Why? Because Our Favorite Private Dick in the Slammer isn’t an exception - he’s the norm. There are dozens of movie industry producers, directors, actors and lawyers who are every bit as hateful and as vile as Mr. Pellicano. Dirty if not disgusting “tricks” has become the industry’s norm, and it’s time to put it to a stop.
Media scribes may be getting frustrated that they’re not yet selling so many books because of the scandal, but I can live with that. The people who’ll eventually buy those books will never be Pellicano’s victims, anyway. There’ll assuredly be some rich and famous Tinseltown celebs and their attorneys though lining up to buy the books first to see if they have to file hasty lawsuits to get the shelves filled back up with the usual trash. And I have no problem seeing these great men of Los Angeles fork over their spare pocket change in this case. They’re performing a great public service and helping to employ Americans locally where otherwise their industry is outsourcing projects to Eastern Europe and Canada with only one or two American actors at the helm.
And mind you, this piece isn’t about our hometown mass media as truth seekers. It’s about the startling relevance of the social hypocrisy in this city of ubiqitous pseudo-liberalism. The diameter of said pseudo-liberals’ joie de vivre is, needless to say, less than the diameter of George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.”
Of course, our glitzy intelligensia will be kissing Tony and holding his hand all along during his trial. Bert Fields may even come to the show and administer a warm spongedown - without a sponge - to keep Tony from opening his mouth (which could endanger the wallets of our movie industry tycoons — Oh the horror!). Wouldn’t this be a good time to remind the world about that, too? Ummn, perhaps make a movie or simply issue some press releases about how the evil federal prosecutor on the case, Daniel Saunders, initially came here to be an actor but failed.
And I think the worm is turning for these vile creatures. At least, I believe it could, if us normal people in Tinseltown (and yes there are normal people in this City of Broken Dreams but we do tend to keep in at night and blog on the Internet) stay on the case. But don’t worry, Brad, Ron, Bert, Marty, Jerry, et al.. Let the all mighty dollar have the last word - because as long as a producer somewhere can still make box office gold, there’s somebody somewhere who’ll tidy up your little indiscretions and indecencies. I promise. Now would I lie to you?…
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06.10.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes at 2:47 am by Administrator
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Damn, wish I’d written that. But Justice Louis Brandeis was the orator of that brilliant gem and not I. And look how true it is in the Anthony Pellicano/Tinseltown scandal. I say, keep the story on the front page no matter how tedious it appears to be getting. I don’t ever want Tony spreading his bile in secret again in this town. I want it out in the open where we can all get a good look. This kook did us all a favor with having too many cajones to count. Not because he showed us what he thinks about in private — who really cares what he thinks about? No, he showed us what the Hollywood power elite who paid through the nose for his “proprietary” services think about in the seclusion of their Bel Air estates and Malibu enclaves. He gave us the barest glimpse into the dark, damp room where persons like himself sit and dream up new ways to hurt people to remain at the top of their heap.
Bravo. I mean it. That kind of acidic waste should be seen and heard apart from poorly written made-for-television movies.
This is a real story ripped from the headlines about one pasty-faced, delusional, middle-aged private dick and the avaricious wealthy nerds in Tinseltown who employed him. Tony never would have been able to have all those Los Angeles policemen on his payroll if there weren’t an eager line of high rolling takers for his very exclusive information. It wasn’t just juicy tidbits that he’d sell either, he could also make irritating situations go away by hook or by crook for upwards of $100,000. Was there a business dispute? Drug overdose? Murder? Rumor of gay sex? Nagging ex-lover? Divorcing spouse? Rape victim? Child molestation? No problem! Presto-chango and it vanished along with some of your cash. Simple, clean and good fun.
And we were and remain collectively in denial and minimizing the extent of things. Ahh, the power of the sun — shines a light and brings the heat.
Honorarium: I would like to thank both the Los Angeles Times and Variety for the inspiration that they have provided me with in writing this post through their continued lack of coverage of the Anthony Pellicano debacle.
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05.31.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, crimes at 9:57 pm by Administrator
Anthony Pellicano has a real big shot former U.S. Attorney from San Francisco as his counsel now, Steven Gruel. Officially Steven Gruel is not being paid by the government to represent Pellicano. Okay that doesn’t rule out pro bono work by the magnanimous Mr. Gruel, but somehow that latter possibility seems a tad far fetched don’t you think? So, how is a supposedly bankrupt convict in the slammer coming up with the sort of cash that will cover his legal expenses? The answer, as the talk goes, is that some secret and rich friend is footing the bill for old Tony and there are quite a few of them here in Tinseltown who could easily fit the ticket.
The first and foremost candidate to consider for Pellicano’s clandestine sugar daddy is Bert Fields. A year or so ago both Gruel and Fields’ lawyer Keker were working different aspects of the same case. It had something to do with political corruption in San Francisco. On the warm and fuzzy side, Fields attempted to start that slush fund a while back to support Tony’s wives and kids while he was up the river. Fields, who is a person of interest in the current investigation, seems to have the most to gain if Pellicano is adequately taken care of and doesn’t begin to squawk to the prosecutors for a deal. The two of them also had that strong bond of comraderie where Tony was willing to convert to Judiasm to please Bert or something.
Another enamored buddy was Ron Meyer. Wasn’t he the one making those treks upstate to the federal pen to visit Tony in solitary around Christmas? Brad Grey also is in the running. Grey was so smitten with Tony’s juvenile bravado and bogus masculinity that he was trying to sell a television series to HBO based on the Pelican’s exploits a few years back. Brad seems to be in denial lately that all this bad stuff is really happening to him but that could be due to his inspired performance of a deer caught in the headlights.
