Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from my Heart Radio. Longtime Hollywood private eye and
Speaker 1: his term problem solver, Anthony Pellicano lives by a unique
Speaker 1: code of honor, a code that has caused him a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of suffering and loss. In two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: Pellicano was released from prison after serving a fifteen year
Speaker 1: sentence for wire tapping, conspiracy, racketeering, and wire fraud. He
Speaker 1: could have leveraged some of the dirt he had on
Speaker 1: his famous clients in exchange for a shorter sentence, but
Speaker 1: that simply wasn't an option for the Chicago raised and
Speaker 1: proudly Sicilian Anthony Pellicano. In the early days, I was
Speaker 1: very successful at locating missing people. So my career started
Speaker 1: out really with that and audio surveillance countermeasures, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, devulgating and a wire It's happy. I've got
Speaker 1: articles about me and TV shows that it did back
Speaker 1: in the seventies, you know, early some Yeah, I did
Speaker 1: a lot of shows, a lot of talk shows. I
Speaker 1: moved to California. First case I had was the Lorian case.
Speaker 1: Who contacted you about that? Actually, John de Lorian did.
Speaker 1: I just had moved out there, and my office called
Speaker 1: me and told me that he wanted to talk to me.
Speaker 1: And I told him that I was in California, and
Speaker 1: they said, well, he's in California. I said, well, fancy
Speaker 1: that anyway. So all my clothes and my you know,
Speaker 1: furniture and all that were on the way out there
Speaker 1: to be moved in. So I went out and bought
Speaker 1: a suit and then went down to a law firm
Speaker 1: where there's a bunch of guys sitting around a table
Speaker 1: talking about FBI conspiracies, you know, British intelligence conspiracy and
Speaker 1: all that bullshit. And so here's this, you know, a
Speaker 1: little Sicilian kid from Chicago sitting at a table and
Speaker 1: tell they're all full of ship. And I told him
Speaker 1: that the Lorian Cohn, the government, the government con DeLorean
Speaker 1: and the informant on both of them. So came to
Speaker 1: pass that that's exactly what was true. And you know,
Speaker 1: we won. When people wanted to contact you, how did
Speaker 1: they contact you, Well, there were two methods, you know,
Speaker 1: either word or mouth, which you know, after de Lorian
Speaker 1: I was a hot ticket, or through attorneys, through agents,
Speaker 1: through you know, personal managers, etcetera. Once I got known,
Speaker 1: then it just spiraled up. You had an office, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I had a a huge office at Sunset. I had
Speaker 1: that office for almost thirty years the Luckman Building. Yeah
Speaker 1: you remember, huh. I was told that I was the
Speaker 1: only guy in the building that paid the rent on
Speaker 1: the first of the month every month. Yes. I got
Speaker 1: a big kick out of that. When people would contact you,
Speaker 1: I wonder sometimes like, at what point did you begin
Speaker 1: to feel Because I do believe the research I've done,
Speaker 1: You're obviously a very smart guy. You're a very tough guy.
Speaker 1: You're a guy with a lot of principles. You you
Speaker 1: went through hell because of your principles. I mean, you
Speaker 1: really really tortured yourself as in service of your principles.
Speaker 1: And I really believe that we'll see to me, the
Speaker 1: most important thing in my life was honor. In my word,
Speaker 1: it still is till today, because they took everything away,
Speaker 1: and that's what I've got left, and that's all that
Speaker 1: really I really cherish. When I had a client, you know,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to work from, they became like a
Speaker 1: member of my family. And nobody works with my family. Right.
Speaker 1: If someone is reaching out to someone in that profession,
Speaker 1: and what they're asking them to do is if not illegal,
Speaker 1: it's dicey, it's illicit in some way. Well let me
Speaker 1: let me stop you right there. Because I was a
Speaker 1: private investigator, but I was really a problem solver, and
Speaker 1: I use investigation as a tool. So when somebody came
Speaker 1: to me, they came to me with a problem, you know,
Speaker 1: And the first thing I did, like I do always,
Speaker 1: I have to define the problem in order to solve it.
Speaker 1: And I never told anybody what I was doing. I
Speaker 1: never told attorneys what I were doing. I never told
Speaker 1: clients what I was doing. I never even told my staff.
Speaker 1: You know. I assigned people to different tasks, and nobody
Speaker 1: knew whatever the next guy was doing. You sound like
Speaker 1: a florist. People say I want some flowers, You deliver
Speaker 1: the flowers, don't ask any questions. This is this is
Speaker 1: this goes back to my you know, to my early
Speaker 1: days where you know, that type of attitude was the
Speaker 1: attitude I wanted to keep. What happened in the early
Speaker 1: days that shaped that attitude. Well, I mean, I'm Sicilian,
Speaker 1: and all of the attitudes that I attained, I guess
Speaker 1: are used and cherished came from that life, and I
Speaker 1: still have that attitude. This is an attitude that you
Speaker 1: developed when where you're very young. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: I was asked to and have written a novel which
Speaker 1: will come out sometime, I guess in May. It's called
Speaker 1: The neighborhoo It and it outlines, you know, the way
Speaker 1: life was for me. Then this is a novel. It's not,
Speaker 1: you know, a biographical thing in any stretch of imagination,
Speaker 1: but it laid it out. And so you you developed
Speaker 1: by association with people attitudes. And one of those attitudes was,
Speaker 1: you know the attitude of keeping to yourself. You know,
Speaker 1: sub rosa, everything is within you. You know, there's an
Speaker 1: opera called Tourndo and he sings, my mystery lies within Me.
Speaker 1: So that attitude kept with me. I I never never
Speaker 1: forgot that, and I never forgot that attitude. What did
Speaker 1: your dad do? My dad, he was a truck driver,
Speaker 1: he was a doc foreman. He was, you know, a
Speaker 1: salesman in the in the trucking business. And your mom
Speaker 1: she was a housewife or she worked too. She worked too.
