The CBS producer accused in a $2 million shakedown of David Letterman was so paranoid, he thought the late-night king might get him fired, burn his house down — or even kill him, according to shocking revelations in the alleged extortion scheme.
“I’m not sure how crazy this guy is, or um, how dangerous he might be,” former “48 Hours” producer Robert “Joe” Halderman was caught on tape saying of Letterman, according to excerpts released yesterday by Manhattan prosecutors.
“So, just for safekeeping, I’m going to keep a copy of everything,” Halderman insisted during “negotiations” with Letterman’s lawyer — who had been secretly wired by the DA.
Halderman warned that he would be keeping e-mails romantically linking the married talk-show host to female staffers, even as he offered to sell the originals to Letterman in the form of a “movie treatment.”
Prosecutors say what Halderman was really selling was a promise of silence — in a classic extortion scheme.
“I’m worried about someone calling [CBS chief executive] Les Moonves, and saying, you know, there’s a producer at ’48 Hours’ who should be fired,” said Halderman.
“I don’t want that to happen,” Halderman told Letterman lawyer James Jackoway as the two sat together at the Essex House on Central Park South.
“I’m an employee in good standing, but should I be fired, mysteriously . . . If my house burns down . . . Any number of things that, I don’t know this person, I’ve never met this person, I have no idea who or what he is or is capable of,” Halderman rants about Letterman.
Unless he keeps copies, “What is to stop somebody from hurting me?
“As I said to you, the only way to be sure that I never talk to anybody is for somebody to kill me. Well, you know, I don’t want that to happen.”
The excerpts were included in DA papers filed in response to Halderman’s November motion. In that document, the producer argued the case be tossed because all he was doing was bringing to Letterman a legitimate screenplay treatment based on the life of an intern-loving TV host whose world “is about to collapse around him” thanks to his philandering.
But prosecutors argued in their papers yesterday that Halderman’s own words make his true intentions clear.
“Here’s the issue, and let’s cut to the chase here,” Halderman said in his third and final meeting with Letterman’s lawyer, the day before he was arrested and charged with first degree attempted grand larceny.
“The issue is, your client does not want this information public. I have said, for a price, that I will sign a confidentiality agreement and I will not make this information public. That’s — that’s the deal. If that’s not acceptable, then I will move forward.”