Marty Singer, an A-list type Hollywood entertainment attorney who has all but disappeared from view in the legal community, was once a frequent flyer on the Pelican. The buzz is that Singer hired Tarlow & Berk, two Beverly Hills big-time criminal defense attorneys, and now good old Marty Boy has taken a plea deal from the feds. If that turns out to be more than rumor, it’s unlikely that Marty is Tony’s mysterious benefactor.
To avert my having to recite an endless and tedious list here of Tinseltown’s elite who have a vested interest in keeping Tony happy, please ask yourselves “Who’s desperate enough to shell out millions of dollars to keep Tony from talking right now?” According to self-serving legal ethics, Mr. Gruel doesn’t ever have to publicly divulge where his check actually comes from. If one of Tony’s former illustrious clients though is trying to cover his criminal butt by footing the Pelican’s bill, Mr. Gruel may indeed have to spill the beans eventually. It may not be spelled out “conflict of interests” but how about “obstruction of justice?”
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05.24.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes, new york times at 8:04 pm by Administrator
You thought you was the cool fool,
Never could do no wrong.
You had everything sewn up tight.
How come you lay awake all night long?
Just one thing I ask of you,
Just one thing for me.
Please forget you knew my name,
My darling [Sugaree/Anthony].
Shake it, shake it [Sugaree/Anthony],
Just don’t tell ‘em you know me …
- Many apologies to Robert Hunter
You have to wonder right about now, how many Tinseltown attorneys are wandering down Rodeo Drive humming the revised version of that old Grateful Dead song. If they hadn’t managed to hear it somewhere yet, they might want to learn the lyrics pronto.
“Please forget you knew my name…Just don’t tell ‘em you know me.” Catchy ain’t it?
The saga of the broadening Anthony Pellicano wiretapping scandal, coupled with the still-burning Pellicano/celebrity attorney influence-peddling scheme, coupled again with the wide legal fallout from the unending demise of both Bert Fields’ and Terry Christensen’s firms, has a crowd of people in Tinseltown wondering when there will be a Federal knock on their door. There are a lot of names on the roll call for this combined mess, and many of them sit as named partners in Century City law firms and on the board of major movie studios and talent agencies.
All of this might be simply written off as just another torrid example of the tired adage that absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely, and it does seem at the Los Angeles Times that these stories are going straight into their circular file. The studio A-listers are corrupt? Naw, that’s just an ugly rumor that the esteemed newspaper won’t give any ink or air time these days while they cover the salient issues like whether Alexander Proctor is really a snitch for the feds. Praise the Lord for the rumor mongering lately of the old grey lady.
There’s a question that needed to be addressed that the New York Times artfully attacked recently. The Pellicano scandal highlights a situation that plows right through “business as usual in Tinseltown” before parking itself next to the curb of “corruption in the entertainment legal system.”
That’s right, “corruption in the entertainment legal system.” That issue the LAT is so terrified of because so much of their revenue comes from those advertisements placed by the major studios.
Over the last several months, the LAT has moved mountains to make sure that the myriad Pellicano catastrophes are blamed on someone else. Their favorite whipping post has been the LAPD. Pellicano happened because of law enforcement failures to police their own moonlighting cops-on-the-beat. So even though only two detectives have been found to be Pellicano snitches this entire morass was due to failures of the police department. Not the studio’s fault or the celebrity lawyers, folks. Two bad cops and one delusional aging P.I. were responsible for all this. Let’s not forget that the federal prosecutors are way overreacting to all of this as well.
The same LAT who lament the shabby state of our town’s law enforcement have been enjoying handsome cash advertisements by covering for the studios with their reporting.
If a newspaper is going to save their own economic bacon with their failure to report on a news item happening on their very own doorstep for the past two decades, the least they could do is not obfuscate the matter further by diverting attention where it doesn’t belong.
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05.23.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, crimes, blogs at 9:15 pm by Administrator
There’s sure some phantasmagoric blogging on the Internet these days about the Anthony Pellicano debacle. It seems that one of the defendants who is currently residing at a federal detention center in Los Angeles, Daniel Nicherie, has taken his case to the court of public opinion in the MySpace forum. He writes there that he was charged with crimes that he did not commit. Daniel goes on to state that his attorneys have apparently been quite busy seeking information about everything from the Israeli Mafia to Ramparts scandal affiliated officers who all somehow colluded to make him the fall guy in this mess. He further elaborates that the real reason for the federal raid on Pellicano’s offices back in 2002 was the government’s search for a tape recording in which two “G-men” are discussing “a bribe that they are being offered to bump (him) off.”
To augment the veracity of Daniel’s assertions, a woman called J.J., who claims to be a paralegal in the law firm handling Nicherie’s federal case, has also started posting odd tidbits about his case on her MySpace page. She blurts out that her firm just “had a meeting with some LA Times writers who, for the first time, have become privy to some jaw-dropping information that will ignite this brewing saga into the biggest headlining story in this decade”. Ummn, perhaps as the lead paralegal J.J. hasn’t yet been informed of a certain court order by the Honorable Judge Dale S. Fischer about leaking information.
If all this weren’t mind-melting enough, Nicherie’s P.I., Jan Tucker, has a bizarrely pastel colored page with the complete run down of Daniel’s err…saga of “innocence”. To save you all from going crazy blind looking at the pastel colors and interpreting all the hypotheticals, here is a short summary of what was said: An unethical criminal defense attorney representing Daniel Nicherie for drug dealing hired a hood and an associate of the JDL to generate death threats against Nicherie to fleece him out of a few hundred thousand of ill gotten drug money. Nicherie paid off the money but by doing so became entangled in some mess wherein “Black rappers” were also getting death threats from the Jewish mob.
Sheesh, just think of it guys, if you hadn’t perused the Internet today you never would have known any of this…..
