Guest blogged by Joseph Cannon
For months, the so-called “DC Madam” — Deborah Jeane Palfrey — has been forbidden by a court injunction from discussing or sharing the contents of the meticulous phone records she kept of her Washington D.C. client base.
Before the injunction was handed down, ABC News’ Brian Ross had received a partial list. Ross declared, in a broadcast report, that the phone records did not point to any “newsworthy” individuals beyond the three known names of Randall Tobias (former head of the Agency for International Development), Harlan Ullman (developer of the “shock and awe” military doctrine) and former presidential adviser Dick Morris.
ABC dealt only with records going back five years, and did not have access to the earlier records. Long-standing rumors — as-yet unconfirmed — have held that Vice President Dick Cheney used Palfrey’s escort service, Pamela Martin and Associates, in the 1990s, while he was still the CEO of Haliburton.
Less than two hours ago, Judge Kessler released the injunction. Palfrey is now free to make those phone records available to any journalists or bloggers who ask for them. She has set out certain circumstances for their release; her primary hope is that those looking into the matter will do so thoroughly. Palfrey has expressed disappointment in ABC’s treatment of this story.
When contacted by The BRAD BLOG, Palfrey first expressed her thanks to Judge Kessler. “This decision could have gone either way,” said Palfrey, “given our current political climate.”
In her decision [PDF], as posted by Citizens for Legitimate Government, the Judge wrote:
The question everyone is asking, and that we asked, of course, is this: Can Ms. Palfrey confirm that Dick Cheney was a client?…
At this time, she cannot.
She emphasized to The BRAD BLOG that all she has is a list of phone numbers. Attaching those phone numbers to names will require detective work. Her clients, she explained, fall into three categories: Those she can recall vividly, those she can recall only dimly, and those she cannot recall at all. The majority fall into the last category.
However, she feels certain that as many as a hundred of her clients held sensitive government positions.
Palfrey noted that her clients opened themselves to the possibility of blackmail. Randall Tobias, for example, was the head of the Agency for International Development, which has often provided cover for CIA agents. Tobias would thus have access to a list of undercover operatives. The idea of a man entrusted with such information being sexually compromised is troubling.
Palfrey made one startling admission to The BRAD BLOG: She had no way of knowing just who her associates were. Pamela Martin & Associates did not have the ability to run thorough background checks on the women who acted as escorts. The possibility exists that clients holding government positions dealt with women who had an external loyalty to (say) a foreign intelligence service, or to a corporation seeking changes in government regulations.
Thus, Palfrey feels that some of her clients may have behaved recklessly and could even have “betrayed the public trust.”
We will continue to speak to Deborah Jeane Palfrey, and we will attempt to determine whether noteworthy names match those numbers. Brian Ross’ definition of “newsworthy” may not be the same as ours.
White House Internal Phone Directory
Everyone may have seen this, but thought i would add it to this thread.
This is gonna be GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hello, entertainment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope they publish the full list. You know us blog readers will do the research and have a complete list within days!
Well now, if Dubya is on the list, we might actually get an impeachment! That IS, after all, the standard…
It should be pretty hard for the MSM to stifle this, its just their kind of story!
Did this release come from out of the blue? Was it expected?
Gee, Brad. You stole CLG’s exclusive story – notice your linking to CLG’s .pdf within your article.
Here is the actual URL to the item:
http://www.legitgov.org/judge_l...ds_050707.html
Cheers,
Lori R. Price
Mgr., Citizens For Legitimate Government
http://www.legitgov.org/
If Bush or Cheney or Rove are on the list they will only say “Clinton did it, so it’s OK if we did it too.” Blame Bill again.
Aquart:
A decision from Judge Kessler has been pending for at least the past week or so. I think most of us thought there was a 50/50 chance it would be favorable to public release of the records.
Now we can use Cheney’s involvement with the prostitutes to force Cheney to resign.
Congratulations to Judge Kessler for respecting the rule of law. But if I were Palfrey, I’d get those phone records out in the next few hours, before some new tactic is used to bury them forever under Iron Mountain. The chances that a long-term escort service in DC hasn’t been used by myriad high-level movers and shakers in government is, well… zero. And I’d bet that most of those dopes are way too arrogant to call in from phone booths.
Mossad will have ALL the names already.
Hold on thar, Lori.
In the first place, the person you are chiding is me, not Brad. Brad is on vacation.
“Stole” is certainly the wrong word. I’ve been paying attention to the DC Madam story for some time on my own blog. I’ve been corresponding with her for the past little while, and I called her this morning. She told me that the injunction had been lifted a mere hour beforehand.
After the interview, while writing this article, I checked the news to see who else had mentioned the days’ events. I was heartened to see the CLG had placed the judge’s decision online in pdf form, so I linked to it.
