Rob Capriccioso, a Washington, D.C., blogger and sometime (now former) Radar freelancer, reported on his own blog, bigheaddc.com, last evening that Sam Donaldson's phone number appears on the D.C. Madam's supposed client list—the record of outgoing phone calls that Deborah Jean Palfrey made while operating the high-end-hooker operation that serviced Sen. David Vitter and other D.C. potentates. (Radar mentioned the Bigheaddc story here.)

What he didn't report is that Palfrey told him, repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, that her single telephone call to Donaldson had nothing to do with prostitution.

Capriccioso found out about Donaldson's involvement from Radar. We were looking into the Donaldson rumor and stupidly asked Capriccioso, who claimed to have a relationship with Palfrey, to talk to her about it. We decided not to pursue the item for reasons explained below, so he picked it up for himself without so much as a "thank you" or heads-up.

Palfrey told Capriccioso at the time—unequivocally—that Donaldson was not a client. She insisted to him that a female relative of Donaldson's—she thought her name was Ellen—had mixed up a digit when she gave Donaldson her number, and that the wrong number just happened to be Palfrey's. So every time Donaldson attempted to call Ellen, he unknowingly reached Palfrey's voicemail and left a message. Palfrey tired of the messages and called Donaldson back—once—to alert him to the error. This, Palfrey told Capriccioso, explains the single appearance of Donaldson's number in records of her outgoing phone calls. The explanation sounds preposterous to us, but it's what Palfrey told Capriccioso. Here's an e-mail he sent to a Radar editor reporting his conversation with her:

"After receiving many calls from Sam Donaldson leaving pleasantries for his releative [sic] on her personal cell number voicemail in the mid-2000s, Palfrey herself decided to give him a call to relay what she assumed to be a mistake. 'Would you please tell your relative to give out the correct phone number?' Palfrey recalls asking Donaldson. 'I was sick and tired of getting these phone calls from people all over Washington asking for his relative.' When she talked to Donaldson, he was immediately panicked and asked how she got his number (she says she didn't tell him that she ran an escort service). She explained the whole story to him about her receiving messages that were obviously not intending for her."

When Radar expressed skepticism, Capriccioso wrote back: "I pushed her hard on that—asked her if she had an affinity for Sam for some reason, and told her that many people would think it was such an odd coincidence that he dialed the wrong number ... she insisted that that was the truth."

The only parts of the above story that made it into Capriccioso's post are the parts about Palfrey confirming a call to Donaldson and Donaldson panicking at the call. The innocent explanation Palfrey offered apparently wasn't relevant.

Radar eventually dropped the item after being waved off of it by a source close to Larry Flynt, the porn magnate who outed Vitter and has been poring over the list. The source insisted that if there was anything to the Donaldson rumor, Flynt would have reported it. Given that, and Palfrey's insistence that Donaldson was not a client, we couldn't sully the man's name in the absence of any other evidence—even if we think Palfrey's story is bullshit. Capriccioso, who didn't return a call for comment, apparently didn't have that problem.

Correction: This item originally reported that Capriccioso posted his item on Donaldson on Monday morning. It went up on Sunday night.