Let the Dead Bury the Dead cover

Former AUSA Allison Leotta writes a novel including elements of the DC Madam narrative

Not so very long ago, I signed up for Google news updates on Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Most of the updates have been articles simply invoking her name so that the site posting it got more hits, but nothing of any substance. Mission accomplished on both counts. This is just one more example of suited turds making a living off of air. The National Law Journal published an interview with former DC AUSA (Asst. US Attorney) Allison Leotta on June 11th. 

Leotta's a professional woman (it's unclear to me at this stage whether she's married or not) who left her secure, good paying job (benes too) of over a decade as a federal prosecutor of sex crimes and domestic violence cases in the District of Columbia to pursue a career...in literature. Hell, I'm sure I write better than her, but never would I have the temerity to refer to what I write as that. And, sure, right, we all do that in the middle of the biggest economic crises in American history, we do an abrupt career change that would wreck the average working person's life--and believe me, I know the dynamics of this, I cannot be shitted about it. But no, there were no silver spoons there whatsoever--not even her getting into Harvard, all bootstraps, a Horatio Alger wet dream fantasy--and even if it's not true, it sounds good on an author's bio and resume. Did I mention that her very first novel was with a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster? Keep in mind here that on average it takes two years simply to get the chance to speak with a genuine literary agent, so forget it mom and pop, self-publish if you ever want that pet project to see the light of day, or to ever get paid.

Somehow, I don't think Leotta's ever going to have worry about either. Fixers get that assistance, and that's a huge part of the job being a federal prosecutor in DC.

What's the point of all of this? She worked in the same offices as the DC Madam's prosecutors and considers one of them a "good friend," which says it all for me at least.  I'll get to who that friend is in a moment. OK, so former minor Inquisitor writes a first thriller for Simon & Scheister, must have sold well, or she still knows the right people, and she's got another one being made from shattered forests somewhere. I've never read her writing, but it's unlikely that a cop lover or a prosecutor is going to write something as good as a Hammett short or novel, ain't gonna happen, wrong side of the tracks. I don't see Leotta ever making the hard choices he made, ever, not really. That, after all, would require genuine conviction that doesn't come easy, no pats on the back, much of a wrong-headed society disagreeing with you--doing the right thing is rarely ever rewarded. Luckily, her bank account will never have to worry about this. Do I have to point out to the reader that she's part of a monstrous criminal justice system that's used to solve social problems mainly through punishment, the wrong way, not proactively? Maybe in her next incarnation she can drive the trains to the new death camps, maybe sell whiskey to the next unfortunates who get their land stolen from them...

So, she's writing a novel that contains some elements of the DC Madam case, because she was "following it closely," which would have been pretty easy working in the same offices with the AUSAs that were on the case, like Daniel Butler, Catherine Connelly, William Cowden, other delusional assholes, yadda-yadda, and their interim appointed boss, Jeffrey A. Taylor. Her novel drops on July 3rd, so rush out and get it before the system she protected in her job takes a crap and dies, finally, belatedly, out of all of the contradictions created by power relationships and an abundance of cowards in these here U-nited States. The novel is going to be titled Discretion, which at least makes sense when you're covering a prostitution ring. Someone's going to have to remind me about this book an hour from now, I'm already forgetting it. Yes folks, ascendant police states produce writing outside of the standard government forms, it's true, behold it yourself on July 3rd.

Leotta has created an alter-ego of a prosecutor in the character Anna Curtis...oh, never mind, here's what they said about the DC Madam in the interview that garnered a solid plug for the upcoming membrane of cellulose:

The remarks below have been edited for length and clarity.

The National Law Journal: This is your second novel, both involving a fictional federal prosecutor of sex crimes in D.C. Your first book, Law of Attraction, focused on a domestic-violence case. This novel delves more into the uniquely political world of D.C. Why did you decide to center your second book in this part of D.C.?

Allison Leotta: Part of it was I'd seen this really interesting case that happened around the time I was writing Law of Attraction. It was the D.C. Madam case — a woman in D.C. running a large-scale, high-end escort agency, and there were all these reporters speculating that her black book held names of powerful men in D.C. I was fascinated by it — by both the woman running the organization and the women who chose to work for her. They came from all different walks of life and did it for different reasons.

I was fascinated as to why they would take these risks and the effect it would have on their lives going forward. In the D.C. Madam case, she was convicted but before she was sentenced, she committed suicide. There was a lot of speculation that it wasn't suicide, but murder. That got the crime novelist side of my head thinking, "What if? How would somebody do it? Who would do it if it was really a murder?"

[The body of the accused madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, and a suicide note reportedly were found in Tarpon Springs, Fla., in 2008.]

NLJ: Did you work on the D.C. Madam case?

A.L.: Someone in the office did. She was a good friend of mine, so I was following it pretty closely. ...

That friend was Catherine Connelly, an AUSA on the case. It could be no one else. Why she didn't bother mentioning her is odd since it's in the public record and press coverage, but whatever.

Question: when is Leotta going to grab a shovel and dig Jeane up to pose for photographs? I wrote the author of the piece--Amanda Bronstad--a letter voicing my concerns, I don't expect a response, so here it is, and long to annoy the lazy reader:

 

 to: abronstad@alm.com
date: Tue, Jun 12, 2012 at 9:39 PM

subject: Leotta interviewmailed-by: gmail.com

Dear Ms. Bronstad, you may publish this as a comment if you wish,



Wow, where to begin about Mrs., Leotta and her recent change in occupation.

My first question is, do accountants and plumbers write novels too, and wouldn't we also think it strange when they got a contract to release a novel through Simon & Schuster?

