As Barbara Walters Turns
Barbara Walters' 10 Most Fascinating People of 2009 aired last night on ABC, and no guest, no matter how newsworthy, was safe from Bab's dizzying turns during each interview's introduction. Maybe she just wants in on the hero worship.

We're Not Messing With You: the "Cat Massage Lady" Was on Letterman Last Night
This begs the question - is the Late Show desperate for guests? Or is the show trying to grab young, internet-savvy viewers like us to actually tune in to ol' man Letterman's show? Either way, our worlds collided last night.

I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant: In What Crazy Places were Babies Born This Week?
Women don't always know they're pregnant. Babies fall out of them all the time, at really inopportune moments-grocery shopping, making coffee, vacuuming, on blind dates, whatever. The re-enactments of these birth really drive home the awkward, unexpected pain.

Conan O'Brien Brings Out His Caddy to Assess Tiger Woods Jokes
The Tiger Woods Avalanche-of-Mistresses story is unfolding at such a rapid rate, it's nigh impossible for any comedian to keep track of and maximize all their jokes. That's why Conan has deployed a Tiger Woods Joke Caddy.

Steven Seagal Tries to Act Like He's Not a Walking Joke on Steven Seagal: Lawman
Steven Seagal: Lawman combines a really really boring episode of Cops with a washed up, overweight, out of work actor. Even with his fat suit on, he's bound to get recognized by the people he arrests. And it is awkwaaaard.

In the clip above, Dave comes out swinging, beginning his monologue with "Boy, looks like that Tiger Woods is having some trouble, huh?" Audience members go wild with long applause, reminiscent, in a way, of their confused enthusiastic laughter during Letterman's announcement of his own illicit dalliances with members of his staff in October. But what, exactly, are they cheering for here, since Dave has yet to make an actual joke? The fact that someone other than Dave has been brought down by the same bad habit? Just the fact that he's even addressing it? Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and assume the applause sign came on, but it's kind of strange. Dave goes on to make jokes about Tiger, and even though they're softballs ("I used to think golf was boring") and most refer self-deprecatingly to Dave's own troubles ("I wish he'd stop calling me for advice"), it's impossible not to feel a sense that Dave is relieved and gleeful that the focus is finally off of him.

Perhaps to minimize the glass-house stone throwing nature of the whole thing, Letterman makes the audience take two polls, asking them by applause if they think Tiger Woods is a jerk, and then if they think he, Dave, is a jerk. The audience applauds both:

Then Dave brings out Tom Hanks, once again, to "react to" the Top 10 List: "Top 10 Ways Tiger Woods Can Improve His Image". (Conspicuously absent: "Get Tom Hanks, the most trusted man in America, to appear by your side during difficult moments"):

This show was basically Letterman's way of putting his own scandal to rest by signaling to his audience that in no way is he going to start treating the infidelity of other famous men, a topic which many have noted has been one of his favorites throughout his show, lightly. If anything, Letterman's status as a fellow "jerk" gives him his own special angle on Tiger and any other future men accused of similar bad behavior. We can probably expect him to pile on the jokes whenever a scandal like this breaks, because unlike Jon Stewart or Conan O'Brien, Dave can always hold up his hands and claim that he's making fun of himself just as much as the joke's victim. He can now own sex scandals by doing what he's always been able to do brilliantly: take any subject and make it about him.

[Here, Roger Clark prepares to bowl by drinking beer, while Alex Pareene types Communist messages.]

Allow alleged extortionist Joe Halderman's attorney to lay it all out for you how it really happened: after Joe discovered Letterman was boning Joe's girlfriend, still, he thought, hey, great idea for a screenplay!

The lawyer says this was not extortion, calling it "a pure commercial transaction." The lawyer says Halderman was merely trying to sell the exclusive screenplay rights to Letterman.

