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.
"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.
So, ABC, a US Senator was discovered to be on that list in about 15 minutes. We now have a problem.
Something's very wrong. ABC's Brian Ross has told us that nobody newsworthy enough is on that list, and the Wash Post reported that "their relative anonymity spared them exposure." Now, a few things could've happened here:
- He didn't get the full list. Indeed, the article mentions "ABC did not push to obtain Palfrey's earlier phone records, which cover a nine-year period." If this is the case, everything's cool. The Senator's name wasn't there, and maybe nobody important was used in the later years. Okay, you're off the hook, Mr. Ross. Sorry to have doubted you. My bad.
- He didn't do the research. There were an awful lot of numbers and names, and it's not like Senator Vitter is the most well-known. Maybe he just didn't properly research everybody and missed the one that was 0.5% of the legislative branch.
- He lied. There are a couple reasons:
3a. Somebody (perhaps a Disney exec on the list) told him to lie. Maybe somebody sent him a national security letter and told him he had to. I don't know. I'm just guessing.
3b. He lied for some personal reason or out of loyalty to Senator Vitter.
I'm interested in whether or not 3 happened. I suppose we'll find out eventually.