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05.20.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes at 3:38 am by Administrator
This blog about Anthony Pellicano has gotten numerous emails since starting a few months ago, and surprisingly none of them have been critical or even from an attorney as yet. Since the site’s visitors have been going over 120,000 a month, people are definitely reading things here. What’s most interesting of all these great letters are those ones concerning the incestous relationship that exists to the present day between the Los Angeles Times and the major Tinseltown studios. This dishonest journalistic collusion seems to be rapidly emerging as the primary reason that the LAT steadfastly refuses to cover the Anthony Pellicano investigation and trial in a truthful and unbiased manner.
Here are a couple of particularly fascinating emails that hopefully will resonate with some of you as well. (Again, the name of the author of any correspondence is always withheld unless he or she specifically requests that it appears here).
I enjoy a lot your web blog.
I’m a director, who had a huge legal battle with Warner Bros. in 1992-1995.
You bet the studio hired Pellicano to wiretap my phones, and tried to murder me on three different occasions. The legal battle is still on, the FBI know about the matter, and the LA Times who covered the lawsuit in 1992 has all the recent court documents. But of course they don’t have the guts to cover it now, partly because in the process, Warner Bros. corrupted a dozen or so federal judges.
However, the Feds are looking into the matter, and if it’ll come out, it will be huge scandal.
Why I’m sharing this information with you? Because you’re on the right track when it comes to the reasons as to why the LA Times is not more aggressive in covering the Pellicano matter. You should also know that some of the journalists covering the Pellicano scandal are personal friends of powerful people at the studios. So hiding behind their “three independent corroboration necessary to publish a story” excuse, they are not eager at all to come up with a new angle.
Keep up the good job.
Well that one was completely intriguing. It seems as if the FBI may be going back even further than 1997 in Pellicano’s massive computer databank of wiretaps and that a new facet of our current Pellicano debacle could well be emerging.
My personal favorite however, which was far less informative, is the following because it was just so damn succinct in message.
I think that the LA Times is so politically correct and beholden to the film industry that they wouldn’t write the word crap if they had a mouthful.
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05.18.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes, mass media at 12:01 am by Administrator
There are political consequences of the Los Angeles Time’s failure to report on the “why” of the Anthony Pellicano disaster. The LAT continually asserts that nobody out there thinks the problems are with the major players at the studios but rather with a handful of corrupt local law enforcement.
Nobody out there thinks that? Why would that be? Could it have anything to do with the LAT’s pusillanimous reporting on Hollywood they’ve been absorbing for a decade plus, even from the “committed” investigative journalists over at the City Desk and in Entertainment, that continues to leave out the context of the disaster and the suffering–i.e., the massive negligence by our ever-more powerful fourth estate to keep watch on the entertainment industry.
The LAT doesn’t seem to be deflecting off attention from individual A-list Tinseltown types so much as circumventing a potential investigation into the overall studio industry’s involvement. How often have the studio heads and major producers been sued by their lowly urchins for violating the terms of contracts and sexual harassment yet been awarded more and more in revenues by the public? What we’re reading in the LAT about the Pellicano debacle is akin to a laundry cycle: spin, spin, spin, repeat… Follow the $$$$ and ignore the talking head words please.
It is important to remember that Anthony Pellicano’s enterprise was in fact a series of “grassy knolls” where some have claimed “rivulets of corruption” may have emerged from, though details are scarce and occluded. Also, no one in a position of power investigated thoroughly the phenomenon known as “Wiretapper’s Remorse” a scenario which suggests that if everyone in Los Angeles were simply talking on their phones simultaneously it could have in fact caused the flooding of Pellicano’s computers, a flooding curiously timed to coincide with Anita Busch finding that dead fish and the rose thing that she made such a damn fuss about. Lastly, the incremental abuse of cell phones by the overall community had been a major source of concern for years with Mr. Pellicano and was causing him undo hardship just trying to keep abreast of the latest technological advances.
On second thought, maybe it was only one or two bad cops and disgruntled SBC employees who were involved in any real way with the whole Pellicano scandal-of-the century. Ummn…perhaps you believe in the awesome power of invisible pink unicorns too?
What the media reports, or fails to, has consequences. Do we now presume that the LAT will report on the alleged consequences of their own lack of reporting? No, they are flesh and blood versions of the Cowardly Lion of Oz, driven by the fear of saying the wrong thing about the studios, of offending someone important at the studios and going out on a limb against the studios. If I wasn’t verging on apoplexy, I’d be getting real nauseous right about now from the scent of “Eau de Media Poltroon.”
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05.17.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes, new york times at 3:22 am by Administrator
The Los Angeles Times’ staff seems to be following their normal protocol with their lackluster and bizarrely slanted coverage of the Anthony Pellicano case, at least according to an article by Jan Golab in Front Page Magazine from 2005. The dynamic duo of Pulitzer Prize winning LAT beat reporter, Chuck Philips, and his apparent protégé at the City Desk, Andrew Blankstein, apparently made a similar incredulous appearance reporting on the Biggy Small fiasco. The following excerpt raises some intriguing similarities in the quality, or lack there of, for the LAT’s authenticity. Please take the liberty to substitute the word appearing second in the parentheses in bold for the text in the original writing and the resemblance to the Pellicano case will become more apparent hopefully.
During the [Biggie/Pellicano] [trial/continuing coverage of the indictment] this [summer/spring], the Times’ overt bias became a hot topic of conversation among [court watchers/journalists and bloggers]. [This reporter/Yours truly] [covered/read about] the [trial/preliminary hearings] [for an October 2005 cover story in XXL Magazine/ in every article that has appeared in both the New York Times, Vanity Fair and the Associated Press]. “Am I [involved in/reading about] the same trial that the LAT is covering?” an incredulous [Perry Sanders/me] asked at one point. [Sanders/Saunders] confronted Times reporter Andrew Blankstein, Chuck Philip’s apparent understudy, for including a gratuitous smear against the [Wallace attorneys/federal prosecutors] in a story about the [LAPD’s hiding of evidence/leaking of secret FBI interviews to the NYT]. Blankstein told him: My editor made me put that in there. The L.A. Times was described in one [Wallace/U.S. Attorney’s] motion as a blatantly one-sided critic of the [Wallace law suit/federal indictment]. [One out-of-town reporter/Me again] commented: I’ve heard stories about The L.A. Times (agenda-driven) reporting on this story, but I didn’t believe it. Now that I’ve been [sitting in court/reading other newspapers] everyday and [reading/thinking about] their stories, I have to wonder.
