Dirty dollar signs flashed in the eyes of veteran CBS News producer Robert “Joe” Halderman when he found the salacious diaries of ex-girlfriend Stephanie Birkitt and other evidence that she had sex with David Letterman — and he became dead set on shaking down the comic for $2 million, sources said.
Details about Halderman’s alleged extortion bid emerged as the “48 Hours” journalist was arraigned in Manhattan Supreme Court yesterday and freed on $200,000 bail.
“The evidence is compelling,” said Assistant DA Judy Salwen. “It shows the defendant is desperate and that he is capable of doing anything.”
Halderman’s twisted plot could have been ripped from the script of a bad romantic comedy, beginning when he found Birkitt’s diary recently after she moved out.
The journal contained more than the musings of a typical 34-year-old woman — it held the steamy reminiscences of Birkitt, a former “Late Show” staffer and onetime secret lover to the talk-show host.
Halderman had been pretty broken up about his split with the bubbly blonde after a four-year relationship. And her diary turned out to be a real page-turner, packed with detailed information about Letterman, sources said.
The producer also got his hands on salacious e-mails between Birkitt and Letterman, as well as some photographs that showed them together, a source said.
Halderman had already known about the fling, which occurred before the 2003 birth of Letterman’s son and his marriage this year to longtime gal pal Regina Lasko.
But the documents allegedly gave him the ammunition to attempt a brazen scheme.
“He recognized a payday,” a source told The Post. “He saw this as his retirement. He just didn’t want to work anymore.”
Halderman photocopied some of the material, and assembled it in a package. He even took some of the facts of Letterman’s antics and made them into the outline for a TV movie that would have been a devastating roman à clef about the host, the source said.
On Sept. 9, Halderman dropped off the package in a limo waiting for Letterman outside the star’s TriBeCa apartment.
Six days later, Halderman met with Letterman’s lawyer at the Essex House hotel on Central Park South. The journalist demanded $2 million, according to Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. A source said Halderman insisted he would not accept less.
After that initial meeting, Letterman and his lawyer contacted the DA’s Office. A source familiar with the case said Letterman never had any intention of negotiating with Halderman to keep evidence of his philandering quiet.
Letterman’s lawyer met with Halderman at the Essex House on two other occasions: Sept. 23 and this past Wednesday.
Salwen said Letterman’s lawyer, wearing a recording device at the request of DA detectives, taped Halderman making “clear, explicit and active threats” against the TV funnyman.
Halderman, who was struggling to make child-support payments, was given a bogus $2 million check at Wednesday’s meeting by Letterman’s lawyer, and a day later tried to deposit it into his account at a Connecticut bank.
“The check was designed to bounce,” Morgenthau said.
“He is in debt to others,” she said. “He has relatives across the country, and we believe he is a flight risk.”
At his arraignment yesterday, Halderman said “not guilty” to the sensational charge in a firm, loud voice.
At one point he turned to look with interest at the audience, which included a swarm of fellow journalists.
His high-powered lawyer, Gerald Shargel, later insisted that Halderman, a father of two who coaches soccer and Pop Warner football, “deeply loves his children” and would never risk fleeing and possibly never seeing them again.
“We intend to bring this case to trial,” Shargel said. “This story is far more complicated than what you heard this afternoon.”
Letterman stunned his television audience Thursday night by disclosing both his past sexual affairs with multiple female staffers and the fact that he had been targeted for extortion.
The bombshell monologue came hours after he testified before a grand jury that indicted Halderman, of Norwalk, Conn.
When Letterman arrived for that testimony, he seemed “like a fish out of water,” a source said.
“This had been weighing on him for a while,” the source said.