I haven't read her first novel; the new one isn't available as of yet, but this second novel raises some questions of ethics for me: like her AUSA friend, I was a part of the DC Madam case. That friend of hers, incidentally, is AUSA Catherine K. Connelly, and from what I read in the article she saw quite a bit firsthand. Is this why she resigned, to be able to use more of that in the novel? I don't know.  These former cops and prosecutors becoming "legal experts," talking heads more generally, media figures, celebrities, novelists, is nutty.  This mining social problems for writing fodder by people who prosecute and investigate the subjects verges on cannibalism at times, we can do better than this. We incarcerate more human beings than any nation on the earth, more even than the worst known human rights offenders like China, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, etc.  Law enforcement is key to this social engineering, so to take it further into the realm of entertainment seems pretty depraved to me. Certainly this true crime mill has been running since colonial times--people are fascinated by the depravity of others. But what we're seeing here with these criminal justice professionals is unacceptable and unethical, made worse by the fact that 95% of federal criminal defendants plea out because the odds are stacked so highly against them. What you have is the society of the spectacle where anything to turn a buck is OK in the US, the only thing that matters, and the forces of production (and those who use force to keep it in place) start talking about themselves in the culture, they become foregrounded. We solve so many social problems not by proactive policy, but through our crazy lock-'em-up conveyor-belt CJ system that's based around the profit motive, like our private prison complex. Crime writing by cops and prosecutors has always been suspect in the United States. Dashielle Hammett may have worked for the Pinkertons (he quit over being tapped to assassinate a communist labor organizer in Montana), but you rarely saw him empathizing with cops, prosecutors, or corrupt politicians, and he's the top of the heap with Jim Thompson in the annals of crime writing. Poe comes first in American literature, he invented the detective story. This is a populist form--where's the populism in this? I'll have to wait and find out. However, great artistic works elicit artistic truths, highlighting the meaning of something. My expectations are low here based on some comments in the interview with Leotta.

Decades ago, it was bad enough when cops and prosecutors who were on high profile cases (like, say, John Wayne Gacy, Bundy--take your pick, but you could say this all begins with Vincent Bugliosi and his prosecution of  the Manson Family) began to resign when the cases were over, signing book deals (Palfrey herself did this, another depravity), movie & media deals, etc. This was considered beyond the pale, but now, in these crazed, depraved times, it floats without much comment if any. That's appalling. What you have is a class of law enforcement and criminal justice professionals making their little cottage industries, Leotta less so, but close.  Some of us are simply lucky enough to be on the other side of the badge in bad times. Or is it luck at all? Leotta has taken it to a new place, for me at least: someone who knows someone who was close to a big sex scandal case (DC Madam, it was far more than a mere sex scandal) is writing a novel based partly upon it, a thriller. Great. So, how did you get the writing gig? Who pulled that string, and when is Connelly doing a novel? What's her next plum position? Qualcomm/Ernst & Young with Jeffrey A. Taylor? This is careerism run completely amok, my opinion, and what's really underneath the veneer of civilization.

As you can tell, my perspective is different and adversarial to government prosecutors, hence with at least a slightly better chance at balance here! I was a researcher for the defendant, the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey. The fact that Leotta is going for the "she were suicided" theory in the novel is her right, and a curious choice that I assume has commercial considerations. At least she makes it plain that Palfrey committed suicide in the interview. As a writer of fiction, she can fuse characters, change dates, all kinds of things, but what's the angle when they're not supposed to be telling us sensitive information from a case? I assume that won't be the case in the novel at all, we won't be learning new information. You can't have it several ways: you either take some information from inside the prosecution and investigation, which is profoundly illegal, or you make it all up, maybe indirectly extrapolating on some facts. She seems to be melding other cases she did with the DC Madam narrative, or some permutation of it, since it has yet to be told coherently by anyone, fine, but when you consider what went down in the case it's distasteful. Figuring in the fact that she was close to it, if not directly involved, doesn't ring well when she refers to the member of a prosecution team that broke the law as a "friend." I applaud Mrs. Leotta for debunking CSI shows when they're wrong about procedure, glad to the point of admiration that she was working sex crime and domestic abuse cases, but I doubt that she's going to add anything of any significance to our understanding of the DC Madam scandal (which was really part of Hookergate).

I find her comment that Connelly (it couldn't be anyone else) is a good friend and that she was "following it very closely" troubling because of the clear prosecutorial misconduct that occurred in the case during the proceedings (this leaves out a procedural error made at trial by AUSA Butler that staggers.  Robertson let it slide). The most egregious of all was when they leaked an unsigned warrant-affidavit to Bill Bastone, editor of The Smoking Gun, no more than five days of the search of Palfrey's home, a felony under federal law. Where's the discussion on that? There was virtually none. I want to make it plain that I consider Palfrey's death a suicide--she was not murdered. But who benefits from that kind of a conspiracy theory? It isn't just the conspiracy theory mills, it's federal law enforcement who create the impression of an ubiquitous State that could very well resort to murder of American citizens in the confines of the Continental United States, an absurd contention in the context of the charges against her, what happened during the proceedings, and the kangaroo court trial that was conducted after some very open judge shopping was done with the replacement of Federal District Judge Gladys Kessler by FISA Court Judge James Robertson. Kessler had ruled that, indeed, this case had national security issues to it, granting the defendant broad subpoena powers over essentially the entire intelligence community. Where was the National Law Journal on this one? Excuse if I'm wrong, but I could literally research the background on this into next month and have writing my own account of what I witnessed in the case, my unique vantage.  Leotta is too coy. Why yes, you can "follow" a case "closely" when you're working in the same offices, sure, a tad cagey there, which raises questions about propriety.

As to who would have a motive to murder Palfrey in a hypothetical, that would have been former clients or even CIA assets, defense contractors, intelligence contractors (like SAIC), and so on. But that's not what happened. There were two suicide notes, one to her mother, and one to her sister.

