Foreign dictators hiring American PR firms is still common practice. Take Ketchum, a public relations outfit owned by the holding company Omnicom Group, one of the mega PR firms. Vladimir Putin’s Russia was one of Ketchum’s largest clients. From 2006 to 2015, one of America’s greatest adversaries paid tens of millions in fees to an American public relations firm. In 2013, Ketchum placed an op-ed from Putin in the New York Times about the Syrian civil war. Ketchum also does work for the American government: the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Army. If you work for Russia, you should not have a U.S. government contract.

  In 2004, Ketchum was accused of “covert propaganda” when it used actors to play journalists in videos shot for a client. In this case, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found the firm in violation of the federal propaganda ban. But Ketchum’s campaigns have been awarded “Campaign of the Year” at least six times by PRWeek, so they’ve got that going for them.

  And while we are telling tales out of school, let’s have a look at one of my favorites: Qorvis. Qorvis has the distinction of being the go-to PR firm for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, the kingdom hired Qorvis for a cool $14.7 million, paid between March and September 2002. One of the tactics deployed was to use an astroturf (or front) organization called the Alliance for Peace and Justice to run radio ads promoting Saudi messaging in the United States mere months after 9/11. When, in 2004, the FBI raided Qorvis’s offices, the firm called the raid a “compliance inquiry” regarding the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

  Inflation hit the kingdom after Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for the Washington Post, was abducted, tortured, murdered, and dismembered on October 2, 2018, at the direction of the Saudi Arabian government. It cost the Saudis $18.8 million in PR cleanup fees for killing just one person. Qorvis gobbled that money up between October 2018 and July 2019.

  Foreign governments hire American PR firms because they’ve seen how skillfully we protect American politicians and corporations. In October 2004, prior to New York State governor Eliot Spitzer’s self-immolation, he looked into the American International Group (aka AIG), a massive finance and insurance company that in 2008 would need a significant bailout from the U.S. taxpayer for misbehavior. AIG did not care for the inquiry and hired Qorvis to ameliorate the situation. You know what’s easier than crisis communications? Paying people off to say nice things about your client. Twenty-five-thousand-dollar retainers and ten-thousand-dollar television appearance fees were offered to former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) officials and think tank staffers. When they were caught, Qorvis called it “research.” Qorvis perfected its bag of tricks with American conglomerates and then sold it to the Saudis for a multiple of the price. Not a bad business model.

  At BLJ, we’re in the same business. We prove our skills in DC and New York and then export the strategies to the highest foreign bidder.

  Gaddafi’s op-ed is a rambling, pro-Russia, anti–NATO expansion screed. I edit the piece, wordsmithing long-winded paragraphs into buzzy sound bites designed to catch an editor’s attention. When placing an op-ed, you need to hit a specific audience. If you’re pitching a conservative argument, you shoot for the Wall Street Journal. If you’re pitching six hundred words of crazy from a North African dictator, you enlist a second-tier publication like the Washington Times.

  I call up the latter’s op-ed editor.

  “You’re full of shit,” she says when I tell her my client’s name.

  I have to spend an hour convincing her I’m a legitimate representative of Libya’s “Brother Leader.”

  A few days later, I pick up a copy of the Washington Times on my way to Commissary. The headline reads, “Gaddafi: Provoking Russia.” I join a small group of people who can say their words have appeared under the byline “Muammar Gaddafi.” I’m not sure if I’m proud of what I’ve pulled off or scared of what I’m capable of. It’s unsettling, like watching someone get mugged in broad daylight and doing nothing to stop it.

  * * *

  At BLJ’s Christmas party, Peter Brown asks me to come to his apartment an hour before the other guests. I’m awed by his views of Central Park, his double living rooms, and his museum-chic furniture. In one bathroom hang pictures of Peter with the Queen of England, Peter with John Lennon, Peter with Ronald Reagan. Every time someone uses his toilet, Brown lets them know he has access to influence. Linking undeniable impulses is part of his genius. He understands that everyone is seduced by fame and that everyone needs to defecate.

