Conservative Babylon

Police: ‘D.C. Madam’ Palfrey Hanged Self in Fla.

May 1, 2008 — Deborah Jeane Palfrey, convicted last month of running a high-end prostitution service in Washington, hanged herself today in a shed outside her mother’s mobile home in Florida, officials said.

Authorities were called to the Sun Valley Estates Mobile Home Park in Tarpon Springs, Fla., by 76-year-old Blanche Palfrey, who found her daughter’s body hanging by a nylon rope shortly before 11 a.m., Tarpon Springs police Capt. Jeffrey P. Young said at a news conference. He said Deborah Palfrey left at least two suicide notes, but he declined to discuss their contents. …

Palfrey, 52, was free while awaiting sentencing June 25 on federal racketeering charges. A federal jury convicted her April 15 of running a Washington area call-girl ring in the guise of “a high-end erotic fantasy service,” rejecting her argument that she was unaware for 13 years that female escorts she employed were performing sex acts with clients for money. …

Related:

• D.C. Madam Update: Vitter, Tobias, Ullman spared long-anticipated (and well-deserved) humiliation

• Randall Tobias

• David Vitter (R-La.)

See the main page for David Vitter
See all entries for David Vitter

See the main page for Randall Tobias
See all entries for Randall Tobias

In anticipation of the trial of “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey (subject of a lengthy profile in the San Francisco Chronicle a couple of weeks ago), speculation began about whether or not diaper-loving David Vitter would be forced to testify for the defense:

An attorney who has represented Sen. David Vitter, R-La., told a federal judge … that a client of his who was subpoenaed by the defense to testify in the so-called D.C. Madam case would assert his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination if the court insists he appear as a witness.

The attorney, Henry Asbill, did not name his client in his brief appearance Friday before trial Judge James Robertson in Washington, D.C., District Court.

After his appearance, he said he was “not commenting” when asked if he is still representing Vitter. …

Vitter’s office, asked for comment, issued a brief statement that did not confirm whether Asbill was representing the senator at Friday’s court hearing.

“I want to reaffirm how sorry I am to have hurt the people I love so deeply, starting with my family and certainly including the people of Louisiana,” Vitter said. “I continue to work every day to make up for that.”

Nobody was fooled; of course the mystery client was Vitter:

Defending herself against a sortie of felony charges stemming from running an alleged interstate prostitution business, Deborah Jeane Palfrey has subpoenaed Sen. David Vitter, R-La., to testify. …

Through his lawyer, Vitter has said he will not testify.

At a last-minute hearing Friday, U.S. District Court Judge James Robertson appeared to reject an argument by a lawyer who has represented Vitter that his client’s testimony would be “totally inappropriate,” reported Legal Times. The judge declined to nullify the subpoena.

On April 7, the first day of the trial:

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, accused of running an upscale prostitution service for a white-collar clientele in the Washington area, went on trial in federal court … as a prosecutor warned jurors that they will hear “embarrassing” explicit testimony from call girls and customers, most of them appearing reluctantly under court orders and grants of immunity.

“You’re going to hear from clients, johns, who perhaps haven’t told their families … about their involvement with this agency,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Connelly said. Describing the witness chair in U.S. District Judge James Robertson’s courtroom as “the hottest seat in D.C. this week,” she told the jurors they could “rest assured that very few” of those called to testify are looking forward to the experience. …

Palfrey’s attorney, Preston Burton, said in court … that his witness list includes two names that have previously surfaced in the case: Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), who has publicly apologized to constituents without saying what he had done wrong; and Randall L. Tobias, who resigned as a deputy secretary of state after acknowledging to ABC News that he used Palfrey’s service for massages.

Connelly said her witness list includes Harlan K. Ullman, a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who developed a military doctrine that he called “shock and awe.” Ullman’s attorney, who was observing in court yesterday, would not comment on his client’s involvement. Palfrey has identified Ullman as a customer.

But by Monday, April 14, we were cheated out of the delightful spectre of Vitter squirming in the hot seat:

Sen. David Vitter was spared the embarrassment of testifying in the D.C. Madam trial Monday when the defense rested without calling any witnesses.

Vitter and Randall Tobias, a former senior State Department official, had been on defense attorney Preston Burton’s list of possible witnesses in the federal racketeering case against Burton’s client, Deborah Jeane Palfrey.

But Palfrey’s trial ended Monday without testimony from a single high-profile witness. Palfrey had said the thousands of clients who used her former “high-end erotic fantasy” escort service included the rich and powerful.

Instead, the trial was dominated by testimony from 13 former escorts, all prosecution witnesses, who related what they did in private with clients. Prosecutors hoped their testimony would prove Palfrey was the mastermind of a lucrative sex-for-pay scheme. …

Burton said after the trial ended he didn’t call any witnesses because, “I don’t think they (prosecutors) proved their case.”

Political analyst Elliott Stonecipher said Burton’s decision spared Vitter major damage to his political career. ..

Stonecipher said Vitter likely would have invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination had he taken the stand. His critics would have used that to accuse Vitter of being hypocritical about his commitment to family values, a cornerstone of his campaigns, Stonecipher said.

“I think it’s a huge deal that he sidestepped that,” he said.

Pffffffffffft! He didn’t sidestep it. He is a hypocrite. And a laughingstock.

Conservative radio host Lee Fletcher said Vitter has done enough to redeem himself.

“He’s taken responsibility for it,” Fletcher said. “He’s made a mistake and he’s moved on.”