Speaker 1: She worked for airline Pilots Associations for many years. But
Speaker 1: you know, my mom and dad or divorced when I
Speaker 1: was young, so I saw very little of my father
Speaker 1: growing up. Did Yeah, what were you looking for? I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that when my dad died. He died right
Speaker 1: around the time that I started working in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I mean, working on a more serious level, I wind
Speaker 1: up seeking men to replace my father. I needed mentoring,
Speaker 1: I needed advice. This was a critical time in my
Speaker 1: life where the decisions I was making I could go
Speaker 1: this way or that way. And my dad died. He
Speaker 1: was only fifty, had cancer in three Right when I
Speaker 1: went to l A, right when I'm surrounded by people
Speaker 1: who are and I don't need to tell you, Hollywood
Speaker 1: is the Harvard of bullshit. I mean, there's more people
Speaker 1: full of ship out there than you can possibly imagine. Listen.
Speaker 1: It took me an entire year to get used to that.
Speaker 1: I was used to people saying, you know, giving you
Speaker 1: their word and keeping it. I was used to people
Speaker 1: telling you the truth. I I it took me a
Speaker 1: year to get used to Hollywood, and it was a
Speaker 1: tough year because of the attitude that I had when
Speaker 1: I came across bullsh shit. You know, I reacted immediately
Speaker 1: and I got a lot of people's attention because of that,
Speaker 1: and that's why I think I would retain attained the
Speaker 1: respect that I got because I was a no bullshit guy.
Speaker 1: I was straight, right in your face, straight, and having
Speaker 1: to deal with it as you had to deal with
Speaker 1: it was cumbersome. The old man told me, he says,
Speaker 1: you've gotta be more careful. I says, listen, the sharks
Speaker 1: that we have in Chicago, don't compare it to the
Speaker 1: sharks that are in Hollywood. You understand what I mean. Well,
Speaker 1: I would say to people that if you want to
Speaker 1: make money, and you want to make real money, go
Speaker 1: to Wall Street. If you want to spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time with beautiful women, go into the magazine business
Speaker 1: and the modeling business. I said. If you want to
Speaker 1: have power over people's lives, go to Washington money, sex, power.
Speaker 1: But if you want the cocktail of all three, money,
Speaker 1: sex and power, that's Hollywood, without any question, and I
Speaker 1: would go out there. And the mistake I made was
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that people will befriend you while you're
Speaker 1: working together, and the moment what you're doing stops working,
Speaker 1: the friendship is over. Well, you know, friendship, you can't
Speaker 1: even equate people in Hollywood with friendship. I mean, the
Speaker 1: guy that I'm closest to in the world is Ron Meyer.
Speaker 1: He's like my brother. I mean, he took care of
Speaker 1: me the whole time I was in prison, never stops
Speaker 1: came to see me. You know. He was a stand up,
Speaker 1: no bullshit man. He's a rare breed. Yeah. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: getting back to father figures, I had lots of fathers,
Speaker 1: you understand, because that's the way the family runs. You
Speaker 1: had bosses, and you had this and that. But you know,
Speaker 1: these were guys that I you know, I looked up
Speaker 1: to and respected, and I respected that attitude and I
Speaker 1: continue that attitude throughout my entire life. So going to
Speaker 1: prison keeping my mouth shut was a no brainer for me.
Speaker 1: At some point in your life, you pick up a
Speaker 1: passion for, if not an obsession for gadgets and technology.
Speaker 1: When does that start for you? Well, when I went
Speaker 1: into the Army, I found out at that time I
Speaker 1: had a high i Q. And they sat me down
Speaker 1: and they asked me what did I wanted? What I
Speaker 1: wanted to do? Well, I'm a street kit. All I
Speaker 1: know is the street, right, And I looked around and
Speaker 1: I saw a magazine that set electronics. So I said electronics,
Speaker 1: not knowing the thing about it, and go in and
Speaker 1: they may make me a cryptographer. Where we stationed well
Speaker 1: at schooling in Fort Gordon, Georgia. But then I was
Speaker 1: stationed in France and I avoided the Vietnam War because
Speaker 1: of it. While in the army, I learned a lot
Speaker 1: about electronics, and I learned a lot about cryptography obviously,
Speaker 1: and when I came out, I started getting heavily involved in,
Speaker 1: you know, audio surveillance. So when when people asked me
Speaker 1: about wire tapping, you know, I've been wire tapping since
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty, never stopped. And the interesting thing about that
Speaker 1: is the person that I learned about a particular recording
Speaker 1: to ICE was Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson was the person
Speaker 1: who put the Sony eight hundred B recorders in the
Speaker 1: White House not mixing. So a Sony eight hundred B
Speaker 1: recorder had a remote jack, so if you want to
Speaker 1: record telephone conversations, and at that time it was really
Speaker 1: real as you can imagine, what I did is I
Speaker 1: devised a device that when the phone was on hook,
Speaker 1: you had a certain voltage, and when it's off hook,
Speaker 1: the voltage drops and it turned the record around and
Speaker 1: every time they hung up, it would shut off. So
Speaker 1: let's go away, way back. One thing I'll say about
Speaker 1: Hollywood movie making, that's one of the benefits of it
Speaker 1: is you can at times get access to things you
Speaker 1: never imagined. And I wanted to talk to guys who
Speaker 1: are part of the joint New York State FBI Organized
Speaker 1: Crime Task Force, and we wound up going to a
Speaker 1: really non to script block on like thirty second Street,
Speaker 1: ninth Avenue. You're the middle of nowhere. Everything's closed, the
Speaker 1: deli's closed, the coffee shops closed, everybody's all work now.