[Detective Russell Poole* believes/ A whole lot of excellent journalists from Nicky Finke in LA to the New York Post’s Page Six team believe] the Times coverage is simply part of the widespread political pressure to protect the [former chief (of police)/forget it, this might be true without any alteration]. They (The L.A. Times) just don’t have credibility, [Poole/Most of the journalistic community] commented following [the mistrial this summer/the LAT’s coverage of the Pellicano case thus far]. They take some truth and intertwine it with propaganda, which is basically what the LAPD was doing with the whole Rampart scandal. Somebody needs to ask the tough questions about who is responsible for all this. Poole likened Chuck Philips to [Detective Steve Katz, the LAPD detective who forgot the jailhouse confessions and other evidence he left in his desk drawers and which led to the mistrial/a mendacious turd blossom]. His career is shot. If you lie one time and you get caught, there’s no way you can [testify/report] in another case. You’re not reliable.
Life always proves to be stranger than fiction and both Chuck Philips and Andrew Blankstein are key reporters for the LAT on the Pellicano fiasco as well. Do you think the adage “History tends to repeat itself” or a “A leopard doesn’t change its spots” is more applicable in this situation? Let’s go with the leopard thing, shall we?
*Detective Russell Poole was one of the good guys in the infamous Ramparts scandal who Philips ostensibly misquoted.
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05.16.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano at 1:28 am by Administrator
There’s buzz going on around Tinseltown that “Pellicano: The Movie” is already in preproduction. Though the “Pellicano: The Movie” poster contest hasn’t officially been announced by any major studio as yet, I was eager to dash off two submissions for what is sure to be a riveting piece of cinema verite. If other erstwhile graphic artists are interested in contributing to the creative endeavor, please send your work to this email and the pics will be posted in the order in which they are received.
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05.12.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, mass media at 12:21 am by Administrator
Ross Johnson provocatively wondered why Hollywood was ever scared of Anthony Pellicano: “Despite all his posturing with bimbos and outright lying to reporters about his prowess with a Louisville Slugger, Pellicano has always been a punk from Chicago who, as attorney Stephen Yagman is fond of saying, ‘escaped his punkdom and moved to L.A., where nobody knew he was a punk.’”
Rather than dismissing Anthony Pellicano as an unworthy Public Enemy No.1 because of his current fallen chaotic state in prison, I’m going to Goodwin** the discussion by comparing the present distortions going on in our perceptions of the Pelican debacle to the continued difficulty most of the world has in putting the Hitler era into any cogent and meaningful perspective. Please take the liberty to substitute any name provided at the appropriate points in these excerpts from the excellent interview that Luke Ford did with William Grange, the author of the new book “Hitler Laughing: Comedy in the Third Reich.”
“People don’t like to think that [Hitler/Pellicano] was like everyone else. He liked to laugh. He liked to see plays. It’s true that [Hitler/Pellicano] was a little strange, but in many ways, he was just like you and me. People try to heroize people who stood up to [Hitler/Pellicano] as morally superior and when you get into those kinds of debates, then you look at somebody like [Hitler/Pellicano] as defective. But he wasn’t defective at all. He was an evil genius…
We know that on [Hitler/Pellicano]’s 50th birthday, [Joseph Goebbels/Ron Meyers] gave him 18 brand new prints of Disney cartoons and [Goebbels/Meyers] reported that [Hitler/Pellicano] said it was the best birthday present he ever had…
[Maria Von Trapp/Kat Pellicano] tells an anecdote about [Hitler/Pellicano] laughing hysterically, gasping for breath for laughing, at a [gross joke/once-weekly-rub-down]…
[Hitler/Pellicano] had no sexual attraction for men but he loved male companionship, particularly with the guys who were the early [fighters/celebrity lawyers/producers] who were with him in [Munich/Hollywood] in the [twenties/eighties/nineties] and were responsible for [the revolution/his making hundreds of thousands of dollars]…
[Hitler/Pellicano] had affairs but he was not promiscuous. There were lots of women, particularly older women, who were madly in love with [Hitler/Pellicano] and wanted to take care of him. He cultivated that and got a lot of money from them…
The real question is, ‘Were people who did not resist [Hitler/Pellicano] collaborators with the [regime/wiretapping/crimes]?’ It’s a difficult question, predicated as always on a sense of moral superiority. It’s easy to look back [sixty/twenty] years and appoint moral standing or deny it to someone else.”
**Goodwin: (verb) Internet slang for being the first one to usurp an online discussion by raising the spectre of Hitler.
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05.11.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, crimes at 12:36 am by Administrator
The buzz among law enforcement types in Tinseltown involved with the Anthony Pellicano investigation is definitely that their case is going exceptionally well because Pellicano is really starting to have a melt down. Sort of seems obvious that there are some cracks in old Tony’s iceberg right now, after hearing that he wanted to serve as his own counsel against a 112 count indictment, his thirty pound weight loss since being transferred from the much more comfy federal prison upstate to the rather austere Men’s Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles, then finally hearing these past two weeks of those bizarre violent threats the Pelican had made from lock-down against his perceived enemies.