This undignified mess is of former CJ professionals [sic] becoming part of the entertainments world is all about class: not just anyone snags a contract for a novel from Simon & Schuster, these are more revolving doors that are improper in my opinion. You have to obtain a major league literary agent, and that gets into connections. How are AUSAs appointed? Often by other appointees, all of it politicized. I don't know if that's the case with Mrs. Leotta, but you have to factor these things in, because again, this is all about class. Not everybody gets to go to Harvard, for example, and so, you know where I'm going with this. Are many of the people she's writing about from the lower depths of society? Now I'm going to have to find out and get around to reading her first novel, but it sounds like it would predominate when you're dealing with domestic violence. While she wasn't on the case with Palfrey, she would be of a higher class than the madam's background as the daughter of a grocer from the dying industrial city of Charleroi, Pennsylvania was never going to make Harvard. That's about opportunity and being part of the club. We can kid ourselves and insult everyone's intelligence, or we could admit that it really is about who you know, and always has been. I could go on and on--and have--about these issues surrounding Palfrey's case, but we'll leave it at that.

Regards, Matt Janovic, writer, private researcher

And that's that.

 http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202559060068&This_prosecutor_turned_to_a_life_of_literature&slreturn=1

Some recent reflections on former DC Madam civil attorney Montgomery Blair Sibley

I've been torn about this man for some time. I don't believe him to be dishonest. Perhaps referring to him as "eccentric" or even "off-the-hook" is accurate, but I never experienced any dishonest or dishonorable acts at his hand. His representation of Obama accuser and homosexual hustler and con artist Larry Sinclair wasn't to my liking, but then, I think I understand what that was about (more on that one day). His attempts to reopen the DC Madam case for a retrial was appropriate as well as brave, it was what gentlemen do under such deplorable circumstances and Sibley is a unique kind of an aristocrat to put it mildly.

Maybe he's Don Quixote, maybe his behavior has been peculiar. Maybe his fixation on his Scottish heritage is archaic. Yes, his behavior has sometimes been peculiar.

However: He was zealous in the defense of Deborah Jeane Palfrey. His constitutionally-based suits against the Supreme Court were principled. His love for his son is clearly genuine, sincere. His humanism is apparent. He has been a threat to established power that's corrupt as well as sadistic and has inflicted itself on the American public via the power of the state. He's not getting rich from charging windmills and I suspect that he's not even remotely how he's been portrayed in the mainstream press, notably by the Washington Post. Indeed, he's drawn to the spotlight like a moth and his being driven from the legal profession could have had merit to it, but that wasn't valid based on his actions in the DC Madam case, albeit that it was probably the main reason for it in the end.

His recent attempts at co-founding a medical marijuana growing space in the nation's capital has my moral support. Other actions by him do not, but what do I know about all of them? What does the press? They don't appear to know very much in any detail. Yes, he "wore a kilt" (traditional, no underwear and he also plays the bagpipes) at his appearance with Larry Sinclair to the National Press Club when his "client" was supposed to present his evidence that he'd snorted coke and had sex with the future presidential candidate in a limousine in Chicago over a decade ago. Sinclair had no evidence. Yet, I cannot come to any conclusions about the man. He's part of our history, for better or worse, and he's terrifically complicated to the extent that he defies one. What would his ancestors like Hiram Sibely be like now? Probably a lot like him, and I leave it at that. He's an anachronism. There are far worse things to be these days.

An important update on the upcoming DC Madam account...

Late last week, just a few days ago in fact, I had a major breakthrough in my research and analysis in this case, and one that could change everything. I'm not going to spill the beans--you're going to have to be patient on this one--but it has to do with the context of Jeane's suicide. No, there has been no concrete information forthcoming that the DC Madam was murdered, and your weird desire that it was so says more about you than it does about this case or this historical moment we're inhabiting together.

One giveaway, the only one anyone's getting before the publication of the account: I've written about it before, and it has to do with her being suicidal. There is actually someone specific who may be to blame for Palfrey's untimely death, and it has to do with official negligence.

My hope? That I'm right about this recent observation of the primary material, that others look into it further, and that, ultimately, it reopens the case in the form of a congressional investigation, an internal one. That's it. That's all you're getting.

Songs from the Site Meter: All roads lead to San Diego III...

WWW--They're baaaaaaaaaaacccccckkkk!

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Songs from the Site Meter: NPR comes around for Jack Burkman, Jr. so they can say they tried...

Site Meter--They don't have to remind me why I never give them money. This is from NPR in DC. They won't do anything about him or look any deeper. Do-nothings, know-nothing careerists (tell us something we don't know, Matt).

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Then there's someone possibly trying to cover their tracks... Domain Name georgetown.edu ? (Educational) IP Address 141.161.133.# (Georgetown University) ISP Georgetown University Location Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : District of Columbia City : Washington Lat/Long : 38.8933, -77.0146 (Map) Language English (U.S.) en-us Operating System Macintosh MacOSX Browser Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20091102 Firefox/3.5.5 Javascript version 1.5 Monitor Resolution : 1280 x 800 Color Depth : 24 bits Time of Visit Dec 2 2009 11:14:23 am Last Page View Dec 2 2009 11:14:23 am Visit Length 0 seconds Page Views 1 Referring URL http://www.google.co...Afm5f3RBQ&usg=AFQjCN Search Engine google.com Search Words jack burkman jm burkman and associates Visit Entry Page http://chickasawpick...-gop-pundit-and.html Visit Exit Page http://chickasawpick...-gop-pundit-and.html Out Click Time Zone UTC-5:00 Visitor's Time Dec 1 2009 11:14:23 pm Visit Number 64,705 And now NPR is data-mining my site: Domain Name in-addr.arpa ? (Unknown) IP Address 205.153.36.# (National Public Radio) ISP National Public Radio Location Continent : North America Country : United States (Facts) State : District of Columbia City : Washington Lat/Long : 38.9097, -77.0231 (Map) Language English (U.S.) en-us Operating System Microsoft WinXP Browser Internet Explorer 7.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; FunWebProducts; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022) Javascript version 1.3 Monitor Resolution : 1024 x 768 Color Depth : 32 bits Time of Visit Dec 3 2009 5:53:16 am Last Page View Dec 3 2009 5:53:16 am Visit Length 0 seconds Page Views 1 Referring URL http://chickasawpick...-gop-pundit-and.html Visit Entry Page http://chickasawpick...05:00&max-results=50 Visit Exit Page http://chickasawpick...05:00&max-results=50 Out Click Time Zone UTC-5:00 Visitor's Time Dec 2 2009 5:53:16 pm Visit Number 64,743

The Jack Burkman files: the GOP pundit and lobbyist was in the DC Madam's phone records after all...

