Why Every American Should Read Let the Dead Bury the Dead…

Too often mislabeled as a “routine” sex scandal by the press, and a prostitution/racketeering/money laundering case by government prosecutors, the charges leveled against the “DC Madam” were a mockery of justice without precedent. This is a tale of institutionalized crony capitalism and the return of aristocracy into a corporate mold. Let the Dead Bury the Dead sheds new light on the investigation, legal proceedings and the phenomenon of the DC Madam, from a witness to history. Drawing from his direct involvement in the case—as well as from a significant array of primary historical materials never before seen by the public–the author will illustrate that there was nothing normal about how the charges against the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey were applied, quite the contrary.

From the mainstream media’s attempts at defining and dismissing many explosive facts and patterns in the case to the legal proceedings and show trial, the DC Madam story illuminates textbook examples of prosecutorial misconduct, information warfare, judicial abuse, and political damage control. Possibly a harbinger of things to come, the subsequent death of the DC Madam stands as a shadow testament to the political crisis that ran riot in America under President George W. Bush, and that continues into the present. Media, government and the business sector colluded to bury the story, and for the most part, they have, until now.

Many Readers Will Learn for the First Time that:

-The DC Madam’s phone records are littered with phone calls from defense-intelligence contractors.

-Palfrey claimed to have received multiple calls from Brent Wilkes, the government contractor who bribed convicted California congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham. -Palfrey’s legal problems began innocuously thanks to a Postal Inspector, spiraling out of control from there.

-Deborah Jeane Palfrey “knew” less than she let on and can be counted as an arbitrary victim of power.

-Palfrey was granted wide subpoena powers over the American intelligence community and all Beltway law enforcement.

-There are more many more “big names” in her legendary phone records yet to be published.

-Porn publisher Larry Flynt assisted Palfrey more than previously thought, promising her a form of asylum in the aftermath of her trial.

-Palfrey was under periodic observation longer than previously reported by federal law enforcement and persons unknown.

-Palfrey was much fairer than the typical American employer by miles.

Article/Phone Interview on DC Madam case & account at Internet Chronicle

This is the very first article on the case and the book, among other topics. I spoke with their correspondent Tyler Bass today, and it was a pretty fruitful discussion on the case and its known and unknown aspects and meanings. I feel my perspective on the case was honestly represented and that he made a number of interesting observations, a few I’d never considered before. That’s typical of the case: some aspects of it look one way to one observer, another to someone else, and what you have is a patchwork that frequently defies explanation. There are always going to be a lot of mysteries swirling around this case, because it involved the secret world of intelligence. To what extent, I don’t know, but it did.

As I told Tyler, were I to summarize the DC Madam case simply, I’d say that it was a branch of Hookergate, most likely the Randy Cunningham/Brent Wilkes/Kyle Foggo “Poway mafia,” all of whom were busted over activities surrounding influence peddling, getting that pork back to San Diego and into their pockets first. Jeane’s escort were probably part of the “gifting” process.

“Matt Janovic Opens Up Hookergate,” The Internet Chronicle, January 26th, 2013: http://www.chronicle.su/news/matt-janovic-opens-up-hookergate/

Let the Dead Bury the Dead is now available at CreateSpace.com

You can find the book here: https://www.createspace.com/4056731

The list-price is 27.95 USD. This is the initial release, with the e-book coming before the end of the month. The book is 8″ X 11″, running at 622 pages, with an index. There are no photos. Sorry to the comic and picture book-only crowd (not really).

And here it is for the UK:  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Let-Dead-Bury-Madam-account/dp/1480297437/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355242478&sr=1-1

Amazon France: http://www.amazon.fr/Let-Dead-Bury-Madam-account/dp/1480297437/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355243316&sr=8-1

Amazon Germany: http://www.amazon.de/Let-Dead-Bury-Madam-account/dp/1480297437/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1355243200&sr=1-1-catcorr

And Amazon Italy: http://www.amazon.it/Let-Dead-Bury-Madam-account/dp/1480297437/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355243385&sr=8-1

Qualcomm being sued by NY State Comptroller over political donations

Without any prompting, Qualcomm came around my blog J to the Power of 7 on a word search over Montgomery Blair Sibley. This was around three years ago. I had no idea why they came around, but when I did a little research, I found that they also do intelligence and defense contracting…and they have a revolving door policy between their executives and those at Ernst & Young, a major corporate services firm that specializes in corporate audits, yes, the books that get cooked.

