An earlier version of this article incorrectly included entrepreneur Stephen Bing as a participant to testify before a grand jury.

Someone's lawyers called a certain major newspaper! Bing is always quick to 'correct' unflattering stories about him in the press.

So let it be known: scuzzy rich real estate heir, developer, and major Democratic party fundraiser Steve Bing will not testify to the grand jury about how he hired criminal wiretapping private eye Anthony Pellicano for some sort of matter related to his messy paternity case with Elizabeth Hurley while Pellicano was secretly actually working for billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, who was paying Pellicano to figure out that Kerkorian's ex-wife's daughter was actually fathered by Bing. For the record!

And guess who is crazy: action film director John McTiernan. He's just directed The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, an inaction film of sorts about how his indictment in the Pellicano case was politically motivated.

See, McTiernan had Pellicano wiretap a producer he was fighting over money with and then the FBI called him about it, and McTiernan was all "nope I didn't do that," and, well, that is not legal, to make false statements to the FBI. McTiernan pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in proson. But then McTiernan got mad that he was the only rich Hollywood prick facing actual jail time over this mess, so he fired his lawyers and withdrew his plea and made this documentary, apparently. He's due to be reindicted.

Anyway. McTiernan has never really thought he should get any jail time for his crime, and he's made it clear from day one that because he is a rich and successful director who is also, at heart, a Good Person, he should not be punished for lying about having everyone wiretapped. How dare they prosecute a man who's always portrayed the FBI in a positive light?

She also scolded Mr. McTiernan for saying in an e-mail message to his previous lawyer that he was "offended" at the idea he could be prosecuted because he had "refused to make movies in which F.B.I. agents are the bad guys," and for complaining that his legal woes could get in the way of his making a "patriotic movie."

McTiernan apparently doesn't remember how when the FBI shows up in Die Hard they are all working from the old terrorist playbook, and Gruber is playing them for saps, and only McClane and lowly LAPD desk jockey Reginald ValJohnson are interested in actually stopping those sons of bitches. Remember? Agents Johnson and Johnson, no relation? God, that movie rules. Anyway. The FBI are not "bad guys" in that movie but they are getting in the way of McClane doing his job, dammit, which is why, 20 years later, director John McTiernan had to lie to them.

Sadly this new movie does not look as awesome as Die Hard, or Die Hard With a Vengeance, which is just as awesome. This new movie looks as bad as Rollerball, frankly.

According to The Political Prosecutions of Karl Rove, the entire Pellicano case was all about digging up dirt for an anti-Hillary Clinton campaign video, because that makes sense. Why else but to derail Hillary would anyone go after noted Great American Ron Burkle?

The film notes that the prosecution allowed federal officials to compel two of Mrs. Clinton's biggest contributors - the entrepreneurs Ron Burkle and Stephen Bing - to testify before a grand jury. Mrs. Clinton, the film says, was widely reported to have had help from Mr. Pellicano when her husband was accused in 1992 of having had an affair with Gennifer Flowers.

Now it is actually certainly true that politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of prominent Democrats were one of the many dirty deeds of the Bush administration, but they were more likely to go after people like Alabama Governor Don Siegelman than to target a scummy Hollywood private eye and the assholes who hired him.

We think McTiernan should cut a deal with the prosecutors: they will not re-indict him if he stops making weird conspiracy documentaries and signs on instead to Die Hard 5.

Pellicano's case, from federal investigation through much of the trial, was an obsession of elite publications like Vanity Fair, the New Yorker and the Times, which at one point had a reporter filing daily dispatches from the courtroom. But eventually everyone got tired of the relentless coverage, paying attention only when, say, recordings surfaced of Chris Rock talking with Pellicano about how the PI would "black this girl [accusing Rock of rape] up totally."

Now the PI has been sentenced to 15 years in prison, ending the whole sensational scandal with a whimper:

Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for running a wiretapping scheme that spied on the rich and famous.
U.S. District Judge Dale Fischer sentenced the 64-year-old Pellicano on Monday and ordered him and two other defendants to forfeit a total of $2 million.
Pellicano was convicted of 78 total counts, including wiretapping, racketeering and wire fraud, in two trials earlier this year.