WWW--There's no need for help on Jack Burkman Jr., the card's a kind of a red-herring. Mr. Burkman called Pamela Martin & Associates (no "LLC" like Jack) from his personal residence over several years on repeated occasions. It's literally irrefutable.

Through a variety of search engines and corroborations, I've isolated the fact that Jack Burkman Jr. did in fact call PMM in November of 2003, January of 2004 (twice on the same day), and the final one everyone knows about on January 15th, 2006. For some reason, others haven't gone into this kind of detail and published it. They should, but I'd imagine this will put things to rest insofar as Jack's denials.

Call me stupid, but I thought trophy wives and gold digger girlfriends were the best surrogate for "paying for it." Like the hookers say, "You always pay for it baby, always." Yep, unless there's something real there, which is rare in a materialistic America.

Jack's in there alright, it's not a mistaken contention--a wrong number--he's in there and it wasn't a misdial. He called an escort service run by a woman who was ultimately convicted of being a pimp, with complications. Coupled with the possible incident of the two girls at the gay pride parade (and, allegedly, the Mayflower hotel), Jack likes to get it anyway he can, he pays, and he's willing to pay a lot according to the two girls. Palfrey confirmed that he was a client herself. In one of my first pieces I hit the nail on the head when I subtitled it, "Whores seeing whores." That would describe the world of lobbying in Washington D.C., literally. They're all whores.

Keep in mind that these are calls that can be isolated to his personal residence and its number at the time. Burkman could have called from other locations, but he appears to have been wise enough to keep it away from the office--not that ordering out from home is exactly a wise thing to do, but that's Jack for you. But I can state here with the utmost certainty that the "Burkman responds" comments he posted right after the revelations of his presence in the phone records went public are factually incorrect, and that it can be easily proven with an Intelius search within just a few quick searches. Corroboration with the late madam's phone records were easy. He's in there, and while he no longer uses 703-524-3209, it was his number during those calls and he wasn't ordering out for pizza.

The gay pride parade incident from June 2006 just corroborates what is likely an impulse control problem that could be coupled with what I suspect are common practices on the Hill in obtaining contracts ala the style of a Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Jack Abramoff, and a Brent R. Wilkes. You know, I'm a breast man too, but Jesus Christ. You become an attorney, lobbyist, and deal maker, just so you can get laid? Surely, there are easier and more direct routes to eros in life, but perhaps Mr. Burkman knew his personality was that finest of birth control methods? Like the Founding Fathers, I hold that these truths are self-evident. I have to at least like a woman to be truly attracted to her, ferchrissakes.

My question is this: since truth is a defense in this nation (I know the law), why did Wonkette, Crooks & Liars, and other progressive web sites pull their stories on this? I'd imagine they were threatened and stupidly believed whatever threats might have come their way. The fact is that Jack Burkman Jr., the well known pundit and lobbyist, protector of the vile Ann Coulter, corporate shill, and an all around GOP hack, called Pamela Martin & Associates on multiple occasions. What happened after that, I cannot say, but one's imagination tends to run (laugh) riot after that. At the very least, this should be investigated by those on the Hill, it's improper behavior by a lobbyists--or is nothing improper behavior for a lobbyist if they have enough money behind them? Welcome to life in a plutocracy where everyone's reified, objectified, a commodity to be bought and sold.

Do I expect them to do anything about it or the outcome of the Palfrey prosecution? Not without some prodding, no. Considering that Burkman was a Bush-Cheney campaign staffer, it makes you wonder. This one's going straight to the president's brain...except that it's empty of reasonable thought. You'd think there had been no elections last fall with so little change, no willingness for real accountability...unless it's someone like ACORN. Accountability only matters when the target is weak enough to be held-accountable, a perverse twist on the rule of law that echoes the attitudes of the Bush II administration. President Obama isn't merely screwing-up, he's part of the overall problem.

One final thought: ABC had to know Burkman was in the phone records and lied about it. When Brian Ross said, "Our viewers won't recognize many of the names," he was probably saying it under extreme pressure from his producers who were having their own arms twisted by influential players.

An open call for information regarding GOP pundit, lobbyist, and attorney Jack Burkman

WWW--I am looking for a very specific piece of information: what was the phone number of J.M. Burkman & Associates in 2006? I already know what the address is but have been unable to locate the number from that time. It could very well be correct, but I get the impression that Mr. Burkman has been going around making threats all over the blogosphere.

Just in case you don't recall, Burkman was very closely involved in the witch-hunt to take down former President Bill Clinton for lying about getting some since painting him with the corruption brush just wasn't going to work when everyone's having the same fun in that arena, what with many of the same fingers in the same pots. Ironically, Palfrey and I argued over Clinton's innocence in the realm of corruption--I never agreed with her or conceded to her on it. Oddly, she would finally end up with Monica Lewinski's lawyer who I don't believe did a very good job defending her.

