The “D.C. Madam” scandal isn’t going away. Reporters, bloggers and investigators for Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt are all scrambling to match recently released phone records from Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s escort service to Beltway pols who might have been clients. “It’s going to be one revelation after the other for the next 20 weeks or so,” says Palfrey, who is fighting federal prostitution charges and who hopes “outed” clients will testify that her employees weren’t prostitutes. She says anywhere between a few dozen to a hundred high-level officials will be discovered on her list.
The latest catch: Louisiana Sen. David Vitter, Rudy Giuliani’s top Southern conservative ally. Vitter quickly confessed to a “very serious sin” and went into hiding. The Vitter revelation is just the latest scandal to touch Giuliani, whose former police commissioner has pleaded guilty to corruption charges and whose South Carolina campaign chairman was forced to step down last month after he was indicted on federal cocaine charges. A Giuliani aide called the scandals “a string of bad luck.” Palfrey says if Vitter did have sex with one of her escorts he should be indicted as she has been—but she’s still not sure he did. “All those right-wing politicians do just that—they fall on their swords. Isn’t there some script out there for this very event?”
The question is who will be next, now that the numbers are so accessible. Vitter’s number was unearthed by Dan Moldea, a D.C. reporter who is helping Palfrey write her memoirs and who also moonlights for Flynt. Palfrey’s list of almost 200,000 numbers is a gold mine for Flynt, who already has a team of investigators trying to dig up dirt on the sexual indiscretions of lawmakers and has placed ads in The Washington Post offering rewards for info. “But the bloggers and the techies are really doing the greatest job,” says Moldea. “And they are all obsessed with numbers starting with 202-224 … numbers coming from the Hill.” A new Web site, dcphonelist.com, allows anyone to punch in a number and it will cross-reference it to “madam’s” list. The site urges users to “be responsible”—but any pols who made use of Palfrey’s services probably shouldn’t count on that.