In brief, Pellicano was convicted for illegal wiretaps, including a series of special lines direct from the phone company's central switch to his office, which allowed him to "monitor calls across Beverly Hills without even stepping outside." Also: racketeeing, following a death threat against Los Angeles Times reporter Anita Busch who was writing about two Pellicano clients at the time.

Time has a nice, brief summary of the whole scandal here. Which, if there is a God, should be the last time you have to read about the endless Pellicano affair, ever. (Ha ha, yeah right.)

Pellicano, 64, was convicted last May of 78 counts of wiretapping, wire fraud, racketeering and conspiracy that ensnared eventual trial witnesses Chris Rock, Michael Ovitz, Brad Grey, Bert Fields and former LA Times journalist Anita Busch, the latter of whose searing testimony earlier this year was recalled in one final scold today before sentencing. The term was decidedly longer than the five-year, 10-month sentence originally recommended by the Probation Department; Pellicano and two of his co-defendants will also be responsible for paying $2 million in fines and restitution. That should keep his wife and daughters busy for a while; good luck to them, and good riddance to the Pelican.

• Pellicano sentenced to 15 years [Variety]

• Pellicano gets 15 years in wiretapping case [LAT]

Titled The Pellicano Girls, the show would revolve around Pellicano matriarch Kat and the couple's three daughters—Alana, 21; Tori, 18; and Josi, 17. A good portion of the action is devoted to Kat's daily struggles trying to maintain the lifestyle they've enjoyed as a result of her husband's successful business dealings as Hollywood's #1 goldigging-whore-silencer to the stars. But were that all, for the three comely girls (we'll assume they're comely—they don't make reality shows about three sisters unless there's at least one Kim in the bunch) are also hot on the trail of their father's open cases:

But the backbone of "The Pellicano Girls" will be their attempts to run a private investigation company with Anthony in jail. The producers call it a mix between "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" and "Charlie's Angels" — with Anthony Pellicano in the Charlie role, Kat Pellicano a modern-day Bosley and the daughters as the Angels.

Following that logic, we anticipate that Pellicano Angel Josi—the Jill Munroe of the bunch—will be the first to enjoy breakout success and move on to a moderately successful movie career. That will require her to be replaced with another Pellicano sister we've never heard mention of until her exciting debut, in which she's instructed by her dad to "go make sure Anita Busch never talks again. I don't care how you do it, Kris Pellicano, just get 'er did."

• Pellicano 'Girls' to get reality show [Variety]

In court papers provided to The News by investigator Paul Barresi, [ex-Scientologist Peter] Letterese claims a member of the church phoned his lawyer at home, and when the lawyer's wife answered, said he was her husband's homosexual lover.

Barresi, who has done investigative work on behalf of Cruise, tells us: "[Letterese] is just including a celebrity name to get attention."

If Cruise's man Barresi thinks alleged Scientology harassment victim Letterese is merely trying to get attention, why would he abet that process by providing documentation of his allegations to a tabloid?

Probably because, after all the video that has emerged over the past eight months, more people than ever are now primed to believe Letterese's allegation that Cruise is, in fact, something like the number two leader of the "scary" sect. Which would mean Letterese's court case, filed under the RICO statute used to prosecute mobsters, might not be ignored by the media. So Barresi is trying to get out in front of the story.

For now, that appears to involve providing some fairly benign quotes to the Daily News — an oddly limited role for an "investigator." One wonders what else Barresi has been — or will be — up to. The PI, after all, works for a man, Fields, who recently compared a celebrity doctor to Nazi sicko Joseph Goebbels after the doctor said Cruise may have been abused or neglected as a child (nevermind that Cruise actually was abused as a child). And, insofar as he is part of a triangle with Cruise and Fields, Barresi follows in the footsteps of Pellicano.

