“She was kind enough not to bring it up,” I say. “But we’re not exactly chummy. Today we had a three-hour meeting previewing my evidence at Saltzman’s office. She wasn’t happy when I mentioned the Psy-Group gave me a laptop.”

  Lindsay looks shocked. “You hadn’t told her this before?”

  “Two-plus years of Royi’s weird shit. I’m going to forget some details,” I say.

  Lindsay has a point. When I recalled the laptop, Agent Logan had the same look on her face as Lindsay does now. Her demeanor changed, as if she believed I had been hiding something—the last thing I want her or Lindsay to suspect.

  “I am giving them everything,” I say. “We spent all day dissecting every email, WhatsApp, and bank transfer.”

  “Sometimes the story you tell isn’t quite the whole story,” Lindsay says. “This time, make sure it is.”

  I feel like my testimony in front of Lindsay is a dry run for Mueller’s people. I’ve been subpoenaed by the Office of Special Counsel and will soon have to explain myself in a formal interview. But it’s more important than anything I will tell the government. I can stomach jail, maybe. I can’t stomach losing Lindsay.

  * * *

  A week later, my lawyer, David Saltzman, and I arrive at a concrete-colored Department of Justice office at 395 E Street Southwest. We surrender our phones at security and are ushered into a small interview room by Zainab N. Ahmad herself. Ahmad has dark hair cropped at her shoulders and brown eyes that cut right through you.

  While prepping for this interview, Saltzman told me, “Phil, you make a much better witness than a target.” I’m only too eager to heed his advice and have supplied the FBI with the last two and a half years of my emails, phone records, and text messages. It’s the same strategy I’ve used to keep my name out of the news. Whenever a reporter threatens to include me in a story, I become a source, offering new information in exchange for anonymity. Prove your worth, and you stay invisible. Today, I’m doing it to stay out of federal prison.

  Ahmad questions me for four hours about Psy-Group. The trip to Israel. The hundreds of thousands of dollars moved through my account to Cyprus. She has questions about the laptop, which likely generated avatars from a server protected by a virtual private network.

  “Did Royi Burstien ever tell you about pitching Trump’s camp an election influence campaign called Project Rome?” Ahmad asks.

  I have the “If We Did It” email about Project Rome, a PDF marketing brochure that was essentially Psy-Group’s explaining how it could have swung the election for Trump if he had hired them. But a meeting with the Trump Organization is news to me, and I fear it will be newsworthy to reporters. Saltzman lawyers me through the interrogation, ensuring I don’t perjure myself. Ahmad wants to know if I’m still working with Psy-Group. I answer truthfully, telling her that I terminated our agreement the day the FBI knocked on my door.

  I walk out of the Department of Justice’s makeshift offices a free man, thanks to Saltzman’s lawyering. But the ramifications of being a Mueller witness extend far beyond the justice system. I’ve introduced Psy-Group to my entire DC network, every reporter and government contact I spent a lifetime cultivating. Now I’m clientless, and gossip about my connection to the Mueller investigation has hit my business prospects. I’ve become radioactive in Washington. No new business is coming in to Chester Creek until this blows over. And that’s not happening anytime soon. Mueller’s investigation is a black cloud of suspicion swirling over DC, darkening every aspect of my life.

  “I don’t have anyone to talk to about this,” Lindsay vents that night while furiously constructing a cat tree for Darth Vader in our living room. “I haven’t told any of my friends. I haven’t even told my parents. I’m texting cat GIFs to the Ladies’ Lounge like nothing is wrong.”

  The “Ladies’ Lounge” is a group chat for Lindsay’s excessively high-performing female friends, all liberal communications professionals with ties to DC. They discuss everything. New gadgets, locations for happy hour, and the ups and downs of their lives. Nothing is spared. Except this.

  “It’s not like I can text, ‘Guess what? My husband might have helped spies overthrow democracy,’” Lindsay says, stacking the cat tree’s parts into neat piles. “They won’t find it charming. People are scared of what’s happening to our government, Phil. And angry. I’m not like you. I can’t bottle up my secrets and drink them down at Commissary.”

