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May 18-20, 2007 — On Wednesday night, CBS Late Night host David Letterman referred to our report about Dick Cheney being a client of the Pamela Martin & Associates escort agency in the 1990s. That earned Letterman a stinging commentary by Radar Online, a Hollywood gossip web site that leans decidedly to the neo-con right. Radar called Letterman a gap-toothed “comic.” This editor remembers other late night TV hosts — Steve Allen, Jack Paar, Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, and Tom Snyder. None of them were considered “comics.” They were TV variety show hosts, not “comics.”
In his monologue Letterman quipped, “Here’s a story we’re working on now. Apparently, there are rumors coming out of Washington that Vice President Dick Cheney, when he was the CEO of Halliburton, used to go visit prostitutes. This could explain why one girl was paid two billion dollars. I mean, I was thinking about this and Cheney … I mean, going to a prostitute, that’s … I mean, I can’t believe a good-looking guy like that would ever have to pay for sex, you know what I’m saying?”
Letterman on Cheney: “I can’t believe a good-looking guy like that would ever have to pay for sex, you know what I’m saying?”
Radar once had the backing of neo-con Mort Zuckerman. In something that should be of interest to Don Imus’ attorney, Radar – which does not hide its sympathy for the Bush administration, is also backed by a consortium that includes Yusef Jackson, the son of Jesse Jackson. Jesse Jackson, along with Al Sharpton, were the chief instigators behind Imus’ firing by CBS and MS-NBC. The current attack by Radar on Letterman appears to fit a pattern. Jackson and Sharpton have long been considered agents provocateur for certain special interests. One of Radar’s original co-financiers, Jeffrey Epstein, was charged on July 27, 2006 with solicitation of prostitution from female minors.
This editor checked out a few more Radar stories. One criticized the TV commercials directed by Oliver Stone for Moveon.org that were against George Bush’s Iraq war. Another pooh-poohed the discovery of two of Karl Rove’s emails concerning the US Attorney firings as largely unimportant.
What is unimportant is the delusional self-importance of many entertainment executives who support the neo-con Bush cause. To report that Disney-owned ABC News caved on the DC Madam story is heresy — an attack on Tinsel Town and New York megamedia and all that they represent. Some of these infotainment cockalorums make the worst politician in Washington look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms by comparison.
Yesterday, Radar referred to this editor as a “weird and lonely” blogger. Anytime anyone in the neo-con corporate media executive office suites (and they know who they are) wants to compare life styles on the weirdness meter, I stand ready. By the way, when I’m lonely I don’t have to resort to calling escorts or engage in phone sex. And as far as the name calling is concerned, when all Cheney’s friends can do is muster up Gopher from the “Love Boat” and an on-line gossip column to throw stones, its merely a question of “mind over matter” — I don’t mind and they don’t matter.
It is interesting how the right-wing corporate media is now treating the DC Madam story. After attempting to have ABC News put a lid on the story, the Cheney revelations have caused the media barons to relegate the matter to the gossip sector. However, this tactic is not working. As anyone familiar with national security knows, there are two signs that someone is a security risk: sudden and inexplicable affluence or a radical change in demeanor and personality stemming from blackmail. Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have both said that the Dick Cheney of today is not the same person they knew as Secretary of Defense. Cheney’s reported dalliances during his time at Halliburton and his radical personality change call for a full national security investigation. If a foreign power or foreign interests had access to Cheney’s phone records from the 1990s — and many foreign intelligence agencies would have been interested in communications in the neighborhood of the CIA where Cheney lived — there is a distinct possibility that blackmail is behind Cheney’s push for the war in Iraq. The right-wing focused on Bill Clinton’s comments to Monica Lewinsky during one of their conversations that he had been warned that a “foreign power” could be listening to his conversations. What was good for Clinton then should be good for Cheney now.
Thanks go to David Letterman for keeping this important story in the public eye. Note to Cheney and company: attempts to have a “work up” or “work over” done to this editor, whether from Washington or London, will surely fail as much as the Bush-Cheney administration has failed. Call off your dogs, Mr. Cheney.