The latter firm is involved in uncovering such things in corporate institutions, but also have had allegations thrown at them on several occasions that they helped to cover it up. What does that have to do with the DC Madam? It might not be anything specific beyond the fact that her former prosecutor, Jeffrey A. Taylor, a Bush II interim appointee who was never fired by incoming president-elect, Barack Obama, and went on to a cushy legalistic job at Ernst & Young. Now, why would someone at Qualcomm do that word search on Mr. Sibley? I have no idea and have never expected a straight answer out of them–don’t have the resources, or the inclination to bother looking into it, life’s too short. But the fact remains that both firms are very closely-linked, Taylor works for Ernst, and someone felt compelled at the sister firm of Qualcomm to do research over Mr. Sibley. When I brought it to his attention, he seemed pretty interested–as interested as I was. It was just one more bizarre “coincidence” from the case. I don’t if Taylor is still working at Ernst, but I would assume so. What’s of interest to me is the connection not only to computer chips and CPUs made by Qualcomm, but their relationship with the Pentagon and American intelligence community, perhaps one similar to SAIC’s, another major league contractor. Qualcomm was never in Jeane’s phone records, but I believe someone fucked up here and showed their hand, for which I thank them!

And now, the Comptroller of NY State, Thomas P. DiNapoli, a Democrat, is suing Qualcomm over political donations to force transparency. NY State is one of the biggest shareholders in the corporation, and is asserting her interest in the firm. This is reasonable since the risks are very high to public investors, especially when so many were burned in the banking crisis of 2008 thanks to widespread securities fraud. This is a major reason for the economic crisis in countries like Greece, for example, just one of many. Consider that when politicians in DC start screaming for austerity measures because of the deficit. Hundreds of billions were spent to keep a lot of crooks afloat.

Here’s more at the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/04/nyregion/new-york-comptroller-sues-qualcomm-for-data-on-political-giving.html?hpw&_r=1&

And my observations on them in relation to the DC Madam case (the earliest are most pertinent): http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/search?q=Qualcomm

News on upcoming e-book edition of Let the Dead Bury the Dead, and more

This is going to be through Amazon Books partners. The e-book will be PDF-only for the time being. I’m not a fan of Amazon’s Kindle at all, it ruins layout and adds more cost because of reformatting. Also, I think it’s a shitty platform and that this e-book craze is just that, a craze that will pass, and so too will most everything on it without some kind of data-migration. Besides that, there’s no burning economic reason to do it, this isn’t that kind of a book. Read some of the .99 cent books on Amazon, and you’ll find what a friend described so well as “sixth-grader level of writing skills,” which is true there all over the place.

Yes, I’m a Luddite and not the biggest supporter of this nutty idea that there must be unbridled technological innovation. I don’t see a lot of it as inherently liberatory (why does WordPress’s spellchecker have a lower vocabulary than me? It can’t spell the preceding word). You could make a great argument yesterday that it’s destroying the world simply by coming into being.

The book is indigestible to the mindless consumer crowd, maybe as much as Pasolini’s final film, Salo! Yes, it has many moments that could be described as entertaining, and without question, as I’m being told by a few readers, it’s a page turner. That’s what all true crime books and works about the world of intelligence and politics should be. There are a lot more reasons–important ones that affect all of our lives–contained in the text that should motivate potential readers, especially those living in North America: a dearth of primary information within the covers that falls under the public’s right to know, and a good percentage of it could be evidence either pointing to, or of, specific acts of corruption in the appropriations process in Washington DC. The greatest waste of all is in defense and intelligence spending for a reason. It’s the easiest trough to gorge from thanks to the reactionary tendencies of the American public when it comes to warfare, and yes, I’m hitting the South with a lot of the blame.

The e-book will be presented exactly as I intended the book to be experienced by the prospective reader. I’m a big fan of PDF for this and many other reasons, but mainly because it doesn’t ruin layout. I’m pricing it at $9.99 USD and there will be periodic sales on it. Like most e-books, it will contain the cover art. It should be available before the end of the month. That’s it, yo, there is no ‘mo

Official Let the Dead Bury the Dead page now up @ Facebook

And here it is: http://www.facebook.com/LetTheDeadBuryTheDeadByMatthewJanovic

Many thanks go to Andrea! Thank you!

