This is what losing looks like:

  “PR Firm Under Fire for Contract with Nigeria”;

  “In Nigeria, Backlash Against U.S. Firm Hired to Improve Image”; and

  “Jonathan’s PR Offensive Backfires in Nigeria and Abroad.”

  Not the kind of accolades you submit to the PR industry awards each year.

  Other firms have lost worse than this. One of the most fantastic examples of self-immolation is Bell Pottinger. In 2016, the British PR firm was putting up big numbers for some high-profile clients and mining the depths of hell for others. Flaks from the firm went to South Africa, a nation with a slightly complicated history of race relations, and tried to sow racial discord prior to an election. Once this came to light, the media were (rightfully) unforgiving. Bell Pottinger went from making over half a billion on a single contract with the U.S. government to shutting its doors over a single negative news cycle. This was not a case of flying too close to the sun; it was a case of believing you were more powerful than the sun.

  Bell Pottinger’s time on earth ended in bankruptcy, with creditors fighting over what scraps were left of the firm’s ill-gotten gains. Nigeria is a fiasco for Levick. But we don’t have to close our doors over it.

  * * *

  A few months after I return from Nigeria, I find Richard Levick in his office. He’s sitting under his shelves of law books, going over a stack of press clippings for a potential client.

  “This fellow is a murderer,” Levick says.

  “Wouldn’t be the first one.”

  “I mean, he has actually confessed to the crime. In the papers. Going to have to turn him down.”

  “Richard,” I say, “I’ve gotten an offer from a polling firm. They’re going to nearly double my salary. I might need money for a ring soon.”

  “Ah, the money.” Levick says. “It’s always that, isn’t it?”

  He strides over to the hollow globe hiding the really good liquor and selects a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle. The same drink I sipped the day Peter Brown fired me. Today, I’m grateful to Peter Brown. Levick hired me because of the skills I had learned at BLJ. Not many people get a chance to learn those skills. Not many people should. But unlike Peter, Levick encouraged me write my own playbook. For the last four years, he has viewed the way my brain works—which most employers would consider a liability—as an asset. “Start with the crazy, I’ll rein you in,” he always tells me. I grew up at Levick’s firm.

  “This may be sacrilege,” Levick says. “But let’s nip it right from the bottle like we did on that fishing boat in the Caribbean. What was our motto that day?”

  “Boom.”

  “Not much chance to be a protagonist of history at a polling firm,” Levick says.

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” I say.

  * * *

  My new desk is plastic, the color of printer paper. My boss tells me to pitch polling data to reporters. “Some really interesting trends in these new numbers,” he intones. Perhaps I should have expected this at a polling firm. When I call my media contacts, they think I’m joking.

  My inbox fills with thousand-slide PowerPoint decks. I steal glances at my colleagues’ screens. They actually seem to be reading all of the slides. At the water cooler, a woman invites me to a birthday party for her dog. He’s turning ten. Within hours, I’m bored. Within days, I’m more depressed than when I was working at Mad Mex during college. Within weeks, I’m having panic attacks and am prescribed a truckload of Xanax.

  When you put my life down on paper, I have no business being depressed. I’m a senior vice president at one of the best polling firms in the world, making a great salary, living with a woman I love and who loves me back. But there are still days I can’t get off the couch. I feel like I’m wearing glasses that filter the world into an alternative reality. No matter how good life appears on the outside, I still feel inside like I’m trapped in hell.

  I tell myself I should be happy, which only makes me feel worse—because I can’t figure out why I’m not. The more I try to talk myself out of being depressed, the more I spiral. I self-medicate with booze while trying to actually medicate with prescription pills from my doctor. Some drugs cause me to gain weight. Others make my brain feel like it’s short-circuiting. I feel as if the doctor is experimenting on me, and it isn’t working.