Speaker 1: It's eight o'clock at night. And I walk in and
Speaker 1: I go into the room and everything's been set up
Speaker 1: by the studio and I go in and these guys
Speaker 1: are there and it's an FBI wire tap nest and
Speaker 1: they had the equipment there and up above was a
Speaker 1: sign and it would say diminish four and they would
Speaker 1: list husband, wife, parishioner, clergy, lawyer, client, doctor, patient. It
Speaker 1: would tell them when they had to turn down the
Speaker 1: volume and not record that conversation. Yeah, but they didn't
Speaker 1: quite do that. Well, No, I don't know that I'll
Speaker 1: leave it to you. But my point is this is
Speaker 1: back in nineteen mid nineties, you'd hear this weird set
Speaker 1: you here, like a big one, which was the guy
Speaker 1: picking up his phone and it's a dial tone and
Speaker 1: you'd hear boo boo boo boo boo boo boo here,
Speaker 1: and then they know, now he's recording the equipment to
Speaker 1: be boarding and real real, And then you hear the
Speaker 1: guy go, Frank, what are you doing? Hi, Tommy? How
Speaker 1: you doing Tommy? I went out to stand down and
Speaker 1: talk to Joey about that thing? What do you say
Speaker 1: that things will take care of? What about that other thing?
Speaker 1: What thing? The thing would ray? You know? And everything
Speaker 1: was that thing, that thing that nobody said nothing, And
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my god, I couldn't believe that this
Speaker 1: is the FEDS wire tapping these guys, these mob guys houses. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a law pass where they had to minimize
Speaker 1: they would have to record for a certain length of
Speaker 1: time and then shut it off and you know, if
Speaker 1: they weren't talking about something, you know, interesting, But they
Speaker 1: never did that. But I'm the guy who coined the
Speaker 1: term of forensic audio, and I devised you know, programs
Speaker 1: through analyze tape recordings. I did the the eight team
Speaker 1: in a gap, I did the sarvantep. Was it easier
Speaker 1: then when you started or did it become gradually easier
Speaker 1: or harder to do this kind of work technologically in
Speaker 1: the old days of the old phone opening. If you're
Speaker 1: talking about your bugging and while you're tapping and all
Speaker 1: that stuff, explain to my audience what the difference is. Okay,
Speaker 1: A wire tap is recording both sides of a telephone conversation,
Speaker 1: and a bug is usually involved in a rumor and enclosure.
Speaker 1: In other words, you know you because smart guys didn't
Speaker 1: really use the phone to communicate certain things. They would talk,
Speaker 1: you know, in their home in a certain room. You
Speaker 1: know when when people asked me to come and debug
Speaker 1: their homes, and I had elaborate amount of equipment to
Speaker 1: do it, and I found lots of wire tap and
Speaker 1: bugging devices. But I would tell them, if you really
Speaker 1: want to keep a secret, you go out to the
Speaker 1: golf course and you're whispering each other's ear and you
Speaker 1: say nothing, Okay, you want to really keep you know,
Speaker 1: what is a Benjamin Frankly that says the only two
Speaker 1: people that can keep a secret, you know, and a
Speaker 1: three person situation is if two of them are dead.
Speaker 1: But one time I went to uh Barrett Jackson, the
Speaker 1: vintage car auctioneer. We were shooting a film in Phoenix
Speaker 1: and we went to the legendary Barrett Jackson and they
Speaker 1: showed us pictures of I don't think we saw the
Speaker 1: actual car that Howard Hughes had commissioned, where he did
Speaker 1: an array of batteries in the back of this buick
Speaker 1: or whatever he had. He wanted to be able to
Speaker 1: drive into the desert in Las Vegas and have meetings,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to have the air conditioning on but
Speaker 1: the car turned off, and he wanted to be able
Speaker 1: to speak with no potential for being bugged or eavesdropped.
Speaker 1: But if somebody really wanted to you would have figured
Speaker 1: it out. But by then Hughes would have hired you
Speaker 1: already and you'd be in his pocket, you'd be on
Speaker 1: his staff. I've been involved in many of those adventures now.
Speaker 1: But let me ask you, so, why are tapping or bugging?
Speaker 1: Was it easier then when there was a simple bell
Speaker 1: system in the old phone company. What's harder than or no? Well,
Speaker 1: let me put it to you this way. When you
Speaker 1: turn on a recorder, let's say you have on the tape.
Speaker 1: You can listen for an hour, okay, you're going to
Speaker 1: record an hour. That means you have to listen through
Speaker 1: that hour, okay. So it's harder back then, because in
Speaker 1: order to gather the information that you needed, you had
Speaker 1: to listen to everything. So I devised a device and
Speaker 1: you know, computer program where I could selectively record. In
Speaker 1: other words, when you dial your mother, I didn't listen.
Speaker 1: When you dial Domino's Pizza, I didn't listen because I
Speaker 1: programmed all those telephone numbers in there, so if you
Speaker 1: dial those numbers, it wouldn't record. So it's a matter
Speaker 1: of efficiency, common sense, and logic to determine what you
Speaker 1: want to do. I was ten times better than what
Speaker 1: the FBI had, you know, and it was all encrypted,
Speaker 1: by the way, so if somebody were to get the recordings,
Speaker 1: they couldn't listen to him anyhow, only I could listen
Speaker 1: to him. I would imagine that with the work you
Speaker 1: were doing, you had people come into your life, and
Speaker 1: there's a legitimate need for private investigation. There are things
Speaker 1: that people are stealing from people, There are things, people
Speaker 1: are cheating on them, marriages, you take a vow you this.
Speaker 1: There's information that people are entitled to and they have
Speaker 1: to take certain steps to get that information, and all
Speaker 1: of that is legitimate and understandable. At the same time,
Speaker 1: the relationship we might have had ends when the work
Speaker 1: is over. Did people kind of distance themselves with you
Speaker 1: when the dirty work, as far as they were concerned,
Speaker 1: was done. Were there's some people that treat you that way?