If nothing else, Barresi has signaled, by working with a tabloid, that Cruise and the Church of Scientology will treat aggressively those who seek to draw the Hollywood star and church hero in their legal battles with Scientology. And through his willingness to be identified and acknowledged in that tabloid, he signals that he wishes to be seen doing so, as well. Prospective church critics will no doubt take note.

[Daily News]

A lot of people in the public eye who behave strangely have mental illness we can learn from, and much of it is based on childhood trauma, without a doubt. Take a guy like Tom Cruise. Why would somebody be drawn into a cultish kind of environment like Scientology? To me, that's a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood - maybe some abuse, but mostly neglect.

Cruise's high-powered attorney, Bert Fields, a frequent client of convicted wiretapper and racketeer Anthony Pellicano, called Pinsky an "unqualified television performer who is obviously just looking for notoriety," adding, "The last time we heard garbage like this was from Joseph Goebbels."

Cruise has already spoken on record about his abusive father. Strange, then, that he would snap so viciously over speculation he was neglected.

Perhaps the megastar interprets Pinsky's statements as a slam against his mother, the presumptive neglector. More likely, it was the line about Scientology's "cultish" environment that sent Cruise, a church bigwig, into attack mode.

But a slam this over the top only makes Cruise look more crazy while drawing attention to his own deep involvement with the sect.

[Post]

The LA Times's Carla Hall, meanwhile, has courtroom sketches:

Before the verdicts were read, Pellicano seemed at ease, grinning and scanning the room. But when he realized the jury had found him guilty, he crossed his arms, took his glasses off and looked around with a blank expression. A woman on the jury dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

We cried a little, too, for all the potential laid waste in this clusterfuck of justice: The potential for Anita Busch's comeback after Pellicano's dead-fish threat and wiretaps ended her career. The potential for Busch-destroyer Michael Ovitz to get a shovel in the back of the neck after slithering off the witness stand. The potential for the bottomless filth of Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bert Fields' testimony, which never came. The potential for "Mr. Pellicano," as he was forced to refer to himself as his own counsel, to just say, "Yeah, fuck it. Put me away; let's all go home." Or the potential for us to give half a shit this was even happening, day after drawn-out day, even under the threat of mistrial.

Pellicano is indeed going home — like "federal prison" home, up to 10 years' worth, we hear. He'd be 74 when he got out, with a few years left to enjoy the fruits of keeping his mouth shut: A couple well-scrubbed dollars trickling in now and then from grateful clients to whom he's anything but the footnote the rest of us will know. At the end of the day — especially today — we struggle to care but somehow wish there was more, as if it was all just about to get good.

Alas, the end is as good as it gets, when we can at last peel away the "alleged" and say yeah, the fucker did it. Finally. And good riddance.

[Photo Credit: LAT]

• Pellicano found guilty of racketeering and conspiracy [LAT]

• The curbside neighborhood "b-box" has your target's line, you just have to figure out the right two wires, then use $50 worth of Radio Shack equipment to intercept their calls. Many of these boxes are unlocked, at least in Southern California, while the others tend to all have the same key, "and retired technicians apparently keep them."
• Sneak in to the central switching office, open at all hours for technicians and "often unsupervised."
• Seduce the phone company dispatchers, like this guy: "Prosecutors say a field technician from SBC Communications (now AT&T), Rayford Turner, who was a bit of a ladies’ man, prevailed upon a small group of middle-age female SBC dispatchers to give him whatever data he requested: toll records, cable pairs, names, phone numbers and so on. They continued to do so long after he retired."
• Rent an apartment: " When Mr. Pellicano wanted to hear the calls of someone who lived outside his area code, prosecutors say, he rented an apartment nearby and had Mr. Turner run the duplicated phone line into it. There it would be plugged into a Macintosh computer that would record a new digital audio file each time the subject’s receiver was lifted off the hook."
• Get a special "set of undocumented phone lines" from the central office to yours. Pellicano did this and was able "to monitor calls across Beverly Hill without even stepping outside."