  One afternoon, I call in sick and watch The Empire Strikes Back with a handle of bourbon for company. Han Solo grins as he pilots the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field, facing down certain death with aplomb. In crisis, he is calm. He is content. I realize that ever since the morning I met Peter Brown, I have been treating my mental illness with crises. Gaddafi, Assad, Qatar, Sarajevo, Dubai (I can’t even tell you what happened in Dubai), Antigua, Nigeria. Fifteen years of constant fires, many of which I’ve lit. With the crises removed, there is no treatment. Except the half-empty bottle at my feet.

  When the movie’s credits roll, I stagger to a bar three doors down from Camelot, the strip club where I spent my first evening in DC. Most of the dancers from back then have probably moved on to new professions, but I haven’t. After my sixth drink, the bartender cuts me off. I come home so drunk I can’t speak coherently to Lindsay. I stumble onto the couch, nearly crushing Darth Vader, who hisses and gives me a scratch I can’t feel.

  “What you’re doing to yourself is not okay,” Lindsay says the next morning. “I can’t fix this. You need to get help.”

  The thought of losing Lindsay jolts me into action. I get a new therapist. For the first time, I try to talk to someone about my time at BLJ. I tell my therapist I have trouble living with the fact that I covered up for the people who blew up Pan Am Flight 103 and murdered their own citizens with sarin gas. I tell her that when I read books or watch TV, my former clients often appear as the villain in the story. I talk about the terror I felt babysitting the Doctor in Las Vegas and that even though he’s dead I still look over my shoulder expecting to see one of his goons. I talk about the fear and the shame. The high I get from taking a risk and coming out on top. I’m finally given a diagnosis: bipolar II disorder with a side of PTSD.

  The next morning, I look up relationship statistics for people with bipolar disorder. The titles of the articles scream at me: “When Sympathy’s Not Enough, Beating the Marriage Odds”; “Bipolar and Marriage: Can It Ever Work?” The answer seems to be “Not really.” One study estimates that around 90 percent of marriages in which one partner has bipolar disorder end in divorce. Bipolar disorder needs a better PR guy. Panicking, I show the articles to Lindsay.

  “I’ve already seen them,” she says.

  “And?”

  “Look, Phil, I’m not with you because you’re a safe bet. You’re like the bad-guy Forrest Gump of DC. Failing up is your whole thing. At least we finally know what’s going on with you. Now we can treat it. We’ll figure it out.”

  I’m silent, too overwhelmed by love that if I try to speak I will weep. I’m a problem. And Lindsay is a problem solver.

  “Now take a shower and get to work,” she says. “Your feelings made us late.”

  * * *

  On a May afternoon in 2015, I ask Lindsay to meet me at the Jefferson Memorial. I take her by the hand and say, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”

  Then I ask her to marry me.

  To my surprise, quoting When Harry Met Sally works, and she says yes.

  My first call is to my parents. My second is to Daniel Lippman at Politico. The next day, Politico puts our engagement into its morning newsletter. It is the first time my name has appeared in a newspaper for something good.

  * * *

  I’m at my desk pretending to read slide 346 of a PowerPoint deck when I see the email. A headhunter looking for a veteran PR operative to represent an Israeli private intelligence agency, Psy-Group. Their motto: “Shape Reality.”

  “I don’t have much info,” the headhunter writes. “These guys are ghosts.”

  Ten seconds later, I’m speed walking down the polling firm’s beige hallway, searching for the exit. A coworker in an ill-fitting suit blocks my path.

  “You catch that Nationals game last night?” he asks. I can feel his rank coffee breath on my neck.

  “Must have missed it,” I mumble, sidestepping him and dialing the man who can connect me to foreign spies as fast as my fingers can hit the numbers.

  CHAPTER 9

  Influence Games

  Royi Burstien’s pool is swimming with spies. They float on their backs, the water bouncing in the July sunshine. They’re smoking endless cigarettes. A hairy-chested operative jackknifes into the deep end, glides underwater, and pops up near the ladder, splashing me. He climbs onto the deck and tells a joke with the punch line “… and then I killed the motherfucker.”