Speaker 1: Or were there other people who actually were gentlemanly in
Speaker 1: an ongoing way. I made a lot of friends. But
Speaker 1: let me just say one thing to you, which is
Speaker 1: an adage that I used all the time. People love
Speaker 1: you when they need you. That's say it all for
Speaker 1: you that say it all that does say it. I'll
Speaker 1: share Hollywood fixer Anthony Pelicano. I've talked to some pretty
Speaker 1: tough characters, from Jimmy Cohn to Eline Stretch and Joe
Speaker 1: Delessandro who went from juvenile delinquent to sex symbol and
Speaker 1: talked about the first time he met the man who
Speaker 1: made him famous, Andy Warhol. I never thought about it,
Speaker 1: about the modeling thing. I had a couple of friends
Speaker 1: in New York that introduced me to other people, and
Speaker 1: and then one day one of these friends said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I know this person that's uh making these campbell soup?
Speaker 1: Can you know makes the candle sup? And I was
Speaker 1: thinking we wore going to eat some soup, which I
Speaker 1: was all for. Here more of my conversation with Joe
Speaker 1: Delessandro that Here's the thing dot Org After the break,
Speaker 1: Anthony Pellicano explains why he represented himself in court when
Speaker 1: he was so well connected to some of Hollywood's most
Speaker 1: powerful lawyers. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to
Speaker 1: Here's the Hang. In two thousand two, following up on
Speaker 1: a tip, federal agents raided Anthony Pellicano's office on Sunset
Speaker 1: Boulevard and found explosives in his safe. For such a
Speaker 1: careful guy, it seemed like an uncharacteristic misstep. Well, there
Speaker 1: wasn't any laughing judgment. The Sea four and the grenades
Speaker 1: that I found were not mine. I tried to get
Speaker 1: rid of them. I'm not gonna mention who they belonged to,
Speaker 1: but I put them in and my evidence safe. They
Speaker 1: were in an evidence safe in my laboratory and my
Speaker 1: forensic laboratory. Now I didn't know that thirty FBI agents
Speaker 1: were to come that day and with a search warrant
Speaker 1: and find them. So it just was a matter of
Speaker 1: time and circumstance and bad luck. When they went and
Speaker 1: searched the vault or whatever it was, the safe and
Speaker 1: got the Sea four in the grenades, well, they had
Speaker 1: an array. I had an array of safe in my office,
Speaker 1: and you know, I was commanded to open them up,
Speaker 1: otherwise they were going to take a mountain and drill
Speaker 1: the locks. So I just opened them all up. What
Speaker 1: do they find in there other than the see four
Speaker 1: in the grenades? Lots of things they contributed to the
Speaker 1: case that took you down. No, not really. There's only
Speaker 1: one thing in the in the and there that was
Speaker 1: a recording that was it, and that that was because
Speaker 1: the client wanted me to memorialize particular recording, which I
Speaker 1: never did, by the way, and I had it on
Speaker 1: a CD and he wanted to keep that for whatever purposes,
Speaker 1: and I had it locked in my safe. But no,
Speaker 1: I mean the actual search warrants entitled the government to
Speaker 1: do just about anything, which they're always entitled to do
Speaker 1: just about anything. You know, when you're fighting the federal government.
Speaker 1: You're not going to win. You are just not going
Speaker 1: to there the litigant with the deepest pockets. It's not there.
Speaker 1: It's not It's not only that. But they have immense power,
Speaker 1: and people don't realize this. They don't know. People don't
Speaker 1: realize the immense power that the United States government has.
Speaker 1: They can do just about anything they want and get
Speaker 1: away with just about anything. They what I mean, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of things that they did that they
Speaker 1: didn't have the power to do, and they did it anyhow.
Speaker 1: I remember a famous actress and she was divorcing her
Speaker 1: famous husband, and she joked and said that when her
Speaker 1: friends would call, let's say, her famous husband's name was Bob.
Speaker 1: And she said to me that she used to joke
Speaker 1: that when her friends would call, she would say She'd
Speaker 1: say say hi to Bob, and they go, what because
Speaker 1: he knew that she knew she was divorcing Bob. And
Speaker 1: she said, well, he's listening in right now. They're they're
Speaker 1: tapping my phone, So say hi to Bob. And they
Speaker 1: don't laugh and joke, and she she was like right
Speaker 1: out there that this whole thing was going on. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of people imagine it too. You know, they
Speaker 1: assume the ratio from actual wire tapping to the truth
Speaker 1: is probably. You know, when you get these phone calls
Speaker 1: from people who say, you know, I think my phones
Speaker 1: are being tapped, I tell them the same thing. I
Speaker 1: could come out there with an array of equipment. I
Speaker 1: can find it and the next morn and they can
Speaker 1: reinstall it. So you know, anybody is susceptible to anything
Speaker 1: under the right circumstances. Is everything wireless? Now, can someone
Speaker 1: sit in a car out in front of your house
Speaker 1: and listen to everything you say on the phone? Oh,
Speaker 1: we can be able to do that back in the sixties, really, yes, sir?
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Well, if you use your imagination, you know,
Speaker 1: anything is possible. And and today, with technology as it
Speaker 1: is today, oh my god, you can do just about
Speaker 1: anything you want, anything you want. So you go on
Speaker 1: trial and you get sentenced to go to prison the
Speaker 1: first round, and then we're gonna talk about how you
Speaker 1: get to the end of that line, and then they
Speaker 1: dump this whole other thing on you for this ungodly
Speaker 1: amount of time. When you're in prison the first time,
Speaker 1: what were you convicted of? Well, that was for the
Speaker 1: CEA for in the grenades, right, and so and that
Speaker 1: was sentence was how long? Well? That was for three years?