A source within the police department, who gave me the permission to quote him but declined being named because of the sensitive ongoing nature of the federal investigation, had some memorable comments about the stress load that must now be raining down on Tony’s balding brow:
Pellicano is becoming unwound…mentally. Whatever sentence he is given he will not be able to serve a fraction of it without something going down. It must be rough going from “shot caller” to “he bitch.”
When one is in jail you immediately begin a process of whose side you are on. It is usually based on race first. Then once you have done this then the “shot caller” of the block is going to test you somehow. Maybe that is why Pellicano is losing weight. Maybe he is trying to get down to his fighting weight. His outside reputation won’t mean much inside. If anything it will work against him. Prison is a good place to get whacked. Even though it is a very controlled environment, things still happen. Can you imagine what Pellicano must be thinking. There is no such thing as cutting a deal and doing no jail time with the feds. It just doesn’t happen. This guy better get some Astro-Glide, and get used to a female name like Shirley.
Oh my, it seems that the Pellicano fest could easily drift from an old George Raft or Humphrey Bogart flick to “Brokeback Boy behind Bars.”
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05.10.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, crimes, new york times at 1:56 am by Administrator
It’s impossible not to come away with the feeling that the Pelican has truely lost his bearings after reading the latest news in the Anthony Pellicano debacle today from the New York Times. Not only does it appear that Tony conspired with known mobsters in Chicago to put a prison “hit” out on Alexander Proctor, the man he hired to threaten reporter Anita Busch, but he seems to have also made a series of violent threats against government investigators and just about anyone else who stood in the way of his regaining his former glory days. Pellicano had a particularly gruesome wish for the FBI agents who were investigating him and that was to:
“douse ‘them’ with gasoline and set them on fire and after they were burning, he would pour more gasoline on them.”
Although I’ve had experience working as a shrink in prisons I’m never quite certain if I have the right notion about the emotional stuff that really goes down when men are locked behind bars. I’ve always had the key to get out at night and I am female, that does change one’s perspective a tad, so I sought out the opinion of a few guys who had spent time in the “Big House” and a police officer famous for the arrest of a big Mafioso who wound up committing suicide when faced with an indeterminable federal sentence.
What these men, from very disparate backgrounds, all agreed unanimously about was truly fascinating. Everyone corroborated each other’s assessment that Pellicano was really going nuts at this point in prison, though the probable reasons for the mental deterioration varied from the lack of a sufficient audience for Tony’s infinite grandiosity or whatever, to having to be someone else’s er…bitch too much of the time. However, the fact that Tony could really not be in our commonly accepted reality anymore didn’t make his violent mouthing any less important in these experienced men’s eyes, in fact it actually made Tony more lethal and his threats more to be feared.
When the guys tried to explain this concept to me I finally had to throw away several academic studies which I tenaciously had clung to, that professed the mentally ill are actually less likely to commit violence than normal individuals, and let myself just listen to the much more pragmatic street wisdom that was being offered up gratis.
The distillation of what these gentlemen said was that Pellicano, right now, is far more dangerous than a poor dog with rabies. His actions are totally unpredictable because he’s beginning to feel that he has no avenue of escape and therefore nothing to loose…so what the hell, take everyone down with him and go out in grand style. If you’re having problems grasping this very wise assessment, please try considering that Pellicano has the mentality of a suicide bomber after being so long in prison with no hope of release anytime soon. Suicide bombers are known to do really horrific things. They don’t just idly threaten now, do they?
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05.09.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, crimes at 11:34 am by Administrator
Let’s settle a bone of contention immediately among the many eagerly watching the Anthony Pellicano fest, whether Vanity Fair editor John Connolly was actually ever physically threatened by Anthony Pellicano.
The answer is a definite and profound “Yes.” The exact circumstances could not be elaborated before now, however, until a particular filing from the U.S. Attorney’s offices occurred with the court on May 8, 2006. The threat to Connolly came in the form of a letter from Tony to Sandra Carradine, Pellicano’s ex-girlfriend turned FBI informant. Pellicano must have really had a knot in his stomach that day, from being stuck in the “Big House”, because he also demanded that another prisoner down in Orange County whack Alexander Proctor, his unfortunate lackey who had planted that fateful dead fish and rose on reporter Anita Busch’s windshield one summer night.
On page thirteen of the government’s response to Pellicano’s First Motion for Discovery from March 20, 2006, the U.S. Attorneys succinctly describe the violent nature of the Pelican’s threats against people who irritated him as they also legally dismantle the defense’s allegation that the government acted improperly in obtaining information from Pellicano’s then-girlfriend, Sandra Carradine.
“When the defendant communicated information to Ms. Carradine (including death threats against several individuals), he took the risk that she would communicate that information to the government. Defendant’s communications with Ms. Carradine were not protected by any privilege, and his subjective expectations of privacy in those comunications are wholly irrelevant to their unprotected status. There is simply no “girlfriend privilege” recognized under the law.”
On page seventeen of this same document it goes on to detail Pellicano’s attempt to whack Proctor:
“As defendant’s counsel has been informed, the government has obtained corroborated information that defendant recently conspired with known organized crime connections in Chicago to place a “hit” on Alex Proctor inside a federal prison in order to prevent Proctor from testifying against him”
That does say “death threats against several individuals” people as well as “conspired with known organized crime connections in Chicago to place a “hit”” on another human being. Maybe the government was getting all hot and bothered over nothing more than old Tony’s cuddly thug personae? Weren’t Pellicano and his elite celebrity clients only engaged in soft, white collarish stuff, like wiretapping and acrimonious divorce cases? They surely couldn’t have been involved in things as sordid as murder, right?