Who would enjoy a screenplay of Letterman's sexual foibles more than the man himself? So, can Joe go now? And also he'd like his job back.
[Pic: Getty]

• Having his tawdry personal life ripped wide open for the world to see isn't doing David Letterman any harm ratings-wise. The Hollywood Reporter writes, "Far from hurting the host's popularity, the sex-and-extortion headlines seemingly have had little impact on his late-night show and possibly even helped the series grow its viewership compared with last year." Season to date, The Late Show is up four percent in viewership, compared to its main competitor NBC's Conan O'Brien who has taken just a tiny 47 percent drop this season compared to Leno's performance in the slot last year. [Hollywood Reporter]

• In the end, Michael Jackson came through. After a back and forth over the past two weeks over whether the hype machine was properly calibrated to the public level of enthusiasm for the rehearsal documentary, This Is It earned a decent $21 million at the US box, although this morning's write-ups focus on the more impressive sounding world tally of $101 million, ample to earn Sony back its $60 purchase price. (Which is odd in that Monday morning box office write-ups almost never mention international grosses, generally taking the US box office as the whole magilla.) The consensus view seems to focus now on the stat that This will become the highest grossing concert film in history. Which is not quite the "Biggest Movie of All Time Ever In History" the media seemed to be heralding a week ago, but still nothing to sneeze at. [Box Office Mojo]

• Elsewhere at the box office, Paranormal Activity continued its run, taking the number two slot and bringing its total domestic haul to $84 million. Saw 6 fell off 60 percent from its already unimpressive opening weekend numbers giving faint hope that the series' day may be drawing to a close (but don't count on it.) [Variety]

• The NBC/Universal drama is on the brink of resolution. Comcast is said to have reached a tentative agreement to buy the studio and network, with an announcement expected at any time. [NY Times]

• Katie Holmes will star in and earn her first producing credit for The Romantics, a film about eight college friends who reunite for a wedding also starring Anna Paquin, Elijah Wood and Malin Ackerman. [Variety]

Today's exhibit: a piece on vanityfair.com by former Letterman staff writer Nell Scovell provides some stark reminders of why working in an office where the boss gets it on with their assistants is maybe not so fun if you are a female staffer who the boss is not getting it on with. Particularly if you are in a workplace like Letterman's, where clearly if you are a woman you have a greater chance being appointed acting head of the Taliban than climbing the ladder to the Dave's inner circle.

Scovell opens her piece with a reminder of the stark odds awaiting women who dare enter the hallowed talk show ranks. Of the 50-some staff writers toiling on the Letterman, Leno and Conan O' Brien staffs, exactly zero are female. For those keeping track, that is lower than the female percentage of the US Supreme Court (22%), serving in the US Senate (17%), and officers of Fortune 500 companies (15.7 %). (Zero percent also ties the current Gawker masthead.)

After recounting her thrill at getting to join the heady Letterman ranks, Scovell remembers difficult reality setting in:

Without naming names or digging up decades-old dirt, let's address the pertinent questions. Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.

Here's what I did: I walked away from my dream job. The show picked up my option after 13 weeks; then, about two months later, while looking for a nicer apartment, I realized I didn't want to commit to a yearlong lease. I'd seen enough to know that I was not going to thrive professionally in that workplace. And although there were various reasons for that, sexual politics did play a major part.

She goes on to rebut the frequently offered charge that there would be more women writing for late night talk shows if more qualified women comedy writers were to available. That argument can quickly be countered by going through the little to no effort the shows make to find or groom female writers. But any attempts to reach out a little are thoroughly stymied by the specter which haunts all late night big wigs - the specter of not being able to make fart jokes in the writers room if chicks are hanging out.

Meanwhile, over in this week's New York Mag, Robert Kolker continues the work of sorting through Letterman's staff horror stories and digging deeper into a personality which has become increasingly isolated and tyrannical. Some highlights:

• Dave has pushed away most of his close friends and associates, communicating with his staff now almost entirely via his coterie of seven assistants, whom themselves, out of his paranoia, Letterman attempts to keep sealed off from the rest of the staff.

• Says a former staffer: "There's a level of mind games and chess that goes on, starting from the top down. They rule by fear. You don't want to make Dave mad or so-and-so mad, so you better do a good job. Everyone there is scared of their shadow all the time."

• As has been noticed, Letterman does not go for the swimsuit models of the world, favoring non-threatening sassy girls who are sharp enough to see through him. As one former staffer puts it in the piece, "You see he's going for personality as well, but I think he's also going for easy targets. He's not setting himself up for rejection. He's not going to ask the head of the cheerleading team to prom. He's going to ask the head of the band or something."

• It seems possible that Stephanie Birkitt was two-timing Joe Halderman with Letterman. And that when he found out about their relationship, amazingly after it was witnessed by TV doctor Bob Arnot, he was so upset that the whole blackmail thing might just have been his way of getting even.

• On Halderman, a quote which should be posted over the front door of every news institution on Earth: "You can be a great journalist and a lowlife frat boy."

