“Oh … Phil.”

  “Burn a few bridges.”

  “You’re going to inform on BLJ?”

  “To every reporter who’ll take my call. At the biggest papers I can.”

  “I’m not going to tell you how to run your life,” Lindsay says. “But it’s generally a good rule to avoid leaving a trail of destruction in your wake.”

  “Peter is doing something wrong. I mean look at the Middle East right now. Blood on the streets. Assad is shooting civilians.”

  “Didn’t you rep Assad as of, like, last Tuesday?”

  “It’s the right thing to do to hold Peter accountable.”

  “That’s why you’re doing this? Accountability?”

  “Bingo.”

  “You want to know what I think?”

  “By all means,” I say.

  “I think you’re pissed at Peter. I think you’re doing this out of spite.”

  “It’s the right thing to do,” I repeat.

  “Phil, this could hurt your future. Move on. Let go.”

  Lindsay is right, of course. About everything. Here’s the thing about good advice: sometimes, you just can’t take it. I start dialing reporters later that afternoon.

  * * *

  The first reporter I meet with has rules. Rule number one: If there is alcohol on the table, the conversation is off the record. Better than fine by me. We’ve met at the Bottom Line, a dive bar where I used to pick up an occasional shift while at Georgetown. There is most certainly alcohol on the table.

  “Gaddafi and Assad’s PR guy, the former manager of the Beatles, selectively registered their accounts with the Department of Justice,” I say. “This is a problem.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because he just fired me.”

  Part of my strategy in dealing with reporters is to express my agenda up front. I’m honest about my conflicts of interest. I often tell reporters, “This is the headline I’d like to read. This is the reason I’m talking to you. This is my motivation. And yes, someone is paying me to say this. But here’s the story.” Why not be up front about my motives? It gives me immediate credibility. It gets dirty laundry out in the open so they don’t find it later. Playing hide the football with someone who investigates people like me for a living is a bad idea. And what comes after “But here’s the story” is usually newsworthy. I’m never trying to sell toothpaste or bananas.

  I tell the reporter how much Gaddafi paid BLJ. I tell them about babysitting the Doctor in Las Vegas. And I tell them that we didn’t register any of this with the Department of Justice. I go through, in detail, each of the questionable things I have been asked to do while working at Brown Lloyd James. The payments in cash. The mysterious emails. The “nontraditional business practices.” Peter Brown is an eccentric man, one who firmly believes there are two sets of rules: one for those with money and another for the rest of the world. Neither set of rules really applies to him.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” the reporter asks. “These are scary people.”

  “The real question is, Do you want the story?”

  People always ask for my motives. They want to know why. Here’s the truth, a truth I have trouble admitting and explaining: I do it for the story. My time with Brown Lloyd James cannot end with the whimper of my making Peter Brown pay for my two-hundred-dollar glass of whiskey. I need it to end with a bomb. It’s not that I’m upset about being fired. Rather, it’s about who fired me. The caliber of the person who fires you matters. Later in life, I will be terminated by a bureaucrat at one of the mega firms. I had so little respect for this person that I thanked him for firing me. But for some reason, being dismissed by a rock-and-roll icon has set something off in me. This story needs a proper ending.

  “You didn’t answer the question,” the reporter says.

  “My safety is not my first concern.”

  “Well, regardless of your motivation, there is a story here. BLJ is flouting the law. And they are unlikely to get caught.”

  I push the manila envelope across the table. “Everything you need is in here.”

  The article goes live on September 9, 2011. “The public-relations firm Brown Lloyd James posts an extensive client roster on its website, including composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, the charity Autism Speaks, Carnegie Mellon University and the state of Qatar,” it begins. “Unacknowledged on its website client list is its work for the regime of Libya’s Col. Moammar Gadhafi and the wife of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.” The work BLJ does, the piece reads, “carries a risk to a firm’s reputation, especially if a firm’s client battles its citizens, as happened in both Syria and Libya this year.” The reporter got Tony Fratto, a Treasury and White House spokesman during the Bush administration, to comment on Peter Brown’s business practices. “To me the job of diplomatic relations with foreign governments, even troubled ones, is the job of the State Department,” Fratto says.

