Actually, there could be more going on than meets the eye. Pellicano was caught with *military* explosives: two hand grenades and C-4/SEMTEX.
C-4 or a close derivative of it was what the shoe bomber Richard Reed tried to use to blow up that flight from Paris to Miami.
And a civilian private eye has little use for hand grenades, as using one against a car would trigger a massive federal investigation.
The timing is also interesting, since Pelicano's C-4 and hand grenades were discovered by authorities at the time when Governor Davis had called out the National Guard to protect the Golden Gate bridge and other high profile locations (e.g., LAX).
Methinks Pelicanno was far too interested in pleading guilty to the unregistered weapons charges, too.
Hmmm...