So there it rests for now, but the more that comes out it becomes increasingly difficult to see how Letterman withdraws his public persona back into the shell where its lived all these years and returns to life as the cypher in our midst.

The Jay Leno Show - Martha Stewart, Ludacris

The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien - Jon Hamm, Freestyle Motocross Athletes, Cobra Starship featuring Estelle (Repeat from 8/11/09)

Late Show with David Letterman - Kristin Davis, Barry Sonnenfeld (Repeat from 10/8/09)

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon - Seth Meyers, Chris Paul, Landon Pigg (Repeat from 9/22/09)

Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson - Ted Danson, Christopher Miller & Phil Lord (Repeat from 9/25/09)

Jimmy Kimmel Live - Edward Norton, Paul Shaffer, the Sounds

The Colbert Report - Jerry Mitchell (Repeat from 10/15/09)

Daily Show with Jon Stewart - Jennifer Burns (Repeat from 10/15/09)

The affidavits don't reveal much new information, and recount the story as it is known: Halderman allegedly placed a packet in Letterman's car with a screenplay treatment and note threatening to reveal private details about his life:

The cops seized Halderman's computer, and seemed to suspect that he communicated about the plot via e-mail—they sought any data related to a redacted screen name and e-mail address that could be Halderman's or could be someone else's. They were also careful to seek a warrant to seize any e-mails or notes related to Halderman and "any and all Public figures," suggesting they may have suspected that Halderman had a sideline going with other targets.

The warrants also give a sense of Letterman's—referred to as "Client #1" in documents—state of mind as the sting unfolded:

In the clip above, Tina says that while she was doing the Bazaar shoot she thought, "Yeah, I look like this!" ... then they turn the wind machine off.

Below, she explains that her daughter is now old enough to pick her own Halloween costume, so the days of stuffing her in a ham sandwich costume and laughing at her are over. Tina doesn't want her to go as a "Barbie butterfly princess," but at least she doesn't want to be one of the Girls Next Door.

The NYO says that Armen Keteyian is out bulldog-reporting the story already, upholding the integrity of the news side and whatnot. Why? First of all, CBS is hopelessly, hopelessly conflicted, Chinese wall or not. Digging up serious dirt on the network's biggest late night star just doesn't pay. Second, the scandal's already been—and will continue to be—overcovered by the other networks, and the tabloids, and everyone else. Third, see point one. The only three possible outcomes to a CBS News investigation:

1. They turn up pretty much the same stuff as everyone else, meaning it was a waste of time.
2. They turn up more dirt that makes Letterman look bad, meaning they screw their own network. In this case, their report either gets censored to some degree by the corporate types, or they run it as is and still get accused of pulling punches due to a conflict of interest, because they do in fact have one.
3. They turn up dirt that makes Letterman's accuser (also a CBS employee!) look bad, and get accused of trying to help Letterman out.

So, just skip it, guys. Have you looked into baby kangaroos? People love that shit.
[Pic: AP]

The Connecticut college will take a good, hard look at its internship programs to make sure none of their coeds end up backstage at Letterman's CBS digs:

Due to recent circumstances we will have a discussion with those in charge of placing our interns at the David Letterman show in the future.

We will diligently oversee this internship program to ensure that our interns are out of harm's way.

Isn't this going a bit, oh, we don't know — far? Should Letterman really cross over to full-blown villainy? Though, yes, his work place affairs were ethically dubious, but Letterman's a late night talk show host who fucked around, got caught and has now become his nightmare: a punchline. It's not like he's Jack the Ripper or the intern's greatest nightmare: a Congressman.

The skit comes to us by way of Kansas City Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart, who credits one of his readers for picking up on it. It showed Letterman in one of those Geico ads where a wad of money with eyeballs follows people around to the tune of Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me." Letterman notices the eyeballs on his desk, picks up a book, and smashes them. Blood spills out from beneath the book, the end. (Barnhart's YouTube page, where he posted the video, is here.)

It's sort of an odd skit to air the day before the arrest of a man who showed up outside Letterman's home in the early morning hours and threatened to reveal intimate details about his life if he didn't pay up. But as tempting as it is to believe that Letterman was acting out his revenge fantasies on his own show and sending a coded warning to his tormentor, we have to agree with Barnhart's conclusion that the skit is almost certainly a lovely coincidence: The extortion plot was closely held information at World Wide Pants, and it's highly unlikely that staffers were tossing ideas about it around the writer's room.

