PRIVATE EYE USED BY CLINTONS ACCUSED OF OFFERING TO KILL FOR CLIENT

DAVID M. HALBFINGER - A hedge fund manager and art collector from New York testified under immunity Tuesday that Anthony Pellicano, the Hollywood private detective accused of wiretapping and racketeering, had once offered to have a movie producer killed for him. Adam D. Sender, the owner of Exis Capital, a hedge fund that at one point had more than $1 billion in assets, said in Federal District Court here that he had paid Mr. Pellicano about $500,000 to investigate Aaron Russo, a producer and onetime talent manager whose film credits included "Trading Places." Mr. Russo died of cancer last year. . .

Mr. Sender testified Tuesday that Mr. Pellicano had wiretapped Mr. Russo for a year and had played recordings of Mr. Russo’s intercepted phone calls for him 10 or 15 times. But Mr. Pellicano grew sick of listening to Mr. Russo, Mr. Sender said. And, in a "frightening" moment in the garden of Mr. Sender’s mansion in Bel-Air, he said, Mr. Pellicano suggested killing Mr. Russo.

Mr. Pellicano said that "if I wanted to, I could basically authorize him" to have Mr. Russo "murdered on the way back from Las Vegas," Mr. Sender testified. "He would have someone follow him back, drive him off the road and bury his body somewhere in the desert." Mr. Sender said he had declined.

On cross-examination, Mr. Pellicano, acting as his own lawyer and speaking of himself in the third person, seemed more concerned with getting his own words right than with disputing Mr. Sender’s account. He does not face any charges related to Mr. Sender’s statements.

"Didn’t Mr. Pellicano say, ‘You’ve spent all this money, why don’t you just whack him?’ " Mr. Pellicano asked. "Didn’t Mr. Pellicano say, ‘If you feel so badly about it, why don’t you just have him killed?’ "

"He might’ve phrased it that way," Mr. Sender said.

JOSEPH FARRAH, WORLDNET DAILY, JULY 2005 - A significant portion of the [Clinton's] Shadow Team's operations were carried out by private investigators, among them: Terry Lenzner, founder and chairman of the powerful Washington, D.C., detective firm Investigative Group International; high-ticket San Francisco private eye Jack Palladino and his wife Sandra Sutherland; and Hollywood sleuth Anthony J. Pellicano. . .

Hillary's secret police tend to be a tight-lipped bunch, professionally skilled at keeping a low profile. However, we know more about Anthony "The Pelican" Pellicano than about most Hillary operatives, thanks to his boastfulness and taste for the limelight. Pellicano's violent career as a private investigator reveals much about the sorts of qualifications Hillary sought in her Shadow Team.

In the January 1992 issue of GQ magazine, Pellicano boasted of the dirty work he had performed for his clients, including blackmail and physical assault. He claimed to have beaten one of his client's enemies with a baseball bat. "I'm an expert with a knife," said Pellicano. "I can shred your face with a knife."

FBI agents raided Pellicano's West Hollywood office on Nov. 22, 2002, and arrested him on federal weapons charges. In his office, they found gold, jewelry, and about $200,000 in cash - most of it bundled in $10,000 wrappers - thousands of pages of transcripts of illegal wiretaps; two handguns; and various explosive devices stored in safes, including two live hand grenades and a pile of C4 plastic explosive, complete with blasting cap and detonation cord.