  “Hey.”

  “Sorry. That wasn’t nice,” she says, sitting on the floor. “I’m just—ugh, why are these fucking instructions written in pictures?”

  “Did the thing where you can’t catch your breath happen at work again today?” I ask.

  “Phil, it happens every day,” Lindsay says. “When I can breathe normally, I’ll let you know.”

  I try to stick artificial leaves onto the cat tree’s plastic trunk. The Xanax I’ve been taking blurs my coordination, and I fumble, snapping one of the branches.

  “Just let me do it,” Lindsay says. She stares up at me from among the parts of the half-constructed cat tree, giving me a suspicious look I’ve come to know too well. “Did you know anything about the Psy-Group meeting with the Trump campaign?” she asks, built-up anxieties tumbling out into the open.

  “I swear to you I didn’t.”

  It’s the truth. But that doesn’t make things any easier on Lindsay. Every target of the Mueller investigation gets washed out in the press a few months later. If my name appears in print, it will blowtorch the smoldering remains of my career.

  “Everything will be fine,” I tell her.

  But I have no idea how any of this can, or ever will, be fine. I’m profoundly sad that my risky behavior has made Lindsay feel she’s in jeopardy. FBI agents knocking on the door before breakfast is not a normal marital hiccup.

  Lindsay tries to think of ways to solve or at least control the situation while I lie on the couch, paralyzed by anxiety. I’m waiting for a story with my name in it to drop on the front page of the Washington Post. A headline runs through my mind: “Former Gaddafi Flak Helps Israeli Intelligence Firm Manipulate American Democracy.” “Phil Elwood” will no longer be a dead jazz reviewer from San Francisco. I’ll be one Google search away from my worst mistake and forever unemployable. In my line of work, anonymity is priceless. PR people operate in the shadows by design. I’m paid to be the man behind the curtain, not the sideshow on the stage. If that happens, I’ll become a problem not even Lindsay can solve.

  Mueller’s subpoena strongly suggests that I tell no one about this investigation. But anonymity is earned. Not given. My connection to Psy-Group is a bomb that will go off at some point. If I provide valuable intel to reporters, I could keep my name out of the press and control, to some extent, whether the ensuing explosion kills me or someone else.

  * * *

  The sign on the door of Morton’s reads, “Proper Attire Required.” I haven’t shaved, showered, or changed my cargo pants in a week. The maître d’ is kind enough to give me a table on the enclosed patio, the only place in DC where you can smoke with your steak. I start filling the ashtray. In the smoking section, the TVs are tuned to Fox News for the lobbyists chewing on cigars; inside the restaurant, MSNBC plays for the think tank set. Both networks have tunnel vision: Mueller, Mueller, Mueller.

  I’m a nervous wreck. Lindsay and I argued last night, and I got up at 4 a.m. I’ve been pacing a circuit between my roof, the marijuana dispensary, and my bed. I suck up half a pack of Camels before Byron Tau arrives. Tau, a reporter, covers the Hill from across the street at the Wall Street Journal.

  “This one is really bad,” I say.

  “Figured. Haven’t heard from you lately.”

  I’ve given Tau lots of leads over the years. He knows I don’t waste reporters’ time. We met when he worked as Ben Smith’s assistant. It was Tau who ghost-wrote the “World Cup vs. Gym Class?” piece under Smith’s byline.

  “Everything I’m about to tell you is off the record,” I tell Tau and make sure he affirmatively agrees.

  “Off the record” is a two-way contract. On September 16, 2021, Politico’s newsletter West Wing Playbook had the lede “Before Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin became one of the most reliable defenders of the Biden administration, she was one of the Obama administration’s most reactionary critics.” The piece described how when Politico reached out to Rubin and her employer, the Washington Post, for comment on this headline, Rubin fired off one of those emails you should save to Drafts. The subject line: “OFF THE RECORD.” Politico stated: “Since we never agreed to conduct such an off-the-record conversation, we are publishing [Rubin’s email] below in full.” I won’t restate what you are free to google yourself, but it was not the columnist’s finest hour. If a reporter doesn’t affirmatively agree that a conversation is off the record, it isn’t.

