Post | 04/21/2008 10:57 am
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Share'wOw Friend' Diane Dimond: In My Constitutionally Protected Opinion, Anthony Pellicano Is Guilty
EDITOR’S NOTE: Diane Dimond is an investigative reporter, author and columnist based now in Rockland County, New York and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I love crime. I love to read about it and write about it. What I don’t like is to live through it.
There’s a trial going on out in Los Angeles right now that brings back a flood of disturbing memories.
On trial is a guy who calls himself the “Sin Eater” — former private detective to the stars, Anthony Pellicano. He’s on trial for, among other things, illegally threatening and wiretapping the phones of his client’s foes, including reporters who were investigating Hollywood bigwigs.
Pellicano’s co-defendants include a former cop, a telephone company worker and a lawyer. The prosecution says Pellicano had a web of cohorts that he relied on whenever he wanted to go after someone, including ex-cons when he needed muscle.
In my opinion, Pellicano is guilty as charged. I know Anita Busch, the freelance reporter he’s currently charged with threatening. She was investigating information about either actor Steven Seagal or Hollywood powerhouse Michael Ovitz. It’s unclear who her target was but both Seagal and Ovitz have hired Pellicano in the past. Busch is still scared to death and was literally driven out of journalism by her fear.
In my constitutionally protected opinion, Pellicano is guilty now just as he was when he started hounding me back in the mid-90s.
I was working for the TV show Hard Copy, just breaking news that Michael Jackson was under investigation for possibly molesting young boys. Pellicano was practically on retainer for one of Jackson’s lawyers and he zeroed in on me.
Suddenly, growing mobs of Jackson fans would surround me as I left work, taunting, threatening and following me to my car. My office phone on the Paramount Pictures lot began to pop and crackle. Things I said only over that phone began to come back to me in strange ways. Funny things started to happen at my house. My mailbox was mowed down, the fountain near my front door was tampered with. Hard Copy arranged for a security sweep at my house. Ultimately they provided me with bodyguards to follow me to and from work.
My journalist husband, Michael, and I devised a red-herring scheme to see if my work phone really was tapped.
At an arranged time Michael called me and said, “So how’s that half hour special about Pellicano coming?”
“Oh, terrific,” I said. “Pellicano is gonna have a conniption when he sees it!”
“OK, honey,” my husband said. “See you at home tonight.”
I sat down and watched the clock on my desk. Twenty-two minutes later my phone rang. It was the Paramount legal department.
“Hey, Diane,” a lawyer named Cindy said to me, “I really need to see that script on the Pellicano special before you start editing.”
Cindy, I knew, had come to Paramount via the law offices of uber-entertainment lawyer Howard Weitzman. Weitzman and Michael Jackson’s lead attorney, Bert Fields, were best buddies. I imagined in my mind how the phone tree had worked right after my husband and I hung up.
It had taken only 22 minutes for the planted information to come back to me. There was no Pellicano special in the works – there never had been - and I told that to a confused Lawyer Cindy.
I had my proof that someone was listening in on that phone line. I never used it again.
A decade later a very high ranking source within the FBI told me they’d confiscated about a billion computer pages of wiretap transcripts from Pellicano’s office. Among them were mine.
I love crime. I love to read about it and write about it. What I don’t like is to live through it.
There’s a trial going on out in Los Angeles right now that brings back a flood of disturbing memories.
On trial is a guy who calls himself the “Sin Eater” — former private detective to the stars, Anthony Pellicano. He’s on trial for, among other things, illegally threatening and wiretapping the phones of his client’s foes, including reporters who were investigating Hollywood bigwigs.
Pellicano’s co-defendants include a former cop, a telephone company worker and a lawyer. The prosecution says Pellicano had a web of cohorts that he relied on whenever he wanted to go after someone, including ex-cons when he needed muscle.
In my opinion, Pellicano is guilty as charged. I know Anita Busch, the freelance reporter he’s currently charged with threatening. She was investigating information about either actor Steven Seagal or Hollywood powerhouse Michael Ovitz. It’s unclear who her target was but both Seagal and Ovitz have hired Pellicano in the past. Busch is still scared to death and was literally driven out of journalism by her fear.
In my constitutionally protected opinion, Pellicano is guilty now just as he was when he started hounding me back in the mid-90s.
I was working for the TV show Hard Copy, just breaking news that Michael Jackson was under investigation for possibly molesting young boys. Pellicano was practically on retainer for one of Jackson’s lawyers and he zeroed in on me.
Suddenly, growing mobs of Jackson fans would surround me as I left work, taunting, threatening and following me to my car. My office phone on the Paramount Pictures lot began to pop and crackle. Things I said only over that phone began to come back to me in strange ways. Funny things started to happen at my house. My mailbox was mowed down, the fountain near my front door was tampered with. Hard Copy arranged for a security sweep at my house. Ultimately they provided me with bodyguards to follow me to and from work.
My journalist husband, Michael, and I devised a red-herring scheme to see if my work phone really was tapped.