Around June 16, 2006, the website Wonkette reported on Burkman's alleged attempts at offering to pay two lesbians to have sex with him at a gay pride parade in DC. The two ladies "outed" Mr. Burkman on one of their Myspace pages, even putting a scan of the business card he allegedly gave to them and a partial account of the whole night:

...afterward, we got a snazzy hotel room at the mayflower downtown. on the way over there, this really hot business man in a pinstriped suit walked past me, said hello, and doubled back. he asked me my name and introduced himself (jack burkman, government relations strategies), asked where i went to school, etc, gave me his card, and asked me to call him. i later texted him and never could get rid of him again. he thought he talked to me on the phone several times, but he never did. i always made kat or kristin be me. he told kristin about how he really enjoyed my outfit (TITS GALORE) and that i was beautiful, etc. by the end of the night (5 am or so), he was offering to pay for our room and give us a thousand dollars if two of us would fuck him. oh, jack burkman. his card is my DC souvenir.

Burkman has been a strong advocate for the Family Research Council, one of those wacky family values organizations and was founded by the televangelist James Dobson.

Less than a month later, Citizens for Legitimate Government (who are they?) was claiming that Burkman was in the phone records of the DC Madam. Now, both articles at Wonkette (and many other progressive sites) on these two incidents of what might have been solicitation are gone, taken down, possibly since 2008. Other sites have pulled their articles on Burkman and one or the other of these two alleged scenarios. Wonkette and several of these sites have refused to reply to my questions on this issue. But Palfrey all-but-confirmed it was real at the time, as she recounted to blogger Margie Burns just a couple days after CLG released the name:

“Ms. Burns… FYI, this and any calls to the Washington area were business, i.e. escort service related.

–Sincerely, Jeane Palfrey” ("Ms. Palfrey confirms that Mr. Burkman's business with her was escort service related, 07.13.2007)

I was pretty close to the story and had never heard of his number being in the phone records and neither have several others close to the Palfrey case. What gives? What is this? There isn't one article that resoundingly impeaches the contention that Burkman was in Palfrey's phone records and not one mainstream press outlet picked it up at the time. What do you think?

Burkman responded clumsily in the third person--as megalomaniacs do--and included a double-negative in his statement that's not exactly reassuring regarding his innocence. A more toned down 2008 version of the statement is still on his personal website:

“BURKMAN RESPONDS:

Web allegations are simply and completely false, driven by a group of left-wing people seeking to intimidate conservatives and independants [sic].

As my viewers and readers know, I usually do not respond to silliness on the internet. But in this case--given the national and international coverage--I feel I must. The recent allegations concerning sollicitation [sic] are false lies. They have been printed and reprinted by websites with a long and intense history of harrassing [sic] me and trying to stop my commentary.

None of the sites even so much as contacted me for comment. But I can assure you that they will not succeed. My family and I have been through this before. During impeachment in the 90's, every form of illegitimate pressure that could be brought to bear was brought to bear in an attempt to silence me. But they failed and seven years later, my commentary continues unabated and unphased [sic]. And it always will.

Thank you for watching and reading.
- Jack Burkman”

Yeah, he's a real martyr for freedom alright, a regular Patrick Henry. He sure never was a speech writer, and he can barely write at all. I could be wrong, but wasn't Henry famous for saying, "Show me your tits, I'll pay"? Maybe this whole Burkman story was overshadowed by the Vitter revelation, but if it's true, what gives? Surely, Larry Flynt would have released his name had his PI Dan Moldea found it, but then, that doesn't fit their criteria at the time: they were looking for hypocritical office holders and Burkman is a lobbyist and talking neck with close ties to the GOP and sundry corporations due to his line of business.

So: if you have any letterhead or copies of J.M. & Associates, LLC business cards, I'd love to see them. Any information related to the aforementioned issue is being sought, and I can only offer you my thanks, that's it. What an arrogant little man.

"Ms. Palfrey confirms that Mr. Burkman's business with her was escort service related, Margie Burns.com, 07.13.2007: http://www.margieburns.com/blog/_archives/2007/7/13/3090733.html

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter has another ethics complaint filed against him, this time by Louisiana Democrats

Baton Rouge, Louisiana--And it's about time. It seems that Davey is still unaware of or doesn't care about campaigning laws. In recent months, he attempted to and was allowed to used campaign funds to pay for his legal expenses surrounding the fact that he used the prostitution service of the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey (aka "The DC Madam"), but it helps to have friends in the right places--put their through crony political appointments.

Now, it seems that Davey is going around on the taxpayer's buck (wouldn't you?) campaigning against Democratic U.S. Representative Charlie Melancon throughout Louisiana, very openly uttering the man's name in-the-pejorative. 

That's campaigning.

Louisiana Democratic Party Chairman Chris Whittington filed a sworn complaint with the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics Thursday accusing U.S. Sen. David Vitter of using taxpayer-funded town hall meetings to engage in campaign activity.

Whittington’s complaint is based on Vitter’s statements at several taxpayer-funded town hall meetings criticizing U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, a potential re-election opponent. At one town hall meeting, Vitter encouraged the audience to “keep up the pressure on” Melancon.

Vitter has said that Melancon supported the health care revamp legislation proposed by the Obama administration when he actually voted with Vitter against the measure. ("La. Democrats file ethics complaint against Vitter," The Advertiser, 08.21.2009)

This is similar to the rules surrounding "franking." Sorry, you can only lie on the taxpayer's dime when you're in the nation's capital.
 
While they're at it, they might want to drag a dead madam into the picture. It seems that the Senator's counsel threatened Palfrey with legal costs around February 25th, 2008. Three days later, she sent this email to journalist Jason Leopold, cc'd to me and a co-researcher in the defense:

Jason… let’s put it like this, the bastards aren’t going to take me alive. Of course, anytime that you want to do an interview – I will make myself available. However, I doubt that I will be doing any interviews once I am in D.C., for the trial. –Best, Jeane

Did the threats from Vitter's counsel at Wiley, Rein & Fielding finally push Palfrey over the edge and onto a firm course leading to suicide? Don't ask Alex Jones, Geraldo, or even Alex Constantine, you won't get a rational answer anyway--not that that should be any surprise. Yet, it's all about the big, bad "government," that boorish catch-all, when it's really about morons like Vitter abusing their office and the bureaucracy. Like any tool, government is amoral. How it's used or abused is the real issue. Abusing power is what it's all about for morons like Davey.