What isn't highly unlikely, however, is that the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz would pen a scolding and schoolmarmish column arguing that Letterman has gotten a pass from the press for dipping his pen in the company ink. Lo and behold:

If Letterman were the chief executive of a defense contractor, instead of a TV production company, would the media critics be so quick to let him skate on sleeping with the help?

You know, he's got a point. What if Letterman were a Catholic priest? You think Monsignor Letterman would get such soft coverage if he were sleeping with a nun? Or what if he were Stephanie Birkitt's father? Kurtz's incisive counterfactual has exposed the media-critic punditocracy for the hypocrites they are, because they insist on treating David Letterman as a private citizen who wasn't elected and receives no taxpayer dollars and broke no laws and wasn't married at the time the affairs were alleged to have happened and therefore was sadly free to do with his dick as he pleased, instead of treating him like a defense contractor, which would be much more satisfying for Howie Kurtz.

During an appearance on the estrogen-soaked chatfest, Shaffer is asked about the current David Letterman scandal that absolutely no one is talking about. He responds by saying his father is a lawyer, just like Star Jones. The only problem is, he reaches out and touches the knee of guest host and Ugly Betty co-star Ana Ortiz. Oopsie!

Now, we're not going to even mention the fact that Star Jones hasn't been on the show for more than three years; we'll forgive him for being out of touch and not doing his research before going to bow before the altar of Barbara Walters. But how can you mistake Ortiz, who is neither the same shape nor color as Jones, for the real thing! Maybe he just needs a new prescription for his wacky glasses. At least he reached right over Sherri Shepard. He may be a little bit touched, but at least he doesn't think all black people look alike.

• 'Bombshell Bussing Incident': We quite like the use of the word "Bussing" as a synonym for "kissing," don't you? Make a note, language hounds. In this case, it seems that Dave Letterman drove Stephanie Birkitt home a couple months ago—to the home she shared with blackmailer Joe Halderman—and Halderman caught them smooching! Right there at the end of the driveway! Then, of course, Halderman flew into a jealous rage and decided to extort Letterman. Case closed, etc.
• But Halderman Seemed Like Such a Good Guy!: Joe Halderman was a hard living producer who like action but his colleagues never thought he would do something like this. Read the entire standard-issue disbelief reaction story in the Times.
• Know Who Does Not Care About This Scandal, Besides Smart People? Advertisers: Because of intricate complicated ad and entertainment industry things like Q Rating and reputation management and the fact that Letterman never really put himself forward as a holier-than-thou guy, his show's sponsors don't much care about this scandal. They do care about ratings. Which are good!

Sgt. Pat Postiglione, who heads the Nashville police department's cold case unit, told Gawker that he had lunch with Halderman in Nashville in the last week of August, when Halderman was traveling there to speak to a meeting of the National Information Officers Association.

"He seemed OK," said Postiglione, who worked for years with Halderman on a 48 Hours story Halderman produced about the 1996 murder of Nashville socialite Janet March. Postiglione's cold case unit solved the case in 2004, and he featured prominently in Halderman's piece. "He seemed like he had lost quite a bit of weight, but other than that he was normal. We talked about different cases, and he said he wanted to come back and do a story on a cold case."

Little did Postiglione know that on September 9, a little over one week after that lunch, Halderman would hatch his alleged extortion plot by handing a blackmail note to Letterman's limousine driver outside his Manhattan home.

Postiglione said Halderman's work on the March story, which took him to Nashville several times over several years, made him a lot of friends in the Nashville police department. "We knew him fairly well," he said. "We were stunned. He's much smarter than that, and he was clearly pro-police to the max." Halderman's true-crime stories for 48 Hours put him in close touch with a lot of law enforcement officers, and made it his job to tell stories of how the bad guys got caught by the cops—which makes his apparently ham-fisted attempt in Letterman's case all the more mystifying. "If he was going to do something like this," Postiglione said, "you'd figure he would have come up with something more sophisticated. He tried to cash a $2 million check and didn't think anyone would notice?"

In a press release, NOW accuses Letterman of creating "a toxic environment" at Worldwide Pants, his production company, because "he is responsible for setting the tone for his entire workplace — and he did that with sex." Yes, that's right—David Letterman set the tone for his entire workplace by doing it with sex, whatever that means. And they demand that CBS "take action immediately to rectify this situation."