  “Are you seeing anyone, Phil?” Brown asks when I join him beside his piano. It’s his first hint at an interest in my personal life.

  “Not at the moment,” I say.

  “Who’s your favorite actress?”

  I’ve recently watched Layer Cake, so I say Sienna Miller’s not bad.

  “She’s a friend. I could introduce you.”

  “Maybe she’s a little out of my league. But thanks for the offer.”

  A who’s who of the media trickles through the door. Michael Elliott, the editor of Time, walks in with senior executives at the Wall Street Journal. Not far behind them are Barbara Walters, Yoko Ono, and Donald Trump.

  “Don’t shake Trump’s hand. He’s a germaphobe,” Peter whispers in my ear.

  I’ve invited my childhood friend Preston, an East Coast, elite university–educated investment banker. When I need the right-wing take on a PR campaign, I tap Preston. As he says, “Nobody who doesn’t have a generator and two years’ worth of food in their garage outflanks me to the right.” I describe him as “authoritarian-curious.”

  When I call Preston for his take on a story, it’s not unusual to find him cleaning his “wireless hole punchers,” his loving nickname for his AR-15s. Plural. Punch a code into a keypad in his den, and a false bookcase swings open to reveal his gun locker, which is filled with short-barreled AR-15s, some loaded with .30-caliber subsonic rounds “almost as quiet as you see in the movies.” Preston says he’s big believer in the importance of “diversity,” so he also has shotguns, pistols, and precision long-range rifles. The locker is stocked with more than enough ammunition to keep his suburban home, in one of the lowest-crime zip codes in the country, safe indefinitely from … no one exactly knows. Bonuses from Preston’s current investment bank finance this arsenal. I’ve had friends arm themselves because they are worried there is going to be another civil war. Preston arms himself because he’s hoping for a civil war.

  “Al Jazeera had a birthday party for a terrorist live on air,” I recently told Preston, crowd-testing ideas for the network to break into the American news market. “How do we get around that?”

  “There is no getting around that in the American states,” Preston replied.

  “You mean the red states?”

  “Said what I said. Just because you’re a U.S. citizen, it doesn’t mean you’re an American. Americans aren’t going to watch the Terrorist News Network.”

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “Barack Hussein Obama,” Preston finished.

  When Preston arrives at the party, he is mystified by a huge vase filled with bananas. He glowers at the cornucopia of public relations professionals, celebrities, and BLJ clients. “All the worst humans,” he says, “gathered in one place.”

  “Play nice,” I say.

  I make small talk with Barbara Walters and watch Donald Trump avoid handshakes. I’ve heard Trump is showing face because he wants to ink deals with Gaddafi. Libya has a multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund. Peter Brown might be able to provide access. I grab another flute of champagne and overhear Preston berating a New York Times journalist.

  “Your profession has disgraced itself,” he says. “You people have no pride. No shame.”

  I sip my bubbly and spot Peter Brown across the room, making Barbara Walters laugh. Brown is completely comfortable with how the world works and his place in it. He understands the hidden machinery behind it all. He knows how to operate it. And he understands that the most important thing of all is how you look while you’re doing it. How you appear. He once told me, “We can’t just do a good job. We also have to appear to do a good job.”

  And that’s public relations. If you can do that, then you can do whatever you want, and there won’t be any consequences. You can represent a dictator, and everyone still comes to your Christmas party.

  * * *

  My cab heads across the underside of Foggy Bottom and stops in front of the Watergate Hotel. The driver hands me a blank receipt. Blank cab receipts are the joy of every expense-accounted staffer in DC. An eight-dollar cab ride can transform into a fifty-dollar trip to the airport. I go to the airport a lot.

  The Watergate’s exterior looks like ribbons flowing in the wind. Once a posh address, the Watergate is slowly dying. Bob Dole used to live here; now the highlight is the Safeway in the basement. DC’s zone-based taxi fare system was influenced by Dole, who wanted to ensure that he could ride from his residence in the Watergate complex to his Senate office in a one-zone ride.

