THE SPITZER SAGA (CONT'D)

RADAR "It's so easy not to not get caught," reformed Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss tells Radar, adding that she provided service to many a well known politician her day. "I saw many famous people-more famous than Eliot Spitzer-and you know what, you pay people right, you treat them right, you don't have a problem." The devil, she says, was in Spitzer's particular freak, which left the gals who are alleged to have serviced him describing the governor as "difficult," with demands that involved "things that, like, you might not think were safe."

"I'm sure he wanted anal sex without condoms," Fleiss says, speculating but strangely confident. It was Spitzer's ethical crusade and no-ho posturing that did him in, too, Fleiss says. In 2004 Spitzer pontificated about the breakup of a Staten Island ho ring, calling it a "sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multi-tiered management structure," then adding, "It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring."

"I think he's an arrogant prick and he thinks he's above the law; no one likes a hypocrite," Fleiss tells Radar. (In his defense, the morning Spitzer found out the jig was up, the New York Times reports, he canceled an appearance with a family planning organization and a private powwow with Cardinal Egan) "He could have gone to the Bunny Ranch and never would have had his cover blown. But this is an arrogant prick," Fleiss says.

CNS The Family Research Council warned on Feb. 28 that Spitzer was preparing for the possible reversal of Roe v. Wade by pushing for a state law that would declare abortion to be a "fundamental right" for women. . . Moreover, in 2002, while serving as New York attorney general, Spitzer "embarked upon a failed effort to close down New York's Crisis Pregnancy Centers, planning to charge them with practicing medicine without a license." Spitzer was forced to back down under public pressure, the FRC noted. Then came the FRC's prayer pitch: "May God intervene to stop Governor Spitzer from succeeding in this evil ambition to make abortion a "fundamental right" in New York!"

RICHARD PRINCE, JOURNAL-ISMS - New York Daily News columnist Errol Louis was not pleased when Spitzer chose him as his running mate. "At a time when voters are demanding reform, Paterson is an Albany insider who has often ended up on the wrong side of ethical questions," Louis wrote in January 2006. "As my colleague Joe Mahoney pointed out in a Daily News article last year, for instance, Paterson held a closed-door meeting in February 2005 with leaders of the Oneida Indian Nation who run the state's largest casino and were lobbying hard to kill a possible rival casino in the Catskills. "The Oneida Nation had given $5,000 to Paterson's campaign and $45,000 to the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, which Paterson controls, weeks before the meeting. Blair Horner of the good-government New York Public Interest Research Group said the closed meeting 'stinks to high heaven.' "Other ethics issues came up last year when records showed that two men on Paterson's staff were also registered lobbyists who often work on political campaigns, one of whom quit the public payroll the day after Election Day in 2004. Paterson claimed ignorance of the dual status of his staffers."

GOVERNING Paterson would be the fourth African-American governor in U.S. history, following Virginia's Doug Wilder, Massachusetts' Deval Patrick and Louisiana's P.B.S. Pinchback, a Governing trivia favorite.

. . . I'm not sure whether Paterson would be the nation's first blind governor. There have been blind U.S. senators, including Thomas Pryor Gore and Thomas Schall.

Paterson's ascension would mean he'd replace Spitzer as a Democratic superdelegate, but that wouldn't change the presidential race. He, like Spitzer, is a Hillary Clinton supporter. Paterson's name has been at the top of the list of possible replacements for Clinton in the Senate, should she win the presidency or vice presidency.

The New York Observer ran a fairly unflattering profile of Paterson when Spitzer picked him two years ago. A key paragraph:

"Mr. Spitzer selected a man described as 'a living contradiction' by one longtime associate. Indeed, Mr. Paterson's 20 years in public life have been characterized by an array of contradictions, some of them openly stated, many irreconcilable. He's a maverick champion of the younger generation whose Senate seat was handed to him, via a special election, by top Harlem Democrats allied with his powerful father, Basil Paterson. He's a self-described reformer who spent nearly two decades in a comfortable political sinecure before launching a reform campaign as Senate Minority Leader.

