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?…

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.”

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

Now, there are no fingers being pointed here at anyone. Websites get hacked into constantly and computers do die painful deaths of their own accord. I always found something interesting though, which happened when I put some spiffy software into my new digs. This software was magical and would tell me if anyone was trying to access my computer, and what their geographic location was. I kept on getting addresses in Chicago and the Valley until I filed a slew of complaints with the federal government and then all was quiet for some time after. All the computer woes were just an extreme nuisance and inconvenience for me really. It wasn’t near as unsettling as a physical threat on my own personal health which had apparently happened to John Connolly proximate to the time of that Vanity Fair article’s publication. Could Tony have been valiantly trying to defend one of his ex-wives’ honor with his threat? That would at least have a noble ring to it, consistent with Kat now claiming that Tony had only wanted to convert to Judaism because he believed in Judaism more than his own faith and not just to please a man twenty years his senior, Bert Fields.

It’s not easy to understand why the Pellicanos are at war now with Connolly. After reading the Vanity Fair article, I was left with the impression that Burroughs and Connolly were being quite kind, especially to Kat Pellicano. I had also been left with many unanswered questions in fact. Since Kat Pellicano had been married to Tony during the height of his reign of terror in Tinseltown, did she know of any of the crimes that he has been accused of committing? Had she in any way colluded or participated in them? Had she benefited from Tony’s ill gotten fortunes? Since Kat and Tony are currently divorced, marital privilege would no longer apply legally and had she been called to testify before the Grand Jury?

Kat Pellicano’s communication with Finke got me wondering even more. Does that imply except for (1) Tony’s reason to convert to Judaism (2) Kat’s daughter telling her to call Tony “asshole” to make him go away (3) Tony demanding his children kiss his ring finger like Don Corleone and (4) Kat and Tony’s son being in Tony’s “war” room, that everything else mentioned in that lengthy Vanity Fair article was true? Hmmn…

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.”

The Pellicano Case: Recently, I met with a talent manager who hired Anthony Pellicano during the mid-1990’s, on behalf of a movie-star client with a female-stalker problem. As the manager recounted it, their first meeting eerily foreshadowed Jared Paul Stern: “Pellicano offered us a laundry list—a menu—and asked exactly how far we wanted to take this,” the manager said. “Nobody can plead naïve here. We all knew exactly what we’d bargained for and what we were getting billed for.”—Bruce Fierstein, New York Observer

It’s not that this revelation about Anthony Pellicano is exactly new but it’s beyond the imagination as to why more reporters in Los Angeles aren’t mentioning it. Not withstanding the complaints of his victims but Pellicano’s very own clients have publicly admitted using his wiretapping services since at least 1993. Howard Wietzman was the first one to laud the disgraced P.I.’s skills in the area. When Pellicano illicitily taped a phone conversation with attorney Barry Rothman, who represented the accuser’s father in the 1993 Michael Jackson sexual abuse scandal, Weitzman said that although Rothman was not informed that the 25 minute conversation with Pellicano was being taped, Pellicano was not breaking the law because it permitted secret taping in cases of suspected extortion. The Jackson camp subsequently purported to have other tapes, most of which didn’t involve conversations with Pellicano. I asked not just a few people about the veracity of what Weitzman had mentioned about the legality of the wiretaps, and suffice it to say that they had a very different opinion of what the laws on wiretapping were in California back in 1993.

In the Gordon Jones multiple date rape case, both Jones’ attorneys, Ronald Richards and Daniel Davis have publicly acknowledged listening to illegal tapes made by Pellicano, but they denied authorizing the taps. Pellicano’s recordings included more than 30 phone calls made by Jane Doe No. 3, one of Jones’ alleged victims. Davis’ bail motions included portions of Jane Doe No. 3’s taped conversations that could only have come from illicit recordings. According to a memo written by Davis, Richards suggested that one of the rape victims be pressured not to cooperate with prosecutors, but Davis worried that the alleged victim would ask the D.A. to start a “formal inquiry.” Richards had told Jane Doe No. 3 the defense had tapes of her phone calls. Davis told Richards that the tapes “would not legally be admissible” in court, and that they could “implicate Pellicano and Richards in a conspiracy to illegally tape conversations.”

D.A. Steve Cooley admitted that the Garcetti administration investigated Pellicano’s activities in 1999. Court documents and police records from the Jones case reinforce the notion that prosecutors knew about the illegal wiretaps in 1999 as well.

So the question is not who knew what Pellicano was doing, but who didn’t?