But surely it is unfair to use the word “stole” to refer to an original interview? In her chat with me, Palfrey made the points about the potential for compromising men in governmental positions, and she also noted that she could not do a full background check on the women who worked for PM&A. I don’t think those notes had been hit in any other interview.
Also, at no other time (that I know of) has she explicitly discussed the allegations of Cheney’s involvement.
That said, we all owe you a debt for placing the judge’s decision online, and for doing so with amazing rapidity.
Mr. Cannon, I found your statement to be spot on:
(ibid, emphasis added). That is the big no no for spies or government officials. To get into a compromise situation.
That is why the Jeffie Gannon-Guckert, Watergate prostitute & gambling (“Dusty Foggo” CIA agent case), and many others, are relevant here.
No government officials can safely use prostitutes or even affairs, because blackmail for classified information or just negligent talk can give away state secrets. Even worse can happen.
That is why this is a story … there is a potential threat to national security … not that that has held bushies back before. I mention it only to give context.
The mother of all madams, SICK INC., is doing a heckuva job killing americans.
SICK INC is the madam on steroids, according to SICKO and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), that leads in numbers of americans dead and wounded by “friendly fire” (a.k.a. “iatrogenic causes”):
(JAMA Vol. 284, emphasis added). So the grand total from friendly fire from madam medical realm is (225,000 + 199,000) 424,000 deaths each year.
Terrorists don’t come close to killing that many people in all the world, much less that many americans.
This mother of all madams must pay congress well … so congress will not declare war on her?
I don’t know Cannon, this seems just about the right amount of time to go through the list and eliminate all the good phone numbers, don’t you think ?
The list has been scrubbed IMO
So tell me John Gideon;
Why is it that you are sending this (e-mail)story to me as an “exclusive” when I ALREADY GOT THE STORY FROM CLG 3 1/2 hours earlier than you put it out? You didn’t even link to their site!!!
What’s up with that?
We have to support each other to beat this problem. Please don’t tell me that you guys are going to become like the guys at that “other site” that sells ads so expensively!!!!
I respect Brad; but I think you owe an apology for this one to Lori.
Yellowbird, #17,
So they both scooped the same story at the same time. Big deal. Did CLG know that Cannon was working on this story or something? Because if you read his reply above, he clearly didn’t know about that coverage until AFTER he wrote the article. It’s all there in #13 above. Sheesh, what a bunch of crybabies. Nobody “stole” anything. I have yet to see that occur here at Brad Blog (although many have, shall we say, “borrowed” from Brad blog itself.) The journalistic integrity here is outstanding. I have watched just about every single thing covered here end up being completely accurate and truthful. It’s truly astonishing.
Oh, fer crapsakes, how “exclusive” is anything you get by calling a madam anyway? Quit scrappin’ over scraps.
I think it is a bit disingenuous for the Madame to first, not do background checks on her employee’s and then to point fingers at her customers saying that they may have compromised national security by using her services.
Now, that is not to say that I have anything against sex workers or even prostitution in general. I know many sex workers and even helped pay my way through college as a security person for an upper class sex worker (the same basic clientele that the D.C. Madame served). I also don’t give a fig about politicians using an escort service. But I was THRILLED when then the guy resigned who used sex workers while simultaneously denying dying “third world” citizens the right to use condoms to protect themselves from the spread of AIDS. THAT is not ok. Such morally reprehensible behavior should be punished, not for the act of paying for companionship/sex, but for the gross hypocrisy. He has every single person who subsequently died of AIDS for lack of a condom on his hands as surely as if he had pulled the trigger himself.
That being said, I will enjoy seeing the names come out if only on the “you’re such a hippocrite’ level of these so called “family values” types. It is not the act of paying for sex that is a problem, it is the secrecy, the persecution of others who do the same thing, and the hypocrisy that runs a mile wide in these guys.
YellowBird –
As you can see in Cannon’s earlier comment responding to Lori Price’s similar query, there was no intention to steal anybody’s “exclusive” on anything.
We’ve been in touch with Palfrey for some time, and Cannon’s report above forwarded the story a few dots from CLG’s original report which, by and large, announced the lifting of the injunction, and included the PDF.
We linked to the PDF, and have since include a link to CLG’s quickie item which, while appreciated, neither I (nor Joseph, to my knowledge) had seen prior to our own report.
We’re always happy to give credit where it’s due! Especially as so many folks have failed to do so with us! We did try to forward the story, and Cannon succeeded in that, so it’s certainly not the same “Exclusive”. But we’re happy to link up to CLG nonetheless, and I’ve added a link to them now from the original report above.
Hope that clears things up.
It’s Christmas and here’s my “wish list”:
(I can wish, can’t I?)
Pat Robertson
Dick Cheney
2 George Bushes (and a partridge in a pear tree)
Dobson
Frist
DeLay
Abramoff (just so he was in there first, and spread disease to the rest of them)
Tom Feeney
Thor Hearne
Bob Ney
Anyone Brad prededed their name with “The Not Yet Resigned…”
HCODCR
Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity
Paul Harvey (he needed Viagara)
Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter (KINKY!!!!!!!!!!)
