Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Legacy Was Marred By Scandal

In an enduring scandal that haunted former Vice President Dick Cheney to the grave, the controversial politician was named as one of the Beltway politicians who hired call girls from the woman notoriously known as the D.C. Madam.

The powerful veep — who died Nov. 3 at the age of 84 — was well known as a spokesman for family values and his alleged links to the seedy escort service sent shock waves through the nation’s capital.

He was identified as a client of suspected call girl ringleader Deborah Jeane Palfrey by national security expert Wayne Madsen.

Madsen, a journalist and author who has the inside track on news in the nation’s capital, made the bombshell claim on his website in mid-2007. He wrote on his site that the names on Palfrey’s list include “a number of mostly Republican politicians, staffers and political appointees, including Vice President Dick Cheney while he was president and CEO of Halliburton in the 1990s.”

According to Madsen, two sources within the Central Intelligence Agency and one source at the Pentagon leaked that Cheney’s name was in Palfrey’s phone records.

Palfrey, who ran her business under the name Pamela Martin and Associates, is said to have sent women to men’s homes and hotel rooms in the Washington area, where the men paid to receive 90 minutes of “legal, high-end erotic fantasy service.”

Madsen says the sources don’t have specific dates Cheney allegedly used the escort service, but it was after his post as secretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush in 1993, and before he quit his job as CEO and chairman of the Texas-based company Halliburton in 2000 to join the presidential campaign of George W. Bush.

At the time, Madsen said: “When Cheney was at Halliburton, he spent half his time in Dallas, of course, but he spent a lot of time at his house in McLean, Va.”

Palfrey’s escorts allegedly had many clients in the area around McLean — “and it’s right by the CIA,” Madsen added.

Cheney never issued a public denial and the allegations remain unproven. But Madsen’s revelation triggered a firestorm in D.C. — and the Congressional Roll Call newspaper added fuel to the fire with the oddly worded statement: “Vice President Cheney isn’t not on the phone records of the alleged D.C. Madam, the accused madam’s lawyer said.”

But Madsen believes the CIA leaked the information about Cheney’s alleged peccadilloes to get even with the veep because he blamed the agency for providing faulty intelligence prior to the Iraq War.