WASHINGTON – “Miz Julia” sent tremors through the nation’s capital Monday simply by threatening to call her “clients” to testify at her trial. Talk about real power.

But Miz Julia, otherwise known as Deborah Jeane Palfrey, is neither a politician nor a high government official involved in making war or policy. Nor is she a CIA undercover agent.

Instead, she says she merely ran a legal escort service in the nation’s capital featuring massages and sexual fantasy. To the contrary, say U.S. government prosecutors. They have charged her with racketeering by allegedly running a prostitution ring, with girls charging $300 an hour.

Now, those allegations have given Palfrey, 50, of Vallejo, Calif., a nickname other than Miz Julia. She has become widely known as the “D.C. Madam” who has brought Washington an old-fashioned sex scandal. And she’s angry. “I believe there is something very, very rotten at the core of my circumstances,” she said Monday after a court hearing in which a federal judge agreed to appoint a new public defender in her behalf.

When sex and politics combine in this uptight capital, they can achieve some explosive results. They forced resignations by former Reps. Wilbur Mills of Arkansas and Robert Livingston of Louisiana and resulted in the House voting to impeach President Bill Clinton in the wake of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

And that raises questions about how big the scandal will become. Another prominent name or two could turn the scandal into a very large one.

Already edgy about war, terrorism and political upheaval, this city could be on the verge of sensational disclosures about some highly prominent figures – or so she claims. She has already given a list of telephone numbers of her clients to ABC News, which plans to air a story about her on Friday, during a “sweeps” rating period.

Her disclosure has already swept away one prominent official – Randall Tobias, 65, the second official in the State Department behind Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Tobias resigned abruptly last week but claimed he only received massages from Palfrey’s girls and did not have sexual relations with them.

As he put it, he called “to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage.”

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that Palfrey’s lawyer had been contacted by five lawyers asking whether their clients’ names were on her list of as many as 15,000 telephone numbers.

Of course, this scandal could quickly fade if only “small fries” show up on the list in coming days.

Stephen Hess, a political science scholar at the Brookings Institution, said, “In this world of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, this sad, pathetic little scandal of Washington will hardly get above the fold (of newspapers). This one can’t last more than a day or so.”

After her court appearance, Palfrey, dressed in a dark pants suit, told reporters she was “genuinely sorry” for Tobias and his family, but added that his admission that he only used the service for massages is “valuable exculpatory evidence” for her.

She said she wished he had come forward earlier. “Had he done so earlier, along with many, many others who have used my company’s services throughout the years, I most likely would not be in my current predicament,” she said.

Palfrey said she had turned over the phone records to ABC News in hopes that the network would come up with the names of clients that she could then call to testify about her service, which she claims is legal.

She said she hired college-educated women for her firm, Pamela Martin and Associates, to provide “legal, high-end erotic fantasy service” and a “refined way of life” to clients.

In a statement she read after her court hearing, she asked the press “to put aside the titillation of the who’s who list at least in part and instead investigate the disturbing genesis, the confounding evolution and the equally alarming continuation of this matter.”

But she said the government should individually prosecute those “who disobeyed my directives, their signed contracts, and participated in illegal behavior, be they a client or subcontractor.”

Palfrey said the Internal Revenue Service seized her life’s savings after allegations were made that she operated a prostitution business from 1993 through August 2006, when she shut down her operations and retired.

She has sued the federal government to force it to return $500,000 in seized property, but a federal judge recently ruled that the criminal case against her must first be resolved.

At first, she thought of selling the phone records to help pay for her defense, but she changed her mind, saying that “this option quickly was abandoned for fear the records would end up in the possession of an unscrupulous person or persons.”

Palfrey said ABC News was under no obligation to assist her, except to help her discover the names of the clients. “For me, this is a necessity, since the government has placed me in the untenable position whereby I do not have sufficient monies to undertake this extraordinarily expensive task on my own.”

The attorney handling her civil case, Montgomery Blair Sibley, took umbrage when a reporter asked if Palfrey’s tactics amounted to blackmail.

“I don’t know why that’s blackmail,” he said. “I call that due process of law. We don’t have any options left.”