Pellicano and friends

I'm late tuning in to the Hollywood wiretap story, but it has caught my interest. The federal investigation of prison-bound private investigator Anthony Pellicano and his clandestine work for entertainment figures has developed major media legs. The L.A. Times says today that entertainment attorney Bert Fields "appears to be a major focus of the probe," and quotes Grand Jury witnesses who were asked extensive questions about Fields. (Fields insists he is a "subject" not a "target" of the feds) Variety story Nov. 6

The LAT piece carries five credit lines, all of reporters with strong investigative credentials from several departments, as did a Saturday front-pager:

What began with a crude attempt to intimidate a reporter has grown into a federal wiretapping investigation that has rattled Hollywood's legal elite...

"There are many, many nervous people in town," said one white-collar defense lawyer familiar with parties involved in the investigation. "A lot of entertainment lawyers hired Pellicano."

The New York Times ran a story yesterday with three bylines including that of contract investigative reporter Lowell Bergman, who produces pieces for the PBS series "Frontline" from an office at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The lede:

The case began with a dead fish and a rose in an aluminum pan, left on the hood of a car parked on a Los Angeles street. Taped to the windshield of the car, which belonged to a reporter for The Los Angeles Times, was a piece of cardboard with a single word: "Stop."

The discovery in June 2002 - for which an ex-convict was later arrested - unleashed a chain of events that has suddenly entwined many of the Hollywood elite and threatens to turn into the kind of scandal that the show business world has not faced in decades. Managers, actors, businessmen and lawyers are being questioned, and in some cases subpoenaed, by the federal government in a widening grand jury investigation of suspected illegal wiretapping that has moved beyond Los Angeles to New York, according to entertainers, producers, lawyers and others involved in the inquiry...

[edited]

It remains unclear how much information the government has about Mr. Pellicano's actions, and whether the lawyers and clients who retained the private investigator knew of any wiretapping. Still, at virtually every movie premiere, in studio commissaries, over lunch at the Grill and at other show business hangouts, the investigation, and who is being called before the grand jury, have become the major topic of discussion.

The threatened reporter was the LAT's Anita Busch, who was asking questions last year about actor Steven Seagal and his links to alleged mafia associate Julius Nasso. Police traced the threat back to Pellicano, and when the feds raided his Sunset Boulevard office they found C4 explosive and hand grenades, as well as a computer with an abundance of confidential data on cases. Pellicano this month begins a federal prison sentence for possessing the explosives.

It feels like the kind of competitive local scandal where law enforcement and Hollywood reporters will make (or break) their reputations. It reminds me I need to renew at the Wall Street Journal and keep up with how Bruce Orwall, John Lippman and the others are doing on the story. For the insatiable, there's also blogger Luke Ford, who has long had something of an obsession with both Busch and Pellicano as stories. He's currently running a long email from Hollywood journalist Ross Johnson with a take on the case (scroll down to the headline "The Scoop On The Chameleon Group, Anthony Pellicano, Anita Busch").