“You know what is kind of interesting. All the things about Pellicano were talked about in hushed tones 5….10 years ago. Everyone knew he was an asshole, hell I even heard about him and I’m a zero, all except the feds for who he did work for. Isn’t it funny how the feds come on the tail end of things like this after all the carnage and damage he was allowed to perpetrate, just like 9-11. The feds are like the Highway Patrol, where are they when you need them? I could just go on and on. The more you read about them the less you will like them, just like Pellicano. You may quote me.”

My friend’s email is bothering me, despite my morning run, especially in light of the fact that Pellicano did work regularly for the federal government since the late ’70s. Albeit the Los Angeles media’s positive bias towards Pellicano certainly didn’t facilitate the unearthing of nasty details about the man and neither did his many friends in local law enforcement besides just Mark Arneson. But why was the federal government using Pellicano so very much as an expert practically up until his incarceration? As recently as 2001 Pellicano was hired to analyze the FBI’s audio tapes of former Ku Klux Klansmen in the 1963 church bombing that killed four Black school girls. Don’t they have anyone more skilled working there than Michael Brown lately?

There’s also that bit about Hilary Clinton’s association to Pellicano in the Bill sex-gate scandals. Not so much for the fact that the powers that were back in the 90’s tried to hush the opposition (just look at the news for the past few days on President Bush) but for the fact that they hired Pellicano for that task. Why did our former first couple turn to a high school drop out and a two bit thug from the South side of Chicago for protection of their vital interests? Couldn’t they get better?

As long as I’m fixating on this, how did Pellicano in 1978 get $300,000 to finance his own analysis of the McGruder tapes that were then submitted and accepted (though never requested) by the Select Committee on Assassinations. Why did the committee ever even listen to him, let alone take Pellicano seriously enough that his analysis helped definitely solve that only one shooter was involved in the JFK assassination? Why was Pellicano the sole expert allowed to testify that that crucial 18.5 minutes of Nixon’s conversation on the Watergate tapes had been “accidentally erased” by Rosemary Woods? After all, all Pellicano had done to that time of note was find Mike Todd’s missing remains for Elizabeth Taylor.

This whole Pellicano mess could really get a whole lot uglier. It’s a damn shame that Fitzgerald is tied up with that Plame business right now. Wonder if he has a brother…

This should all get kind of interesting with Pelicano’s attorney, Stephen Gruel, arguing that the certain documents aren’t admissible but with five former Pellicano clients already stating (without coercion) that the statements within them are true.

Nicki Finke, of LA Weekly, recently started talking about the analogy of “rats” in relationship to the Pellicano investigation. Least I presume that that implies “rats leaving a sinking ship” which I totally agree with. Bullies have always been rats, which I learned long ago from a public school yard in the inner city.

It seems that U.S. Attorney Saunders is an exceptionally skilled prosecutor. Rather than going after the ‘big fish’ initially, he chooses to go after the ‘little fish’ who are most likely to fold and help build the government’s case. After all, Saunders does have infinite time to prosecute anyone he wants to under Ricco laws, which is what he’s operating under. What’s becoming painfully apparent, and completely undermining any Hollywood hype, is that Anthony Pellicano would work for any one who would pay his exorbitant fees, not just celebrity types. The imprisoned P.I. absolutely didn’t care if he was being asked to cover up crimes that ranged from rape to child molestation to tired and blaise Tinseltown scandals. Let’s not even get into if his clients were guilty or not. If someone would pay him at least $100,000 Pellicano was the definitely the go-to guy for the rich and now infamous.

Let me take this blog space on the Internet to fully commend Daniel Saunders and FBI Special Agent Stan Ornellas for their excellent work to this point on the Anthony Pellicano investigation. Dear God, someone has to, what with all the defense attorneys now complaining that their clients are ’suffering’ with the prolonged prosecution of the Pellicano case and the media gossips itching for blood. I know it’s all been painfully slow but it’s damn fruitful. Congrats!

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?

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?

Pellicano’s connections went far beyond simple cops on the beat for him to have gotten away with what he did for so long. His network was efficently spread within police detectives, district attorneys, attorney generals and news reporters so that he could destroy the lives of many innocent people who crossed his path. I know my own story too well, but having been doing this website now for well over a year, I’ve had the opportunity to hear from a variety of other non-celebrity victims. Pellicano really appears to have had a penchant for hurting women particularly.

It would be refreshing if the mass media began reporting the real underbelly of the Pellicano debacle…but first they might have to own up to their own duplicity in the matter.