The release cites the heartbreaking case of the father of a 16-year-old daughter who called NOW looking for advice on what to tell her about Letterman:

The father raised his daughter to be a feminist. He raised her to stand up for herself. He raised her not be objectified as a sexual object. She admits she is confused because the messages she sees on television and news reports appear to make it okay to objectify women as long as the man in power is famous. He can crack a few jokes and publicly apologize for his mistakes. It is this kind of hypocrisy that perpetuates the image of men in power preying on women, while many look the other way.

Well, one thing he could tell her is this: When you grow up, sleep with precisely who you want to sleep with, and nobody else. But we guess that since David Letterman hasn't been fired—only publicly humiliated—she's going to have to sleep with any powerful man who comes along, now.

We agree that bosses shouldn't sleep with their assistants, and that it's—in the words of one noted wag—"creepy" when an international celebrity starts screwing around with someone in his employ who is decades younger than he is. It's crude, and selfish, and gross, because it takes advantage of youth and inexperience and star-struck awe. (Mostly our feelings on the matter are informed by the way we felt when seniors used to swoop in and date the freshman girls we liked in high school, and of course affairs of the heart are messy and unsuited to strident moralizing. But it's just, well, ungentlemanly to put your employees in that position, so to speak, and we always thought Dave was a gentleman.)

But is it an offense against feminist principles? We guess so, if it turns out that Letterman's bird-dogging turned Worldwide Pants into a sex-crazed hothouse where trapped women faced horrible decisions every day about what they were willing to do to get ahead, or to not get fired. Or if, in NOW's words, it created "an awkward, confusing and demoralizing situation." But we don't know yet if that's the case, and NOW's simple assertion that it was so doesn't actually make it so. As far as we know, the women involved were adults, and there are no accusations of untoward bargains or indecent proposals. Just gross, creepy, consensual sex. Letterman's wrongs here were moral and personal in nature, and NOW wants to cast them as political and possibly legal transgressions, and place the uncertain future of some 16-year-old who's "confused because the messages she sees on television and news reports appear to make it okay to objectify women" on his shoulders.

Maybe we're insufficiently conversant in some relevant threads of feminist theory, but is it just automatic now that when you sleep with someone who's in an unequal power relationship with you, you're treating them as a sexual object? Is it impossible to view an employee to whom you are sexually attracted as a subject, someone with their own needs and wants and autonomous desires, worthy of respect? Just asking, because there's no indication—yet—that Stephanie Birkitt or any other women involved were in any way objectified, ever, by anyone. Maybe Letterman just thought of them as pieces of ass. Or maybe he really liked them, a lot, and enjoyed spending time with them, and was interested in their lives, and wanted to sleep with them, and they let him. Creepy, yes. But not every sexual encounter is an object lesson in feminist dogma.

NOW is calling on CBS to "recognize that Letterman's behavior creates a toxic environment and to take action immediately to rectify this situation." We're not sure what action they're looking for—though it's obvious that publicly aplogizing for his mistakes isn't enough—but they're right when they say that "with just two women on CBS' Board of Directors, we're not holding our breath." Yeah, right—like Nancy Tellem, the president of the CBS Paramount Television Network Entertainment Group, who is responsible for CBS, would ever upset the Old Boys Network she oversees. When pigs fly!

No, the reason they shouldn't hold their breath is that, as Nikki Finke pointed out, Tellem's boss Les Moonves is now married to the employee he started fooling around with behind his ex-wife's back. We agree that Moonves should be fired, because he's an arrogant ass. But not Letterman. We like Letterman.

Of course it shouldn't come as a surprise that NOW is gunning for Letterman; they also went after him when he publicly threatened to rape Sarah Palin's teenage daughter:

"I think what David Letterman said is terrible, is inappropriate and nobody should be making jokes about the sexual activities of teenagers, whether they are the daughters of politicians or not," said Kim Gandy, NOW president.

"Comedians in search of a laugh should really know better than to snicker about men having sex with teenage girls or young women half their age."

So there you have it, Dave. Not only can you not do it; you can't joke about it either.