That same profile also mentioned that some Democrats think he worked too closely with the Senate's Republican leader, Joseph Bruno:

"At the same time, Mr. Paterson has been criticized as being too eager to please the Republican Senate leader, Joseph Bruno. Democrats griped when their leader agreed to serve on a Medicaid reform panel that Mr. Bruno assembled, lending it a bipartisan sheen. (Mr. Paterson said he'd had the idea for such a panel months earlier, but that his staff had failed to execute it. "I'm standing there smiling, but I'm seething inside.") But by all accounts, he and the equally frank and charming Mr. Bruno get along easily. On the Democrat's desk is a silver box, with the script: 'Happy Birthday David, the always eloquent statesman. It's dated 2005 and engraved with Mr. Bruno's name."

JOSH GOODMAN, GOVERNING When Democrats gained a State Senate seat in New York a couple of weeks ago, it was big news. The party had reduced the Republicans' edge to 32-30. With Democrat Lt. Gov. David Paterson the tie-breaking vote, the Democrats were one seat short of ending Joe Bruno's reign as Senate Majority Leader. If Gov. Spitzer resigns, however, the Democrats will once again need a two-seat pickup. The Village Voice explains:

Should Spitzer resign over his involvement in the Emperor's Club prostitution scandal Paterson would be appointed as his replacement. That would leave Bruno to serve in the capacity of lieutenant governor, and the New York State constitution offers no mechanism to appoint any replacement. In effect the tie-breaker would be gone, and Democrats would face the more daunting task of taking over two seats to achieve a State Senate majority before 2011.

NY POST Cheers erupted on trading floors around the city yesterday as word spread of the stunning downfall of Gov. Spitzer - who spent most of his term as attorney general torturing Wall Street with his witch hunt for financial wrongdoing. An employee of a major investment bank, who requested anonymity, said the company chef had been instructed to break out bottles of champagne so that the staff could party and swap jokes about "client No. 9."

PAUL KARL LUKACS, REASON If the allegations are true (and Spitzer's statement that he "acted in a way that violates my obligation to my family" certainly sounds like an admission), the governor's hypocrisy - and his belief that there is one set of laws for the little people and another set for Great Men like himself-is obvious. As attorney general and leader of the state's organized crime task force, Spitzer spearheaded the prosecution of two alleged prostitution rings, according to the Times.

But Spitzer's moralistic crusade against paid sex (by non-Spitzers, at least) wasn't confined to New York or even the United States of America. As far as Spitzer is concerned, he has the right to prevent people from exchanging cash for cuddles anywhere in the world.

Big Apple Oriental Tours was a Queens-based travel agency with an angle: it marketed vacations for men to destinations such as Angeles City, Philippines, a jurisdiction in which adult prostitution is nominally illegal but is condoned and regulated by the government because of the money it brings in . . .

In 2003, attorney general Spitzer, with one eye on the feminist vote and the other on the governor's mansion, commenced a campaign of legal harassment against the tour company, obtaining a civil injunction prohibiting the company from advertising, which effectively put it out of business, according to owner Norman Barabash.

Spitzer then brought criminal proceedings against Barabash and co-owner Douglas Allen that continue to this day. The first indictment was dismissed because prosecutors improperly relied upon a hearsay tape recording. The second indictment was dismissed because the facts alleged did not constitute a felony, leaving only a misdemeanor charge of promoting prostitution in the fourth degree, a crime so penny-ante it applies to doormen or bouncers. The third indictment was dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, according to Barabash, and is currently before the appellate court. After all that harassment, there's been no trial.

While Spitzer's crusade may seem overzealous and, based on what we now know, disturbingly Freudian, his attempt to apply domestic laws to conduct outside the country isn't that far outside the current legal mainstream. The mother of all extraterritorial laws, the 1977 U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, makes it illegal for U.S. citizens to bribe a foreign official, regardless of where the bribery took place.

NY TIMES - "I think biologists could tell you this has something to do with natural selection - the person who acquires power becomes the alpha male," said Tom Fiedler, who teaches a course in press and politics at Harvard's Kennedy School. He was involved in reporting Gary Hart's notorious fling with Donna Rice in 1987 that terminated the senator's presidential bid. . .

Dr. Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University, said that many politicians are what he calls Type T personalities, with T standing for thrill-seeking. "Politics is an uncertain business," he said. "You're at the whim of the electorate. There's no tenure. It's often hard to know what the criteria for success are. It's either all or nothing - you either win or you lose. And so it inspires a risk-taking person to go into that line of work. But on the public side, they're supposed to show stability and responsibility, and so this risky nature may show itself more on the private side.". . .