…and grab onto your floatation devices for the last one, and I’m sorry about this:
HENRY KISSINGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Also, I hope there’s a lot of high-up ABC employees on this list, maybe the head of ABC, because they said they didn’t publish this list because there were “no names of significance” on it. A few “names of significance” resigned just at the original threat of this list being published, remember? So that’s a proven lie already! Here’s hoping there’s a lot of ABC higher-ups on this list, too.
Follow the money.
Most of you are going to have to be prepared for a little wait, unless some names are hit early-on by some chance event. 46 lbs. of phone records, covering 1993-2006 is going to be utterly sprawling-in-scope. I’m close to the story, and I can tell you that it’s going to be in the hands of an army of researchers and investigative journos. Many numbers will be dead, changed, or who-knows-what. We just don’t know at this point. However, Jeane Palfrey was told by ABC producers six major names, and asked if she knew her clientel was so “well-heeled.” These names were not in the broadcast.
Here’s some observations on the ruling by Judge Kessler:
A very Special thanks go to Maria Cuvillion (phonetic) and Joe Clark, the postal inspectors who walked-past the phone records several times in their search of Ms. Palfrey’s home. You missed the most important evidence in the case–the evidence that could exonerate Ms. Palfrey, and maybe cage some of you abusers of our federal bureaucracy. Why they sent you, and not the FBI is hard to understand, Joe and Maria, but it worked-out OK for everyone. At the Justice Department, they have even bigger-problems besides the U.S. Attorney firings scandal–Assistant U.S. Attorneys William R. Cowden, Catherine K. Connelly, Daniel Butler, and their interim appointed boss Jeffrey A. Taylor are in for quite a ride. Judge Kessler was paying attention during the hearings:
In short, there’s no good legal reason to let the temporary injunctions on release of the phone records stand. “Unindicted co-conspirators” don’t get to hide behind legalisms trotted-out by the federal prosecution, and the five “confidential informants” (really “co-operating witnesses,” which fits the Government’s contentions more accurately) are going to be unmasked for the purposes of the defense. This doesn’t bode well for the Government’s case at all. That observation of a prolonged silence in the above quotation is Judge Kessler noting her doubts in the Government’s contention over the injunctions. This was just one of a number of reasons and observations given by Federal District Judge Kessler, but the observation is perhaps her way of hinting she’s not buying all of the prosecution’s story.
The phone numbers/names/careers I would be most interested in would be during the time of the Clinton Impeachment hearings – were any of the procescutors on it or ANYONE who voted yes for impeachment over jailhouse sex in the White House while using these services. Not counting the ones already outed for having their own intern/mistresses during their attacks (Starr, Gingrich, etc).
Wouldn’t it just be typical if we found out they actually used the resources (phones, money,credit cards,hotels or transportation) the taxpayers paid for to implement the Clinton railroading – and wouldn’t that be illegal? Hmmm.
Also, will there be any way to be certain the list hasn’t been “scrubbed?” Like certain Air Force records during the Vietnam war seem to have been?
DeepThroat # 24
I did and it ended up in “the bank”.
Shit yes, america just keeps getting better and better. Can you imagine how green with envy the rest of the world must be?
I must be an odd fella to them, because when I look over the american landscape and focus on what it has become, I have to resist puking.
Dames and Gents,
In times unprecedented and tinged with despair, it is appropriate to reflect on the founding of our great nation. It was not with George Washington, but with Brutus, and not the one who killed Caeser. There was another who rebelled against the tyrant monarchy of Rome at the time, The Tarquins. He wrote the Roman Constitution that would stand for 500 years. His sons sided with the monarchy. The monarchy lost. So to punish his sons and found a perfect union, he immolated his own sons.
Machiavelli speaks fluently and voluminoulsy and voiciferously on this subject, and yet is proved wrong on several counts by the miracle of America.
He says that a nation founded in servitude, as America was a colony, will never win its freedom. He also says that a nation founded on fertile soil that is easily defended, will in time loose all of its freedoms because it will become, eventually, inevitably, sloth and sated, and will forget to protect them.
As regards ‘The DC Madam’, I am personally involved. You can view my involvement at http://www.maytheygetwhattheyde...e.com/KAT.html
Sometimes a mouse will lead you to a kat, and a kat can lead you to a rat and a rat, ironically, can lead you to the truth.
And the truth, as they say, and as it is written, will set you Free.
May all those who sincerely and patiently wait for freedom be free and may all those who desire to steal those freedoms find instead the dire consequences that accompany contempt for a great man like Brutus.
As regards Machiavelli,
is eram sapiens tamen nefas
And again,
vox vocis publicus est vox vocis deus
May The Republic stand forever and bring the Glory of The World, with Dignity, into Its Treasury.
Purple