  I’m stressed because Peter Brown called me an hour ago and said, “You need to get down to the Libyan embassy.” Lately, Brown has developed a penchant for calling at all hours with orders. Orders to jump on the next plane out of town. Orders to put out a fire. Or to light a match.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Our client is very happy,” Brown said. “But the world will be very displeased.”

  Inside the Watergate’s office building, I head through a nondescript door into a suite full of Libyan flags and portraits of Muammar Gaddafi. The embassy’s décor is tacky, stuck in the 1980s. Everything about the Gaddafis is stuck in the ’80s—and covered in layers of cigarette smoke.

  Ambassador Ali Suleiman Aujali invites me to sit down at an oval desk. Last time I was here, we had Donald Trump on speakerphone setting up a game of golf for the Libyan ambassador.

  “I gotta ask. Why did you pick the Watergate?” I say once I’m seated.

  “It was available,” Aujali replies.

  “I’d imagine,” I say. “Nothing shady has ever happened here.”

  “Today is a great day for our country,” Aujali says, beaming.

  He fills me in. Tomorrow, Scotland will release Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the terrorist responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. Apparently because he has cancer and the Scots believe in compassion toward terrorists. Al-Megrahi is set to receive a hero’s welcome back home in Libya.

  “The Brother Leader doesn’t want the press to spoil his moment of triumph,” Aujali explains.

  “Oh, they are going to try.”

  We’re in a fiery-red space beyond crisis. The world will find out about al-Megrahi’s release in less than twenty-four hours. Then comes the storm of negative coverage. Al-Megrahi murdered Americans. Men, women, children. A lot of them. There is nothing I can do to stop this runaway train. But I can create a counternarrative. I think it up before I leave the Watergate: Libya is America’s ally in the war on terror. We have bigger fish to fry than one asshole who blew up a plane in the eighties. I need one story. One headline to say that there is some dissent in the international outcry against Libya. Anything counts.

  Back at my apartment, I scan old Google Alerts for “Libya.” Four members of Congress traveled there in 2004, before the United States restored diplomatic relations. They tried to open the door to the West. I smile when I see that one of them was Solomon Ortiz. I know Congressman Ortiz from a recent operation in Mexico. When an earthquake rocked Turkey in 1999, the Mexican government sent dogs trained to locate survivors in the rubble. Saved a lot of lives. After a flood hit Mexico’s Tabasco region in 2007, BLJ’s Turkish American client decided it was time to repay the debt and donated ambulances to the relief effort. Ortiz facilitated the transfer.

  The next morning, the press begins. It’s worse than I imagined. So bad that FBI director Robert S. Mueller pens an open letter to Scotland’s cabinet secretary for justice. “Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice,” he writes. “Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law … You have given Megrahi a ‘jubilant welcome’ in Tripoli, according to the reporting. Where, I ask, is the justice?”

  I give the news an hour to flood through DC before I call Ortiz’s office. “Listen, Libya is getting the shit kicked out of them in the media,” I say to the staffer who answers the phone. “Your boss helped restore diplomatic ties so they won’t sell C-Four and Semtex to anyone with fifty cents and a cause. You switched them to players in the war on terror. All this shitty press is going to push Libya away from us. We don’t want them to undo all the good work your boss has done.”

  “I haven’t hung up yet.”

  “I can draft an open letter. Ortiz can sign it.”

  “He’ll consider it. That’s the best I can do right now.”

  I dash off the letter: “Restoring diplomatic ties after such a prolonged period of animosity is not an easy process. There will be stumbling blocks on the road, but we should not be deterred from the course of peace and dialogue … consider the years of hard work on behalf of both nations to build this relationship and to avoid undoing these efforts lightly.” I throw on a suit, head up to the Hill, and drop off the letter at Ortiz’s office. A few days later, it appears in my inbox, signed by the congressman. Not a word changed.

  I ship the open letter off to Ken Vogel, an influence reporter at Politico. Once I’ve piqued Vogel’s interest, I float him an invitation to a reception later that week at the Willard Hotel. BLJ is celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Muammar Gaddafi’s rise to power. According to DC legend, the term lobbying was coined at the Willard during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. Seems like the appropriate venue for the occasion.