Well….wrong. Somebody way before the federal government in 2002 should have noticed Pellicano’s criminal activities, since it was basically commonly recited folklore in Tinseltown for at least the past decade. Pellicano’s high-tech wiretapping and his intitmidation of the rich, supremely spoiled ex-wives who wanted millions of undeserved dollars in divorce settlements are only the fluffy white frosting on this particularly rotten cake and just plain fun to read about as well as darn easier to prosecute, particularly with a running statute of limitations. There is an unpleasant and nasty side to this Pellicano mess that doesn’t exactly make Tony and his friends real lovable guys for the eventual T.V. movie we’ll all begrudgingly be watching one day.
Pellicano may have lived in his own private celluloid Mafia fantasy, but he forcefully imposed his distorted version of reality on those he disliked, and there were many of them. If a person disturbed Tony’s imperious sense of omnipotence in any way, shape or form, he would do his best to see that that poor individual eventually met with an untimely injury, be that through a variety of any of his favorite methods from character assassination to car accidents. As for the annoyance John Connolly was proving to be for him, it seems that Pellicano was going to resort to one of his more physically violent “special” techniques to try to rid himself of that particular nuisance.
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05.08.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes, mass media at 7:41 pm by Administrator
Here in Tinseltown, there are a lot of folks having problems understanding that the crimes which went down in this city during Anthony Pellicano’s mob-style reign were very real and not just some laughable escapade of a balding middle aged Italian man trying to regain his inner Tony Soprano. These are the very same people who produce the scripts that become our media driven concepts of reality. They must have gotten too used to just red lining any distasteful dialogue as they churned out their own press releases. This Hollywood Boys’ Club appears to still be attempting to do some aggressive positive re-branding of the Anthony Pellicano image despite an abundance of forever burgeoning evidence to the contrary.
Of course many involved in the media cover-up in Los Angeles are just looking out for their own guilty butts due to the collusive relationship that they once had with the ‘Pelican’. Then there is that element who truly believe that if it’s not sex, drugs and rock and roll, or at least larger-than-life, it won’t sell. Most, though, simply have genuine difficulty recognizing where fantasy play ends and reality begins. I’d like to remind these guys that the Pellicano saga was a bit more like a modern graphic novel than a D.C. comic book per say, except all the blood had this sickening human stench to it and didn’t really glow fluorescent yellow.
Pellicano was not only a bit off-balance, he was physically violent, a bully and a coward. Prototypically, men like that either go pretty far in society or wind up in prison. Well, Pellicano has managed to do both within one brief lifetime. That man always did say he was the “best”.
The other notion that these frustrated silver screen writers of reality seem to be unable to give up is that truly bad things don’t ever happen to nice people, though they privately revel in watching the rich and powerful tumble from grace. Repeatedly lately, the Los Angeles Times has been profiling select Pellicano victims in such a way that their despicable plights could easily arouse contempt. The LAT’s eulogies for Pellicano’s collaborators, the latest and greatest being to Bert Fields on Sunday, read like Greek tragedies as we watch heroes fall when their mortal weaknesses are revealed. Well, this is all just pure unadulterated garbage and there’s no reason to politely mince words about it.
Unless you’re secretly a pimply adolescent whose been trapped for years in his mother’s basement on the Internet only to emerge a forty something studio executive, you realize that bad things do happen to nice people all the time. A person absolutely didn’t have to deserve it to have their life destroyed by Pellicano. Most of the victims that I’ve met were only guilty of knowing or doing something that inconvenienced Pellicano and one of his clients. As for Pellicano’s A-list cohorts being simply poor, misguided, grateful recipients of his illegal spoils….yeah….right. Let’s try coming up with some better fiction please or at least a more plausible treatment. Ummmn-kay boys?
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05.05.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes, mass media at 3:50 am by Administrator
An uneventful news day on the Anthony Pellicano debacle let’s me highlight an email I was sent recently:
There was an article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday about some rich bitch who was “wronged” by “3 inch Tony,” Boy what a slam. It pissed me off so I am writing the Times about getting real with their collective reporting, and report on regular people who were screwed by “Big Boy.” I am referring to you by initials only, but they will know. Hope it is OK. I just want to raise a few eyebrows down at the Times.
Then this very same person sent the following letter to the Los Angeles Times today:
To: letters@latimes.com
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 11:10 AM
Subject: Jude Green, Divorce Pellicano Style 5-3-06
Dear Editor,
It is articles like this that make me wonder why I still subscribe to your paper. Why not have impotent reporters like Chuck Phillips do some introspection and repent their collective sins of the past with Anthony Pellicano? Why doesn’t your paper write about real people who were ruined, I mean really ruined by Pellicano. This would be some real reporting, who knows Phillips could actual earn an award for investigative reporting, seeing as the last one was for unofficially acting as a press information officer for both Pellicano and the California Medical Board. Yes, that is correct. In the matter of NJF, M.D. Phillips wrote a series of articles which contained privileged and confidential information regarding her case before the Medical Board. It seems that at the most inopportune times articles by Phillips would appear hashed and rehashed, saying the same not factual drivel. All of this seemed to coincide with hearings, or after hearings before the Medical Board.
Believe it or not, Anthony Pellicano, had a major hand in this charade. You see Pellicano worked for Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, at different times, and god knows what his role was but the fact is one of his geek workers, with the initials of T.M. found the bodies of Steve Ammerman, M.D., and approximately six months later found the body of Don Simpson. Both deaths as you know occurred at Simpson’s Bel Air estate. What are the statistical odds of this fact? During her short professional relationship with Don Simpson, NJF, M.D. saw some things she was not supposed to see. This caused some big people, including Pellicano some real ethical, and possibly criminal exposure. So what happened next is a chapter out of Pellicano’s book of dirty tricks. NJF, M.D. was the recipient of your papers one sided wrath. The relationship between Chuck Phillips and others within the Times, and Pellicano cannot be ignored. Thanks to the Times reporting, and an unethical one-sided administrative hearing, NJF,M.D. lost her license. It took several years for this phony kangaroo court decision to be corrected by an appeals court, and her license has been restored.
