JUSTICE MET AND JUSTICE DENIED.



Once upon a time there was a guy by the name of Anthony Pellicano. He was a private dick working for the top Hollywood brass. He made a great living snooping and characters like him are in hundreds of novels written by people like Dean Koontz.

As the Daily Beast reports citing the LA Times, while representing people like Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson, and Chris Rock.  And they, evidently paid him handsomely for this service.

He was really good at listening in on the conversations of others.  He bribed police officers to get access to places to wiretap and to get information concerning arrests and the dope that flowed from those arrests. He was very good at his job.

He was arrested, convicted and sentenced yesterday.  At age 64, he received THREE TIMES the recommended sentence.  Fifteen years in prison. The picture at sentencing was worth a thousand words according to the LA Times:


"As the judge spoke, Pellicano -- dressed in green prison garb and shackled at the ankles and waist -- remained mostly expressionless, leaning back in his chair with his chin propped on his hand."
When given a chance to address the court before sentencing, Pellicano said he had taken 'full and complete responsibility' for his actions."

"Assistant U.S. Atty Kevin Lally called the statement "hogwash."

The Judge was just as condemning as the DA:

"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."

W stated on several occasions that his administration never wiretapped any conversation unless it included someone overseas and only when a proper warrant was attained. That was throughout 2004, remember?  The year he was running for reelection.

Newsweek's cover story entitled The Fed Who Blew the Whistle is quite a long read but really gets to the nub of things.  Basically:

"In December 2005, the New York Times published a story on its front page discussing its investigation of a wiretap operation that was nation wide involving several phone companies. ..


The NSA, with the secret cooperation of U.S. telecommunications companies, had begun collecting vast amounts of information about the phone and e-mail records of American citizens. Separately, the NSA was also able to access, for the first time, massive volumes of personal financial records--such as credit-card transactions, wire transfers and bank withdrawals--that were being reported to the Treasury Department by financial institutions. These included millions of "suspicious-activity reports," or SARS, according to two former Treasury officials who declined to be identified talking about sensitive programs. (It was one such report that tipped FBI agents to former New York governor Eliot Spitzer's use of prostitutes.) These records were fed into NSA supercomputers for the purpose of "data mining"--looking for links or patterns that might (or might not) suggest terrorist activity." One of the NYT's primary sources was an FBI agent by the name of Tamm became increasingly upset over the fact that 'extra judicial  procedures' were being used by w to get around FISA and the FISA Court.  The wire-tapping and E-Mail downloads were being had without warrant. In violation of the law, the constitution and w's own pronouncements. He was also upset about other matters:


"Tamm concedes he was also motivated in part by his anger at other Bush-administration policies at the Justice Department, including its aggressive pursuit of death-penalty cases and the legal justifications for "enhanced" interrogation techniques that many believe are tantamount to
torture. "

"The story of Tamm's phone call is an untold chapter in the history of the secret wars inside the Bush administration. The New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its story. The two reporters who worked on it each published books. Congress, after extensive debate, last summer passed a major new law to govern the way such surveillance is conducted. But Tamm--who was not the Times's only source, but played the key role in tipping off the paper--has not fared so well. The FBI has pursued him relentlessly for the past two and a half years. Agents have raided his house, hauled away personal possessions and grilled his wife, a teenage daughter and a grown son. More recently, they've been questioning Tamm's friends and associates about nearly every aspect of his life. Tamm has resisted pressure to plead to a felony for divulging classified information. But he is living under a pall, never sure if or when federal agents might arrest him."

So the New York Times gets the Pulitzer prize, w is free as a bird and still lying about the entire mess and the guy who wanted to do the right thing is facing ten years in prison.
CHECK OUT NEWSWEEK HERE:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/174601/page/6

CHECK OUT LA TIMES HERE:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-pellicano16-2008dec16,0,6208677.story

The end.