Ex-Client of Alleged Madam Tries to Stop ABC From Airing His Name

For 13 years, until her arrest last year, Palfrey ran Pamela Martin and Associates, providing escorts for men around Washington. She gave ABC four years of phone records to mine for customer identities, insisting that she acted out of desperation to find defense witnesses to testify that her escorts provided only $300-an-hour massages and erotic, role-playing fantasies.

Sibley said yesterday he estimates that ABC News has identified 1,000 customers and could publicly identity five to 10 people based on how their public roles or positions conflict with the hiring of escorts.

ABC News spokesman Jeffrey W. Schneider said yesterday that such estimates are premature. Although the program is being promoted with excerpts on ABC's Web site, he said "20/20" has not finished its reporting.

"I don't think anybody can tell you what we're going to do," Schneider said. He declined to comment on how ABC will determine whom to name, but he said it typically would consider the public interest and possible hypocrisy by public officials.

Palfrey said even she does not know whom "20/20" will ultimately identify.

"Mr. Sibley, I and the rest of America will know who will be named simultaneously," she wrote in her e-mail to The Post. She suggested that there was nothing to stop her from naming Salky's client publicly.

"Since Mr. Sibley and I, along with ABC News do not know who the identities of the government's witnesses [are], we in turn cannot abide by any court order," she wrote.

Staff writer Sue Anne Pressley Montes and researchers Meg Smith and Julie Tate contributed to this report.