  Peter liked to call me an arsonist. Now he’s got a fire.

  The Department of Justice refuses to confirm if Brown Lloyd James will face sanctions or penalties due to its failure to properly register clients. I hear rumors over the next weeks that the U.S. government has called BLJ with some questions. Staffers there are frantically emailing to get all their records updated for the DOJ. But in the end, Brown files the appropriate forms, apparently having convinced the DOJ that there was no intentional evasion of the law. All crimes are forgiven. And the system will keep turning. Influence will be purchased. Governments will topple. And the people living under dictatorships will continue to suffer and die.

  My career as a bagman for dictators is over. But I can’t get out of public relations. I’m still in debt. This is the only way I know how to make money. Who else will employ me after what I’ve done? The Hill won’t have me back, but the PR industry embraces me. And that’s what happens when I walk through the doors of Levick Strategic Communications, the premier crisis communications shop in DC. I tell the firm’s CEO Richard Levick, about my work on the Qatari World Cup bid. He’s impressed.

  * * *

  On May 13, 2011, while I’m filling out new-hire paperwork with Levick, NATO aircraft strike Gaddafi’s Bab al-Aziziya compound in Tripoli. Gaddafi responds by taunting NATO. “I tell the cowardly crusader [NATO] that I live in a place they cannot reach and where you cannot kill me,” he says in an audio recording played on Libyan state-run TV.

  Turns out, he was right. For about three months.

  Tripoli falls in August. Gaddafi and Mutassim flee to the desert city of Sirte. At approximately 8:30 a.m. local time on October 20, NATO forces intercept a satellite phone call made by the Brother Leader. At the same time, a Royal Air Force reconnaissance mission spots an ever-so-subtle seventy-five-car motorcade blasting through the desert. An American Predator drone circling the skies over Libya, operated by someone in Las Vegas, fires at the convoy first. It is the middle of the night in Sin City, where I spent my terrifying weekend with Mutassim. Moments later, French fighter jets bomb the convoy. Gaddafi hides in a drainage pipe before being captured by rebels.

  The next day, I follow the news. The networks show a photo of the Doctor’s dead body, shot in the chest and the neck. I wonder what’s become of Ali and the two Muhammads. I have a feeling most of the people on our Las Vegas trip are now dead. Al Jazeera cuts to footage of Muammar Gaddafi being beaten by rebels, blood pouring down his face and clumped in his hair. A pistol is put to his head.

  His last words are, “Do you know right from wrong?”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Government v. the Internet

  A call from a Wall Street Journal reporter wakes me at 5 a.m.

  “Phil, I wanted to give you the chance to comment on a story that’s about to go live,” he says. “Here’s our lead: ‘After months of planning, New Zealand police swooped on Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom’s home as guests arrived to celebrate his birthday.’”

  “Let me get some people awake,” I croak.

  Dotcom’s lawyer, Robert S. Bennett, former counsel to President Bill Clinton, fills me in. Counterterrorism agents have raided the Web baron’s 25,000-square-foot Auckland mansion using military helicopters, canine units, and SWAT vehicles in an operation coordinated with the FBI. My client barricaded himself in his panic room, clutching a sawed-off shotgun. He faces extradition to the United States on charges of copyright infringement, racketeering, money laundering, and wire fraud.

  When you work in crisis communications, you expect the phone to ring with a crisis. Just not this many of them at once.

  * * *

  Six weeks earlier, on a Monday morning in December, I enter Levick Strategic Communications. Our building sits on the corner of Nineteenth and M Streets NW in Washington, DC. Richard Levick’s corner office is lined with bookcases stuffed with legal treatises. That day, I join Levick, who is smoothing the lapels of his three-piece suit, and four executives huddled around the speakerphone. A senior vice president gives me the once-over.

  “So, you’re Richard’s new black-ops guy?”

