Coming down the pike

Prostitution scandal has Washington in new 'shock and awe'

The demise of a call-girl ring and pending trial of an alleged madam claiming thousands of clients has the US capital riveted by the chance powerful men may now be caught with their trousers down, with a senior state department official apparently first to fall.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 50, dubbed the DC Madam in local media, has been arraigned in federal court on charges of operating a Washington prostitution service for 13 years until her retirement in 2006.

Palfrey has denied she ran a prostitution ring. Her company, Pamela Martin and Associates, was simply a "high-end adult fantasy firm which offered legal sexual and erotic services across the spectrum of adult sexual behavior and did so without incident during its 13 year tenure," she said.

Palfrey contends her escort service provided university educated women to engage in legal game-playing of a sexual nature at 275 dollars an hour for a 90 minute session, the Washington Post reported.

But Palfrey has also hinted that she has a record of the phone numbers of thousands of more than 10,000 customers that could embarrass more the a few of the US capital's high-fliers.

Friday, the US State Department announced that Randall Tobias, the embattled head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), was resigning for unspecified personal reasons.

That unspecified personal reason being that he solicited "massages" from Palfrey's business, not sex of course (the Haggard defense).