Dr. Judy Kuriansky, an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University's Teachers College, said that "sex and power are extremely connected, because they're basically an expression of this huge energy that these people have." Not uncommonly, she said, politicians speak out vigorously against the very behavior that they then indulge in, as is the case with Governor Spitzer. "You project wrong onto others that is symptomatic of your own behavior," she said. "It's called a defense mechanism. Basically, it's unconscious." Moreover, she added, "Even though Spitzer is a lawyer, when you get into a position of power, you think you're above the law."

Some secrets do in fact have long lives. Not until 2004, three decades afterward, did it come out that Neil Goldschmidt, who became governor of Oregon in the 1980s, had sexually abused a 14-year-old babysitter while he was mayor of Portland. Well, what could Oregon legislators do at that point? They took his official portrait and hung it in a less visible spot in the state capitol.

It is sometimes speculated that certain politicians, at least subconsciously, want to be caught and have their careers upended. But do they? "I've never seen it," said Dr. Farley. "I don't believe it's a factor with these people. It's just in their nature to push things. I don't think they have a death wish. I think they have a life wish. They just love all aspects of life - some of it too much."

RELIABLE SOURCE, WASH POST New stop on D.C.'s sex scandal tour: Room 871 at the Mayflower. The 83-year-old hotel has a long and storied history of fat-cat partying and other Washington excesses, but it never made headlines for horizontal high jinks until "Client 9" . . . There hasn't been this much excitement since 1999, when Monica Lewinsky fought her way through throngs to (appropriately enough) the presidential suite, where she recounted her affair with Bill Clinton to congressional impeachment managers. The Mayflower was also Judith Campbell Exner's home away from home when she trysted with John F. Kennedy at the White House. And yes, history buffs, it was the hotel's Town & Country lounge where FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover lunched daily for 20 years alongside his live-in aide, Clyde Tolson.

The Mayflower now joins the list of Washington's greatest bed-and-breakfasts: The Jefferson, where Clinton confidant Dick Morris sucked the toes of $200-an-hour call girl Sherry Rowlands; the former Vista (now Westin Washington) where Marion Barry was caught smoking crack as gal-pal Rasheeda Moore looked on; and the Ritz-Carlton, Pentagon City, where Marv Albert bit the back of a female companion, Linda Tripp secretly taped Lewinsky talking about her affair, and Deborah Jeane Palfrey (a.k.a. the D.C. Madam) sent escorts for what she calls legal, non-sexual "dates."

GLENN GREENWALD, SALON DCLaw1 asks a question to which I would love to hear an answer:

I have always found it very curious that one of the following, but not the other, is illegal:

(a) Two people have sex, one of them gets paid for it;

(b) Two (or more) people have sex, all of them get paid for it, and it is videotaped and sold to third parties as a commodity.

I have yet to hear a convincing argument why this difference makes any actual sense.

NY OBSERVER - On the face of it, there's very little reason for the Democrats in the State Assembly to go out on a limb for Eliot Spitzer. Hence the response of Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester when I asked him what their position was on whether the governor should stay or go: "There is no position of the Assembly majority on Eliot Spitzer," he said. I asked him what the general mood is in Albany. "The mood?" he said. "The mood is, ‘What the fuck.' "I mean, what? What? Could you have seen this coming?"

WNBC Published reports indicate that Governor Eliot Spitzer allegedly used the name "George Fox" as an alias in the activity currently under investigation. Mr. Fox has known Governor Spitzer for more than 20 years and has been a supporter during the Governor's various political campaigns. The news that his name may have been used as an alias comes as a great surprise and disappointment. Mr. Fox only became aware of Mr. Spitzer's alleged activity when informed of it Monday morning by the media. There is absolutely no connection between Mr. Fox and the Governor's alleged activity beyond the unauthorized use of his name. Mr. Fox considers Governor Spitzer a close friend and is distressed by the news that has emerged. While he is disappointed that his name was involved, he appreciates the apology the Governor has personally communicated and he wishes the Governor and his family strength as they endure this difficult period.

SPITZER T-SHIRT

PHOTOS OF CLIENT 9'S WASHINGTON HOTEL ROOM

HOW TO DRESS WHEN YOU CONFESS

ABC NEWS In a interview two years ago, Spitzer, then-attorney general, told ABC News he had some advice for people who break the law. "Never talk when you can nod, and never nod when you can wink, and never write an e-mail because it's death. You're giving prosecutors all the evidence we need," he said.