Time has funny way of correcting sins of the past. If you live long enough, you will see justice done. Today NJF, M.D. is putting her professional life back together after having it ripped apart by Pellicano, Chuck Phillips, and the Medical Board. Pellicano is in jail, where he belongs. And a few dirty cops will be hitting the slam with him. However, I do not think the feds have found them all. I worked for NJF, M.D. as an investigator, and it has always been my contention that there were, and are more dirty cops to be found from her case who were connected to Pellicano. Maybe the feds should be talking to Chuck Phillips and your legal department. I think they should. It would make a real good story. I think it is time for the Times and Chuck Phillips to come clean, before you read about it in the New York Times, or Vanity Fair.
Regards,
James Ellis, LAPD retired
Orange County, California
I did commisurate with Jim (who requested his real name be used for this post) that I doubted the LA Times would even answer or ever publish his very excellent letter to their editor because life is just the way it is sometimes.
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05.04.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, mass media at 12:46 am by Administrator
This week’s award in the Anthony Pellicano fest goes to Page Six of the New York Post so far. Page Six reporters slammed the Los Angeles Times for their feeble coverage of the Pellicano investigation as only Page Six can.
THE Los Angeles Times has never been known for aggressive coverage of Hollywood’s dirty laundry, but its out-to-lunch performance in the Anthony Pellicano case has Tinseltown folks scratching their heads. The paper has been scooped regularly in its own back yard by the New York Times. “This is the biggest scandal in the history of the entertainment business, and the L.A. Times has completely dropped the ball,” said an insider. “Is it just that they are lame, or have important people leaned on them to lay off?” Private eye Pellicano was arrested in 2002 after FBI agents raided his office and found explosives in his safe. The feds also confiscated a huge cache of illegal wiretaps, which has led to the indictment of 14 others. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood have been questioned and may face charges. The N.Y. Times, which has been leaked transcripts of FBI interviews, has detailed Pellicano’s relationships with CAA founder Michael Ovitz, lawyers Bert Fields and Dennis Wasser, Paramount boss Brad Grey and Universal chief Ron Meyer. The L.A. Times hasn’t broken any stories. There was a rumor the paper was hamstrung because it had a relationship with Pellicano, but a spokesman told us, “The Los Angeles Times has never hired Anthony Pellicano.”
The LAT had previously denied hiring Pellicano to Nikki Finke. Actually that only partially answers one of the many questions about the relationship the newspaper and their reporters had over the years with Pellicano. It is true that nearly everyone here in Tinseltown now is denying they were EVER anything but poor victims of the gumshoe, and of course we believe all of them. Credit must be given to supermarket billionaire Ronald W. Burkle’s legal team for being the first to come up with the victim shtick and the beautifully Christian variation on the forgiveness theme that Burkle demonstrated by showering gifts and special favors on Pellicano after Pellicano had threatened to investigate him for his rival in crime, Michael Ovitz.
Did the LAT perhaps have one of those mutually beneficial deals with the incarcerated P.I. in the vein of Burkle? Were gifts and favors exchanged between the LAT and Pellicano in exchange for certain services? Did Pellicano have a strong presence in decision making about what stories the newspaper would ultimately give coverage? In exchange, had Pellicano provided certain scoops on other juicy items and a special venue with some very important people in the biz who controlled the LAT’s prized advertisers?
Perhaps the newspaper’s final exculpatory statement will be more along the thinking of Cigarette Man from the X-Files, “We never, ever hired Anthony Pellicano, we only kept our friends close, and our enemies closer.” Nope, for that novel line of defense to work successfully the LAT still would have to acknowledge just how close they had really been with Pellicano in the past, so they’ll most likely go on denying that anything ever happened for the time being. Is all this starting to bring back fond memories of Bill Clinton’s famous discourse about what the ‘meaning of “is” really is’ right about now to anyone else here?
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05.03.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, crimes at 7:19 pm by Administrator
Kat Pellicano is busy hunting for a publisher to purchase the rights to what appears might be her already written book. The following is a notification that was posted May 2nd on the Publisher’s Marketplace website:
Listening In: The Story of Kat Pellicano
Author: Kat Pellicano with Ellen Rosner Feig and VallaRae McDade
Description: Kat Pellicano’s ex husband, Anthony Pellicano, is one of America’s most notorious and high profile private investigators. During her twenty year marriage to Anthony, Kat ran the business and sat in on meetings with celebrities including Michael Jackson and others. In this tell all memoir, Kat relates her life as a teen in Oklahoma dreaming of Hollywood grandeur, of her first meeting with charismatic, Anthony, of their subsequent marriage and birth of four children, of the drama surrounding Anthony’s growing business and celebrity and of the ultimate end of the marriage to which she had centered her life. With the growing press around the upcoming trial of Pellicano and a recent Vanity Fair article Kat is fighting, this book is one that tells the tale of the woman behind the man.
Rights available: All
Other information: Attorney Ellen Feig is a multi-published author and editor. Her book, The Ex Files; Women, Litigation and Liberty will be released in June 2006.
Contact: Mary Sue Seymour
The Seymour Agency
marysue@slic.com
phone: (315) 386 - 1831
fax: (315) 386 - 1037
475 Miner Street Road, Canton, NY 13617
Let’s hope that Kat Pellicano’s new book truly won’t be of the tell-all variant. After going back and rereading the recent Vanity Fair tome on her ex-husband, and carefully eliminating every item that Kat Pellicano refuted last week to Nikki Finke, I for one don’t want to read any more dirty little secrets from the woman about her now defunct marriage especially after hearing that originally Kat would joke to people that the name of her book was going to be, “Married to a Three Inch Dick”, a reference to Pellicano’s legendary lack of sexual apparatus.