  Before I can respond, the speakerphone connects and a German accent punctures the room. Kim Dotcom’s voice throws me—not what I’d expected from an obese hacker. I’d assumed he’d sound like Neo from The Matrix, not Christoph Waltz from Inglourious Basterds.

  “I vant to box this little vorm,” Kim Dotcom booms.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dotcom,” Levick says.

  “Mr. Dotcom’s subsidiary Megaporn has been sued by Perfect Ten, a porn company looking to create a new revenue stream as a copyright troll. He’s being forced to pay a large settlement,” adds Dotcom’s tech lawyer, a fast-talking attorney from San Francisco. “Perfect Ten’s CEO is on the older side.”

  “I vill fight him on television for the exact amount of the settlement,” Dotcom says through the speakerphone.

  The suits around the table exchange frowns. I immediately like the guy. I’ve finally met a client whose ideas are crazier than mine. As the junior man on this intake call, I remain mute, watching how Levick handles the situation.

  “Sounds a tad … splashy,” says Levick. “What if we got some third-party allies to say good things about you?”

  “Put a good face on the settlement while still maintaining a viable business,” a VP in the room interjects.

  “I am not a criminal,” says Dotcom.

  “Paying the settlement is not dispositive of guilt,” says Levick.

  “I have a legitimate business. Forbes vants to put me on the cover. I see a vorld where big content and internet freedom can exist together.”

  “I see that world, too,” Levick says. “And we can help the public see it. Let’s hold off talking to reporters until the settlement news cycles through the papers. Is there anything else we should know?”

  It’s a good question. All PR crises start with an intake call. It’s an exercise in extracting as much information as we can from the client and their lawyer. Usually your client, or more often their lawyer who is always on an intake call, doesn’t tell you the whole truth or neglects to tell you something very important. (Case in point: At the time of this meeting, the FBI is six weeks away from taking down Dotcom, and he’s already hired a criminal defense team.) Or they straight-up lie to you, trying to play the PR pro with PR pros. Sometimes, I say to lawyers, “Do you see me getting up in the courtroom and making objections? Tell me the truth and let me talk to the media.”

  “That’s where things stand,” says Dotcom’s lawyer.

  “So, nothing else?” asks Levick.

  “I vant to move fast,” Dotcom says.

  “We will turn around a proposal for you in twenty-four hours,” Levick says, shooting his finger in my direction.

  Proposals are the responsibility of the most junior agent. Twenty-four hours is actually a large window within which to come up with a crisis strategy. I’ve been through fire drills where a client had to talk to reporters within thirty minutes.

  “Start with the crazy on this proposal. I’ll rein you in,” Levick tells me after the call, over a glass of bourbon. He keeps the good stuff hidden inside a false globe. “I love the way your brain works.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Stop by HR on your way out. Tell them you’ll need to look at some … blocked sites on the company laptop. I don’t think Perfect Ten or Megaporn are whitelisted.”

  * * *

  I order takeout from Commissary and browse dozens of articles about my new client. Kim Dotcom is my kind of criminal: a six-foot-seven, three-hundred-pound computer nerd who likes chartering model-laden yachts, driving vintage Cadillacs on golf courses, and playing games with the American entertainment industry. In 2005, he started the file-sharing service Megaupload, through which users could access copyrighted content like Hollywood films free of charge. At its peak, Megaupload claimed to have sixty million users, to generate twice as much Web traffic as Facebook, and to have turbocharged Dotcom’s net worth to two hundred million. He sometimes travels with a life-size statue of the alien from Predator.

  Out of all my clients, Kim Dotcom has the longest rap sheet. The man born Kim Schmitz was first convicted in 1998 for trafficking stolen phone card codes, computer fraud, and data espionage. He milked the arrest for hacker cred, telling the press he was the head of an international cybercrime team called Dope. He bragged that he had breached Citibank’s digital vaults and sent twenty million dollars to Greenpeace. A 2001 piece in the German newspaper Die Welt says he hacked NASA and the Pentagon, accessing classified military intel on Saddam Hussein. The Guardian claims he sabotaged the credit rating of former German chancellor Helmut Kohl. In 2002, he was convicted of manipulating the stock of a Dutch internet company. German authorities extradited him from Thailand. He met them at the Munich airport introducing himself as the “Royal Highness Kimble the First.”

