The late DC Madam's precedent and the CIPA...
As we come up on the anniversary of the late "DC Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey's "suicide" in Florida on May 1, 2008, it is important to recall that the convicted proprietor of "Pamela Martin & Associates escort agency, which, according to our past reports, serviced Halliburton Chairman and CEO Dick Cheney in the 1990s, attempted to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) in her trial last year.
On May 3, 2008, WMR reported: "There was no mistake that when Deborah Jeane Palfrey's phone records were made public by order of US Judge Gladys Kessler, shortly before she asked to be reassigned from the case, that Palfrey's Pamela Martin & Associates escort agency had some very intriguing clientele. If one were to have mapped the phone numbers on Palfrey's list, McLean, Virginia would have looked like the epicenter of an earthquake. McLean is the home to the CIA, Washington's top politicians, and assorted foreign and domestic business movers and shakers who travel in and out of the CIA's shadow."
WMR added, "On September 1, 2007, WMR reported the following: 'WMR has learned that on August 31, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the indicted Pamela Martin & Associates (PMA) proprietor, filed a 'Motion for Pretrial Conference to Consider Matters Relating to classified information' under the 'Classified Information Procedures Act' (CIPA) with the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC. The purpose of the filing alerts the government that Palfrey's defense will likely involved the disclosure of evidence and identities presently deemed 'classified" by the U.S. government.' The CIPA is only invoked in cases when classified national security information must be revealed. It is now clear that Palfrey, who never admitted to this editor any links between her agency and the CIA, was a contractor for the spy agency."
The CIA would have us believe they never engaged in such practices but the record speaks for itself. On February 5, 1975, famed muckraking investigative journalist Jack Anderson reported in his "The Washington Merry-Go-Round" column that "For years, the Central Intelligence Agency operated love traps in New York City and San Francisco, where foreign diplomats were lured by prostitutes in the pay of the CIA."
Anderson further described the blackmail operation: "Through hidden one-way mirrors, CIA agents filmed the sexual adventures and later tried to blackmail the victims into becoming informants."
Anderson reported the CIA's San Francisco operation lasted from the late 1950s to around 1965. The San Francisco operation used only bugging devices and not the one-way mirrors. Anderson reported the New York operation lasted from around 1960 to 1966.
The New York operation used two efficiency apartments on the sixth floor of a high-rise apartment in Greenwich Village. Anderson reported, "On the wall of the blackmail apartment was hung a large painting of two ships. But the painting was actually a one-way mirror."
"On the other side of the wall, CIA agents could watch and film the action through the see-through painting. The painting was strategically placed so that it gave the CIA observers a full view of the sofa, which opened into a bed. A Japanese screen, implanted with microphones, provided the sound for the CIA's blackmail movies. The one-way mirror was hidden behind a painting with hinges. The agents merely would swing back the painting like cabinet door for the peep shows in the adjoining apartment."
Anderson suggests the blackmail operation used both female and male prostitutes. "To stage the shows, both male and female prostitutes with a variety of sexual skills were used."
To maximize government efficiency, Anderson reported that the old Bureau of Narcotics would use the apartments when not needed by the CIA. "They [narc agents] would be advised to stay away on certain nights," wrote Anderson, adding, "the rent, food, and liquor bills were paid out of a special checking account in a bank near the New York narcotics office.
There was one major difference between the CIA's 1950s and 60s prostitution operations and Palfrey's 1990s and early 2000s operation. The CIA never permitted a political vendetta-seeking Justice Department to indict its operatives in New York or San Francisco for prostitution.
