Targeted. Brittany Kaiser
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connection to the Russians, and would be accused of being a spy for the Russian intelligence services.
At the time I met him, though, Sam struck me as a consummate professional, trustworthy and serious, the kind of person who looked you dead in the eye and told it like it was. He arrived at the Mayfair office on January 3, 2015, dressed in a proper suit, but wearing a polo shirt and carrying a worn laptop bag that made it clear he was distinctly American and that he had likely carried the bag around the world for years.
I brought Sam up to date on my limited experience with the Nigerians and then handed off control. The plan was basically “crisis comms,” or crisis communications: getting out as much material as possible and as fast as possible to make as significant an impact as we could. I had given the campaign the name “Nigeria Forward,” and I assumed that in the few short weeks we had left, it would be an upbeat, all-out fight to support Goodluck Jonathan. I imagined the radio spots, the videos, and of course the rallies—held on the back of a truck that folded out into a stage, which I had been told were used for SCL-organized campaign events in Kenya.
Only two weeks later, the picture in Nigeria had changed significantly. News came that the Electoral Commission was planning to postpone the February 14 election until late March. The insurgents of Boko Haram in the north were disruptive and threatened to make polling impossible. There were technological and logistical problems as well. It was difficult to distribute voter ID cards, and the biometric card readers weren’t working, the Election Commission reported. The new elections were scheduled for March 29. While that should have been good news, as it meant the team would have more time to accomplish its goals, the delay, along with other factors, would lead to a situation with the Nigerians that would become ever more complicated.
There was an international outcry about the postponement, including from Secretary of State John Kerry, who insisted that the elections be held on time, and he warned the Nigerian government against using “security concerns as a pretext for impeding the democratic process.”5 The All Progressives Congress (APC), challenger Buhari’s party, called the move “highly provocative” and “a major setback for democracy.”6 And UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon “urged officials to take all necessary measures to enable Nigerians to vote ‘in a timely manner.’”7
The project and the contract were valid only through February 14, the day originally set for the elections. Our team had expected to lift off from Abuja the day before, to avoid any problems. We therefore reached out to the clients to let them know that if they wanted to extend the contract, and have the SCL team stay longer, they would have to provide more funding, probably as much as or more than they already had. The team seemed happy to stay longer, according to feedback I heard around the office—by day they worked in their “war room” at the Abuja Hilton, by night they drank with David Axelrod’s team that consulted for the opposition—and they never complained to us at HQ.
Personally, I was thrilled with the idea. If I closed another deal with the Nigerians, I’d have the chance to earn that commission I had hoped to win in the first place. But the Nigerians were dubious about a re-up. They hadn’t seen enough progress yet to warrant it. Our team might be working tirelessly on the ground, but where were the results?
I didn’t know how to answer. I had enough elections experience to know that it takes time to see results, and in the case of the Nigerian campaign, the proof was going to be in the election results themselves. But the Nigerians said they needed to see what the team had actually done. Where were the billboards? Where were the radio spots? Where had their money gone? I knew that it took at least two weeks to get most of those things up and running, but I also knew that they had to be in progress.
To reassure the Nigerians, Alexander had Ceris write a report that detailed everything being done to date in the project. As for me, I called Chester to ask for suggestions as to what I could do.
His idea: let’s invite the Nigerians to Davos—and Alexander as well, so he can meet with them and reassure them. I asked if I could invite my friend John Jones, the human rights lawyer. He’d be perfect, I said, because his expertise could help the Nigerians use Davos as a platform to speak out against Buhari and gain the international outcry they wanted.
It sounded brilliant to me.
There’s always a hitch.
One of the things that Chester had on his Davos to-do list was to throw a party on one of the evenings—and not just any party, but a really odd one. The party would be for a consortium of billionaires who had formed a company that was endeavoring to mine precious metals in space, on asteroids, Chester explained.
Asteroids?
Yes, he said. The idea was that the billionaires would launch rockets to land on asteroids and set up mines there. They hadn’t done it yet, but they wanted to meet at Davos. They had asked Chester to help them set up a party as a venue for them to do so. If I came to Davos, I could help, Chester said. The asteroid mining company would pay us handsomely.
It was more money earned in one day than I could have made at SCL that whole month. I knew nothing about how to throw a party in Davos, but I was game.
I arrived in Davos a week early to prepare for a week of the highest-level meetings, and of course, the party, and it was a good thing I did. There was so much to do, and party logistics were so complicated in that village and at that crazy time of year. Chester had rented an apartment in the middle of the high-security zone, directly across from the Davos Congress Centre, the site of most of the key sessions for the World Economic Forum, and it wasn’t easy getting things in and out of that area. There would be caterers, bartenders, trucks filled with liquor, food, furniture, and other supplies; and the area just around the venue was almost as hard to penetrate as Fort Knox.
The temperature the night of the party was frigid, as it often is in January in Davos, but everything was ready. We set up heaters outside on the apartment building’s vast rooftop terrace, where the bar was located and where we’d placed glow-in-the-dark chairs and stools, which gave the place an otherworldly vibe, in keeping with the outer space theme.
And we spread salt to prevent the guests from slipping.
Indoors, I hung the banners and helped lay out the food. Here and there, I laid down business cards of my own and SCL brochures.
Alexander and John Jones were early arriving. They were thrilled to be there. Neither had been in Davos before.
I stood at the door and welcomed guests. Each was more famous than the last: the entrepreneur Richard Branson, Ross Perot Sr. and Jr., members of the Dutch royal family, and at least a hundred others. They spilled out onto the terrace, where they watched the bartenders performing magic tricks, mixing cocktails and juggling with fire. Inside, in the middle of the living room, they stood around watching a giant demonstration that the aspiring asteroid miners had set up: a model of an asteroid atop of which was perched a contraption that looked like a tripod and was meant to resemble something like an oil rig.
Milling among the guests, John Jones looked happy. While Alexander clearly felt that SCL was in a far smaller class than the other businesses represented in the room, he was glad to have the chance to network, and he was particularly happy to see Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google. Before he ventured over to Schmidt, he shared with me that it was Sophie Schmidt, Eric’s daughter, who had been partly responsible for inspiring the inception of Cambridge Analytica.
The party was going swimmingly until my phone buzzed: the Nigerians had arrived and were downstairs, just outside the apartment building.
We had planned a literally flashy welcome for them. When they landed at Zurich airport, a limo was waiting for them, and on the drive into town, they were accompanied, in front of the limo and behind, by police cars, sirens blaring and lights flashing, announcing the arrival of visitors of significance.
But when the Nigerians reached me by phone, they weren’t pleased.
They were hungry. Where was their dinner?
I had invited them to the party; there was plenty of food there, I told them. Chester and I had