Finally something to take Hollywood's collective mind off that screener scandal.

Tinseltown is buzzing over the revelation that the FBI is investigating illegal wiretapping by a celebrity gumshoe targeting some of the Industry's top movie stars, lawyers and agents.

The phone-bugging scandal had its origins in a June 2002 incident, according to the Los Angeles Times, when one of the newspaper's reporters came under siege for investigating alleged ties between actor Steven Seagal and a reputed mob figure. Times staffer Anita Busch found a dead fish and a rose on the hood of her car and a cardboard sign on her windshield saying "Stop."

A year and a half later, authorities eventually charged an ex-con and former drug dealer by the name of Alexander Proctor for the scare tactics.

And that's when things really got juicy.

Proctor fingered Anthony Pellicano--one of Hollywood's go-to private eyes, who has toiled for the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson--as the man who wanted to make the threat.

A search of Pellicano's office last year turned up not only C-4 plastic explosives and two modified hand grenades, but also transcripts and tapes of phone calls detailing private conversations between celebs and other Hollywood bigwigs.

The feds subsequently launched a grand jury investigation to determine the extent of the illegal snooping and figure out whether someone hired Pellicano to perform the dirty work. FBI agents have since been questioning those thought to have been bugged by the P.I., including Warren Beatty and his pal Garry Shandling.

Reps for both Beatty and Shandling declined to comment. Calls to the FBI's Los Angeles office seeking comment were not immediately returned.

Another person who turned up on Pellicano's call sheet was Court TV personality Diane Dimond, who told the New York Post she was contacted by the FBI Tuesday. Agents informed her that her phone was monitored by Pellicano back in 1994 while she was working as a reporter for Hard Copy and covering accusations by a young boy that he was molested by Michael Jackson.

At the time, Pellicano was employed by Jackson's lawyer, Harold Weitzman.

"I [was] positive my phones were tapped--I heard lots of clicking and crackling noises on the line and then my words started coming back to me through others," Dimond told the Post. "I would call new sources and they would tell me, 'We understand you've heard X, Y and Z' so I knew my phone had to be tapped."

She also said that during that period she was also the target of a harassment campaign.

"My house was vandalized. My car was broken into," Dimond said. "They gave me armed guards to go to and from work--nothing was safe."

The agent's probe is reportedly focusing heavily on the wheelings and dealings of several prominent entertainment attorneys. Among the subjects of the investigation is Bert Fields, whose star clients have included Tom Cruise and Kevin Costner.

Fields issued a statement on Tuesday acknowledging he had a prior business relationship with Pellicano, having contracted him for investigative services, but Fields flatly denied involvement in any illegal surveillance.

"I have absolutely no information involving Mr. Pellicano and illegal wiretapping, and any suggestion that I do is complete baloney," Fields said.

Another name that surfaced in grand jury testimony was Ed Masry, the lawyer who helped the real-life Erin Brockovich take down a California utility company for polluting the water supply, as portrayed in the movie Erin Brockovich.

A former employee of Masry's testified that her ex-boss, against whom she won a $120,000 slander suit, might have paid Pellicano to tap her phones during thier litigation. Masry's office had no comment.

The Times reports that Masry's role in the investigation is small, and that Fields is the one they're really taking a close look at, especially whether he authorized tapping on people involved in litigation with his clients.

Producer Bo Zenga, who sued Hollywood mogul Brad Grey, a Fields client, for backing out of a deal testified before the grand jury in May that his phones might have been tapped during the trial. Zenga lost his lawsuit and a subsequent appeal.

"[I] was contacted by the FBI, and they asked me questions about Brad Grey and Bert Fields hiring Anthony Pellicano to tap my phone lines and the hiring of a rogue LAPD officer who illegally investigated me and my wife," Zenga told the Times.

That "rogue cop" was Sergeant Mark Arneson, a 29-year veteran of the LAPD and pal of Pellicano's. In a scene straight out of The Shield, Arneson was suspended in June and placed on "inactive duty" for allegedly passing along restricted information from police databases to the P.I.

As for Pellicano, the 59-year-old has not uttered a peep publicly since pleading guilty last month to illegal possession of military-style weapons. He's due to start serving a two-and-a-half year prison sentence next Monday.