  The other spies find this hilarious.

  Royi surveys the pool party from a chaise longue. A short, balding man in his fifties, he looks as if he’s sat behind a computer for most of his life. The art deco McMansion behind him is all glass and sharp angles. Discount Frank Lloyd Wright on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.

  Over the last four days, I’ve met Royi’s family. Heard what he wants me to hear of his story. After fifteen years running psychological operations for the Israel Defense Forces, he decided to repurpose his military skills in the private sector. What better way than to assemble top-level former Mossad agents and military intelligence officers and sell their skills to anyone with a checkbook?

  Yesterday, I entered Psy-Group’s offices through an unmarked door. Inside the bland building, operatives typed behind computer screens. They wore jeans and thick beards. Many were in their mid-twenties. “Royi picks us up at the gate of the IDF when we leave the military” is how one agent described his recruitment.

  Psy-Group works in color-coded teams. Red, Blue, and Green gather intelligence. Rubik team, a blend of colors, is a hybrid of intelligence gathering and influence campaigns. Psy’s bread and butter is to create false online identities called avatars. These avatars extract intelligence on targets, usually enemies of Psy-Group’s clients. When it needs to, the firm brings these avatars to life using real-world operatives. For “Project Madison,” a virtual honeytrap for jihadists, Psy created a Facebook page for an all-American girl named “Madison” who was interested in converting to Islam. It then used “her” to infiltrate ISIS groups in need of Muslim brides.

  Royi’s spies don’t look like secret agents from movies. Nobody has a watch that shoots laser beams or shows me their pen gun. But they have some tells. The operatives move methodically, never in a hurry, exceedingly aware of their surroundings. Even while sunning their hairy bellies poolside, they scan for exit routes. They speak slowly, asking me questions, prompting me to tell them about my work for Gaddafi. After a few conversations, they know much more about me than I know about them.

  At the pool, Royi feeds his dog a scrap of shawarma from the grill. He tells me he has aggressive aspirations for his intelligence firm. Psy-Group will be a better Black Cube, he tells me, referring to a competing Israeli intelligence outfit. He wants to pitch Project Madison to the U.S. State Department. Psy’s avatars have extracted useful intel on ISIS fighters, which Royi views as proof of concept to generate high-level clients. That’s where I come in. I’m to tap my extensive network of Washington contacts.

  Before I leave Israel, Royi gives me a promotional brochure. The cover features a cat casting the shadow of a lion and the message “Reality is a matter of perception.” Some services offered are euphemistic, such as “Targeting & Monitoring.” Read: surveillance. Others, more to the point, like the “Honey Traps” advertised on the second page.

  “What do I say when people ask about the legality of all this?” I query.

  “Everything we do is legal in the jurisdiction in which we do it.”

  “I’ll use that line.”

  “You know what you need to do in the States,” Royi says. “Now go do it.”

  And with that, I’m Psy-Group’s representative in DC.

  * * *

  When you work for spies, unexpected things appear in your inbox. Documents in myriad languages, satellite photos of houses in Middle Eastern countries, memes in Hebrew, photos of cats in war zones. When I was “interviewing” in Israel, Royi asked how many languages I spoke. At Georgetown, I received a “gentleman’s C” in Spanish, on the promise that I would not take the next level.

  One day, I receive compromising audio files of a prominent South African family who made their fortune selling skin-lightening cream to Black South Africans during apartheid. On the tapes, the family members bad-mouth one another. Lob accusations of greed. I’m to weaponize this intelligence by putting it into the hands of reporters from around the world. Make sure the targets of Psy’s investigations appear in the international news. Turn information into influence.

  “Who is this for?” I WhatsApp Royi.

  Psy-Group can’t reveal its client. Just a code name. All I’m told is the headline Psy wants—and that I’m to crush the family. Perhaps get the press to mention that they opened an apartheid museum.