Speaker 1: And you wound observing how long? Well? I finished that
Speaker 1: sentence and walked out the door, and there were two
Speaker 1: marshals who brought me back downtown and then I was
Speaker 1: indicted for the racketeerian and everything else. And so when
Speaker 1: that happened, do you think that these were people who
Speaker 1: did this just to funk with you because you wouldn't
Speaker 1: cooperate with them? Were they out to get you without
Speaker 1: any question? Because they came to me with all kinds
Speaker 1: of deals, and I, you know, I wouldn't talk about
Speaker 1: my clients or lawyers or judges or senators or presidential
Speaker 1: candidates or any of the other people that I represented,
Speaker 1: nor would I talk about Chicago. So they wanted me
Speaker 1: to cooperate, and I wouldn't. I'll give you a one story.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in prison and they come in and grab
Speaker 1: me and they locked me in a caged room and
Speaker 1: they tell me that I have visitors, And I thought,
Speaker 1: my families here? Why am I here? And they says no,
Speaker 1: it took him, you know, an hour and a half
Speaker 1: to get here. I says, well, if it's who I
Speaker 1: think it is, then tell them that now they know
Speaker 1: how long it's going to take them to get back.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't talk, so and they were fisted about
Speaker 1: that obviously. So no, they tried all kinds of machinations
Speaker 1: to get me to talk, but I never would. They
Speaker 1: sent you to how long well I I did. Essentially
Speaker 1: sounded ten years altogether. So I did a film once
Speaker 1: again in terms of this motion picture access thing. I
Speaker 1: went to what was then Rahway State Penitentiary. The guy
Speaker 1: that was the director of communications escorted me through minimum
Speaker 1: security with some officers. We had bodyguards, and my goal
Speaker 1: was to interview people in minimum security. They had a
Speaker 1: maximum security block in the distance. When you say minimum
Speaker 1: you're talking about a camp, yeah, I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you can quote them. It was one of the most
Speaker 1: mesmerizing and eye opening experiences of my lifetime and the
Speaker 1: stories I heard and the things I learned. It was
Speaker 1: one of the guys that was one of the head
Speaker 1: of the guards and he said to me, everybody says
Speaker 1: they're innocent. They all say they're innocent, He goes, but
Speaker 1: you can tell the ones that really are innocent. I said,
Speaker 1: how he said, the ones most of them complain that
Speaker 1: they're innocent, because but after about a couple of months,
Speaker 1: they settled them because they know they belong here, because
Speaker 1: they know they did it, he said. The ones who
Speaker 1: are truly innocent, he says, they never adjust, never, they
Speaker 1: never accepted one day. They're bitter and miserable. Well, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I would agree with that, because
Speaker 1: everybody was bitter and miserable. You know, I was guilty,
Speaker 1: you know, I I served my time. I was guilty.
Speaker 1: They convicted me, and I was guilty. So but I
Speaker 1: you don't You know, if you're a man, you don't
Speaker 1: sit and cry about it. You do your time. What
Speaker 1: you do in time. You're sitting now. You might go
Speaker 1: through a lot of problems and pain while you're in prison,
Speaker 1: but that's what you're essuchially doing. You've given up time
Speaker 1: of your life. That's what you lose. You lose that time.
Speaker 1: That time is never recoverable. But you know, I can
Speaker 1: tell you that based on my experience, I only met
Speaker 1: one innocent person the entire time I was in prison.
Speaker 1: How did you know he was innocent? Because the guy
Speaker 1: that actually committed the I'm confessed that they let him
Speaker 1: out otherwise I wouldn't know. And by the way, you know,
Speaker 1: when I was antisocial in prison, I didn't enjoin gangs.
Speaker 1: I was my own guy. Were you asked to Oh God, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: but you know I I sith the claim I'm Sicilian
Speaker 1: and I deal with Sicilians, So you know, go away.
Speaker 1: And when you were in prison, did you have friends
Speaker 1: and family on the inside, Well, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people that I knew that were in. But you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody wants to hurt you, they're going to hurt you.
Speaker 1: And I went through a lot of occasions where I
Speaker 1: could have been hurt seriously, But you know, it's just
Speaker 1: the way it is, and you have to live with that,
Speaker 1: and you learn to live with that, and you learn
Speaker 1: to get into what I would call a mindset where
Speaker 1: this is where you are and this is where you're
Speaker 1: going to stay for a period of time. Did they
Speaker 1: offer you opportunities to talk and you could have gotten out,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't have done a day
Speaker 1: if I would have talked. But more I'm asking is
Speaker 1: beyond the sentencing, is in an ongoing offer? Well they
Speaker 1: tried a couple of times, yes, but that did work.
Speaker 1: None of that work with me. You know, I was essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, a closed mouth, you know, which you couldn't
Speaker 1: pry open. And they learned that and I continue that
Speaker 1: and I'm still that guy today. I'm the same man
Speaker 1: that went in. I haven't changed my attitudes, my honor,
Speaker 1: my word, and all of that is still the same.
Speaker 1: So you know, you've got to be stand up or
Speaker 1: you're not. You're gonna be honorable or you're not. That's
Speaker 1: not a thing that you could learn. You're born with me.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's lots of things in prison that would
Speaker 1: make you, you know, give you pause. But that's just
Speaker 1: the way it is. And by the way, I came
Speaker 1: across more, you know, circumstances while I was free that
Speaker 1: were more dangerous than when I was in prison. So
Speaker 1: you know, I call it time and circumstance. Why did
Speaker 1: you present yourself in court? You knew some pretty powerful lawyers,
Speaker 1: and you had worked for some pretty powerful lawyers. What
Speaker 1: happened to them? Yeah, but nobody knew more about me
Speaker 1: than me. And I wasn't going to talk and I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to interrogate my own clients. I told everybody
Speaker 1: to tell the truth, and that's what I wanted everybody
Speaker 1: to do. There's no sense of people going to prison
Speaker 1: with me, I said, everybody, including my employees. You know,
Speaker 1: they gave a bunch of people immunity anyhow. But I
Speaker 1: told everybody to tell the truth. Why do you have
Speaker 1: to suffer because I'm going to suffer. I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not that kind of guy and I and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: testify against somebody else to save myself. But did you
Speaker 1: also think that a lawyer would try to get you
Speaker 1: to cut a deal? Like did you say to use
Speaker 1: off y waste time? Because any lawyer is going to
Speaker 1: say cut the deal, Well, they're gonna be frank with you.
