Busch's Bad Time

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Two days ago former Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Entertainment Weekly and L.A. Times journalist Anita Busch testified at the Anthony Pellicano wiretapping trial about the heavy intimidation she received in '02 (the "stop" note, the dead fish, etc.) at Pellicano's behest to back off from writing a tough story about one of his clients. Variety's Anne Thompson filed a story about it early Wednesday evening.

Busch, thought to be a pretty tough and shrewd reporter in her day, wept a bit, talked about how scared she was about her life back then and whether or not she could financially survive, declared that she "stopped writing" and that she'll never write a book about the threats, and so on. I never had a dead fish put on my car windshield, but my phone was tapped by Pellicano in '93 and he tried to shake me up psychologically during the same period. It was unpleasant as hell, and I was angry for a time, but I got over it. You ride it out and you move on.