Hillary Clinton And Her Former Employee Anthony Pellicano

16 Dec, 2008 by John Hawkins

Print this article Font size -16+

The LA Times has done a story on Anthony Pellicano being sentenced to 15 years in prison. Unsurprisingly, they failed to mention his most famous clients, Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Former Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano was sentenced to 15 years in prison Monday for running an illegal wiretapping operation that gathered information for a list of well-to-do clients, including celebrities, attorneys and business executives.

U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer condemned the once-famed investigator for “reprehensible” conduct that went on for many years as she handed down a sentence that significantly exceeded the five-year, 10-month term recommended by probation officials. “He did this eagerly, sometimes maliciously, and with pride,” she said.

…The 64-year-old sleuth, whose clients and victims ranked among Hollywood’s biggest stars and most powerful executives, was convicted in two criminal trials earlier this year of 78 counts, including wiretapping, computer fraud and wire fraud.

…In court papers filed in October, prosecutors asked the judge to sentence Pellicano to 15 years and 8 months in prison, saying he was charged with, and convicted of, only a fraction of the crimes he actually committed.

By tapping phones and bribing public officials, Pellicano violated fundamental privacy rights of hundreds of people and chipped away at the integrity of public institutions, prosecutors contended.

…The earliest Pellicano can be released is 2018. Pellicano has been credited for the time he has served since 2006, when he was indicted after he finished serving 30 months for possession of explosives.

…Pellicano’s troubles began in 2002, when a reporter who wrote negative articles about former Hollywood super agent Michael Ovitz went to authorities after she found a dead fish, a rose and a note saying “Stop” inside the smashed windshield of her car.

The reporter, Anita Busch, told the judge Monday that Pellicano’s intimidation and wiretapping were like “death by a thousand cuts.”

Incidentally, Google News currently features 662 stories that mention Pellicano and only one of them mentions the Clintons. That lone story? It was from the left-wing outfit Media Matters, which used Pellicano to back up the Clintons, citing him as “a prominent expert on tape recordings who has testified in numerous criminal cases involving tapes” without mentioning that he was on trial. If you wonder why so many mainstream media outlets are losing audience share, this sort of deliberate blackout of facts that are inconvenient to Democratic politicians goes quite a long way towards explaining it.

Additionally, the fact that Pellicano has been convicted is particularly intriguing given that the Clintons sicced him on Gennifer Flowers, who, along with some of the other women Bill Clinton slept with and molested, reported being harassed. If the Clintons hired a scumbag like Pellicano — and other people like him — who’s to say these stories that include everything from threats against these women’s families, to break-ins at their homes, to even missing cats don’t have a lot of truth to them?

At the very least, it seems to me that Republican senators should bring up Hillary Clinton’s connection to Anthony Pellicano at her Senate confirmation hearing. Nothing too outlandish, just a mention of the fact that Pellicano is going to jail for doing the same sort of work he did for the Clintons and perhaps a question or two. Did he ever do anything like this when he worked for the Clintons? How does Hillary feel about the sort of wiretapping Pellicano did, especially given that the FBI files of her political enemies were improperly viewed during her time in the White House?