Steven Seagal Out for Justice

**FUZO** · 08-17-2007, 10:30 PM

You'd probably be pretty upset too if you'd gone from Hard to Kill to hard to hire.

Steven Seagal, the ponytail-sporting, martial arts-practicing, early '90s-era action hero, thinks that there's a simple explanation as to why the phone hasn't been ringing as much over the past five years, and, just like one of his big-screen characters, he wants someone to pay.

Or say sorry, at least.

The 56-year-old actor, who still works steadily but more in the straight-to-DVD genre of late, thinks he deserves an official apology from the FBI, which investigated him several years ago in connection with several shady endeavors, including a 2002 plot to frighten two reporters out of writing unflattering stories about him and his ex-business partner.

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E! Online "False FBI accusations fueled thousands of articles saying that I terrorize journalists and associate with the Mafia," Seagal told the Los Angeles Times. "These kinds of inflammatory allegations scare studio heads and independent producers—and kill careers."

Seagal was cleared in 2004 of any wrongdoing after authorities looked into whether he had hired Hollywood private investigator Anthony Pellicano, who's currently in federal prison awaiting trial on numerous other unrelated charges, to put the squeeze on a freelance reporter.

On June 20, 2002, Anita Busch, who was working for the Times then, found a dead fish, a red rose and a note that read, "Stop!" on the broken windshield of her car. She had been researching Seagal and his former producing partner Julian Nasso, who had been charged earlier in the year and eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to extort money from Seagal.

Calling the idea that he was involved "laughable," Seagal says that he tried to cooperate with the FBI's investigation and make himself available for questioning, but that they weren't interested in hearing what he had to say…because they knew darn well he had nothing to do with their case.

"The FBI didn't want to know," the Under Siege star told the Times. "It would've been very easy to prove if Pellicano was calling me or if I was calling him. The FBI subpoenas phone records every day. Why not mine? You have to ask yourself: If there was enough probably cause to raid Pellicano, why not raid me too?"

During the course of the investigation, however, Seagal's name wound up on a host of court documents, including affidavits that implicated the actor in the Times threat as well as in some scare tactics employed against a Vanity Fair writer who was penning a story about him.

And despite the fact that he's been officially cleared and that he didn't really get ensnared in this legal web until after his action-blockbuster heyday, Seagal feels it would serve him well in the public eye and put him back in big-league Hollywood's good graces if the FBI would 'fess up to needlessly dragging his name through the mud.

Recalling a meeting that took place on Oct. 20, 2004, between him, two of his attorneys and Stanley Ornellas, the FBI agent in charge of the case, Seagal said: "The last thing Stan said to me was, 'We know you had nothing to do with it.'"

But although his unwelcome run-in with federal authorities has obviously been weighing on his mind for years, at least he has managed to keep busy. Seagal is currently planning his directorial follow-up to the 1994 environmentally friendly action flick On Deadly Ground. The actor, whose biggest films once grossed a collective $1 billion at the box office, will direct himself in Prince of Pistols, which he also cowrote.