  After Tau orders the truffle fries, I push my phone across the table and let him read my subpoena from the Special Counsel’s Office.

  “Holy shit,” he says.

  I fill him in on the last two years of spy games. He licks his reportorial chops when Mueller enters the story. The special counsel’s investigation is the biggest news story in Washington. Tau’s editors are breathing down his neck for any incremental development in the Mueller investigation, and frankly, the Journal is getting beaten every day by its crosstown rivals at the Washington Post and the New York Times. Tau is under heavy pressure, and the opportunity to reveal more about the strange path Mueller is treading is tantalizing.

  “I’ve been spending eighteen hours a day standing in the hall outside Hill meetings in the hope of getting some House Intelligence Committee member alone for five minutes to try to get them to give me a tidbit of information,” Tau says. “I want to be ahead of this story.”

  My next meeting with Tau is at Joe’s Stone Crab. I’m glad to have a meal on the Journal, given that I haven’t worked in two months. Tau has been doing his homework. He knows who owns the Psy-Group: Joel Zamel, the man to whom I handed a package at the St. Regis. Tau has spoken to Zamel’s lawyer. He is in reporter mode, ready to grill me for hours. He wants to harvest primary source documents from my laptop.

  “If we do this,” I say, “I’ve got to remain anonymous.”

  “I figured as much,” Tau says.

  “My reasoning here is clear,” I say. “I’m informing on former Israeli spies. I fear many things from them, including reprisals. Keeping my name secret is paramount to my safety.”

  “Fair.”

  To structure an anonymity deal, you need a monopoly on the information a journalist wants. Check. Or you can position yourself as the second source confirming information they already have but cannot print without confirmation. I’ll also be helpful to Tau in this regard, as Psy’s spooks won’t be going on the record. And as shocking as this is, I am a reliable source. I have never given information to a reporter that I knew was false. Providing good information to Tau for years has earned me points with his editor, who also has to sign off on my anonymity.

  Journalism would die without anonymous sources. They take risks to leak stories that check the power of the rich and powerful. But the sword has two edges. Anonymous sourcing is used by the powerful to advance their agendas. It is incumbent on the news organization, the reporter, the editors, and their corporate counsel to determine the veracity of the information and the informant’s motives. The majority of this responsibility falls on the reporter. While gathering information, they must understand how it fits into a broader agenda, should one exist. It almost always does.

  Tau is a seasoned reporter who understands this game. I once pitched him some Psy-Group bullshit about Ukraine that he realized pretty fast was fake news. (It was literal fake news: Psy-Group was trying to manufacture something, and the version of the story that ultimately ran was a fake news broadcast.) Reporters don’t just print whatever I want them to, unfortunately. Tau and I both understand the unspoken agreement: I have to dish everything, and misleading him will only cause my anonymity to evaporate.

  “Okay,” he says, taking a pen and notebook from his messenger bag. “Let’s begin. I hope you brought your laptop.”

  * * *

  Tau can’t be the only reporter chasing after the Psy–Mueller connection. I need to cover my bases. I drop a line to a reporter from Bloomberg and start feeding him intel off the record. Every time I pitch this story, I’m gambling. Going all in. Every hand. It is a binary equation: I will either win or lose. And the result will be very, very public. There’s no hiding a mistake on the front page of a newspaper.

  PR operatives gamble every time we pitch a story. Sometimes we lose. Just like any good gambler, we try to minimize our losses. To do that, we must know what can go wrong. The editor could blow the headline. The paper could break the embargo date. It could misquote your client. It could accidentally quote you. An off-the-record statement could bleed into the story. Your adversary might have the goods on your client. A regulator or government might step in and skew the story. Other news might eclipse your story. The reporter you are working with might get scooped. Your source could get cold feet. And finally, it might turn out that your client has been lying to you the whole time.