[Times]

(Image via EveryStockPhoto)

And then, there were his final comments to the jury—probably the most entertaining final close that I've ever heard. "Mr. Pellicano refuses to insult your intelligence," he said of himself. "Mr. Pellicano told you that the evidence will show what the evidence shows and it clearly does." ...

Finally, he had one last thought for the jury. "Mr. Pellicano had instructed me not to stand up here and try to sway you, and you know that people do what Mr. Pellicano says," he argued, prompting the judge to cover her face with her hand to conceal her laughter. ""So, I'm going to do what Mr. Pellicano says." And with that, he thanked the jury for their service and walked over to his chair with a big smile on his face.

The only thing that could improve this episode is to imagine a sign-language interpreter struggling to keep up with the defendant's court-mandated self-referentiality, stabbing repeatedly at her chest while Pellicano speeds up his third-person hijinks. Alas, the resultant injuries would force yet another criminal trial for the disgraced detective, thus launching an endless cycle of self-defense from which Weiner and the rest of a tired Hollywood would likely never extract themselves. We will not miss Pellicano when he inevitably shuffles upriver, but we can't help but appreciate the glints of dark humor his downfall has brought to our lives. Thanks a million, Pelican. Now get the fuck out of here.

[Photo Credit: Getty Images]

• Pellicano Delivers Own (Hysterical) Closing Arguments [HuffPo]

· Tom Wolfe's sex-at-college novel I Am Charlotte Simmons (how's that for distilling 752 pages into one compound modifier?) will be directed by music video vet Liz Friedlander, to be eventually followed by Medusa's Pom Pom, a tell-all exposé detailing what went wrong behind the scenes of the box office dud. [THR]
· Closing arguments in the Pellicano trial begin today. [THR]
· Les Moonves pledged this morning that Showtime "would not miss a beat," despite having lost output deals with Paramount, MGM and Lionsgate to a new, yet-to-be-named premium cable channel, as that decision has effectively "freed up $300 million" to lavish on "more original programming like the one with all the lesbians going at it." [THR]

It's a loooong story, as Weiner writes, but let it suffice to say that the witness is waiting around to be advised of her Fifth Amendment rights, and Arneson's attorney doubts that his client's character can be restored as the trial winds down. We don't (or won't or can't) believe for a second that this is enough for an honest-to-God mistrial, but Weiner's the lawyer among us, so we defer to her — for now, anyway. We'll keep our fingers crossed and our eyes on it.

• Pellicano Trial: A Possible Mistrial? [HuffPo]

Under stern cross-examination by Pellicano, who was wearing green prison drab and white sneakers, Busch became emotional again.

"I was scared 24/7 for my life," she said. "I didn't know how I was going to survive financially. I thought (the book) would be the way to do it, but I realized it was not the right way. It was a big mistake. After the threats and everything happened to me, I couldn't focus. Because of the wiretap, my sources fell away. I struggled to be a journalist, but I couldn't continue. I couldn't see a future, I saw everything slipping away. I didn't know what I was going to do."

At this point Busch couldn't speak and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. "It was a relentless attack, Mr. Pellicano, as you know."

The judge wasn't having any of that. Nor, alas, will he have any more of Ovitz slithering out of a criminal courtroom; as Allison Hope Weiner noted late Wednesday at The Huffington Post, California's statute of limitations put an end to that hope:

A source close to the case (who didn't want to be identified because they believe that Mr. Ovitz should have been charged) happened to mention that the statute runs out today on any charges in connection with Mr. Ovitz's alleged wiretapping of his enemies (including Ms. Busch). So, the good news for Mr. Ovitz is that unless he committed perjury today during his testimony today, he's in the clear.

However, Busch's civil case against Ovitz still has a future pending the outcome of the Pellicano verdict, and there's always that hovering rumor of CAA's Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane laying waste to their former boss with a civil charge of their own. God's spokespeople, meanwhile, declined comment on the status of Ovitz's pending damnation, suggesting the potential civil verdicts would eventually influence the temperature of his eternity. We can hardly wait.

