Comments on: Rich People and Their Private Armies

By: Tlaloc

Tlaloc — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 00:01:18 +0000

Tobacco industry has a pretty scary history with regards to whistleblowers.

By: legion

legion — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:51:11 +0000

William Randolph Hearst? Yeah, and didn't Henry Ford have a downright creepy level of interest in the personal & home lives of his workers, too? I guess when you've got more money than you know what to do with, you find things to do with it...

By: Tlaloc

Tlaloc — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:30:12 +0000

William Randolph Hearst?

By: charles austin

charles austin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 21:02:26 +0000

"I almost guarantee that the next politician to go against corporate America won’t be so lucky."

Ok, so Ezra Klein is a conspiracy nut. Why do you take stuff like this seriously?

By: legion

legion — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:54:54 +0000

One of my dad's closer friends was pretty bloody rich; he didn't do much of the PI stuff, but his (equally-wealthy) family members' main hobby was basically suing each other for utterly random things. To each his own, I guess...

By: dave

dave — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:44:31 +0000

There really wasn't any blackmail, but Richard Mellon Scaife among many other very rich individuals on the right spent a great deal of money (what would be a great deal of money to me) on investigations of Bill Clinton in the early-mid 90s...

By: floyd

floyd — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:25:09 +0000

Anybody else see the way CNN handled the Spitzer news last night? That's right.... a ten minute report on Republican and Evangelist peccadilloes, some dating back to the early eighties!
No bias there! Or was it just typical adolescent rationalization?
At least he hasn't yet been accused of assigning a state policeman to be his procurement officer, like a certain former Arkansas governor!

By: mike

mike — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:20:28 +0000

There is a criminal case against Pellicano in LA, CA involving a PI who would spy on wives/spouses of the very wealthy or on prominent people involved in the entertainment industry for purposes of future trials/blackmail etc... Drudge carried an article about the case b/c it involves potentially 100s of famous/wealthy folks. From an article from CNN:

Prosecutors said he obtained confidential information that could be used to gain advantage in divorce, business and other cases.

By: yetanotherjohn

yetanotherjohn — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:56:32 +0000

I remember one case from law school. The case was on the theft of trade secrets. A factory had it's roof off (I forget why, storm damage, building, whatever) and these two guys flew over taking pictures. Apparently an expert could determine part of the "secret formula" involved by examining the routing of the lines and equipment in the building. The case hinged on whether this rose to the level of a theft of trade secrets (where the secrets being kept from public access, etc). The two guys never ratted on their employer even though they lost their PI license and had to do a couple of years for the 'theft'. So maybe the rich can afford guys who keep their mouth shut, so thats why we don't hear about it. I also remember when we were trying to get our hands on a competitor's chip for comparative analysis. Through a couple of intermediaries we were hooked up with someone who had a "shadowy past". It was hinted but never said he was ex-KGB or Stasi or something. The guys basic pitch was that for $5000 he would get the chip no questions asked. While we were trying to decide if it was really worth that much money, one of our field application engineers got one at the cost of a nice dinner from a customer. Does that count? By the way, I am in no way the super rich, but when this was going on I was working for a fortune 500 company which corporately could have counted as the super rich.

By: Triumph

Triumph — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:04:37 +0000

Are there any examples of ultra-rich folks using P.I.’s to dig up dirt so that they can blackmail government officials? Inquiring minds truly want to know.

This isn't in the "governmental official" realm, but General Motors hired a private eye in the 60s to dig up dirt on Ralph Nader whilst he was publishing articles and books on auto safety issues.

By: Alex Knapp

Alex Knapp — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:55:54 +0000

Ugh,

I forgot about the HP deal. Still, I think that finding the source of a leak isn't in the same league as digging up dirt for blackmail.

By: Ugh

Ugh — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:52:43 +0000

Well, there was the whole HP scandal where they were using PIs to try to find out who was leaking things from board meetings. Not politicians but certainly an example of corporate titans having "lots of private investigators" to go around doing not-so-kosher things.

By: Dave Schuler

Dave Schuler — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 14:51:25 +0000

I've known a number of the ultra-rich over the years and I've never known any of them to employ private detectives. Maybe it's a New York thing ;-)