Create a book fanpage, win a copy of Let the Dead Bury the Dead!

Yes, we live in a crass, capitalist Dystopia. In that spirit of social malaise, and limited to two signed copies I’ve set aside, if you can illustrate that you’ve put up a real, functional fan page on a social media site that gets hits, I will kick you a copy, gratis. The most viable pages win, void where prohibited, viva la muerte, and ashtray’s your uncle.

This is a real offer, not a satire. Get the word out and I’ll send you a collection of nearly 400,000 words on the DC Madam case, carefully marshaled into meaningful action. I can be contacted here and at my blog, listed in the links at the bottom of the home page here.

An open letter to former Pamela Martin & Associates escorts

Ladies, if I may be so forward, or so foolish, to address you as such:

You turned your back on Jeane. Maybe she wasn’t the nicest human being to work for, but she was a human being, and you either knew or should have known what you were getting yourselves into. The fact that somewhere in the range of fifteen of you turned snitch to save your skins was despicable in light of how well you were paid. Admittedly, I only know so much about how you were treated, yet none of you were willing to come forward to educate me and others on any of the details but one, the woman who courageously attempted to establish contact with Ken Silverstein when he was an editor at Harper’s. That woman was a hero and she has my deepest regards and respect.

As for the rest of you, the others that went into hiding, believe it or not, I get it. That being said, it doesn’t excuse your kicking the late Ms. Palfrey to the curb. Many of you had moved on after more than a few years, and that’s a good out, it’s fair. Nonetheless, a number of you, the ones who testified against her, are scoundrels. You own a piece of her death, you are rats, scum, filth, indirect killers. I despise you.

You see, what a number of you did helped bring PMA to its knees and Jeane to hang at the end of a rope. You are Judases. Not a lot of you were in any specific need to become escorts–there was little desperation involved in it, more a desire for a soft, materialistic life that you felt entitled to. That doesn’t make you much different from the rest of the entitled whores that overpopulate this country, but it makes you lower than a streetwalker who’s run out of options and finds themselves in the profession. Yes, I don’t want to see the government and some of the elements you serviced victimizing you further, there’s no point to that, and there’s been enough suffering in all of this. But the fact remains that some of you, some of the over one hundred and thirty escorts that worked for PMA over the years, are going to have to live with what you did.

I was fair to you in my book, maybe too fair. But don’t expect that I was letting you all off-the-hook completely, because I didn’t. For the dozen-plus of you who turned informant, you have no sense of honor. It pleases me that this will cause you a certain degree of pain for the rest of your natural lives. A woman died, as you know, as we all know, and there’s no going back from what happened. My hope is that some of you learned something from this and changed, but I’m not an optimist about people and their ways. My assumption is that this will haunt some of you psychologically in some way, yet it won’t result in any real shift or transformation in who and what you are, selfish pigs, and that you’re going to continue on your merry, indifferent ways just as before. How lovely for you.

Some idiot claiming to be one of you, Andrea Detty, made a limp attempt at undermining the book by suggesting that I hadn’t contacted you, therefore, how solid could my attempt to chronicle what happened. That wasn’t my job. My job was to tell what I experienced and learned, my part of the puzzle and to try to make as much sense of that as I could. That included obtaining more information. A lot of this was so that I was able to move on from my role in the last year of Jeane’s very short life. That kind of an attempt is the act of a scoundrel, a liar, and a psychopath, exactly what I’d expect out of a genuine informant. There’s nothing lower than that. Who is this magical person or persons that was able to speak extensively with the former escorts? If they exist outside of a government job, they’re sitting on it, and at this point, now that a lot of the smoke has cleared, their behavior is incredibly unethical. I put out requests long ago on this blog for information from you women with no results whatsoever. The onus is on you. It wasn’t even a nice try, “Andrea.”

You women are the past, and what’s past is prologue. I you want to clarify things, great, then do it, otherwise, shut the fuck up, forever, you have no legs to stand on, no credibility.

