ANITA BUSCH SPEAKS !
Was She Thrown Under the Bus?
"What is the ethical question for any newspaper when
a long time news source turns out to be a criminal.....?"
Anita Busch following the Pellicano verdict
Hollywood’s big wigs held their collective breath during the sordid, long running trial of the Private-Eye-to-the-Stars,
Anthony Pellicano.
So many of them had hired
Pellicano over the years that they were sweating bullets, worried that their names or their company’s names, might come
up in court. Most of those most-worried honchos are connected to either the big
Hollywood studios or are part of L.A.’s vast entertainment
law community. None wanted their names mentioned in the same sentence with terms like:
illegal wiretaps, pay-offs, intimidation tactics, back-door deals.
Now, the Los Angeles Times
is called on the carpet in this smarmy scandal.
Following Pellicano's conviction
on 76 of 77 felony racketeering and wiretapping charges, some of the most intriguing comments from the courthouse steps
came from former L.A. Times staff reporter Anita Busch. She, of course, was at
the center of this current case against the gumshoe. It was Busch’s complaint that took cops to Pellicano’s Sunset
Blvd office where they began to unravel his sins. It was the threat to silence
Busch’s investigative reporting, traced back to Pellicano, which put a human face on the private detective’s long
running bully-boy tactics. Her emotional appearance during the trial was one no spectator will soon forget.
Once the trial was over
and the verdict announced Busch finally broke her silence and unloaded, not only on Pellicano but on her former employer
as well. It wasn’t be pretty – especially if you read between the
lines of her official statement * (found at the end of this column) There is a much more dramatic story still to be told. Let's hope Busch hasn't been completely scared away
from the business of journalism and will ultimately tell her story in book form some day.
Busch had called for the
L.A. Times to conduct an internal investigation to determine how deep the bond was between Pellicano and one of the newspapers
top reporters and at least one member of its legal staff. The allegation is that
at least one Times staffer got so dependant on Pellicano’s information and services ~ even if those favors were given
freely ~ that that staffer or staffers may have overlooked Pellicano’s obvious, long running criminal shenanigans.
A major American newspaper
in bed with a self proclaimed “Sin Eater” private detective like Anthony Pellicano? The official L.A. Times response to my inquiry about whether the paper had ever employed the defendant
was: “The L.A. Times has not ever hired Anthony Pellicano.”
Anita Busch believes there
was a relationship there nonetheless.
I, for one, could see how
such an entanglement might happen. I lived in Hollywood and worked for the television program HARD COPY for most of the 90’s. I saw many reporters there hang on Pellicano’s every word, I’ve seen evidence
of the bargains he struck with journalists to get them to withhold information they wanted to report, the back scratching
and exchange of sensitive information. The in-your-face, snarling Pellicano did
whatever he needed to do to keep ugly truths about his clients from being revealed or taken seriously. Threats and intimidation came easily to him. He conducted
news interviews while wielding a baseball bat.
When I first began to report
on Hollywood Madame Heidi Fleiss and her black book that I just happened to get my hands on, Pellicano phoned me several times. He unsuccessfully tried to disguise his distinctive Chicago accent as he warned me against naming the names from the book because, he said, “they
will sue you and sue you big!” It was clear to me the man on the
other end of my office phone was working on behalf of one or more Heidi clients.
And later, when I was deep
into the early days of breaking news about the child molestation allegations against Michael Jackson I felt my phone at work
was tapped. I knew Anthony Pellicano was working for Jackson and everybody in town knew the P.I.’s expertise was electronic surveillance. When I expressed my concerns about the phone I could tell my bosses didn’t believe
me. My co-workers made gestures behind my back as though I was crazy or craving
attention.
My husband and I came up
with a ploy – a red herring – which we planted while I used that suspect telephone. I spoke about a phony Pellicano TV segment I was working on and in short order a lawyer in the Paramount legal office called to warn me off. The lawyer
who called me had recently come to Paramount (the parent company
of HARD COPY) after working at the law office of Michael Jackson’s attorney Howard Weitzman. Weitzman was one of Pellicano’s frequent flyer employers.
I recently wrote more fully about my sordid Pellicano problem here: http://www.wowowow.com/search/node/diane+dimond
Oh, and one more thing. I later learned Pellicano had been hired by Paramount
(before I ever got there) and operated within the gated Paramount
lot. So he knew the lay of the land there, including the main telephone building
and the people who ran it.
Reporter Anita Busch says
the same thing happened to her when, in June of 2002, her Audi’s windshield was found with an apparent gun shot (or
hammer smash?) and a dead fish adorned with a rose which was left for her with a one word note: STOP. Later she was also nearly run down by a mystery Mercedes
and was otherwise threatened. She says she immediately reported the threats to
her supervisors, including Lennie Laguire, her editor at the newspaper and, ultimately, to the then Editor-in-Chief John Carroll,
a security man named Cletus Page and a member of the Times legal team, attorney Karlene Goller.
On June 21st,
2002, the day after the first frightening fish-tainted threat, Busch reported that she got a call from a man she did not know. He warned her that a “private investigator in L.A. had hired someone to blow up her car.” Again,
Busch took that information directly to those in charge at the Los Angeles Times.
