Alan Huffman - Were with Nobody: Two Insiders Reveal the Dark Side of American Politics

WERE WITH NOBODY

Two Insiders Reveal the Dark Side of American Politics

Alan Huffman
Michael Rejebian

In our jobs, were with nobody.
This book is for everybody.

Contents

Chapter 1
Alan

I ts a balmy summer night in the rural countryside near the North CarolinaSouth Carolina line. This guy Joey, or JamieIve forgotten his namesits in the dark on the deck of his trailer, silhouetted against the flickering light of a TV thats blaring an old episode of Married with Children through the open door. I dont know him and he doesnt introduce himself or even get up from his chair when I approach, but Im sure Im in the right place because he doesnt seem surprised to see me. He just says, Hey, hows it going? like were old friends. I pull up a plastic lawn chair and get out my notebook. As my eyes adjust, I notice hes got a shotgun cradled across his lap.

Until now weve spoken only by phone and our conversations have been brief and a bit cryptic, but he starts talking a blue streak before Ive even pulled my pen from my pocket, and soon Im blindly scrawling notes and dont have a chance to ask about the gun. Excited as he is, hes speaking so softly that he occasionally gets drowned out by the obnoxious laugh track on TV, like hes afraid of being overheard, though were alone in the middle of nowhere. Im tempted to ask him to turn down the volume because its hard not to listen to Al Bundys drivel, but Im hesitant to interrupt.

I watch the red dot of his cigarette arc between the arm of his chair and his lips as he holds forth about a feared local businessman whos running for Congress. The red dot flares momentarily; he thumps his spent cigarette off the deck, then lights another. In the flick of his Bic I catch a glimpse of his face. He looks weary for his relatively young age. It appears that life has not been easy for him. I notice these things only in passing, because Im not here to get to know the guy. Im here to find out about the congressional candidate, and he supposedly has the goods.

My partner, Michael, and I do this for a living. Were opposition political researchers, which means were hired by campaigns to compile potentially damning profiles of candidates. Our lives during the campaign season are a coast-to-coast series of behind-the-scenes interviews and paper chase sortiesclandestine missions that revolve around facts, truths, lies, surprises and dead ends, all bundled together with strands of strange situations, odd confrontations and the unique social scenery of the American landscape. One day were in New Orleans, staring cross-eyed at court records in the hazy morning aftermath of a late night on Bourbon Street. The next were in New York City, resolutely standing on the last nerve of a records clerk who frowns as she looks at the request Ive just handed her.

The New York City clerk episode was typical of the way we approach our job and how our work is frequently perceived. In that case, the records clerk asked, So, who did you say youre with? knowing full well I hadnt said. For some reason, Michael and I live for these small moments, when someone, knowingly or not, throws the gauntlet down.

Im not with anybody, I replied, knowing that if the clerk had blinked, the questioning would end. But we were in New York City, where institutional blinking is rare.

What do you mean, youre not with anybody? she persisted.

Well, technically, I work with him, I said, tilting my head toward Michael, who was leaning against a wall, texting someone and half listening to a conversation hed heard a hundred times before. He glanced up just long enough to give her a little half-assed smile and a wave that actually looked more like he was dismissing her. She frowned again and turned back to me.

So why do you want this? she asked.

I just stared at her. All I was asking for were some straightforward tax documents, public records deposited in her office for anyonefor allto see.

I mean, what are you going to do with it?

It doesnt really matter, does it? I said. Because it didnt, and she knew it. This is America. What we were looking for is part of the public record, and why we wanted it was nobodys business but our own.

Though Michael and I are, technically, with someone, in that we provide the information we compile to someone who, in most cases, is associated with the Democratic Party, thats largely immaterial to the completion of our work, and its irrelevant to anyone else. Were essentially free agents, and how we go about doing our work is up to us. Our personal and professional ideologies are reflected only in who gets our reports. We want our guys to get elected, and achieving that involves more than uncovering damaging information about their opponents; it means doing it to our side, too. Its not only about discovering whats impolitic; its about finding the truth.

Sometimes we focus on private clients, such as a business, but our forte is researching candidates for elective office, using documented records to flush them out into the open. People call it dirt digging, but the dirt is just one by-product of discovering what makes a candidate tick. The search also requires us to navigate the larger issues of the dayimmigration, the death penalty, the outsourcing of collectible Snow Baby factoriesat very close range. You think of politics as taking place in the seats of powercounty courthouses; city halls; state capitals; Washington, DCbut important scenes also unfold at less obvious locales, such as mobile homes on lonely gravel roads where someone who lives on the fringes deigns to tell what he has seen and heard.

Weve been doing this for the better part of two decades now, gathering political intel during a weird, extended road trip that no one else would ever take, through Americas main streets and back roads. Were guided, more or less, by the conviction that no one is fit to lead unless proven otherwise. Though negative campaigning is often perceived as a bane of politics, we like to think of ourselves as seekers of the truth. In our view, documenting that truth is more crucial than ever, when todays news is prone to distortion, willful ignorance and lies; when untruths go viral in the blogosphere overnight and even conventional media sources give airtime and print space to erroneous claims and rumors; when the headline on the lead story on Yahoo! News about a descendants account of a ship officers experiences reads: TITANIC RELATIVE REVEALS TRUTH ABOUT SINKING . Truth is a word that should never be qualified. Its like pregnancy; its yes or no. It is possible to inculcate the public with untruths or distortions, but as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan reportedly once observed, Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts.

Considering how blithely the truth is often regarded today, Michael and I sometimes feel like relics of a simpler era, gathering our old-timey facts while everyone else obsesses over imaginary death panels and whether the president is a Muslima bit of news that Obama, regardless of what you think of him, correctly characterized as part of a network of misinformation that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly. Our primary aim, aside from earning a living, is to help guide the political debate through the real, documented world, where talking points are derived from actual facts rather than from voices emanating from a planet far, far away. We do listen to those voices now and thenyou never know where clues will be foundbut our work is utterly dependent on locating the documentation.

Unfortunately, thats not always the thread our own campaigns are looking for. Because we usually profile both our candidates and their opponents, to ensure that our side knows how we could be attacked and what were up against, we get to see everyone naked, for better or worse. Sometimes our guys look good going in and turn out bad; in one case we found that our young, articulate candidate had numerous arrests in his record, including a DUI and throwing a pipe bomb at a high school homecoming parade float. And sometimes the opponent looks bad going in and turns out good. We dont pull any punches in the assessments we ultimately provide to our campaigns. We present our findings, based on the records, then abdicate control and move on.