May 17, 2007 — Conflicts of interest in DC Madam case. On Tuesday, May 15, this editor submitted a question to be asked of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the National Press Club breakfast. The question, which, like others, are screened in advance, was never asked. Part of the reason is that as far as most of Washington’s corporate-bought Fourth Estate is concerned, the DC Madam story was put to rest by ABC’s 20/20 and nothing further needs to be reported on the story.
The question that was to be posed to Gonzales was: “Do you believe a Special Counsel is necessary in the DC Madam case since a number of Justice Department officials and other federal law enforcement officers, including those involved in prosecuting the case against the “DC Madam,” are also clients of her sexual fantasy entertainment firm, Pamela Martin & Associates?”
WMR has learned that on the phone list suppressed from further release by US Judge Gladys Kessler are the names of scores of Justice Department prosecutors, Drug Enforcement Administration and Secret Service agents, Internal Revenue Service officers, and US Postal Inspection Service officials, including one involved in ordering the seizure of Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s assets. These names are in addition to a number of mostly Republican politicians, staffers, and political appointees, including Vice President Dick Cheney while he was President and CEO of Halliburton in the 1990s.
And why is the Fourth Estate so nervous about pursuing the DC Madam story? It also turns out that among the clients of Pamela Martin & Associates are a number of journalists for top Washington news media organizations, including — ABC News — which spiked the story and said there is no one “newsworthy” on the phone lists it obtained.
WMR also wants to thank the Randi Rhodes and Stephanie Miller shows for helping to keep this story alive. Hear the editor at http://www.randirhodesarchives.com/ . Click on hour 3, Friday, May 11, 2007. Thanks also to go Mike Malloy for his encouraging words about WMR.
No party left untouched:
May 16, 2007 — Part of the focus on the johns in the DC Madam case, an overwhelming majority of whom are Republican political appointees and office holders, is on particular office and residential areas of McLean and Alexandria, Virginia, in addition to K, H, and Eye Street lobbying and law offices in downtown Washington, DC. The net may also ensnare two 2008 GOP presidential candidates, one declared and the other, as yet, undeclared. WMR has also learned that some of the clients arranged their own direct communications with Pamela Martin & Associates employees. Some requests by clients fell into the category of aberrant sex, including bizarre requests for urination, defecation, sado-masochism, and acts of sodomy by certain clients, some of whom have significant political profiles in Washington. These requests did not technically run afoul of prostitution laws which are based on vaginal, oral, or anal penetration by the client.
It is also noteworthy that according to one page of Pamela Martin & Associates August 1996 phone records previously released, the phone number of Pentagon City’s Ritz Carlton hotel, 703 415 5000, appears once on August 18 and twice on August 20, 1996, around a week before the Democratic National Convention when it was revealed that current GOP political adviser Dick Morris was engaged in toe sucking with prostitute Sherry Rowlands. In the June 26, 1995 issue of Time, it was reported that Morris often registered at the Ritz Carlton under an alias when he was visiting Washington from Connecticut. Morris was then the chief campaign adviser to President Bill Clinton and the revelation of his toe sucking antics with Rowlands during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago severely embarrassed the president. The Star tabloid featured a photo of Morris and Rowland embracing on a balcony of the Jefferson Hotel, four blocks north of the White House on 16th Street.
Morris also was only reachable on his pager during his stays in Washington, according to Time. Several calls of a very short duration on the page of DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s phone list from August 1996 appear to be calls to pagers in the Washington-Baltimore area.
Press reports have named Morris as a Pamela Martin client. Morris knew Clinton since his the Arkansan’s run for governor of Arkansas in 1978. Morris also provided campaign consulting to North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, both Republicans. The criticism of WMR’s investigation of the DC Madam’s client list from certain quarters, including pro-Hillary Clinton Democratic Leadership Council-linked blogs, likely has much to do with the fact that Morris was a confidante of President Clinton during some of his reported liaisons with Pamela Martin employees.
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Bound, Not Gagged 