I'd ask Vitter and his counsel about whether they think they pushed Palfrey too far, but I don't expect an answer that wouldn't insult my intelligence. Life is too short. Never let it be said that David Vitter is unwilling to crush anyone who gets in his way. Lying is fine, obfuscation is fine, and a general tone of ruthlessness runs through his political career as one would expect it to be in American poltics. I'm sure that if the people of Louisiana really knew the man for who he truly is, they'd recoil in terror and chastise themselves for being so delusional as to have ever voted for him. Nah...

Revised 08.23.2009

"La. Democrats file ethics complaint against Vitter," The Advertiser, 08.21.2009: http://www.theadvertiser.com/article/20090821/NEWS01/90821020

The health care "debate"

Washington D.C.--There isn't one. As a friend recently said to me (I'm paraphrasing him), "It's all political theater in Washington. This is a plutocracy. It's just fighting over who gets money from the lobbyists, the perks." I'd agree. With a solid 70% of the American public behind a single-payer health care system, the rest is just a game, show.

Some half-assed version of reform will make it through, the whole "blue dog democrats" issue is just another smokescreen, a diversion from the real power in the party in people like Rahm Emanuel (a creep and a corporate gangster if ever there was one), and while they're going to keep costs down for a time, it's not going to help fix the economy anytime soon. These morons are going to keep wrecking the system as their kind did in the 19th century when there was a depression ever few years. Then what? The economy--as we have come to think of it--is going to have that final crash where we really-and-truly do need another F.D.R. and there won't be one.

That's likely to come sooner, rather than later. This is a matter of Madisonian democracy versus Jeffersonian. Rule by a plutocratic elite, or actual democracy by the public. The new president is with the Madisonians.

While we keep watching the news turn into puerile entertainment at our expense, and we watch America becoming something unrecognizable, there is always another way: We the People. It's up to us to stop all the yammering over garbage issues like abortion, "9/11 was an inside job,""they're gonna take my guns away," and to recognize that no strong man is going to fix things and save (it never worked that way, not even with F.D.R.), look at what we all generally agree on that actually affects us directly, and push these idiots in Washington into a corner on health care, defense spending, the wars in the Middle East, global warming, and a host of pressing issues that can no longer wait for our attention. In other words, it's time to hit the streets, it's time to organize now and to demand very loudly that business-as-usual isn't going to cut it and that the party's over for the nihilistic clowns running our country into the ground.

A groundswell and widespread striking can do this.

The choice is ours and the time is now. To fail in these endeavors is to fail ourselves--and without putting America on some kind of pedestal--to fail humanity and to take the path towards doom and oblivion. That's it, there is no more left to say after that. The majority don't want the policies they're getting from Washington. To do nothing about this knowing you're hardly alone is completely irresponsible. If you want to convince yourself that because a few yammering morons are shouting down their fellow citizens at town hall meetings as evidence that you're isolated and alone on the issue(s), fine, you didn't need very much reason to cop-out. Your problem after that will be having to live with yourself, and rest assured, that problem will be your own. The time has come for America to grow-up as a nation.

The rest is just window-dressing to confuse and overwhelm you with a bunch of empty statistics and rhetorical flourishes that were skewed before the polling was ever conducted. The debate is a false one. There is no health care debate, it's one of the big lies.

Why Just Her, by Montgomery Blair Sibley (review)

A s anyone can imagine, it’s difficult reviewing a book about an event that one was a part of, and especially one in which the main protagonist has died, but fellow participant and former counsel Montgomery Blair Sibley’s book offers a certain degree of closure in the matter of one Deborah Jeane Palfrey (dubbed the “DC Madam” by the mainstream press). Finding a coherent narrative in this tangled-mess was a difficult task, as I can attest to it myself. Palfrey was an enigmatic figure on the national stage from roughly late March 2007 until her untimely death by suicide on May 1, 2008, less than a month after she was found guilty of racketeering charges related to running a prostitution ring in the Washington D.C area from her Vallejo home. This isn’t to say that Sibley’s book is the final word (no book can be that) on the subject, but it’s a good start. There are questions to this story that will never be answered, and not merely because Jeane is no longer with us.

Sibley was very close indeed to the flames and brings us all (myself included) a viable and constructive narrative of what he witnessed and his interpretation of it as the longest serving counsel to Deborah Jeane Palfrey, now forever branded by a puritan media as the “DC Madam.” A great deal has been written about Montgomery Blair Sibley’s behavior inside and outside of the DC Madam scandal and the courts, and while I’ve only corresponded with him via email and spoken with him on the phone a few times, I’ve never felt truly misled by him outside of an attorney’s duties to a defendant or that his behavior or tone were bizarre.

I became a part of this narrative from the first week of June 2007 until very shortly before Palfrey’s death, and was brought into it by the main protagonist herself. Like many historical events, most participants involved only experienced a small-part of the story; but for a few, there was more than just a sliver and they bore witness to more of an event than any other single player. Sibley is the latter. The fact of the matter is: Montgomery Blair Sibley was there from almost the very beginning from October 2006, shortly after Palfrey’s home was raided by USPS inspectors and investigators from the Treasury Department, until very close to the bitter end. To be sure, Palfrey was guilty-as-charged, and whether anyone likes it or not, Mr. Sibley has seized the narrative de facto by being the first to document it in book form. Only time will tell us how solid his version of events is, as with any historical accounting.