I could go on endlessly about you, but let me sum it all up: life is short, and the truth will one day come to light. One day we’ll know precisely who the worst were, who were the heroes, who at least tried under terrible circumstances to do what was right at the time, and really, who the fucking animals were. Jeane is dead, and I am one of the caretakers of her legacy, one of the few who can bring her voice back from the grave, one of the only people in the world who can at least begin the process of allowing her to point her dead hand at the guilty. There never be a place to run. There is no place to hide from a sun that never sets. Dwell on that for the holidays.

Matt Janovic

DC Madam trial transcripts posted today

I posted what are nearly all the transcript files of the DC Madam’s trial in the spring of 2008. If you quote them, reference me as well. Insofar as I’ve been able to ascertain, no one has posted them online in full form.

The Google docs links can be found here, at my blog: http://chickasawpicklesmell.blogspot.com/2012/12/dc-madam-trial-transcripts.html

DC Madam trial transcript excerpt

Author’s note: Below is a brief exchange from the trial transcript for April 10th, 2008. It was striking how poor and lacking-in-detail coverage from Palfrey’s trial was. Reading the transcripts themselves, it’s not difficult to understand why–it was little more than a formality to hold it, and Palfrey’s criminal defense attorney–Preston Burton–didn’t fight very hard for his client.

There’s the real possibility that it’s because he’s rumored to covet a Federal Judgeship, but then there’s the fact that he’s also a partner in a law firm that does extensive contract work for the government internationally. You never know.

But that’s my opinion, decide for yourselves. I wasn’t aware of how informal and shoddy these affairs were conducted until recently, being unable to attend the trial itself. A real eye-opener, that. It must have been excruciating for any defendant to have had to sit there and watch the kangaroo court unfold before them as it surely did this April in Washington D.C.

Reading the transcript, you get the very obvious impression that the Court and the prosecution were working hard to rush the proceedings and that Burton barely mounted a defense at all. At some point, this site will be publishing the entire transcripts in-full.

From Pg. 20-21 of the April 10th, 2008 trial transcript of Deborah Jeane Palfrey

…”MS. CONNELLY: Your Honor, we have nothing further for
this witness.

THE COURT: All right, Ms. Couvillon. You may step
down. (The witness steps down.)
May I see counsel at the bench?
(Bench conference on the record.)

THE COURT: Okay. Where do we stand? Is that it?

MS. CONNELLY: For today, yes.

THE COURT: And what about these other two people?

MS. CONNELLY: Well, one of them is flying back into
town tomorrow, so she’ll be here Monday. The other one we spoke
to — well, the agent spoke yesterday to her in the hospital,
and they’ve diagnosed diverticulitis and they were just debating
when they’re going to release her. They think possibly this
weekend.

THE COURT: Do we need either one of these people? [Page Break]

MR. BUTLER: The one that’s in the hospital is
racketeering, so the answer is yes.

MS. CONNELLY: I think they both are.

THE COURT: You need all 14 acts, but you’ve got 15
now.

MR. BUTLER: We do have the burden of proof, and we
need sufficient evidence to meet that burden.

THE COURT: Yeah, but so what? There’s only 13 in
baseball. Thirteen out of 14 isn’t bad.

MS. CONNELLY: We’re at 10 out of 14 now.

MR. BUTLER: Well, I would request, Your Honor,
that (inaudible) the last day for court proceedings.

THE COURT: What can you tell us about what you’re
going to do?

MR. BURTON: My inclination is to not put on any
defense.

THE COURT: Okay. So we’re looking at one, maybe two
witnesses first thing Monday morning, and then we’re going to
argue and charge.

MR. BURTON: But we do have a rule 29.

THE COURT: Yeah, we have a rule 29. That’ll be a
lengthy argument.

MS. CONNELLY: Your Honor, do you charge first or do
we argue first?

THE COURT: I charge first.” … [Page Break]

[Original Postscript, 11.13.2008]: Talking about baseball gives one the impression that the “wall of professionalism” was basically nonexistent between the prosecution and Judge Robertson, a real convivial and friendly atmosphere between them all. You think they went out and had a drink at trial’s conclusion? I mean, really, if I was one of the AUSAs or USAs, I would’ve went out and gotten the judge laid, frankly. They had a good list of escort services in-hand, so…what scum. Yes, worse than a female pimp. The public was denied coverage of the trial because it was not only handled poorly, the proceedings were rigged from their inception.