ABC decides not to identify more escort service clients

WASHINGTON -- During several weeks of calls to possible clients of the woman dubbed the D.C. Madam, Brian Ross of ABC confirmed that some fairly important people had used her escort service.

But when he put together last night's segment for "20/20," the network's chief investigative reporter decided against outing anyone beyond the two people who already had been identified.

"Their names won't mean anything to our audience," Ross said in an interview. "They just weren't newsworthy enough." Instead, he said, "what we really wanted to do is demonstrate the range of official Washington" involved with the escort service.

Their positions, as described by Ross, made them important, at least by the capital's standards: a federal prosecutor, who recently died. A handful of military officers, including the head of an Air Force intelligence squadron. A senior official at the World Bank.

But their relative anonymity spared them exposure as a result of the decision by Ross, "20/20" executive producer David Sloan, and senior vice president Kerry Smith.

Ever since Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who is contesting federal prostitution-related charges, gave ABC the last four years of her phone records on March 15, Ross and his news division have faced a journalistic dilemma: Should they name some of the roughly 1,000 clients they identified?

Many media outlets, including The Washington Post and a number of cable news programs, kept up a steady drumbeat of coverage. ABC News has posted updates about the story on its website.

Ross said he personally called 20 to 30 people on the list. "Many were very honest and said 'I dreaded this call coming,' " he said.

In one case, a man who told the escort service he was a White House economist turned out to have engaged in résumé inflation. He actually works across the street as an analyst for the Office of Thrift Supervision, Ross said.

"One guy swore to me up and down it couldn't have been him -- he loves his wife," Ross said. The man, a well-known member of a conservative think tank, was right: Palfrey, Ross said, had repeatedly misdialed his number by confusing the 202 and 301 area codes.

ABC looked into women on Palfrey's phone list as well, including a legal secretary at the prestigious law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, who has been placed on leave, and a lieutenant commander in the Navy. The network seems to have exercised some compassion, with Ross saying the commander would probably face court-martial if identified.

In other news related to the case, a source briefed on the inquiry said evidence seized from Palfrey's residences indicated Brandy Britton, a former college professor who hanged herself in her Howard County, Md., home in January, had worked for her at times. At the time of her death, Britton was about to go on trial on four counts of prostitution.

One ABC inquiry became public last week when Randall Tobias, a deputy secretary of state, resigned after Ross called him. Ross said that perhaps he approached Tobias too early -- "I didn't think he'd quit the next day" -- but that if the official, who ran the Agency for International Development, had stayed quiet, "20/20" would have identified him.

"This was a guy leading a crackdown on prostitution worldwide," Ross said. "The fact that he was a repeat customer of this and other services, the hypocrisy made that important." But despite the expectations raised by Tobias's resignation, ABC found no one of comparable prominence in the phone records.

Another client contacted by ABC, Harlan Ullman, an adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a Washington Times columnist, was identified by Palfrey in a court filing.

ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider says allegations that ABC held the story for the ratings sweeps period are unfair. Ross said that he had to finish another story and then went on vacation before starting the Palfrey story and that yesterday was the first available "20/20" air date.

Palfrey made clear that she gave ABC the phone records to help her defense, because she needed assistance in identifying past clients who could be called as witnesses.

There may be another shoe yet to drop. ABC did not push to obtain Palfrey's earlier phone records, which cover a nine-year period. But Ross said she has given them to journalists investigating the Clinton administration.