  You might think these things don’t happen. They do. All of them have happened to me. We don’t have room in this book for all the stories that have gone sideways in my career. Trust me, there are a lot.

  Good PR operatives learn how to minimize the chance of damage. For a story to go my way, I need two things: time and information. In this instance, time is against me. I don’t know which other reporters are on this story. They might be calling me soon. And I don’t know if the Office of Special Counsel is going to leak my connection to the Psy-Group to the media. So I’ll have to rely on information. I know which items resonate with which publications. Bloomberg eyes the money angle, so I reference the large transfers made through my bank account as being of great interest to the authorities.

  The articles run in quick succession. Tau and his colleagues at the Journal publish in April, exposing Mueller’s probe into foreign influence in Washington. The Bloomberg piece hits in May, naming the Psy-Group for the first time. My money angle works: “Mueller Asked About Money Flows to Israeli Social-Media Firm, Source Says,” the headline reports. The Wall Street Journal follows up the next day with a piece on Psy-Group’s partnership with Cambridge Analytica. I appear in the articles not as Phil Elwood, but as a person familiar with the work of Psy-Group.

  * * *

  My relief is short-lived. In May 2018, I get the call I’ve been dreading. It’s from an investigative journalist with the New York Times. If there is one publication I’m afraid of in my situation, it’s the Times. They are scooping everyone on Mueller.

  “I’m writing a story on the connection between Psy-Group and Trump,” the reporter says. “You’re in it.”

  “Slow down,” I say. “Can we meet?”

  The reporter agrees to have a drink with me at Commissary. Right now, I’m the target. I need to turn myself into the source. “If my name is in your piece, my career is fucked,” I say. I explain that I am a minor player in this story. I would be nothing more than collateral damage. And that if the Times names me, I will not be a source, and the paper’s story may have factual errors. It’s a Faustian deal with a twist. I am the devil this reporter knows.

  “Okay,” the reporter says. “Tell me everything you know.”

  I cough it all up. I tell the reporter how the Psy-Group works and the names of the major players. I hand over client lists. I let the Times reporter look through my laptop and forward documents from my email account. It’s the most access I’ve ever granted a journalist, but I’m the most desperate I’ve ever been.

  This is the wrong way to leak documents. I should have taken a page from Daniel Ellsberg, the man responsible for one of the biggest leaks in U.S. government history. Sure, he got charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, but in the end he won a medal for it.

  As a researcher with the RAND Corporation, Ellsberg had access to classified documents at the Pentagon. It was 1971. America was utterly disaffected by the conflict in Vietnam. The government was pushing the message that things were going just fine in Southeast Asia. Ellsberg knew the Pentagon’s internal documents told another story. At a copy machine, he duplicated what he could. He then covertly met with members of Congress.

  Ellsberg’s strategy here was quite cunning: under the Speech and Debate Clause of the U.S. Constitution, no member of Congress can be prosecuted for what they say on the floor. That’s right: a member of Congress could introduce the leaked information into the Congressional Record, making the whole thing public, and not face charges. This eventually happened, but congresspeople have never been known for having much of a spine. They need cover before acting.

  Here comes the need for the Fourth Estate. Whistleblowers often use the press to give members of Congress cover—or “air support,” as some practitioners call it. Ellsberg went to the New York Times. This was before email and Snapchat, so he leaked the Pentagon Papers the way it should be done today. If you are going to leak a document, do it in person. Print the thing off and physically hand it to a reporter. So many people leak documents via email. Email is forever. Once you hit Send, you have created what will someday be a public document.

  On June 13, 1971, the New York Times printed its first story on the leak. The government sued the paper. For fifteen days, the courts sorted out how the Constitution and the needs of the government should be balanced. During that time, Ellsberg went to the Washington Post while eluding an FBI manhunt. Two days prior to the Supreme Court’s decision, Ellsberg outed himself as the source. The Court ruled in favor of the New York Times. Ellsberg was arrested and charged, but all charges against him were dismissed in May 1973.