The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (20 page)

A kid like De Payne or Mitnick, I wonder?

De Payne continues with a story about how he pranked some
security people years ago, but I steer the conversation back to
Mitnick.

"So do you think you're a criminal?"

"No, I don't like to think of myself as a criminal. But if the tech-
nology laws are like Singapore, where it's illegal to chew gum ..."
Mitnick sighs. "I guess I'm a criminal.

"I'm the type who's a master safecracker. I'd read your will, your
diary, put it back, not take the money, shut the safe, and do it so you
never knew I was there. I'd do it because it's neat, because it's a
challenge. I love the game.

"I guess you could paint me as the alcoholic. Five years ago, that's
all I looked forward to, even in my marriage. I put my hacking above
my work, my time with my wife, anything. At the time I knew I had
this drive to do it, but I didn't think about it."

"What was the attraction?"

"The high. To beat the System. It's scary not knowing why you do
something, but I didn't want to do anything else. I'm trapped.
There's no escape."

■ ■ ■

I've been wanting to ask Kevin Mitnick this question for a long time.

"What is a hacker?"

"A computer hacker? It's a person who can figure out ways of
bypassing security. Whatever way you get in, using technology upon
the System, hardware bugs, tricks. That's what I consider to be a
hacker. It's not being a super programmer. Most super programmers
are not good hackers.

"It takes a mind-set, trying to think of every possible way to get

in, watching your back all the time. You pick the easiest path in. If
all it takes is a phone call, rather than a wiretap, then you take the
quickest way in."

Mitnick uses the games he played with Eric and the FBI as an
example.

"We told Eric bullshit. We told him we were planning to check a
DNR [a phone tap] in a Calabasas Central office. We told him we'd
picked the lock. We were playing Eric as a mark, we fed him with
bullshit."

"Eric says you told him that you just wanted to 'make some fuck-
ing money this time.' "

"I could have said that to play him, but look at my actions versus
the words. I could have pulled off scams. Credit card fraud is easy.
You get access to a credit agency, you get someone's maiden name,
change the address, switch the phone number to voice mail. I could
do that, but that's being a thief. It's not a challenge.

"But if you're asking might I go in and get a copy of Microsoft
Windows? I would do that. Would I take a hundred dollars someone
left in their top drawer? No."

"So how is Eric different?"

"Eric is Aldrich Ames," Mitnick bristles. "If Eric wants a Porsche
he'd sell out fucking anybody to get his Porsche."

"The government knows Eric's motives. They understand him.
They don't understand Poulsen. They don't understand me —"

De Payne interrupts: "Someone with no monetary gain they don't
understand."

■ ■ ■

"What's the hardest thing about being a fugitive?"

"Not being able to call friends and family," Mitnick complains. "I
can't be myself. When I go outside the door, I have to believe I'm
another person or I'll goof up. Once outside I'm in the twilight zone.
I have to be a different person. It's terrible. I'd like to sort the mess
out. I don't consider it fun. I have friends, but I can count them on
my left hand."

But then, it does have an upside.

"It's interesting to be undercover," Mitnick reflects. "It's like being in a movie, like being a CIA operative. Being so good that if
somebody calls your real name you don't turn around.

"Now I'm changing again."

"What do you mean?"

Mitnick's heard his face will be beamed to millions of television
screens from coast to coast on the network program
America's Most
Wanted.

"I have to prepare for the worst. I have to change everything
I do."

"' ■ ■ a

The police car cruises down the quiet, tree-lined suburban street a
third time. This time the black and white stops.

"Are you OK?" asks the local cop, leaning toward his open win-
dow.

It's long past midnight. My book light died a half hour ago. I'm
scribbling by the dim yellow glow of the street lamp. My rear is
numb from sitting on the cold concrete, my legs stiff.

"Just fine, Officer!" I shout. "Just fine!"

"You've been there a couple of hours," the clean-shaven cop ob-
serves.

"Yes, Officer. Thanks very much," I say politely.

The cop shakes his head and drives on. Ordinary cops aren't used
to people having two-hour midnight pay phone calls.

"What's going on?" Mitnick asks.

"A cop was questioning me," I tell Mitnick and he laughs.

■ ■ ■

Kevin Mitnick is replaying his conspiracy theory.

"The government controls the press. They didn't want Eric in
public view. They're interested in the old story. As soon as they put
that out — the Markoff
New York Times
story — we [Mitnick and
De Payne] decided, let's make what the government is doing public.
Suddenly Eric was facing stories in the
L.A. Times.
The boys in
Washington didn't like that."

"Why do you think Markoff wrote the
New York Times
story
about you?"

I don't tell Mitnick, but Markoff's article has jolted the FBI into
suddenly making his parole violation a high-priority case. Ken
McGuire of the FBI has started calling his hacker informants in Los
Angeles, digging for information about Mitnick. Ironically, some of
the first files provided to McGuire are De Payne's Internet posts in
which he mocked the FBI.

"Markoff's a pawn. He was asked to do it. A cellular company
said a hack [against its computers] sounded like the character [Mit-
nick] in his book. They asked him to keep their name out of it."

Mitnick doesn't name the company but it sounds like Qualcomm,
the San Diego cellular phone company Markoff mentioned to me in
his call back in June.

The conversation drifts. I ask about the rumor I've heard that
Mitnick ran into Susan Thunder just before he went on the run.