What I would like to know though is just how duplicitous she had been with Tony’s crimes since she now lays claim to running the business as well as sitting in on meetings with Tony’s clients for the twenty years of their marriage? Since Kat and Tony were divorced before the investigation even started, marital privilege would no longer apply to any federal grand jury testimony that she would have surely been subpoenaed to make. What was the upshot of that testimony and how has she escaped indictment thus far given all her lauded presence in her ex-husband’s shady business dealings? Unless Kat is willing to disclose some of those juicy tidbits, it doesn’t seem like there’d be much of any audience left really for what type of lotion she used during Tony’s pre-Viagra days, once weekly rub downs.
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04.29.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes, mass media at 9:32 pm by Administrator
Seems like Chuck Philips, Anthony Pellicano’s old beat reporting friend at the Los Angeles Times, is working on a special piece about the incarcerated P.I. Consistent with Philips’ cozy relationship with Tony, he wants to do more of an up close and personal profile to really show the true man. Philips must also be getting a little desperate lately for something to write about. He hasn’t gotten any real scoops since 2002, when his favorite anonymous source was sent off to prison. Philips and the LAT feel that the rest of the media has just been too hard on poor old Tony as they try to help recreate the gumshoe’s halcyon glories.
Philips is busy contacting many of Pellicano’s former co-workers and clients to obtain some warm and fuzzy anecdotage about the gumshoe’s quirky traits. In one of these conversations, Philips derided that recent threat Pellicano had made against journalist John Connolly’s safety when the explosive Vanity Fair article premiered.
According to Philips, both he and his newspaper don’t believe that Pellicano would physically threaten journalists as had occurred with John Connolly, Anita Busch and Ned Zelman. In fact, he added, at the LAT they never believed “any of it” and that’s why they haven’t given “anything like that” real coverage. Philips wouldn’t leave well enough alone in singing Tony’s praises (which really isn’t the wisest thing to do, Chuck old boy, when trying to get information out of sources who might disagree with you right now). Philips opined that Tony could never/would never do such terrible things to people. Philips and the LAT had worked with Tony for years and they both respected and admired the man and his work.
Well, duh, so there’s the explanation for the LAT’s peculiarly positive bias and soft coverage of the Pellicano case in a nutshell. Does anyone else wonder if some of that newspaper’s staff has been called yet to testify before the Grand Jury? Let’s all be patient and the New York Times will tell us.
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Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, crimes at 3:12 am by Administrator
So much is being written now about who did and did not hire Anthony Pellicano, it’s seems fitting to devote at least a parcel of Internet space to Pellicano’s victims. Most of them weren’t famous celebrities, like those models, actors and producers who’ve been profiled. Who can feel sorry for victims like that? That mogul’s ex-wife, Bonder Kerkorian, only wanted a few hundred thousand every month for family support and she probably got what she had coming anyway. Damn, even Linda Doucett had enough money left that she could comfortably retire to nuzzle horses in California. Pellicano was just a man in search of the Jewish God who only wanted a rubdown once a week from his wife. Is that too much to ask for? He even was rumored to be a family man who’d honorably refuse to wiretap people who had had debts welched on, like his billionaire friend Burkle. Anthony Pellicano was a man of discriminating taste who made sure that he only preyed on the “bad” people.
Uh, no.
Pellicano was a monster. He wasn’t any flesh and blood recreation of a Phillip Marlowe celluloid character; he was something out of Saw II. But don’t take my word for it just because I had the pleasure of meeting the man several times and the personal delight of practically being ground out of existence by his Tinseltown machine. Let’s look at how some other victims felt instead:
“That’s what I have been doing for the past 7 years and actually the reason I contacted you…Unfortunately, the victories have been few and far between for me. I’ll never be able to forget any of it but if I’m ultimately successful maybe it will be easier to live with. I’m not interested in any more lawsuits, just looking for a little justice and vindication from…the people who told me “No”.”
“I was a Jane Doe in the Jones case “aka Limousine Rapist”. [Jones] put GHB in girls drinks and raped them. Most of the girls frequented the clubs where he did this. I “met” Jones when I was out celebrating my birthday, actually on my way home and did and do not frequent the clubs. In fact, the irony is it was probably one of 2 times I went out to a club in years. The DA’s office had to relocate their task force in the beginning because women from as far back as the early 80’s were coming forward and there were so many they couldn’t keep up. Soon after he was released on bail he was put back in and denied bail for 2 1/2 years because he committed more acts and was caught with notes to him to pay off girls and get to the families along with 800,000 in cash. Pellicano was hired from the beginning and the DA’s office told me to expect him to be watching and listening to me which I later learned he had from the FBI. The DA’s told me their phones were bugged as well. Jones’ first set of attorneys were Danny Davis and Ron Richards who also represented a friend of Jones, Andrew Luster the Max Factor heir that did the same thing to women and taped it. Upon a year of nothing happening in the criminal case I filed a civil case to protect my rights. I went through hell for the next 3 years, looking over my shoulder, defending myself against ludicrous lies and trying to make sure I did everything I could on my end.”
“I’m a former wife and biz partner to a very connected Hollywood producer who’s produced Secret Service/CIA movies. Thanks to [Pellicano’s] thug mystique, a corrupt justice system and the Pellicano type element in Hollywood, I went through a most hellacious divorce and partnership split that involved harassment, bribery, traitor attorneys, manufactured evidence, constant perjury, industry blackballing, police bullying, you name it. Wire tapping was the least of it. [I] have a disabled son and I’ve lived in fear alongside some hope that by being silent (mostly) my son will not continue to suffer from the outrageousness on top of his disability. I was hoping for some justice…”
The common theme of these victims is fear and hope. The common desire is revenge…which isn’t such a bad thing really. Wouldn’t you want revenge too if some criminal had tried to rob you of all your personal integrity and identity?
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