  I’m about to break one of my rules of PR: “Know your customer.”

  No such requirement exists in the field of public relations. Normally, this rule is reserved for banking or financial services. Financial institutions need to know their client’s identity, suitability, and the risks involved in maintaining a business relationship with them. As you can imagine, many such regulations came about after 9/11. To combat financing of terrorism, banks around the world had to know a little bit more about their customers before legally laundering their money.

  But that’s just a “know your customer” requirement. Ideally, you should also know your customer’s customer. The person actually paying the bills. Impossible when you work for an organization of former Mossad spooks. I don’t know who owns Psy-Group.

  Additionally, I need to keep in mind the law of unintended consequences. Every time you place a story, there is some collateral impact. (I use the word impact here because sometimes news coverage helps the innocent, but often the word damage is more appropriate.) But if you don’t know your paymaster, you can’t know their motives. So you can’t know who they are trying to hurt with this particular headline. If collateral impact damages one of their associates, you are putting yourself in danger.

  If I break my first rule, I’ll be forced to break another. I’m always up front with journalists about my clients’ identity. In this case, I can’t be. You lose a lot of credibility with reporters when you won’t divulge the source of your income.

  I pitch international reporters from Forbes and the Associated Press, steering clear of the American press. In order not to trigger any obligations under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, I’m doing my best to avoid even inadvertently influencing reporters or disseminating information to reporters in the United States on behalf of a foreign principal.

  The reporters ask for the source of the recordings. I say, “Not for attribution,” which translates to “They fell off the back of a truck.” But this works only if the journalist knows the source. Reporters are willing to keep certain facts from their readers, if they know said facts. A note to journalists who are offered this kind of intel: walk away. If someone you barely know comes to you with information and they don’t know its provenance, it’s probably a trap.

  “This seems sketchy,” the Forbes reporter tells me. “Doesn’t meet our journalistic standards.” The AP doesn’t return my email. The reporters run in the other direction.

  I don’t.

  I’m newly married, Psy-Group keeps the lights on, and I’m mastering the art of influence brokering. Lindsay and I get a small country home on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. More important than the money is the thrill of the work and treating my depression with risk-taking behavior. My bipolar lows feel like a free fall from an airplane without a parachute. Working for Psy-Group feels like skydiving.

  * * *

  In December 2016, shortly after Trump defeats Hillary Clinton, Royi and I down a few bottles of lunchtime vino alongside Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica. Royi swoons over Cambridge Analytica’s ability to influence elections, his highest aspiration. Super PACs are cash cows, teats ready to be suckled.

  Nix, in turn, is obsessed with Psy’s cloak-and-dagger tactics. Royi says Psy-Group has the capacity to create a large number of highly credible avatars. Enough to man a human resources or staffing agency. Psy’s staffing agency creates hundreds of fictional job postings tailored to targets of an intelligence operation. They advertise the job postings over LinkedIn.

  “Creates less suspicion if the target comes to you,” Royi says, rolling his r’s, a feature of his thick Israeli accent.

  When the target applies for the job, the intelligence gathering begins. Dangle a high salary and good benefits in front of someone, and they are often willing to discuss their former and current employers. Sometimes, they’ll even send proprietary information from their company. Sometimes they accept free travel to a foreign country—ideal for a covert recording of them being “interviewed” by the avatar. During this interview, a real-world operative extracts more information from the target.

  LinkedIn is Psy-Group’s first line of offense. The fastest way into the living rooms and lives of their targets. If LinkedIn is Psy’s first stop, governments are doing this too. Be careful who you accept on LinkedIn.

  Nix can’t get enough of Royi’s tales of espionage.

  “Black Cube rented a hotel room to spy on the chief prosecutor at Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate,” Royi says, eager to bad-mouth a rival outfit. “Armed agents caught them red-handed. Everyone went to jail. Idiots! We’d never get caught doing that.”