Many of Sibley’s detractors in the press and the legal profession are in for a bit of a surprise (outside of their own prejudices, possibly earned by Sibley and his late client for various reasons). Yet, by all appearances, this is a solid primary historical document containing what Sibley feels he experienced representing Palfrey; what the information in his possession means; and what the case itself means within our general and political culture. If he’s wrong anywhere in his version of the narrative, it’s likely that any mistakes or omissions were accidental or simply beyond Sibley’s control and were unintentional. It should be noted here that many materials related to the legal proceedings are still under seal, if not classified under national security statutes. Also worth noting is that this isn’t just about Palfrey, but about the author himself.

To be sure, there is an advantage that comes out of proximity, and the Sibley’s self-deprecation is both refreshing and forthcoming in ways that go well beyond most “what happened” books of this type.

From the point-of-view of this participant, he seems to “get” the hypocrisy of the charges leveled against Palfrey within a very large judicial context, and I applaud him for it. The DC Madam’s former legal counselor notes ably how little justice is to be had for just about any criminal defendant at the federal level and places Palfrey appropriately within that very context in fairly graphic detail. As he accurately states in the text, over 90% of federal criminal defendants plea out, which should tell you something about the prospects for victory for nearly anyone accused of violating federal statutes.

But Sibley had bigger problems than simply taking on the District of Columbia’s prosecution team under the Bush/Gonzalez interim-appointed U.S. Attorney, Jeffrey A. Taylor, an eleventh hour appointment at that. The “lawyer with a good name” had a client who was part of that 10% that would never, under any circumstances, capitulate to a plea deal.

Palfrey told this writer in our first telephone conversation in early June 2007 of two very good plea deals (reported in much less detail by ABC in their May 20/20 special featuring Palfrey for scant few minutes):

…I would not take their offers. …The best offer I think we had was about a year total of jail time—about maybe half of that in a halfway house, about half of that in a prison…maybe four months in a halfway house, maybe four months in a prison. They would take 2/3d’s of my—uh—life savings. That was the best offer possible. I basically told them to go screw themselves….to go to hell. Now, when that last offer came down, that’s when they indicted me. [i]

Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you (even Sibley, though we might disagree on this and several other points) that those were extremely generous plea deals, better than the average. What was she thinking? What else? She was thinking about the money—her overall assets--and the fact that she was going back to jail, and that’s about it.

This writer can attest to Palfrey having a tendency towards making irrational demands of others (I rejected my share of them) and acting in ways that could only have hurt her. In other words, it’s my humble opinion that she was disturbed and that it was a long-term condition of some sort that was exacerbated by her legal ordeal. When it began, I cannot say, but it appears to have been present as early as 1991-1992 in the aftermath of her first conviction and incarceration. There is little reason to think that either the Court or the prosecution were unaware of this fact at any stage in the proceedings. This begs-the-question as to why there was no intervention to assess whether the defendant was a threat to herself.

Why Just Her is generally silent on this issue for what we can assume are very serious legal reasons of procedure, and likely more.

The origins for Palfrey’s irrational behavior have been widely speculated on. Taking the overall picture that Sibley paints of the DC Madam’s state of mind during the legal proceedings for what they are and were, it’s hard not to conclude that the defendant Deborah Jeane Palfrey was not merely unhinged by the charges against her, but that she had ongoing mental problems that were probably with her for the entirety of her short life. This jibes perfectly with my contact with her, which was generally through a few telephone calls and a very long correspondence via-email. Sibley reveals some of this mental state to us through some rather extraordinary emails between others (including myself) and Palfrey, court filings, transcripts, anecdotes, and so on. He astutely notes from Palfrey’s autopsy report that she had high levels of Zolpidem in her bloodstream and corroborates this himself that he believes she was abusing it during her legal battle.

From the toxicological report done for the Pinellas County Forensic Laboratory:

2483B Zolpidem, Blood…

Analysis by Gas Chromatography (GC)

Zolpidem

Synonym(s): Ambien®

Peak plasma concentration following single oral 5 and 10 mg doses: 29 – 113 ng/mL (mean = 59 ng/mL) and 58 – 272 ng/mL (mean 121 ng/mL), respectively occurring at a mean time of 1.6 hours [before death]. [ii]

Sibley accurately states in his account that Palfrey took an overdose of generic Ambien roughly two hours before her death, so he’s not shaping the facts and his reading of this and other specific public documents appear to be on solid ground.

As a layman, I cannot comment to his interpretation of the laws and statutes invoked in Palfrey’s case. That’s what attorneys and judges are for. All that being said, I don’t think he was able to discuss the theme of suicide very expansively in Why Just Her because of court procedures regarding sealed documents as well as the Palfrey Estate’s invoking of attorney-client privilege over the last year. Some of these issues will probably be resolved before the end of 2009 (or not), but Sibley does drop a few bombshells:

Blanche subsequently told me that after writing the three notes on April 25, 2008, and taking an unknown quantity of [Z]olpidem, Jeane was unconscious for 30 hours. Upon waking up, she drove her [Jeane] to Blanche’s mobile home in Tarpon Springs, Florida. …Though conspiracy theories quickly populated the internet, the hard evidence was simply too overwhelming to permit any conclusion other than Jeane had taken her own life. [iii]

As evinced by the number of attorney firings (not including the then-recent U.S. Attorney firing scandal that brought Jeffrey A. Taylor into the equation) by Palfrey over the course of events, Montgomery Blair Sibley and the rest of her representation had their hands full. I don’t expect that either A.J. Kramer or Preston Burton will be writing their accounts anytime soon--if ever--and their reasons probably run-the-gamut. I can relate. They all had a nightmare client on their hands, possibly the worst kind one could represent in a criminal/civil case, and Sibley has represented some real “doosie” clients like Obama accuser Larry Sinclair in the aftermath, so it’s saying something. Sinclair was probably like a vacation compared to Jeane.

