The Fugitive Game: Online With Kevin Mitnick (13 page)

"To me? I think it is to a lot of people that are involved in com-
puter hacking. They feel kind of helpless in a weird way. They do
this to compensate," Eric explains.

"What does hacking do for you?"

"Knowledge is power. I just like to know as much as I can. It
makes me feel more comfortable. It intrigues me —"

"I don't see you as the typical computer nerd. You have a whole
other life —"

"A lot of hackers aren't nerds."

"What is it about hacking that appeals to you?"

"It's the control, the adrenaline, the knowledge, the having what
you're not supposed to have."

■ * ■

Eric's in control now, shooting questions back at me.

"Do you consider yourself to be living vicariously through these
subjects you're studying?"

It's a fair question. What is getting me out of bed at four in the
morning to listen to the musings of a wanted cyberpunk? I suspect
it's because there's something distinctly American about hackers.
We invented hackers, just like we invented cowboys and gunfighters
and gangsters, and if they aren't part of freedom and democracy,
they sure seem to come with the territory. Listening to the confes-
sions of Eric in the middle of the night is like talking to the Sundance
Kid as the posse moves in. Eric's a marked man, and there's some-
thing compelling about hearing a desperate man's story.

Eric has another question.

"What would you recommend for me to do with my life?"

What would I recommend? I haven't read the federal statutes.
Does career counseling a cyberfugitive land you a charge of aiding
and abetting? "Well, you're talented, intelligent. There must be
plenty of jobs you could get."

"I don't want to be stuck in a life where I have to work for a
living."

"What about detective work?"

"It's still work," Eric reminds me, irritated at my lack of under-
standing. "I don't want to have to work. I don't want to have to do
something that I don't really enjoy."
Eric sighs. "I would rather be a criminal."

Three-Way

"Take a walk," teases the
woman in a sexy voice at
about 10 p.m. on May 19, 1994.

I don't know who it is, but I can guess. It's probably Bonnie Vitello,
the former Mrs. Mitnick and current girlfriend of Lewis De Payne.

This is the only way Kevin Mitnick will talk. De Payne phoned a
month ago and asked for the last four digits of a pay phone near my
house. Then, a couple of weeks later, I gave De Payne the pay
phone's prefix.

"OK," I say to Mitnick's ex and hang up. I pull on my down
jacket and ski cap and jog down the deserted neighborhood street.
The local public library is empty except for the lonely buzz of the
janitor vacuuming behind the locked glass doors. I pace across the
bricks, warm in my ski gear, catching my breath.

The phone rings. I let it ring again. A man's voice greets me. And
then another.

"Hello."

"Hello."

It's Mitnick. And De Payne. They sound like they're in the same room.

Within the first minute I pick up enough clues to have a pretty
good hunch where De Payne is. He's doesn't seem to be driving,
walking, or leaning on a pay phone. He must be at 5502. Dobbs

Street, lounging on his couch, in front of the table crammed with
electronics gear and cellular phones. There's probably a cat on his
lap and another curling its tail around his ankles. I imagine Bonnie
Vitello getting something to drink in the kitchen.

De Payne is playing telephone chaperone for Kevin Mitnick, cy-
berfugitive. In any other world, this would be considered strange.
Mitnick is, after all, on the run largely because he violated his parole
by associating with De Payne. Why would he rely on De Payne to set
up a three-way chat line with a journalist?

Wouldn't the FBI be trapping De Payne's line?

But I'm looking at this from the wrong angle. De Payne and Mit-
nick must be talking over cell phones. Surely they're employing inge-
nious methods to befuddle the feds. Surely they're doing it because
the feds would never believe they would be so bold. Surely they're
doing it because they can't resist thumbing their noses at the FBI.

The odd couple raises an even more basic question. De Payne is
the guy who stole Mitnick's wife and helped plunge Mitnick into
cyberspace exile. Why are they still friends?

■ ■ ■

Why is Mitnick talking to me? Information. It's what feeds hackers.
On one level it's crazy for a wanted fugitive to be talking to a jour-
nalist, but I'm the only journalist who has talked at length to Mit-
nick's nemesis, Eric Heinz. Mitnick can't resist knowing more about
his enemy, even if I tell him little more than Eric's fondness for wrap-
ping women in cellophane. And, of course, he may be talking to me
for another reason. I had a big story in the
L.A. Times,
and I've got a
movie option. Most hackers can't resist talking to the media.