At an arranged time Michael called me and said, “So how’s that half hour special about Pellicano coming?”
“Oh, terrific,” I said. “Pellicano is gonna have a conniption when he sees it!”
“OK, honey,” my husband said. “See you at home tonight.”
I sat down and watched the clock on my desk. Twenty-two minutes later my phone rang. It was the Paramount legal department.
“Hey, Diane,” a lawyer named Cindy said to me, “I really need to see that script on the Pellicano special before you start editing.”
Cindy, I knew, had come to Paramount via the law offices of uber-entertainment lawyer Howard Weitzman. Weitzman and Michael Jackson’s lead attorney, Bert Fields, were best buddies. I imagined in my mind how the phone tree had worked right after my husband and I hung up.
It had taken only 22 minutes for the planted information to come back to me. There was no Pellicano special in the works – there never had been - and I told that to a confused Lawyer Cindy.
I had my proof that someone was listening in on that phone line. I never used it again.
A decade later a very high ranking source within the FBI told me they’d confiscated about a billion computer pages of wiretap transcripts from Pellicano’s office. Among them were mine.
Read more about: A Friend Stopped By, Anita Busch, Anthony Pellicano, Hollywood, Michael Ovitz, Steven Seagal
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15 Reader Comments (so far…)
Unbelievable. Glad you survived to tell this tale. Sounds like a Grisham novel.
Maybe you should think twice before working for sleeze bag shows like Hard Copy……
Diane, Tres fort writing, dramatic, compelling, exciting!
Now, can you use your talents to write about someone doing something really interesting and constructive? What on earth is the fascination with gangsters and thugs? Why devote your talents to that? Oh, gee, we can kill and rape people, we can sell drugs to troubled souls, we can steal cars, we can burn down buildings, we can break into houses, we can sell women into sexual slavery. Okay. Got it. And we can chase the people around who do these things and spend endless tax dollars putting them in cages. Also got it. What else you got?
Ms. Dimond may write about whatever she chooses to. If gangsters and thugs fascinate her, so be it. I would not tell another writer what she should use her talents on; that sounds somewhat judgemental. I know I would not appreciate being told what I should write about.
I didn’t “tell” her, I asked her. Our media is totally filled with the fascination I outlined. Just as I asked Ms. Dimond if her pony knew any other tricks, I want to know if our culture in general does. I appreciate your comment, M.L. And of course she may write about whatever she chooses to. Not in dispute.
Pelicano thought he was above the law. He engaged in illegal
wiretapping. He did the crime, now he must face the consequences.
What a truly scary story… I hope Mr Pellicano gets what he deserves.
Actually, I hope we all do.
when we play with fire…
Oh, come on. We all know that Pellicano is guilty. The problem is, he was doing what he did TO MAKE MONEY, duh! And that, in our society today, seems to be the pre-eminent raison d’etre! Even Diane Dimond —- she’s not reporting on celebrities necessarily because she CARES! She’s doing it (duh) for THE MONEY. Until we are all fabulously wealthy, and are in a position to change our society so it is not so celebrity and money-centric, I think we might just lay off on these people a wee bit. HOWEVER, anyone knows that Pellicano could have made a decent amount of money being just a regular private dick and that what he did was not only wrong, it was against the law. I do think that we all have a right to private telephone conversations, in spite of what the Bush Administration says! I have worked for “Hollywood attorneys,” and, trust me on this, they are all about the money! As is everyone else! So why WOULDN’T they hire someone “to get the goods on” another celebrity? They do what they must, in order to get paid by their celebrity clients. It’s all part of the greed-and-celebrity culture we now have. I kind of liked it when the studios were in power. During those days, we didn’t hear much of anything that was lurid about celebrities, and no one did much of any illegal wire-tapping that was successful, because celebrities had the studios to protect the celebrities! They could quash anything.
I agree with Mugsey as to what important news should be and that we don’t get.
However, I think the ‘story’ here is how easily each of us can be listened to and not even know it.
It has been going on big time in the U.S.of A. since the 60’s and Nam. I myself have been listened to trying to be a good citizen , gratis, preparing a federal court case for a family applying for political asylum.
I’ve simply gotten so I don’t care anymore. For awhile I was afraid of what I would say on the phone or write on the net, no more. I’m just not afraid anymore. But I’m sure there are a lot of people sufferin’ greatly from this breach of privacy, by anyone who has the money or political power. This is the ‘story’ I think.
The feedback here and on some other topics should carry a message to the “founders”. Most of us regularly reading WowoWow really prefer more relevant topics which speak to current events and concerns. I don’t mean to trivialize your article. It just didn’t raise enough hackles amongst the readership.
I am a regular read of WowoWow and find this article very interesting and will hope that justice prevails. I always thought it was small towns living by the motto “It ain’t what you know, it’s who you know.” For her phone conversation to take only 20 minutes to get back to her just shows that none of us are as safe as we would like to be. It just depends on who we piss off.
In a better world, journalists would not need to be protected from thugs: thugs not in government, thugs in authoritarian governments, thugs trampling on freedom of the press.