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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06.10.06
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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05.24.06
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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05.20.06
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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05.08.06
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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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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04.20.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes at 3:51 am by Administrator
Just sent off the following letter to David Garcia, the media co-ordinator of the Los Angeles Times, asking him for a bit more elucidation about his newspaper’s involvement with Anthony Pellicano. I will be posting his reply. He is currently out of the office till April 24, 2006.
Dear Mr Garcia,
I noticed yesterday that you made a statement to Nikki Finke regarding your newspaper’s past involvement with Anthony Pellicano. I was hoping that you might be able to clarify your statement further along the following lines of inquiry:
1. Did the LAT ever use Pellicano’s services without financial reimbursement but in a fashion that might be considered as mutually beneficial for both parties?
2. Did LAT reporters, either staff or freelance, ever use tips from Mr. Pellicano verbatim as an anonymous source without corroborating the information?
3. Did the LAT ever give preferential treatment to stories about Pellicano’s clients, many of whom have helped provide substantial advertising revenue for your paper in the past?
4. With what frequency was Mr. Pellicano in the LAT’s offices and were person’s related to the LAT in Mr. Pellicano’s offices? What was the frequency of phone contact with Mr. Pellicano and by whom?
5. Did your staff or freelance employees ever receive monetary gifts or favors from Mr. Pellicano?
6. Were any of your staff or freelance employees also on Mr. Pellicano’s payroll?
7. One of your staff reporters, Chuck Philips, as recently as last year, boasted to other journalists that he had a very “special” relationship with Mr. Pellicano. Could you please have Mr. Philips define what he meant by very “special”.
8. Can you explain what has come to be regarded by many as your newspaper’s positive bias towards Pellicano and his clients in your articles, both in the past and recently?
Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
Nomi Fredrick M.D.
http://anthonypellicanoweblinks.com
http://anthonypellicanoweblinks.com/blog
For anyone interested in sending Mr. Garcia an email, please write to him at david.garcia@latimes.com.
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04.19.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes at 12:27 am by Administrator
David Garcia, the Los Angeles Times’ director of media relations actually made a statement to Nicki Finke today, after refusing to respond to numerous other reporters’ queries: “The Los Angeles Times, including its legal department, has never hired Anthony Pellicano ever. This includes in-house legal counsel as well as any outside legal counsel working on behalf of the Times.” Nicki is polite in attributing the response to a “semantics game”. I’ll be so politically incorrect as to call it a likely bold misrepresentation of the truth.
I’m absolutely not calling Mr. Garcia a fibber, but his statement reminds me of a particularly cogent quote from Upton Sinclair:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
Even if Mr. Garcia does indeed understand the situation at the LAT, he still seems very careful to avoid mention of if his employer ever used Pellicano’s services without financial reimbursement, sort of in the vain of I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Did his newspaper’s reporters ever use Pellicano’s tidbits as uncorroborated sources of information for their stories? Did the LAT ever bury stories out of service to Pellicano’s clients while putting others on their front page, vis a vis the type of trading that Pellicano was famous for doing with the tabloids from the Mitteager tapes? Was Pellicano ever in their offices? Were their reporters ever in Pellicano’s offices? Did their staff receive any monetary gifts or favors from the disgraced P.I.? Were any of the LAT’s staff also on Pellicano’s payroll? Those are just a few of the many questions that Mr. Garcia should be able to clearly answer for both the LAT’s public and the journalistic community at this point.
Just on the face value of what Mr. Garcia said, and hoping for it to be true, I might conclude that the LAT never actually paid to have someone wiretapped though the paper still might have benefitted from Pellicano’s ill gotten spoils in their scoops on the entertainment industry. Essentially then no federal crime was committed by his newspaper. What I have no sense of however from Mr Garcia’s statement was if the LAT acted in an ethical manner delivering news objectively in a way that was fair and balanced to a city of over 9 million.
Mr. Garcia, I think I’ll write you a letter myself. If you answer, I promise to not only post it here but also distribute it to every journalist I know to stop those ugly rumors that have been circulating around Tinseltown about the Los Angeles Times’ collusive involvement with Anthony Pellicano.