Like the Rabid Right Republicans have forgiven Bill Clinton his mistake, and allowed him to move on?

Rrrrrrrrrrright.

Claims to fame: Former CEO, AT&T International; former CEO, Eli Lilly; member, numerous corporate boards; major contributor to Republican candidates and PACs; former U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator under George W. Bush; former (and first) first U.S. Director of Foreign Assistance; former Administrator/Ambassador, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); john; adulterer; hypocrite to the nth degree

Moral apex: As Bush’s AIDS Czar, supported abstinence-only, no-condom U.S. policy that specifically prohibits foreign aid to organizations that help prostitutes…

Punch line: …while he was patronizing prostitutes.

Tobias’s name showed up on the phone list of the “D.C. Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who ran an “erotic fantasy service” that didn’t offer sex. (Also: The world is flat.)

In October, 2006…

…federal prosecutors charged Palfrey with racketeering offenses in connection with the business, which she contends was a legal operation. From 1993 to August 2006, Palfrey ran a high-end escort service in the nation’s capital, charging a flat fee for 90-minute “dates” with women between the ages of 23 and 55 whom she termed independent contractors.

The women signed contracts agreeing not to engage in illegal activity, including having sex for money, Palfrey says, and were given guidelines on the difference between legal and illegal sexual behavior. At least one woman, Dr. Paula Neble, is known to have told federal prosecutors that she had sex for money while working for Palfrey. Palfrey is suing her for breach of contract.

Palfrey has claimed that her service’s clients were “upscale” and “came from the more refined walks of life.” In March, she made headlines by briefly offering to sell the phone records of her company, Pamela Martin and Associates, to the highest bidder. She withdrew the offer after a federal judge ruled the government could confiscate any proceeds. Shortly thereafter, Palfrey consented to be interviewed by ABC.

See David Vitter for more on Palfrey’s prostie ring.

But, wait! There’s more! By Tobias’ own admission, Palfrey’s wasn’t the only hooker service he patronized:

Tobias, who is 65 and married, told ABC News … that he had used the escort service “to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage” and there had been “no sex” involved. He also told the network that he had been using another service with Central American women.

Memorable quotes:

What about the emphasis on abstinence and behavior change?

Well, the heart of our prevention programs is what’s known as ABC: abstinence, be faithful, and the correct and consistent use of condoms when appropriate. This is not an American invention; this is something that President [Yoweri] Museveni in Uganda figured out over time when he recognized that there was an enormous problem in Uganda.

And it’s also not “ABC: Take your pick.” It’s abstinence really focused heavily on young people and getting them to understand that the best way to keep from getting infected is to be abstinent and not engage in sexual activity until they are old enough and mature enough and get into a committed relationship, such as a marriage. B is being faithful within that committed relationship. And A and B, those two things together clearly had a huge impact in bringing the infection rates down in Uganda.

C recognizes the fact that there are individuals in high-risk circumstances who either by choice or by coercion are going to find themselves unable to follow A and B, and therefore they need to have access to condoms, and they need to understand the correct and consistent use of condoms. I think more and more of the experts, the people who really understand the prevention requirements with HIV/AIDS, have come to endorse ABC in a very balanced way as the appropriate prevention centerpiece.

. . .

What about the guidelines on sex workers?

The Congress I think very appropriately has put into the legislation that created this program that organizations, in order to receive money, need to have a policy opposed to prostitution and sex trafficking. I don’t think it’s too difficult for people to be opposed to prostitution and sex trafficking, which are in fact two contributing causes to the spread of HIV/AIDS. I think when organizations initially became aware of that requirement, some organizations were concerned about what the implications of that might be, but we implemented that in the first year with non-U.S. organizations. We’re now implementing that requirement with U.S. organizations. And so far, I really know of no problems that we’ve had on the ground.

But with regard to prostitutes and sex workers in developing countries, is it necessary to work with them? Do you try to get them to change behavior? And if they don’t, then what?

First of all, very recently I was in Haiti in a program where we are working with prostitutes, teaching them skills that will give them the economic leverage to get out of prostituting. The particular program that I visited, young women were being taught the skills of being beauticians, of doing cosmetic work and hair work and that kind of thing. Now, none of these young women were saying, “I don’t want to work with this non-governmental organization because they have a policy opposing prostitution.” Quite the contrary. These young women were people who wanted to get out of prostitution. So there’s nothing about our policy of requiring organizations to oppose prostitution and sex trafficking that in any way gets in our way of working with people who have been traced, or people who are in prostitution, trying to get them out of it. …

But is there a moral quotient, a moral factor in your prevention work?

There’s a certain moral aspect to it, but the principal focus of what we’re doing here is to carry out the prevention program that is at the heart of this program, which is abstinence, be faithful, and the correct and consistent use of condoms, driven by the fact that from a public health perspective, those are the components that really make the most sense.

PBS Frontline: The Age of AIDS
2006

Memorable observation:

I think it is somewhat ironic and hypocritical that he would patronize an escort service while he was denying funding to organizations who want to help prostitutes, and supporting a policy that obviously forbids fraternizing with prostitutes.

— Jodi Jacobson, executive director
Center for Health and Gender Equity

Suggested Bible reading for Mr. Tobias:

For thy mouth uttereth thine iniquity, and thou choosest the tongue of the crafty.

Thine own mouth condemneth thee, and not I: yea, thine own lips testify against thee.

— Job 15:5-6