• That Dude Mostly Blackmailed Letterman Just to Make Him Feel Pain, Allegedly: The New York Post's daily Letterman angle is that Joe Halderman, the guy who tried to extort Dave for $2 mil, didn't even care about the money that much—he wanted to see suffering! "He wants to hurt Letterman as much as he can — and he wanted to hurt the girl, too," said a snitch. Probably because Dave was still boning Stephanie Birkitt, Halderman's girlfriend.
• Grandma Speaks: Stephanie Birkitt's 90 year-old grandmother told the Post, "She said she never had sex with him." Christ. Leave that old lady alone, sex-talking reporters.
• Sexy Letters Exist Maybe: Hello, the Daily News still has some fight in it! New York's slightly less skeevy tabloid gets back in the Letterman Scandal Game with today's story: Stephanie Birkitt wrote (but never mailed) "'trashy' love letters [to Letterman] that will embarrass them both when they become public, sources said Tuesday." One might argue that we cum-hungry tabloid news outlets should be more embarrassed about reading and publicizing the contents of a lady's unsent private love letters. It's a debatable matter!
• Who's Leaking All This?: Yesterday we mused over who might be the source for all this inside info about the case. Letterman's camp? Halderman's lawyer? Birkitt's friends? Judging by what's come out today, we can safely assume: It's the fucking cops.

On August 1, 48 Hours aired a true-crime story, produced by Halderman with Sara Rodriguez, about Sonia Rios—the "Black Widow of Lomita." Rios, a Filipino immigrant who lived in Lomita, Calif., allegedly had two of her ex-husbands murdered during visits to her home country, once in 1987 and again in 2006. Rios herself turned up dead of a bullet wound to the head in 2007.

The story originally aired in February, but the August re-broadcast was updated with new reporting based on developments in the case. It's a run-of-the-mill true-crime tale of murder and deception, but it features one detail that seems strange in retrospect: The sister of one of the victims, who never got her brother's remains from the Philippines after his murder, at one point received creepy anonymous e-mails from someone claiming to have her brother's ashes, and offering to sell them to her. From the script:

Jackson was devastated. She didn't even know where Larry's ashes were. But after her brother's murder, she received a bizarre e-mail with an offer: "It said that they would help my family get my brother's ashes back."

The mysterious e-mailer told Jackson her brother's ashes could be retrieved from the Philippines for a mere $35,000.

That's from a story Halderman was immersed in a mere 40 days before he delivered a blackmail note to Letterman's car, demanding money in exchange for silence on Letterman's sexual hijinks. The strange thing is, in the story Halderman reported, the ransom scheme goes haywire: The man behind the e-mail ends up attracting attention to himself and gets arrested for Rios' murder. Maybe Halderman got the idea that he—a producer who crafts TV crime narratives for a living—could pull off a heist like that better than any of the rubes he covers. Or maybe he wasn't thinking at all. (We should note that the onscreen credits for the Rios piece don't list Halderman as a producer, but the online credits on the transcript do, and we know from published reports and from talking to people involved in the case that Halderman was deeply involved in producing the story.)

We came across the weird synchronicity between Halderman's day job and his after-hours scheming while going through his old 48 Hours segments and looking for signs that they may have been produced by someone crazy, desperate, stupid, and/or unscrupulous enough to engage in blackmail. By and large, everyone we found who was involved in Halderman's stories speaks highly of him.

"He seemed to be a pretty nice guy," said Dennis Bourdeau, the brother of Rios' other victim. "They did a fantastic job." As a result of Halderman and Rodriguez's story—Peter Van Sant was the correspondent—Bourdeau was able to locate his brother's remains in the Phillippines after 22 years and have them brought home.

"He was a gentleman and a professional, and there was nothing out of the ordinary," said Murray Janus, a criminal defense attorney whose client, Piper Rountree, was at the center of another of Halderman's stories. Rountree was convicted of murdering her husband, and Halderman's story largely hewed to the prosecution's case. The prosecutor, Wade Kizer, had the same recollection: "I was completely surprised when I saw [the Letterman] story. He was always professional, and seemed like a pretty nice person."

We only found one person who's seen the business end of Halderman's reporting and had any complaints, and they sound more like routine—and probably legitimate—bitterness at getting screwed over by a reporter than signs of nascent extortionist leanings. Houston attorney Marty McVey, who was embroiled in the Rountree case—Rountree was convicted of murder after prosecutors accused her of impersonating her older sister and traveling from Houston to Virginia to carry out the deed—says Halderman and his CBS News colleagues did a "hatchet job."

"They took everything out of context," McVey says, claiming that the 48 Hours piece on the case implied that McVey was involved in a sexual relationship with both the Rountree sisters. "They tried to make it look like I was intimate with both those women, and it's just not true. And they never asked me outright if it was true." But everyone does that, right?