Somehow never heard of it.
I never heard of it until I came across a legal paper signed by a guy from SF who I knew to be well known, but wasn’t sure for what.
From the Jewish News of Northern California, 1997:
Harold K. “Hal” Lipset, a San Francisco private investigator who died Monday at age 78, will be remembered not only for cracking some of the nation’s most famous cases, but for lending his behind-the-scenes know-how to the Jewish world.
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A private eye for nearly half a century, Lipset died of heart failure at San Francisco’s Mount Zion Hospital, following surgery for an abdominal aneurysm.
Credited with helping turn the detective business into a respectable venture, he had a list of clients that included law enforcement agencies, government entities, attorneys, businesses, and private citizens.
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Whether Lipset ever brought to the Jewish world such pioneering surveillance tactics as bugging roses or martini olives, Brooks would not say. Once, the crafty detective hid a microphone in a bar of soap, which he took with him into a Turkish bath.
For moves such as these, Lipset is believed to be the inspiration for the private investigator played by Gene Hackman in the 1974 movie “The Conversation.” Lipset served as a technical adviser on the Francis Ford Coppola film.