Speaker 1: I don't know anybody smart enough they handle that case.
Speaker 1: And what I did as I went through the machinations,
Speaker 1: I did subcross examinations and I saved clients by asking
Speaker 1: them questions that would exonerate them, you know, So I
Speaker 1: did that. I still was the loyal guy that I
Speaker 1: always had been, even though I was in trial and
Speaker 1: I knew it wasn't gonna win. There was no way
Speaker 1: of winning. Did I know that the judge was going
Speaker 1: to slam me? No? I thought that I was going
Speaker 1: to do about five years. I never thought that I
Speaker 1: would get the kind of time I did. But I
Speaker 1: realized when the prosecutors told me that they were going
Speaker 1: to very aggressively sentence me, you know, and I just
Speaker 1: looked at him and do that. I said, do the
Speaker 1: funk what you want to do. They're not going to
Speaker 1: hurt me. I'm going to do whatever time the judge
Speaker 1: gives me, and that's going to be it. But getting
Speaker 1: back to being represented, what could a lawyer do that
Speaker 1: could help me? Nothing? What could I do for myself?
Speaker 1: I could be myself and help me. So no, I
Speaker 1: mean there was a lot of a ton of lawyers
Speaker 1: that wanted to represent me for the publicity alone. You
Speaker 1: got out of prison, win. Oh. I got to prison
Speaker 1: my seventy feet birthday in March two thousand nine. So
Speaker 1: it was pre pandemic. Yeah, although in two thousand in
Speaker 1: seventeen that we had an outbreak of the flu that
Speaker 1: was awful. As a matter of fact, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to say this without something glib, but it was
Speaker 1: worse than what it is here. I had a fever
Speaker 1: for two days, a hundred two fever for two days,
Speaker 1: and had that flu for six weeks, so it was
Speaker 1: pretty awful. And everybody on the tier who gets the flu,
Speaker 1: I mean, someone on the tier gets the flu. Everybody
Speaker 1: in the tear gets the flu. There's no escaping anything.
Speaker 1: When you're you're in a cage and there's no way
Speaker 1: escaping it. You've got the very poor circulation, ventilation, et cetera.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna get it. So you just get it,
Speaker 1: and you just bear through it. And in prison, they
Speaker 1: don't give you any medication. You know, they tell you
Speaker 1: drink lots of water. I don't know if you ever
Speaker 1: heard that growing up, when you have the flu, drink
Speaker 1: lots of water. That's what they tell you. That. They
Speaker 1: don't even give you a title. And now, now I
Speaker 1: would imagine that there are people who erroneously compare the
Speaker 1: pandemic to being locked down. That's kind of silly. They'll
Speaker 1: sit there and say, hey, you get out of prison,
Speaker 1: and now we're in a pandemic and everybody's locked down again.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure like they don't know what lockdown is
Speaker 1: until you go to prison, No fucking way, exactly. I
Speaker 1: was in a hole for two of the years that
Speaker 1: I was in prison. Why, But that's that's the reason
Speaker 1: you know that. You know, that's serious time when you're
Speaker 1: locked in a room with a little porthole and nobody
Speaker 1: comes to the door except to feed you. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I would imagine. Another thing is that when you're in prison.
Speaker 1: This is what occurred to me. This may sound tried.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of horrible things about prison.
Speaker 1: I have always had. I've always maintained this fascination. Someone
Speaker 1: said to me, if you had your life to do
Speaker 1: over again, what are some of the other careers. There's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a bouquet here of careers. I
Speaker 1: might have psychiatrists. I find that very stating, and one
Speaker 1: of them is to be in penology, to be the
Speaker 1: warden of a prison. Oh you don't want to do that. Well.
Speaker 1: What I wanted to explore was this idea that when
Speaker 1: I did the Rahway thing again, because which was so informative.
Speaker 1: You know, one guy says to me, I'm with a
Speaker 1: white guy that looks like Gene Hackman. I said, what
Speaker 1: did you do? He said he was? He said I
Speaker 1: was a stick up man. He said, what was the game?
Speaker 1: He said, One rule was always have your gun with you.
Speaker 1: Never be with the biggest crime was to not have
Speaker 1: your gun. I said, why, He goes, because if I
Speaker 1: go to the gas station and the little old ladies
Speaker 1: there by the counter and she has nine hundred bucks
Speaker 1: in the register and none of my gun, that costs
Speaker 1: me nine hundred bucks. He said, always have your gun
Speaker 1: with you. Another guy said to me, when you get up,
Speaker 1: this was my favorite one. He I go, what's the
Speaker 1: first thing you do when you get out of prison?
Speaker 1: He says, you get a girlfriend. And it was a pause, like, oh,
Speaker 1: of course I get that. He goes, no, no, not
Speaker 1: for that. He said, you need to have someone to
Speaker 1: funnel all your paperwork through. I can't get a lease,
Speaker 1: I can't get a bank account, I can't get a
Speaker 1: phone turned on. You gotta get a girlfriend who you
Speaker 1: can get everything turned on for you, so you can
Speaker 1: kind of funnel all your administrative stuff through. But my
Speaker 1: point is is that I was kind of shattered by
Speaker 1: the idea that one guy said to me. He goes,
Speaker 1: you go into prison. He said, you're in prison for
Speaker 1: a month, two months, three months. You're sorry, if it's
Speaker 1: a non violent craft, you didn't murder somebody. He goes,
Speaker 1: you're in prison, four months, five months, six months. You're
Speaker 1: really sorry, said, You're in prison for nine months. He said,
Speaker 1: you're so fucking sorry. He goes, you keep me there
Speaker 1: one day more than a year. He goes, I ain't
Speaker 1: sorry anymore. Fuck you that you made me stay in
Speaker 1: here all this time for something mine or like drugs
Speaker 1: or what have you. My attitude was just the opposite.
