Selective Notions of a Right to Privacy

Like so many other runners-up, I was hurt and embarrassed to be left off the list.

Sylvester Stallone made the cut, and so did Garry Shandling and Keith Carradine, as well as an ex-New York Times scribe and a former L.A. Times reporter.

All of them were targets of wiretaps and other snooping allegedly directed by private dick Anthony “The Pelican” Pellicano, a Hollywood sleuth and law firm Doberman who once popped off about softening foes with a baseball bat.

You might call it “L.A. Confidential” meets “The Devil’s Advocate,” except for the modern twist -- a Fountain Valley co-defendant and techie who developed the software for a wiretapping program called Telesleuth.

Two thumbs way up!

Pellicano -- with the help of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills cops on the take, along with an inside man at the phone company -- allegedly tried to dig up anything that could be used by his clients in legal battles. Even “Saturday Night Live” has-been Kevin Nealon turned up as a surveillance victim in the 110-count federal indictment, as did a film producer and a couple of talent agency execs groomed by Michael Ovitz.

“I think there are so many people in Hollywood saying, ‘My God, here’s all this free publicity, and I didn’t get any of it,’ ” said law professor Laurie Levenson.

Exactly. Had I been wiretapped, I could have parlayed it into a gig on “Hollywood Squares,” if not “Larry King Live.”

And I would have killed for a dead fish on my car, like the one my former colleague Anita Busch found one morning. In a secret recording, an ex-con said Pellicano had him dump the fish to scare Busch off a story about Steven Segal and a reputed New York mobster.

In the past, Pellicano’s services earned him millions. His clients once included Michael Jackson and Tom Cruise. You have to love a guy whose biggest concern when police raided his home in 2002 and found grenades, plastic explosives, a detonator, gold bullion and $200,000 in cash, was that it would kill his shot at a reality show.

All of which leads to a rather obvious question: Who was Pellicano working for when he allegedly did his snooping, and why aren’t his employers on their way to jail with him?

I read the 60-page indictment and didn’t find any answers. We don’t know if any big-name celebrities or highfalutin lawyers will get dragged into the mess, but it appears there may be revelations to come. As Levenson said, “If this is the tip, it is a very big iceberg.”

What we do know is that Pellicano was employed for many years by Bert Fields, the lawyer whose hardball style has made him nearly as sought out in Hollywood as a good tuck-and-lift man. Fields has handled the Weinsteins, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dustin Hoffman and John Travolta, among other clients with messy legal matters that needed straightening out.

Fields had been a subject of the federal investigation, but was mum this week. He’s a partner at the Century City firm of Greenberg, Glusker, Fields, Claman, Machtinger and Kinsella. Norman Levine, a managing partner, said Fields and some of the firm’s other lawyers have used Pellicano as an investigator.

But “if Mr. Pellicano engaged in any illegal activity,” Levine said, “he did so without their or the firm’s knowledge or authorization.”

Yes. I’m sure Greenberg, Glusker and company were shocked, shocked, shocked.

But how can you hire Pellicano and not know what you’re getting?

The man was featured in a 1992 GQ magazine profile called “The Big Sleazy,” in which he said he had engaged in blackmail and used the ball bat on one of his client’s enemies. But my favorite quote from Pellicano was this one:

“I’m an expert with a knife. I can shred your face with a knife.”

Without passing judgment in this particular case, Levenson said that when a big client hires an investigator, there sometimes is a wink-and-a-nod understanding: Do whatever you have to do; just don’t tell me about it.

“Once it all comes out, of course, everyone wants to say, ‘I had nothing to do with it’ ... It’s this culture of, ‘I want to come out on top; I don’t want to get my hands dirty. But I want to win.’ ”

Even if lawyers are not legally culpable in such an instance, said New York University law professor Steve Gillers, they’ve got ethical responsibilities to consider.

“If a lawyer has reason to believe that an investigator employs illegal means to get information, the lawyer has to make it clear ... that it’s not acceptable,” said Gillers. If it’s at all fishy, he went on, “the intentional avoidance of knowledge” on a lawyer’s part “is the same as knowledge ... You can’t just take the goods and hold your hands over your ears.”

On the other hand, how can we fault Pellicano or anyone else for having an expansive interpretation of what’s legally, ethically or morally acceptable in Hollywood? Especially when it comes to spying?

The Bush administration got caught eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants, and on Monday the U.S. attorney general defended the practice as vital to national security.

“If there’s a lesson in this,” Levenson said of Hollywood’s snooping scandal, “I do hope the public opens its eyes to what violations of privacy are all about. We don’t get upset if we’re violating the privacy of someone who has relatives in the Middle East. But Sylvester Stallone? You better not.”

Before we get too judgmental about Pellicano, let’s not forget that even after he boasted about his skills with a knife and a Louisville Slugger, government prosecutors used him as an expert witness, paying the hired gun thousands of dollars for favorable testimony about disputed evidence.

I say The Pelican’s best bet is to work a deal with the U.S. attorney’s office in which he takes all the fat cats down with him -- lawyers, moguls, celebrities -- in return for a cushy job as a federal spook.

Hollywood, Washington. Who can tell the difference?

Reach the columnist at steve.lopez@latimes.com.