• Busch, Pellicano face off [Variety]
• Ovitz in the Spotlight and in the Clear... [The Huffington Post]

She related the June 2002 threat that prompted the Pellicano investigation: a fish and a rose left on her car, next to a note saying “Stop” and a bulletlike hole in her windshield. She told of phone trouble beginning that month, of learning that her D.S.L. service had been canceled without her knowledge and that large chunks of e-mail had been stolen, and of finding a virus on her computer.

On an August morning, she testified, two men in a Mercedes nearly ran her down. One put a finger to his lips, as if warning her to keep quiet, and then motioned with two fingers as if saying goodbye, before the driver sped off.

That November, she finally got the phone company to check her phones, and learned there had been a wiretap on her lines since June. “I was stunned,” she said.

Ovitz said he did not direct Pellicano to intimidate Busch, and Pellicano's cross-examination implied the threats came from other subjects of her writing.

Talking about how difficult a time he was having selling his company AMG in May, 2002, Mr. Ovitz tried to elicit sympathy from the jury while he talked about using Mr. Pellicano to get "embarrassing information" on his enemies. "Yes, it was an extraordinarily difficult time for the company and for me," he said, looking pained by the memory. "There was all this negative press saying we had client problems and financial problems. There were morale problems as well."

"All I wanted was a graceful exit from the business," explained Mr. Ovitz. And, apparently, in order to get that graceful exit, he needed to stop the articles being written by [Anita] Busch and [Bernard] Weinraub. As to the information Pellicano gave him, Mr. Ovitz expressed gratitude to Mr. Pellicano for providing such good stuff. "It was incredibly helpful to me," he said of the information.

Naturally, HuffPo correspondent and resident A/V geektress Allison Hope Weiner has audio excerpts of Ovitz's pants-pissing chats with Pellicano, while Nikki Finke just published brief testimony transcripts Ovitz fingering Ron Meyer and David Geffen as sources of the ever-threatening Busch/Weinraub articles in The New York Times. Meanwhile, court is in recess until Thursday pending the clean up of acrid old douche around the witness stand.

• Pellicano Trial: Michael Ovitz Testifies About How Much He Appreciated The Information He Got [HuffPo]
• Ovitz Testifies Busch/Weinraub NYT Articles "Wildly Embarrassing" [DHD]

The Times is asking this morning, and Condé Nast isn't saying. The only substantive comment anyone at the magazine group would give the Times was concerned Hollywood mogul Michael Ovitz, who was featured and supposedly obtained the pre-publication copy of Vanity Fair.

If Condé Nast executives at waffling on whether to keep the IT guy, Wayne Reynolds, they would be well-advised to read the Huffington Post's account of how he sounded on the stand in the trial of Pellicano, his self-described surrogate father:

As Mr. Reynolds admitted that he'd lied to the F.B.I. in 2003 and tried to point out that he was telling the truth today, Mr. Pellicano [representing himself] looked tempted to do a victory lap. At last, success....

Bolstered by having finally asked a good cross-examination question, Mr. Pellicano actually began to seriously do some damage to Mr. Reynolds credibility. "Didn't you use bugging equipment to overhear your supervisor at Conde Nast?" Mr. Pellicano asked, sounding as if he was sure of the answer. As Mr. Reynolds tried to fake laugh the question off with a strong "no," Mr. Pellicano went in for the kill. "Didn't you tell another employee of Mr. Pellicano's that you'd bugged your supervisor's office?" Again, Mr. Reynolds answered "no," but it seemed possible that the former son had learned a few things from the father.

Finally, Mr. Pellicano seemed to answer the question as to how Mr. Pellicano might have gotten advance copies of certain magazine articles. "Did you provide Mr. Pellicano with confidential information from Conde Nast pre-publication of that information?" Mr. Pellicano asked. "No, that never happened," Mr. Reynolds replied.