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04.18.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes, mass media at 3:19 am by Administrator
All those skeletons in people’s closets must really be rattling by now if they were ever involved with Anthony Pellicano. The sixth person in the Pellicano investigation, director John McTiernan, rolled with a sealed plea agreement which likely indicates he’s ratting others out to the prosecutors at this very moment. If things keep going this way, there are soon going to be more guys pleading guilty than proclaiming their continued innocence in the case. It does give one pause to think how much longer Pellicano will be able to maintain his mum posture. If he continues tight-lipped he will likely die an old man in prison. A deal with the U.S. Attorney would really be in his best interest, sheesh…just look what Abramoff is going to be getting away with. Maybe some of the A-list Hollywood types and government politicos are threatening Pellicano’s family or offering financial renumeration to buy his continued silence. After all, the man has nine children and six ex-wives still to support.
The Los Angeles Times had peculiarly unique reporting, once again, about McTiernan’s plea bargain. Even though Reuters reported that McTiernan admitted that he had lied to agents when he said that he had not asked Pellicano to wiretap producer Charles Roven, the Los Angeles Times quoted McTiernan as simultaneously saying that he did not know that Pellicano had used illegal wiretaps in any investigation. Perhaps the LAT’s reporter, Andrew Blankstein, was just in the wrong courtroom this afternoon. As Nicki Finke commented, the Los Angeles Times’ inability to hit hard at the Hollywood types caught up in the Pellicano mess thus far has given rise to some major rumors. The newspaper itself probably hired Pellicano to do work for it’s legal department in the past as well as used him as an anonymous source for a number of their articles. They had a consistently favorable bias (or lack of any real coverage) for most of Pellicano’s clients, including Delorean, Belushi, Judas Priest, Michael Jackson, Don Simpson and serial date rapist Gordon Jones, let alone the disgraced gumshoe himself. So whose going to investigate the Los Angeles Times, the FBI or the New York Times?
I call “tails.”
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03.27.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times at 11:37 pm by Administrator
The Los Angeles Times started a special section all about Anthony Pellicano this past Saturday. Interestingly it all happened the same day my blog was hacked into and a day after my original post about the peculiar relaltionship between the Los Angeles Times and Pellicano was distributed to over 2,000 readers on the Internet. I’ve also heard that an especially good journalist has been recently asking questions of the LA Times that are making them very nervous about their past involvement with Pellicano. Of course this could all be odd circumstance and I’m not pointing fingers at anybody, but I am entitled to have my own opinions on the chain of events.
The Times now bills that they are giving “complete coverage” to the Pellicano investigation. Well, for complete coverage there’s still a lot lacking. Reading their article about Anita Busch today I couldn’t help but notice how this interesting sentence was slipped in that “As the racketeering investigation has widened, a big unknown is the extent to which Pellicano acted at the behest of high-powered lawyers or their clients — or on his own in a bid to impress them.” It was frankly a non-sequitter and had nothing to do with the rest of the story that they were reporting on.
So why would the LA Times have a vested interest in continuing to bring to it’s readers the concept that Pellicano acted on his own without his client’s knowledge? Is it just fair and unbiased reporting or because of a second agenda on their part? Was the Los Angeles Times one of Pellicano’s many A-list clients in Tinseltown?
Personally, I find those fascinating questions and I would like to know.
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Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes, mass media at 1:20 am by Administrator
An article about Eric Portocarrero that appeared a few days ago in the Los Angeles Times is actually a lot more interesting than all the recent blather about Keith Carradine suing Anthony Pellicano et al. Yes, I loved Keith Carradine in Nashville but pretty much since then, “feh.”
Someone in LAPD informed me today that Arneson was working Vice at the time the whole Portocarrerro blackmail thing came down. Of course that obviously wasn’t reported in the Los Angeles Times but …. least I get caustic here.
Arneson took the fifth when questioned in the Portocarrerro case, which in my FOX News and Court TV trained mind implies guilt and not innocence. The question is what exactly is Arneson guilty of. We know that he’s been indicted for accessing confidential government databases to secure personal information for Pellicano. The fact that Arneson was working in Vice at that time and gave Pellicano information on an ongoing criminal investigation implies that he was a snitch as well.
