After ABC News ran a 20/20 piece on May 4 that failed to reveal well-known politicos or power players who have used Pamela Martin & Associates, the now-defunct escort service owned for over a decade by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, many journalists felt that the story of the alleged DC Madam was dead. Brian Ross, the lead investigative reporter on the story, even outwardly admitted that his piece, as presented on air, was a big letdown.

But what many journalists did not realize is that ABC had not received Palfrey’s full records. Nor did they know that the network faced intense political pressure to make the story die. And most in the media failed to go direct to the source - to Palfrey herself - to ask the important questions that needed to be answered.

After the report aired, and as Palfrey saw her name relegated to the gossip pages, as if she were a side note to history, she insisted to Big Head DC that her full story had not come out — and that she was “suspicious” of ABC’s reporting. ”Right to the last minute, we believed that they were coming out with a hard-hitting story,” Palfrey told us in June, ”and they came out with nothing…”

And she insisted that ABC hadn’t done a thorough job. “I think there were indeed big names in the list ABC was given,” she said. 

Palfrey was steadfast that she needed to publicize the fact that the government had not allowed her to release a vast portion of her phone records, despite a plethora of legal arguments on her side. On July 5, the courts finally agreed that the government was in error, and Palfrey was free to release her full records. She originally did so to individuals who requested the names via her Web site, but after list tampering became evident, she decided to release the records wholesale yesterday on her Web site.

Then, last night, it was dramatically reported all over the mainstream press that GOP Sen. David Vitter had used her escort service — a story that went unreported by the ABC News investigative team in May. Palfrey insists that several more top politicians, including Vice President Dick Cheney, will possibly be revealed.

To those who ask what is the importance of whether politicians use an escort service or not, Palfrey has a response: “We have these hypocrites running around telling us how we should behave, yet they behave quite differently,” she told us in June. “Hypocrites are in power, and people need to know that.”

Whether hypocrites are in power at ABC remains to be seen, but at this hour it is known that the station’s news team either made a dramatic mistake in judgement, or it is just plain inept.

Earlier: ABC News Reporter Planning Tell-All “DC Madam” Book?