Jeane Palfrey, the D.C. Madam, recently turned over thousands of phone numbers belonging to clients of her high-class escort service to Brian Ross at ABC News. Ross announced his findings last night on “20/20.” I’m glad I didn’t stay up:

The phone records trace back to thousands of men, including a career Justice Department prosecutor. There are NASA officials; at least five military officers, including the commander of an Air Force intelligence squadron … The phone numbers also track back to Georgetown mansions and prominent CEOs, officials at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and lobbyists both Republican and Democratic.

But as usually is the case in Washington, much of it is dull. There were no members of Congress that we could find in these phone records, no White House officials.

Quite frankly, but for the few exceptions, most of the men on this list just aren’t newsworthy, not even as customers of the D.C. Madam’s escort service.

Hiring a prostitute is as illegal as being one, or so I thought. So the fact that a Justice Dept. official and military officers are breaking the law would be newsworthy to a lot of people.

We knew that Deputy Sec. of State Randall Tobias, the head of the Bush administration’s global anti-prostitution crackdown, resigned after being outed as a Palfrey client.

(Tobias’ role as the anti-prostitution czar adds irony to this cavalier remark: “Tobias said [calling for a prostitute] was no different than ordering a pizza and denied there was any sex.”)

But the name Harlan Ullman was new to me:

Also named by Palfrey is Harlan Ullman, a leading military analyst who wrote the book “Shock and Awe,” a concept cited by the Pentagon in planning the war in Iraq.

Palfrey says she remembers Ullman as “Mr. U,” — remembers him well.

Jeane Palfrey: I think he was a disagreeable character. And there were some complaints about him, yes.

Brian Ross: From your women.

Jeane Palfrey: Yes.

Brian Ross: They didn’t want to go?

Jean Palfrey: Because he was an unpleasant person.

I assume Palfrey gave the phone numbers to Ross with the intent that he would expose her clients’ names so that they would suffer some of the same consequences she will, if she is found guilty. She should have known better.

As Melissa Farley, an academic who studies prostitution, said to “20/20″ last night:

The women are arrested; the women are incarcerated; the women are taken out in handcuffs, and the men who buy and use women in prostitution slowly and quietly slink off, and they’re pretty much socially and legally invisible.

Same as it ever was.