That raises a question for me, and I hope you as well, about who all Pellicano’s snitches were. Were they on his payroll that the FBI has? Where, besides the LAPD, did they work? With all the embarassing tidbits that the gumshoe dug up and created on people, there must have been a slew of paid informants. People like that don’t tend to do it for gratis.
Pellicano actually alluded to his use of paid informants in those illicitly recorded tapes of him that surfaced with Paul Barresi from Jim Mitteager in the ’90s. Wouldn’t it be delightful if some investigative journalist started reporting on that aspect of the Pellicano debacle?
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03.25.06
Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes, mass media at 11:42 pm by Administrator
Nearly everyone in Los Angeles, from the beat cop to the studio executive, knew that Anthony Pellicano was used by many of the power players to do what they needed to be done with “no questions asked”. What took the “traditional media” so long to “get it”? Why haven’t the many investigative journalists in Pellicano’s hometown really looked into not only who hired him but what was common knowledge about Pellicano’s shenanigans for well over the past decade? Were they truly ignorant of Pellicano’s illegal tactics, even though at least since 1993 his victims have bitterly complained to anyone who might listen to them? One has to give a moment’s thought especially to the behavior of the Los Angeles Times in this morass. After all, they are the premiere newspaper on Pellicano’s home turf.
Initially, in their early reporting about Pellicano, they gushed like love-struck school girls about his daring feats and deeds of wonder from Delorean to Judas Priest to Michael Jackson fame. They were the first and often the only news organization to always report the incarcerated P.I.’s viewpoint. Everytime Pellicano said, “I wasn’t there” (when he was spotted outside Nicole Simpson’s house the night she and Ron Goldman were brutally murdered), “I didn’t sanitize anything” (when the coroner said that Don Simpson’s death scene had been altered) and down to “I’ll never snitch on my clients” (right before Pellicano went to federal prison in 2003) the LA Times was thoroughly Johnny On The Spot.
One of the Time’s staff reporters , Chuck Philips, who was the lucky one to get the gumshoe’s “I’ll never snitch” swan song, often bragged that he had a very “special” relationship with Pellicano. Again, it gives one pause to wonder exactly what sort of objective journalism was involved in the many stories he covered for the Times since 1990 where Pellicano had been an active player. These stories included Judas Priest, Michael Jackson and Don Simpson to mention a smattering. Philips appeared to be only one of a burdgeoning crowd at the Times though.
Taking a look at what the Los Angeles Times chose to give almost no coverage to is equally arresting. They barely reported on the Jones rape case that was happening on their own doorstep. They helped demonize their own reporter, Anita Busch, when she was hounded by Pellicano and sought appropriate legal relief. They also failed to report anything of importance really on the ongoing federal investigation about Pellicano’s wiretapping and extortion for almost the past three years, unless they were forced into it by competing news agencies or blogs.
Okay, maybe the Los Angeles Times is just allowed to have had their own opinion on things in the past. Perhaps their editors, reporters and attorneys thought that Pellicano was really a nice, cuddly guy and had actually used his services themselves. What explains their continued rose-colored glasses perception of the events in the Pellicano investigation now? Everyone I’ve been talking to here in Tinseltown has been watching the New York Times mercilessly beat them on any news story really worth reporting on rather than just lift off the Associated Press wire.
The media is finally becoming excellent again in reporting on multiple levels of political and financial corruption. What happens though, when they themselves are one of the corrupt entitites in an emerging news story. Whose job is it then to do honest investigative journalism on that ugly can of worms?
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Posted in anthony pellicano, pellicano, los angeles times, crimes at 11:20 pm by Administrator
It’s sort of peculiar that one day after I posted about the funny relationship between the Los Angeles Times and Anthony Pellicano that my original blog was completely hacked into and destroyed.
Whoever did that will be reported to the appropriate federal agencies immediately. I just want to tell them personally that what you did was a crime far beyond just being a not nice thing.
I want to apologize to the many people who had registered on this blog as subscribers. All that information was completely lost and you will have to subscribe again. I will be emailing all of you shortly after I repost several of the original articles that appeared on this blog before it was destroyed.
Thank you all for patience.
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