The pseudononymous Patterico, at Patterico.com, ties one of his favorite topics, the nefariousness of Chuck Philips, to the recent conviction of Anothony Pellicano on racketeering and wiretapping charges.* [Link via kausfiles.]

Philips is the LAT Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter whose blockbuster story about the non-fatal 1994 shooting of Tupac Shukur ran aground on the information given him by an imprisoned con man. The paper first acknowledged that the story was based on falsified information and then formally retracted it and apologized.

Patterico has been suspicious of Philips for years. (Hitsville, I should note again, is a fan of Philips’, though I know him not at all. As I have written previously, however, I think there’s a good case to be made that he and the LAT have not heard the end of the Tupac debacle.)

Anyway, Patterico has a statement from Anita Busch, the reporter who found a threatening note on her car and started the process in motion. She wants an investigation of Chuck Philips’ Pellicano reporting, charging that he had a too-close relationship with the private eye. She has a sophisticated point to make:

To Pellicano and his wealthy clients, ‘winning’ meant completely obliterating someone’s life and livelihood. They saw the media as just another weapon in their arsenal and used and abused it to go after anyone in their crosshairs. For example, they used their PR connection to plant items in the New York Post’s Page Six to slam victims like Bo Zenga and Garry Shandling. And when their targets became FBI agent Stan Ornellas and U.S. attorney Dan Saunders, they tried to smear and discredit these decent men in the pages of the L.A. Times. The Pellicano case coverage in the L.A. Times as reported by Chuck Philips (who told the NY Times that Pellicano was his longtime news source) should be examined. It’s a case study of how Pellicano worked his media relationships to try to destroy his adversaries.

Patterico says that, specifically, the LAT was the only paper that cast aspersions on those investigating Pellicano. The rest of evidence is pretty thin; Philips is said to have gone to Pellicano’s wedding, and to have been at the reading of his verdict earlier this week, in both cases not taking notes. Philips could be the secret godfather of Pellicano’s pet parrot or barely know the man; this sort of stuff is evidence of neither.

(Patterico also has a long discussion of a couple of married LAT editors and what one of them may or may not have said about hiring Pellicano to investigate the Busch threat, and a response from one of them, which you are welcome to peruse at your leisure.)

On the other hand, a good investigative reporter, particularly one of the ones going after the very dirty stories Philips specialized in, sometimes has to hang out with some very dirty people. You want them going to the hoods’ weddings.

That may be why the Times is standing by Philips. On the surface, he was hoodwinked by a professional con man and it seems as if, for now at least, the paper is acknowledging that great reporters can make mistakes.

The only problem with this is that there are still some very key questions the paper hasn’t yet explained to readers. (I’m not one who thinks that the press owes readers every little bit of behind-the-scenes detail. But while the paper has been quite open about the problems of the story, and retracting it, there remain some very difficult questions that haven’t been answered. An overview here.)

Of course, looming over this is the potential of a lawsuit from Puffy, rap agent James Rosemond, or associate Jacques Agnant, all of whom were slurred in the original Philips story. The paper may be suiting up for a big legal attack, and that probably explains why it is not volunteering any more information to readers.

Sean Combs is definitely a public figure, but he may have his own reasons not to take the case to trial. (He may be working on a settlement with the paper behind the scenes, however.**) Rosemond and, particularly, Agnant have a better argument to make about not being public figures, with the standards for a libel judgment correspondingly lower.

Rosemond has a special case to make in that, besides being branded as the guy who set up Tupac for the assault in which he was shot, he was also mistakenly said to have done prison time for drug dealing, which the paper retracted as well. Again, I’m not a lawyer, but the failure to do simple fact-checking of such a volatile accusation will not look good in court.

* One part of the Pellicano story I’ve always adored, but which is often overlooked in the slew of incredible charges that have transpired since, is that fact that, once the cops got onto him six years ago, they searched his office and found … a significant quantity of C-4 explosive and two live hand grenades. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, but has remained in jail after being indicted on the wiretapping charges.

** The legal problems the paper is facing could mean we may never know how exactly the story went awry. Couldn’t the paper settle with all three characters, and agree to keep the details secret? That might be good for the paper in the business and legal senses, bad in the journalistic one. Sam Zell, of course, inherited this mess. What will his call be?

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Previously:

Big Trouble in LA: The Times retracts the Tupac story

At the LA Times, the pain may be just beginning

Did the LAT get hoaxed on its Tupac bombshell?

What will become of Chuck Philips?

Also:

The LAT’s apology and its original story.

The Smoking Gun’s expose of the hoax.