Joe Halderman's affairs were brazen, taking place both in the office and on the road, colleagues tell the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove. He was a surly drunk, and was once thrown through a plate-glass window at an Upper East Side singles bar, one colleague told Grove. Some of his colleagues found his "cocky" aggressiveness more endearing, describing him to Grove as a "smart fratboy" and "charming rogue."

In fact, colleagues told the Observer, his limit-pushing was the key to his $200,000-$300,000 per year job at CBS News, where he worked starting in the early 1980s:

"If you said, which CBS News producer would be caught up in this thing, he would have been one of the first people to come to mind," said one associate. "His personality is one that pushes the envelope. As a breaking news producer that's what you need, but you could see how he would be living on the edge a bit."

And all the drinking and womanizing came crashing down on Halderman. His colleagues quoted in the Observer repeatedly "wondered out loud how such a smart person could do something seemingly so stupid." But it would seem he was pushed by circumstances, circumstances he himself made possible through his self-destructive spiral. Halderman met his first when wife when working in the CBS northeastern bureau, according to the Observer, only to divorce her after becoming a "star...cowboy" producer in London and re-marrying to a former CBS News translator — Russian, says Grove — who had three children of her own.

After having two kids with her, the couple divorced in 2004, a situation no doubt brought on at least in part by those "extramarital romances" colleagues told Grove about. As reported previously, Halderman was paying $6,800 and then $6,000 per month to the woman in child support payments. He went on to live with Stephanie Birkitt, a reported former lover of Letterman's, until she reportedly "dumped" him several weeks ago, as one colleague told Grove. His wife had just taken the kids with her in a move to Colorado and the breakup was, perhaps, the last straw.

As CBS producer Marcy McGinnis told Grove: "This is not a bad man. The behavior is so unbelievable, he just must have snapped."

[Previously]

(Pic: Halderman in New York Supreme Court today. Getty Images.)

Letterman's tabloid-ready confessions comes after he spent the afternoon testifying before a grand jury, a first for the long-time Late Show host:

This morning, I did something I've never done in my life. I had to go downtown and testify before a grand jury.

So, what went down? Well, it all started when an unidentified man sent Letterman a package 3 weeks ago that reportedly proved the talk show host has been carrying on with female staffers, though the number's also unknown. The man said he would keep his trap shut if Letterman sent him a check for $2 million. Not one to take extortion lying down, Letterman went to the authorities, who had him mail a fake check and then they caught the bad guy. Score one for celebrity justice.

All of this will definitely put a strain on Letterman's relationship with his wife, Regina Lasko, whom he dated for 23 years before marrying last March.

We'll get you lovelies some video as soon as it's available.

Update: Here's video and some extraneous commentary!

"A former employee is demanding my wife Sheryl and I pay her $1.5 million by the end of the week or she will accuse us both of a vicious laundry list of false terribles."

Lowe goes on to print text messages from the nanny detailing her gushy "I Quit" notice to Lowe's wife Sheryl, in which she states "I have nothing bad 2 say about your family." Not according to Lowe, who says she is claiming Lowe "sexually harrassed" her and hoped he would divorce the "abusive" Sheryl. And while this 26-page accusation certainly deserves center stage, Lowe's lawyer has two other juicy suits to deal with: one against a former chef who Lowe says had sex in his bed and stole medicine from the cabinets, and yet a third suit against another nanny who is accused of spreading crazy lies about the couple and talking dirty in front of the kids. After all this grumbling, we're wondering if Lowe should put the past behind him and simply start hiring his staff through a different employment agency.

[Photo Credit: Wireimage]

• HOUSEHOLD BETRAYAL [HuffPo]
• ROB LOWE SUES THREE EX-EMPLOYEES IN EXTORTION CLAIM [People]

He's pleading guilty to one count of transmitting threatening communications with the intent to extort. When sentenced, he will face up to two years in prison, one year of supervised release and a substantial monetary fine.

Also revealed in the papers: in June 2007, Schmidt met with [Tom] Cruise's representatives and told them, "It would not look good for anyone if the photographs become public."

Later, during a July 2007 meeting, Schmidt told Cruise's representatives that he would "hunt down to hell and back anyone who crossed him."

While we're comfortable in the knowledge that justice has been duly served, something about Schmidt's threatening overtures towards Cruise's camp in June have left us extremely curious as to just what kind of sensitive material might have been contained in the purloined portraits. Short of a telephoto shot accidentally revealing the inner circuitry of the Suri-bot, we'd be hard pressed to envision a single scenario captured at this happy occasion that might shed an unflattering light, up to and including the unshackling of the war bride for the couple's ceremonial first "Silent Dance," performed before the gathered crowd to the hushed strains of an instrument-miming OT orchestra.

• Man in Tom Cruise Extortion Plot Cops Plea [Extra]

David Hans Schmidt, 47, was nabbed Tuesday by FBI agents and is currently being held at the federal detention center in L.A.. He allegedly tried to sell Cruise a large cache of private photos from the actor's November 2006 wedding to Katie Holmes. Schmidt sought more than $1 million for the wedding photos, which were stolen from the actor, said Bert Fields, a Cruise lawyer.

Fields told TSG that Schmidt approached Cruise's representatives earlier this year about the purloined photos and that the actor's camp immediately called the FBI and the United States Attorney's Office. From that point, Fields said, the matter was handled by federal investigators (presumably with some working in an undercover capacity).

Schmidt's main mistake—beyond underestimating Scary Hollywood Lawyer Bertram Fields, who has the FBI on speed dial button marked "T.C. Extortion Plot Hotline"—was in his inflated appraisal of the photos' value in the first place. $1 million for shots of the sweat-soaked groom doing the Chicken Dance at his own nuptials seems grossly overpriced—it's not as if the Sultan had discovered a videotape from the reception of the proud new dad unscrewing his daughter's face-plate and showing the android-baby's advanced infant-simulation circuitry to an amazed Will Smith, then promising his pal that if he and Jada felt like making an addition to their family, he could get them their own Suri-bot at cost.

• Tom Cruise Extortion Plot [TSG]