  Nobody from any self-respecting nation attends the reception. So, the room is quite full. If North Korea had an ambassador, he’d be snacking on the cheese plate. I stand with Vogel at the bar, burrowing talking points into his ear.

  “Congressman Ortiz wanted to be here,” I spin. “But he had to attend Obama’s address to the Joint Session of Congress.”

  Vogel’s report on the party runs in Politico the next morning. The headline: “Knock Off the Libya-bashing, Ortiz Says.” Politico prints whole chunks of my ghostwritten letter. A positive piece of press. Landed for the Gaddafis. Within weeks of al-Megrahi’s release. I deserve whatever the opposite of a Pulitzer is.

  I forward the article to Ambassador Aujali. “I’ll pass it on to the Brother Leader,” he says. “He will be pleased.”

  Peter Brown is also pleased. I get a ten-thousand-dollar-a-year raise. The extra money gets spent in bars instead of paying off my credit card debt.

  * * *

  I’m sleeping off a Commissary hangover when my phone rings.

  “Get out of bed, pack a bag, and get in a cab,” my manager’s voice blares. “Your flight leaves for Vegas in an hour. I’ll send you info via email.”

  I don’t have time to ask questions. I’ve fastened my seat belt in coach before the email blips through on my BlackBerry. Subject: “Leaving Las Vegas.” My stomach drops into my shoes as the boarding door closes. For the next three days, I’ll be babysitting Muammar Gaddafi’s son, and Libyan national security advisor, Mutassim Gaddafi at the Bellagio hotel.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Doctor and Las Vegas

  FRIDAY

  Ali lays out the rules for the weekend:

  Don’t look the Doctor in the eye.

  Don’t get in the Doctor’s way.

  Ever.

  Call him the Doctor. Never Mutassim.

  “Why does he insist on being called the Doctor?” I ask. “He doesn’t have a medical degree, does he?”

  “He has a degree in torture from Moscow State University,” Ali replies.

  Ali is the Doctor’s head of security. He’s a former professional soccer player whose hands are built like the heads of hammers. He looks like he could put me through a wall with his shoulder. We’re sitting under chandelier light at Jasmine, a haute cuisine Chinese restaurant at the Bellagio. I’m drinking my calories, too nervous to stomach my obscenely priced sweet and sour pork. Outside the window, fountains dance in front of a half-size Eiffel Tower.

  “You follow rules for your own safety. You understand?” Ali asks.

  I jump in my velvet chair when a sharp burst of sound explodes from the Doctor’s table a few feet away. False alarm. He’s only popped another bottle of Moët. Long, stringy hair, sunken eyes, and cigarette ash–colored skin give Mutassim Gaddafi the look of an animated corpse. A brown velour suit hangs loose on his stick-thin frame.

  His two-man entourage, both named “Muhammad,” suck absently on lobster claws. Natasha, a model Mutassim flew in by private jet for the weekend, holds out her champagne flute and pouts her bright red lips. Mutassim’s German personal trainer is also part of the crew, but I have yet to spot him. Maybe he’s working out.

  It’s Friday night, the final days of Ramadan. Devout Muslims—which the Gaddafis claim to be—abstain from eating, drinking, smoking cigarettes, or having sex from sunup to sundown. Today I’ve seen the Doctor do three of those things. And I’ll bet the house that Natasha wasn’t flown in to tuck him into bed. You’re definitely not supposed to spend Ramadan banging your infidel girlfriend and then heading to the pool for a noon cocktail.

  The Doctor has never cared much for rules. I don’t think a dictator’s son even comprehends the concept. In his twenties, Mutassim plotted a coup against his father. This earned him points in the family, as Muammar had taken over Libya when he was in his twenties. So, the coup was more of a “coming of age”–type thing than a “something to kill your son for”–type thing, as the Doctor is now thirty-five and unexecuted. Quite the opposite: not only is he Muammar’s national security advisor, but he leads his own army unit. This probably amounts to his playing dress-up in a military uniform for photo ops a few times a year.