Speaker 1: I knew I was going to be in prison for
Speaker 1: a long time, and I just settled in. What I
Speaker 1: wanted to do is keep my mind active. My mind
Speaker 1: was my most valuable possession. How did you do that? Oh?
Speaker 1: I did all kinds of things. I read like two
Speaker 1: thousand bucks while I was at prison. I wrote, I
Speaker 1: did lots of high level geometry that took like five
Speaker 1: hours a day. One problem took me nine days to
Speaker 1: figure out. And when the lights go out, I developed
Speaker 1: a technique and I call them, you know, memory movies.
Speaker 1: It took me seven years to do this, by the way,
Speaker 1: where I could selectively play back things in my life
Speaker 1: that made me happy and ignore the things that didn't
Speaker 1: make me happy. You play all kinds of games, mind games,
Speaker 1: you know, to keep yourself sane and keep yourself active
Speaker 1: and keep your brain working. Because otherwise you stagnate. And
Speaker 1: if you're a guy that only wants to work out
Speaker 1: all day, that's all you're gonna do. And at the
Speaker 1: end of your prison term, that's all you got in
Speaker 1: your pocket is that you worked out. You might have
Speaker 1: developed some muscles, you might have developed a more healthy diet,
Speaker 1: you understand, but that's all you got. And I refuse
Speaker 1: to walk out of prison. You know, dumber than I
Speaker 1: was when I came in, So I continue to educate myself.
Speaker 1: Former private investigator Anthony Pellicano. If you're enjoying this conversation,
Speaker 1: tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the
Speaker 1: thing on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Anthony
Speaker 1: Pellicano talks about finding ways to care for others while
Speaker 1: in prison. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the thing. Anthony Pellicano refused to talk when he was
Speaker 1: in prison, not just to the Feds, but to other
Speaker 1: inmates as well well. I was in rooms by myself,
Speaker 1: I was at cells, I was for a lot of time,
Speaker 1: I was in a cage, okay, but there are times
Speaker 1: that you're in a you're in a dormitory situation, whether
Speaker 1: you're with the roommate, you know, two guys, four guys,
Speaker 1: room full of people. I would imagine that for me,
Speaker 1: the temptation to pass time would be just to talk
Speaker 1: to people and shoot the ship. And did you find
Speaker 1: you were incapable of telling them about your life because
Speaker 1: of confidentiality, Well, listen if you're if you're gonna ask
Speaker 1: me that I talk about what I did, No for
Speaker 1: a mirrorment of reasons, because usually when people are asking
Speaker 1: you questions while you're in prison, so that they can
Speaker 1: use that information to try to get a better deal
Speaker 1: for themselves to get out of jail. So you learn,
Speaker 1: you learned, you just tell nobody a fucking thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But I had such respect when I was in prison
Speaker 1: because of my attitudes and because of who I was,
Speaker 1: that I had many many sons. I had many, many
Speaker 1: guys that I would mentor many many you know people
Speaker 1: that I would advise about cases. I got like six
Speaker 1: guys out of prison, and that was pretty much because
Speaker 1: I was bored. I mean, I give you this one occasion,
Speaker 1: the white shot caller came to me and says, you know,
Speaker 1: I'd like you to help me. I said, I'm not interested.
Speaker 1: He says, well, could you can I tell you about it?
Speaker 1: I said no, I'm not interested. So he kept coming
Speaker 1: back to me and coming back to me, and one
Speaker 1: day he said the following words to me that changed
Speaker 1: my mind. He says, my mother and father have been
Speaker 1: calling my lawyer and and he won't return their phone calls.
Speaker 1: So I says, well, they gotta have try harder, and
Speaker 1: I walked away. He says, don't We've tried, We've done this.
Speaker 1: I says, well, at the end of the day, what
Speaker 1: is your lawyer doing for you? And then he paused,
Speaker 1: and I said, wait a minute. When's the last time
Speaker 1: you saw your lawyer. He says, a year and a
Speaker 1: half ago. I said, excuse me, I told him. I said,
Speaker 1: you said, your mother and father are calling your lawyer
Speaker 1: and he's not taking their calls or you're speaking to
Speaker 1: her receptions. Yes, you bring me their telephone bills for
Speaker 1: three months, and you go downstairs and you asked for
Speaker 1: a list of all your phone calls because you say
Speaker 1: you were calling to well. Three months later, he got
Speaker 1: all of this accumulated. So I wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: the judge for him, saying that he hasn't seen his lawyer.
Speaker 1: His lawyer has been inattentive, he won't answer his mother's
Speaker 1: phone calls. I write this nice letter to the judge.
Speaker 1: Two days later, gets called before the judge, and a
Speaker 1: judge realms out his attorney and realms out the prosecutor.
Speaker 1: He said, young man, how long have you been you
Speaker 1: know here in the MDC. He says, five years, Your
Speaker 1: hon her, he says, time served. Walked that kid out
Speaker 1: the door that day. Okay, but yeah, but that's you
Speaker 1: see that that all that took was logic and common sense. Well,
Speaker 1: and also that you cared. He was lucky to meet you.
Speaker 1: You cared in the way that you hoped your lawyer
Speaker 1: would care. You just said the magic four letter word care.
Speaker 1: Because people say they're gonna do this prison reform, they're
Speaker 1: gonna do all of these things. I said, it has
Speaker 1: to start with the four letter word. Somebody has to care.
Speaker 1: Somebody has to go to somebody who goes to somebody
Speaker 1: who goes to somebody, and that whole line of people
Speaker 1: that you go through, they all have to care. If
Speaker 1: they if somebody along that line doesn't care, you're dead.