Palfrey was that impossible client who lied most of the time and kept her cards close-to-the-vest, as this book documents throughout, and therefore, there can never truly be a full portrait of who she was and what she did running Pamela Martin & Associates, generally unmolested for thirteen years within the greater Washington D.C. area. In many ways, she will remain an enigma. Such are the obstacles to all historical portraits, even when they’re coming from those who had a lot of contact with the subject, but Sibley does an exceptional job in reconstructing the timeline as well as his and Palfrey’s general state of mind over the course of her prolonged legal proceedings. People accused of criminal acts have their secrets and their reasons for harboring them, and Palfrey was no exception to this tendency.

Like everyone in this life, Palfrey took some of her secrets to the grave. But there are a few glaring mysteries including how much money she actually made over the years which contradict her and the government’s assertions, and there is smoke. For example, Sibley notes a very serious problem in the cross-examination by AUSA for the prosecution, Daniel Butler, at trial regarding the testimony of IRS agent Troy Burrus. Statements were made that pulled-back the veil, and the only explanation this writer can find is incredible incompetence. In short, they accidentally charged Palfrey with under-reporting her income at trial rather than beforehand. This is a major procedural error in any criminal trial.

But no worries, the presiding judge had their back in the end. A reasonable outcome would have been a mistrial, but Judge Robertson was no Judge Kessler (who was replaced in a predawn raid without explanation), and anything but reasonable. This exchange occurred during Palfrey’s trial on April 9, 2008:

…22 Q. Does Ms. Palfrey's return show gross receipts or net

23 receipts?

24 A. It shows gross receipts.

25 Q. And where does it show that?

450

1 A. On line one, under part one for the income, it shows the

2 gross receipts.

3 Q. And what is gross receipts, just to make sure?

4 A. Gross receipts in this instance would be all the income that

5 was received by the business during that year.

6 Q. So that would include Ms. Palfrey as well as her employees.

7 Is that correct?

8 A. Actually, it should include the monies that she actually

9 received, that was sent to her.

10 Q. And did you compare the tax returns to the bank records for

11 Ms. Palfrey?

12 A. Yes.

13 Q. And what did that show?

14 A. The comparison of the bank records for this year, 2002, show

15 that there was a greater amount of gross receipts than was

16 reported on this line.

17 MR. BURTON: Can we approach, Your Honor?

18 THE COURT: Yes.

19 (BENCH CONFERENCE ON THE RECORD.)

20 MR. BURTON [Palfrey’s criminal counsel at trial]: I don't know where this is going.

21 MR. BUTLER: I'm not going to any tax discrepancy, or

22 anything to that effect.

23 THE COURT [Former FISA Judge James Robertson who resigned from the Court in December 2005 when the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program was exposed]: You just saddled her with basically what is

24 false reporting.

25 MR. BUTLER: Well, I don't think it's gone that far.

451

1 yet, Your Honor. I'm not going any further with this line of

2 inquiry.

3 THE COURT: Well, now you've put the defense in the

4 position where they have to respond to this. How are they going

5 to do that?

6 MR. BUTLER: Well, Your Honor, that was not the intent

7 of my question, but I appreciate what the Court is saying.

8 THE COURT: What was the intent of the question?

9 MR. BUTLER: My intent of the question, Your Honor, was

10 directed at the gross receipts that were deposited into this and

11 comparing it with the bank records that we have. It was a

12 poorly phrased question. That's all I can say about it. I

13 don't know anything more than that.

14 THE COURT: Well, where are you going next?

15 MR. BUTLER: Your Honor, I'm going next with -- can I

16 just have a moment, Your Honor?

17 Your Honor, there's another chart in terms of -- I just

18 need to grab it, just to answer the question more explicitly, if

19 I can have a moment.

20 THE COURT: How much more do you have with this guy?

21 MR. BUTLER: Not very much at all, Your Honor.

22 MS. CONNELLY: I think there's a bunch more documents.

23 MR. BUTLER: Well, there's other documents we need to

24 admit through him, yes.

25 THE COURT: Can he come back in the morning? [iv.]

Palfrey’s final criminal counsel merely went through the motions, and weakly called for a mistrial, which Robertson rejected immediately. Burton didn’t press the issue, which was typical of this defense strategy during the trial. It appears that his defense wasn’t especially zealous. Yet, critics of Sibley would be hard-pressed in saying he didn’t represent Palfrey zealously enough--if anything it might have bordered on the overzealous (whatever that means), and I believe he did his best to save her from herself, including attempts to bring her suicidal behavior to the attention of the Court, and possibly even that of the prosecution.

But, again, I believe that he and they are not legally able to discuss or write about such things for procedural reasons.

This is the first place to start for the average person in beginning to understand a very convoluted and chimerical scandal that was inherently political. It is an honest effort at understanding what happened from someone who was intimately involved in it and it offers about as sincere a perspective as you’re going to get from someone in such a position. The press’s coverage of this event was superficial, lacking in substance, and even went so far as to intentionally obscure very important issues, never mind the real ones at hand in it. In other words, they missed the real stories, the core issues. That’s not very hard to believe given the state of investigative journalism these days.

That the prosecution was engaged in gross misbehavior is a given. That the Court failed to administer reasonable due process at trial is open to interpretation, but why then was Judge Kessler so abruptly removed and replaced by former FISA court Judge James Robertson if there really were no national security issues to the case? They’re not telling, but Montgomery Blair Sibley is, and as much as he’s allowed to under the law. That speaks volumes, and resoundingly.

---

[i] Phone conversation with the author, June 10, 2007.

[ii] “Toxicology Report,” NMS Labs, Work order 08165556, Palfrey, Deborah Jeane, May 31, 2008.

[iii] Sibley, Montgomery Blair, Why Just Her. (Full Court Press, 2009) P.581.

[iv] United States v. Deborah Palfrey, “TRANSCRIPT OF TRIAL RECORD VOLUME 3,” “Criminal No. 07-0046,” April 9, 2008.