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'D.C. Madam' Case Generating More Winces Than Thrills
Deborah Jeane Palfrey contends that her company was "a legal, high-end erotic fantasy service" with clients "from the more refined walks of life."
(By Jay Mallin -- Bloomberg News)
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Ex-call girl: [mumbles].
Clerk: "A little louder, please."
Ex-call girl (slightly clearer): "Rebecca Dickinson."
Judge: "Move a little closer to that microphone, please. Take two deep breaths and relax. Everything's going to be okay."
Maybe not. Dickinson, 38, is a lieutenant commander in the Navy who moonlighted for Palfrey for six months in 2005-06 while assigned to the Naval Academy. The military, which learned of her escort work from investigators after the fact, said it has placed her on leave pending possible disciplinary action. In the courtroom gallery were a gaggle of reporters jotting down her name, among them a writer for Hustler magazine.
Palfrey, with her bouffant hair and ruby-red lipstick, stepped onto the public stage in March 2007 after being indicted by a grand jury in Washington. To raise money, she announced, she planned to auction the phone records of her defunct escort service (about 10,000 client numbers), figuring a journalist might want to find the men to see if any are prominent.
Her client files had been seized by investigators, and Palfrey said she could recall only a few of their names, none famous. Her offer, which stirred plenty of public snickering and gossip, found no takers, and eventually she gave the numbers to ABC News and posted them on the Internet.
ABC reported finding numbers linked to military officers, corporate CEOs, lobbyists and officials at the World Bank, NASA and the International Monetary Fund.
"I went to see a client in Georgetown, and he doesn't like condoms," one ex-call girl testified, describing the man as a physician with the National Institutes of Health.
The only notable names made public so far are Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who has apologized to constituents for an unspecified "very serious sin;" Randall L. Tobias, who resigned as a deputy secretary of state after acknowledging he used the service for massages; and Harlan K. Ullman, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who would not comment.
The three are on lawyers' witness lists in the case, but none has been called to testify, and it is possible that they won't appear at the trial, which is to resume today.
Prosecutors have called just three ex-clients -- a landscaper with a history of mental illness and two suburban lawyers you never heard of. No senator. No diplomat. No war strategist (Ullman conceived the high-tech form of blitzkrieg he dubbed "shock and awe").