Speaker 1: You know, you can go all the way to a congressman.
Speaker 1: And if your congressman doesn't care, you're dead, that's amazing,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. I read somewhere that you were approached about
Speaker 1: getting involved somehow in the Michael Jackson case. Represented Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: you representative, and what happened. What I do is when
Speaker 1: somebody is accused of something, and I didn't handle that
Speaker 1: many criminal cases, so you understand I do just the
Speaker 1: opposite of what you would think. I try to prove
Speaker 1: their guilty. I go out and do everything in my
Speaker 1: power to prove that they're guilty. If I can't, then
Speaker 1: the chances that they'll tell me the truth. But it
Speaker 1: came a point in time with Michael Jackson that I
Speaker 1: learned some things and I quit. I fired him. No,
Speaker 1: I learned the truth. I fired him, and I was
Speaker 1: end of that. And by the way, I gotta offered
Speaker 1: tons of money to tell that story, and I have
Speaker 1: never well, I you're the only person I know who
Speaker 1: by closing his mouth and simply doing nothing and saying
Speaker 1: nothing has cost yourself tens of millions of dollars. But anyway,
Speaker 1: a plus years of your life. Um, you got at
Speaker 1: a prison in two thousand nineteen, and of course we're
Speaker 1: in the COVID. Now are you back to work? Are
Speaker 1: you back to work in your old career, my old career.
Speaker 1: I can't be a private investigator. You're not allowed to.
Speaker 1: You've been barred from doing that. But I still can
Speaker 1: do negotiations in troubleshooting, which is what I do, consulting.
Speaker 1: I have a website that says Pellicano Negotiations and that's
Speaker 1: what I do. And I think you might have read
Speaker 1: about my most recent adventure with that. So yeah, But
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, I have no desire in
Speaker 1: the world to be a private investigator again ever, no
Speaker 1: desire whatsoever. And like I told you before, I use
Speaker 1: investigation as a tool to solve a problem. So let's
Speaker 1: say I need somebody to gather information for me, I
Speaker 1: could just hire them. But to the extent that you
Speaker 1: do sound, I mean you do. You clearly sound so strong, steely, competent, smart, mature, sober,
Speaker 1: you all these things. Was there a little part of
Speaker 1: you that got a little high on the career you had?
Speaker 1: Did you get high on it a little bit? No,
Speaker 1: not at all, not at all. No, No, it was
Speaker 1: a job. No, you were about to talk to say
Speaker 1: things that I wish that I've never done. No, but
Speaker 1: I didn't like everybody I worked for. I can tell
Speaker 1: you that there are a lot of celebrities that I
Speaker 1: had disdained, But you know, the lawyers who hired me
Speaker 1: or the agents that hired me. I had to do
Speaker 1: the job. And by the way, that's the name of
Speaker 1: the game. You know. You come to me with a problem.
Speaker 1: I solved the problem. You pay me, and that's how
Speaker 1: I support my family. That's how I took care of
Speaker 1: and that was my livelihood. So that's why you know.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's nothing that I regret. There are
Speaker 1: things that I would have done differently. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: given the degree of loyalty to certain people who didn't
Speaker 1: deserve it. But I'm that guy. I can't be anything
Speaker 1: different to the day I die. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: that loyal guy. If I'm loyal to you, I'm going
Speaker 1: to remain loyal to you unless you do one thing,
Speaker 1: and that's the killer lie. Once you lie to me
Speaker 1: one time, you're dead. What's your bucket list? Now you're
Speaker 1: at a prison after this ungodly length of time, what
Speaker 1: do you want to do with the time in your life. Now.
Speaker 1: I want peace. That's all I want is peace. I
Speaker 1: want to, you know, survive as long as I can survive.
Speaker 1: I want to have the relationship with my children. I
Speaker 1: want to have the relationship with the few friends that
Speaker 1: I have. And that's it. How were your children when
Speaker 1: you were in prison? What were they like when you
Speaker 1: were in prison? Uh, they were devastated. It was terrible
Speaker 1: for them, you know, and you know, if you want
Speaker 1: to use the term regret, I'm sorry that they went
Speaker 1: through what they went through. But you know, they came
Speaker 1: to people. More people came to me and told me talk,
Speaker 1: you know, and all you gotta do is talk. And
Speaker 1: I'm not that guy. And I you know, my children
Speaker 1: realized that, they realized that their father is an honorable
Speaker 1: guy and he's just not going to do it. They
Speaker 1: didn't like it, Nobody liked it. But that's what I am.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to remain that. What's the first thing
Speaker 1: you did when you got out of prison? What's the
Speaker 1: thing you said? Just I gotta go do this? What
Speaker 1: you do? You have a nice meal in a beautiful restaurant.
Speaker 1: Ronnie Yer loves to tell the story, I'm out of prison,
Speaker 1: they take me to lunch, and then he takes me
Speaker 1: to Italian restaurant after eating gruel for all these years, Right,
Speaker 1: I'm complaining about the food. He loves to tell this
Speaker 1: fucking story. I said, this is ship. He looks at me.
Speaker 1: You've been eating beans and race for all these years,
Speaker 1: and you're complaining. I said, well, this is I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you, and I cook this is ship. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna stay in touch with you. I'm coming out there
Speaker 1: in a few weeks. I'm gonna look you up out there.
Speaker 1: And what I wanted to advance is one promise from you.
Speaker 1: You find the restaurant that you know you're not going
Speaker 1: to complain about, because I want you to have a
Speaker 1: decent meal. If you complain about that fucking meal, I
Speaker 1: we'll start crying. Okay, partner, Okay, deal. Anthony Pellicano's novel
Speaker 1: The Neighborhood is coming out later this spring. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is here's the thing. We're produced by
Speaker 1: Kathleen Russo, Carrie donohue, and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is
Speaker 1: Frank Imperial. Thanks for listening. Nat