  Kim parlayed exploits into hacker fame. According to Wired, “He promoted his new bad-boy rich hacker genius image through a bizarre Flash movie called Kimble, Special Agent, in which his cartoon alter-ego drives a ‘Megacar’ and then a ‘Megaboat’ before breaking into Bill Gates’s compound and riddling the wall behind Gates with a machine gun (spelling out ‘Linux’ with bullet holes).”

  Peter Brown taught me that “anything is possible with the right amount of money.” Dotcom has exponentially more money than Peter Brown, and his fortune has allowed him to stay one step ahead of the law since the Clinton administration. We’re now well into the Obama administration. Dotcom had successfully skirted the law for three presidents while enjoying wine, women, and song. And he found the time to become the number one–ranked player in the world in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. “Don’t hate me because I beat you,” goes his gamer motto. “Respect me because I can teach you.”

  A 2001 article in the Telegraph calls Dotcom “a PR man’s nightmare and a journalist’s dream.” Conventional PR wisdom says the public should hate him. Not so. He’s mostly beloved, even by people who should really hate him like Kanye West and Apple’s Steve Wozniak, who had money taken out of their pockets by Megaupload. Of course, Dotcom is reviled by the entertainment companies and their lobbyists, like the Motion Picture Association of America, and they have really good reasons to detest him. The MPAA estimates that online piracy costs the U.S. film industry around $29.2 billion per year. (Typical of the MPAA, this figure seems like a bit of hyperbole.) But millions of fans on the internet can’t get enough of this obese geek who lives like Richie Rich while gleefully flipping the bird to the powers that be.

  I, too, am smitten. Dotcom is a PR genius. He breaks every rule of public relations and gets away with it.

  Rule 1. Don’t believe the lie that “any press is good press.”

  “There is no such thing as bad press” is the most flawed statement in public relations. Just ask Gaddafi. Except if you are Kim Dotcom. There is no way for a journalist to write about this cartoon character that he won’t find flattering. Dotcom lets it all hang out and flips bad stories into irreverent jokes on his Twitter account.

  Rule 2. Don’t repeat the negative.

  Tell me the first Richard Nixon quote that pops into your head. “I am not a crook,” right? You remember the line even if you weren’t born yet when Nixon said it. Everyone remembers the line. Those five words are perhaps the single greatest PR blunder in American history. Nixon repeated the negative, the first thing in media training we teach clients to avoid doing. If someone asks how long you’ve been beating your wife, you don’t say, “I’m not a wife beater.” You say, “I’m a good man.” Why deny when you can obfuscate?

  Dotcom is often asked if Megaupload is legal. He doesn’t say, I run a legitimate business and donate to charity. He says, The law is wrong. Everything that comes out of Kim Dotcom’s mouth is worthy of indictment. Because he tells the truth, he’s guilty of most crimes except perjury.

  Rule 3. Never wrestle with a pig in shit.*

  Two things will happen. You’ll be covered in shit. And the pig will like it. Never get down and fight with an opponent who is beneath you. Dotcom wants to challenge a copyright troll to fisticuffs. He’d probably stream it live on Twitter. And people would root for him.

  Rule 4. Don’t kick someone when they are up.

  An old saying in Washington. It’s too much work to attack a strong opponent. Know your place. Dotcom kicks whomever he wants: beloved CEOs, the entertainment industry, powerful lobbies like the MPAA. These are people who hire shadow men like me and tell us, “Do your worst.” Even Dotcom’s ridiculous surname kicks up at authority. Knowing that his line of work would bring him up against lawsuits and investigations, he legally changed it so the header of any case against him essentially reads, “the Government v. the Internet.” He’s a complete 180 from humorless dictators sequestered in their bloodstained, oil money palaces.