1115.org

As part of the continuing teaser-trailer for Friday’s tell-all episode of 20/20, ABC News‘ The Blotter reports:

The woman charged in a federal indictment with running a high-class Washington, D.C. call girl service says she plans to call her prominent clients to testify at her trial.

Jeane Palfrey, dubbed the D.C. Madam, says among those she will call to testify are Randall Tobias, who resigned Friday as deputy secretary of state after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of Palfrey’s escort service.

Tobias is the second prominent man to be identified as a customer of the Palfrey’s “sexual fantasy service.” Two weeks ago, Palfrey alleged that military strategist Harlan K. Ullman, creator of the “shock and awe” combat theory and now a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was also a customer. Ullman has said that the claim was “beneath the dignity of comment.”

Also on Palfrey’s list of customers who could be potential witnesses (in her trial, for the defense!) are a Bush administration economist, the head of a conservative think tank, a prominent CEO, several lobbyists and a handful of military officials.

Stay tuned for further revelations.

And, for the record, as a legal defense, this makes a lot more sense than Libby’s “It’s not perjury because I was too busy to remember the truth”. Palfrey’s defense, after all, is that she was running a perfectly legal escort service. No criminal sexual activity was involved. (Or if there was, that’s on her subcontractors, not on her.)

Who better to attest to the fact that no criminal sexual activity was involved than a whole phalanx of respectable and respected establishment figures?

You may remember how Alberto Gonzales‘ Justice Department fought to obtain a gag order to suppress the phone records that are now being used to identify her customers. Since that didn’t work, the administration damage control team will have to fall back on plan B. It is not clear at this time whether that will involve an act of extraordinary rendition, or the conferring of a shiny new medal. Or (since this is, after all, the Bush administration), both.