"Yeah, I confided in Susan. I met her at the Stardust, at Saint
Henry's Chinese Restaurant. I told her, hey I've got this guy named
Eric, I think he's a rat. Would she keep it to herself? Susan was going
to visit Eric. She was going to seduce him and look for his real ID
while he was asleep. I thought to myself, this is crazy. Eric would
never sleep with this woman.

"She had these crazy plans of seduction. She's the type of gal I'm
embarrassed to be around, her ass is so big. And here I was fat my-
self. I would see her about once a month. She was interested in listen-
ing to vice squad frequencies for professional [call girl] reasons. She
offered me a job handing out handbills."

I've met Thunder in Vegas too, heard her imaginative fictions and
seen the handbills; nude color photos of Thunder herself, with erotic
names like Sweet Serena, Voluptuous Valerie, Victoria, or Mandy,
and captions like, "Share your secret fantasies and fetishes with me
tonight.... Motorcycle Mama will ride your machine. . . ."

"What would you say to young kids thinking about getting into
hacking?"

"Don't make the same mistakes I did. Hacking might look excit-
ing at the beginning, but when you look back on it, you only have
one life to live."

Mitnick's battery dies and his call patches out. I gather my notepad
and dead book light and stand up, but before I walk away the phone
rings.

"I'd like to figure a way out of my predicament," Mitnick con-
tinues, telling me about his plan to get a job, save twenty thousand
dollars for an attorney, and then go public. But surprisingly he can't
find an attorney that wants his case. Mitnick doesn't understand the
lack of interest in his predicament. He doesn't believe he's commit-
ted any serious crimes. He's an old-fashioned hacker. He's in it for
the knowledge, the thrill.

"It's the challenge," he says. Mitnick copies software to "learn
and study." If he bills phone calls to other people, he does it only for
"the security of the call."

But Mitnick partially contradicts himself. He doesn't pay for his
phone calls and invades people's privacy because he
can
do it, be-
cause he figures if the information river is already running, why
shouldn't he enjoy the waters?

"The bus goes down the street anyway. In my mind, they've built
the service. It's like the people who hijack cable TV. I don't think I'm
invading anyone's privacy. Everybody's open game for that. The
government invades your privacy every day. I just like to have the
same ability the government does."

Besides, Mitnick says he can be trusted to use discretion. "The
only time I would tap phone calls is if someone is trying to hurt me.
Only in the case of watching a rat."

Life on the run may be taking its toll on Mitnick, but he's far from
ready to turn himself in.

"It's better to live the way I am. I have to get used to it. It's se-
rious. It's not like the movies. One flub and it's over."

"How do you prepare yourself?"

"I think of a past I'd like to live, a place I'd like to have grown up.
It's living a lie. I'd like to see what drives me, why I have this passion.
I'd like to go to a therapist."

"Why don't you?"

"If I did it might happen like this. The therapist might be talking

to his wife about it at dinner. His kid, who's checking out the Inter-
net, might hear something. And the next thing you know I'd be
busted."

"What do you think of these articles De Payne is encouraging?"

"I didn't call the papers. Lewis did. I tell him to stop, but he
doesn't listen. Is this guy really my friend? Sometimes I wonder. He
has nothing to lose. I keep telling him to shut up, but he won't stop.
I'm not happy with him."

With De Payne asleep, I ask Mitnick about his ex-wife, Bonnie
Vitello, currently dating De Payne.

"I was obsessed with trying to figure out why she left me. I was
restricted [during probation] to the Jewish Community Center. I
knew she had bought an answering machine at Radio Shack for a
hundred dollars. I called up the store and asked what answering
machine they sell with a beeper. They said they had one for a hun-
dred and one for one seventy-five. I decided to sound out the ma-
chine for a hundred. I told them I'd lost my beeper, and asked if they
could look at the machine. It's got a,b,c,d tones." Mitnick then de-
scribes how he social engineered the store into playing all the tones
that worked on Bonnie's machine.

"So I called Bonnie. It [the recording of the beeper] worked on the
second one. I had a feeling there was another guy. I hear Bonnie's
voice, " 'Hello, it's me, good morning!'

"Why is she talking to her own machine, I think? Then, I hear him
say, 'How do you turn this thing off?' That really bummed me out. I
was devastated that she left me. Then she moved in with Lewis. I've
always wondered whether she was with him while I was in jail.
That's not a cool thing. I've always wondered."

Mitnick's stories of his ex-wife moving in with his best friend
bring back memories of prison. "I did eight months in MDC [Metro-
politan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles]. Solitary was a
hellhole. They said I was too dangerous to be near a phone. They let
me out one hour a day. You're shackled when they take you to the
shower. It's like the movies. They treat you like an animal. One day
is hell. Imagine eight months. They fuck people.

"At Lompoc [a federal detention facility north of Santa Barbara] I
did time with the Barry Minkow people [famous for the ZZZ Best
carpet-cleaning scam that rocked Wall Street in the late 1980s].

"I spoke to Boesky at Lompoc. Me and Ivan were waiting for the
phones. He went to get coffee. He puts his quarter in the vending
machine and returns.

" 'Hey, Ivan, I wouldn't drink that.'

" 'Why?'

"Then, he sees the cockroach floating around in his cup.

" 'Hey, Ivan, I'll teach you computers, if you'll teach me stocks.'

"Ivan said, 'No.'

"Then he asked me how much money I made hacking.

"I told Ivan, 'Nothing. I didn't do it for money.'

"He looked at me like I was an idiot."

About a quarter to two in the morning Mitnick's battery dies
again, and I'm sitting on the concrete listening to static after three
hours of conversation. I gather my dead book light and notepad and
walk home.