But, Anita Busch says in
short order she was made to feel like a suspect drama queen instead of a legitimate reporter who was the victim of an obvious
death threat. Jealous co-workers began to spread rumors that she had a poor memory,
was a bad reporter, paranoid – even unstable and crazy. She had been well
thought of enough for the L.A. Times to hire but suddenly she was being viewed with suspicion.
Outside media columns began to report on gossip from inside the L.A. Times that Busch could not be trusted.
As a string of e-mails
I’ve obtained shows that well after the threats there was a scramble to figure out if the Times’ lawyers would
represent Busch in front of the grand jury hearing the Pellicano case, whether the paper stood behind Busch and her claim
that her life was threatened. One e-mail, written by David Garcia of the communications
department, was drafted as a response to one of the negative columns about Anita Busch.
After it was vetted by attorney Goller it came back minus this sentence:
"We stand firmly behind Anita and value her contributions to the Times."
And most damning, Busch
claims, one of the first reactions to the threats by Karlene Goller was to suggest they call in Anthony Pellicano! Busch says she testified under oath that Goller said they should think about bringing Pellicano on board
because, “We’ve worked with him in the past and he’s done really well by us.”
At the time no one knew
who might be behind the threats against Busch but that mystery phone caller
had clearly indicated that “a private investigator in L.A.”
wanted to do her harm. Why in the world would anyone think it would be safe to
consult with any local P.I.?
E-mails sent to Karlene Goller
asking for comment were returned by a newspaper spokeswoman. When pressed
to explain the quote attributed to her the response from the LAT’s Nancy Sullivan was:
“It is important we speak precisely and “on board” is a nebulous term. Neither the Los
Angeles Times nor its lawyers have ever hired Anthony Pellicano -- nor have they suggested doing so.” ** (see
update below)
Another of the newspaper’s
staffers who Busch will likely mention post-verdict is long time reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Chuck Philips. Philips admits Pellicano has been a long time news source of his and Busch will call into question the
Time’s using Philips to cover the Pellicano case. For one reason, a reporter
shouldn’t cover the criminal case of a long time source and, second, it’s likely that Philips’ stories were
vetted by attorney Goller who admits Pellicano has “done really well by us” – whatever that means.
It should be noted that
Karlene Goller is married to another Los Angeles Times employee – Jim Newton who, along with Chuck Philips, has written
the bulk of the paper’s Pellicano stories. Newton has now moved into an executive editorial position.
He told me during a lengthy phone conversation that he always dealt with Pellicano with extreme care and routinely
double and triple sourced any information he got from him. Newton made it clear he never fully trusted the man.
Anita Busch will say it’s
all an incestuous case study of how Pellicano worked his media relationships to try to manage situations
and how they, in turn, protected him from scrutiny lest a prime source of information dry up.
In a story in the New York
Times on March 24, 2008, Chuck Philips admitted Attorney Goller instructed him to call Pellicano shortly after the first threats
to his fellow reporter, Anita Busch. That, despite the then Editor-in-Chief Carroll’s
instructions not to contact Pellicano. Philips maintains his long time source
never called him back.
Chuck Philips is the reporter
who was recently embarrassed when the paper was forced to retract his blockbuster story about a 1994 assault on rapper Tupac
Shakur. Philips original story cited sources which claimed Sean “Diddy”
Combs orchestrated the attack. The Times concluded Philips relied on a
fabricated FBI report and at least one confidential source that was not trustworthy.
Calls and e-mails to Philips
LAT’s office have gone unanswered. Ex-Editor John Carroll didn’t
return repeated e-mails.
So, what’s the truth
here? Did reporters at the Los Angeles Times turn away from writing negative
stories about their long time source, the renegade detective Anthony Pellicano? Had
a staff attorney relied on Pellicano in ways that were unsuitable? Did Anita
Busch fabricate a story of repeated threats to her life? Did she make up the
phone call warning her that someone wanted to blow up her car?
Law enforcement believed
Busch enough to build a case around her. She says she’ll take a lie detector
test if asked.
Maybe Anita
Busch is right. Maybe the Los Angeles Times needs an impartial internal investigation.
-30-
* Anita
Busch's statement to reporters after the verdict:
"I’d like to
thank the judge and jury for their patience and wisdom on this case
as
well as the honest people in law enforcement who stopped others from being relentlessly attacked and terrorized. For that,
I am eternally grateful.
The
full story of Pellicano's reach has yet to be told. To Pellicano and his wealthy clients, ‘winning’ meant completely
obliterating someone's life and livelihood. They saw the media as just another weapon in their arsenal and used and abused it to
go after anyone in their crosshairs. For example, they used their PR connection to plant items in the New York Post's Page Six to slam victims like Bo Zenga and Garry Shandling. And when
their targets became FBI agent Stan Ornellas and U.S. attorney Dan
Saunders, they tried to smear and discredit these decent men in the pages of the L.A. Times. The Pellicano case coverage in the L.A.
Times as reported by Chuck Philips (who told the NY Times that Pellicano was his longtime news source) should be
examined. It's a case study of how Pellicano worked his media relationships to try to destroy his adversaries.
** After
the guilty verdict was read the L.A. Times' P.R.
person, Nancy Sullivan, sent this response:
"For any number of reasons,
attorney client privilege among them in this case, we do not comment on or disclose internal news gathering conversations."