De Payne brags about how he toyed with Eric and the FBI, but he
quickly tires of the conversation. He fades in and out, tossing an
occasional barb.

"Why'd you get involved with Eric at all?" I ask Mitnick. "Why
didn't you just walk away?"

"He had so much information. It was the first time I'd encoun-
tered somebody that knew more than me."

Mitnick launches into a forty-five-minute description of how he
figured out Eric was working for the feds, and how the FBI bungled

its investigation. His voice surprises me. One minute he's got a
puppy dog's warmth and enthusiasm, the next he flares angrily. He
sounds a decade younger than his thirty years: animated, intensely
emotional, naive, trusting, human, and nearly always on the verge of
raucous laughter. Mitnick's grammar is off, he confuses tenses, and
he has the attention span of a kid. Mitnick doesn't sound like a
genius, and he doesn't sound evil.

"Who else do you think was wiretapping with SAS?" I ask Mit-
nick about Pac Bell's secret eavesdropping system.

"Probably the Bureau [FBI] was using it," Mitnick guesses. "They
knew Eric was using it."

"Why would the Bureau use it?"

"They could wiretap without court orders. This is all speculation,
of course, but it's interesting they didn't shut it [SAS] down. They
did nothing to block it."

What an allegation! The FBI and Pac Bell won't talk, but Pac Bell
does acknowledge the system exists.

"Do you have any evidence the FBI was using it to illegally wire-
tap?"

"My battery's running low. I could patch out anytime," Mitnick
warns. "Who knows. If they thought I had access to it, they'd believe I
was using it," Mitnick snarls. "I feel the same way about them.. . ."

"SHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Mitnick's call patches out.

I pace in front of the library, still bundled in my down parka and ski
cap. I've been staring at the phone for the last ten minutes, trying to
will it to life. The janitor is long gone and the stacks are dark, except
for the yellow glow cast by the sodium streetlight. It's getting colder,
and I'm wishing I'd worn my long Johns.

BRRRRINNNNNNG!

"Hi, Kevin."

Mitnick's put off by my greeting.

"Do me a favor," he snaps in a cold tone. "Don't call me that."

Mitnick's in a funk, and when he's upset he talks about how he's
been screwed by journalists. Mitnick's a stuck record that way. He's
sore that a movie deal based on
Cyberpunk,
a book partly written

about Mitnick and De Payne, is about to die. Mitnick says the movie
option is up June 8, 1994.

"I had a deal, a three-year option for five thousand dollars," the
hacker fumes. "They want me to extend the option for no money.
What do you think of that?"

"It doesn't sound like a very good deal."

Mitnick fills me in on the story behind
Cyberpunk.
He'd just fin-
ished eight months in solitary confinement and another four months
in a federal prison when the authors began interviewing people for
the book. Mitnick knew the book's authors were getting a six-figure
advance, so he wanted to be paid for an interview. He figured he
deserved it.

"So why'd you keep investigating Eric?" I change the subject.

"I wanted to know how I was being screwed. Who Eric was. Why
they were doing it." Mitnick steams. "How I could discredit him if
he were to come to court to testify."

"Why do you think they targeted you?"

"My probation was ending. They obviously picked me. Scott
Charney, the head of the [Justice Department's] Computer Crime
Division, maybe he was delegating, maybe he wanted some major
convictions."

"So when did you take off?"

"My supervision was up on December seventh, so on December
eighth I was legally free. I left. It's none of anyone's business where I
went!" Mitnick spits out the words. "So far as I'm concerned I com-
pleted my parole. They made a mistake. I abided by all the condi-
tions. Fuck them! Goodbye."

The call patches out. The time is a quarter to one in the morning. I
pace for five, ten, fifteen minutes, just to be sure, staring at the silver
and black pay phone.

"Hulloo," I mumble, groggy. It's pitch dark. My wife's asleep. I was

too, a few seconds ago.

"Sorry to call so late, Jon, but this is the best time."

I'm half asleep, but I recognize the metallic monotone of Lewis De

Payne's voice.

Kevin Mitnick operates on a different schedule, and I can't be
choosy about when he's in the mood to chat. It's closing in on mid-
night, the last day of May 1994, twelve days since my first call from
Mitnick. I pull on some long underwear. Summer may be approach-
ing, but in Northern California it's still chilly this time of night.

Mitnick laments how hard it was for him to go straight.

"When he [Eric] called, I was unemployed at the time. I had a
tough time getting a job. I had to tell them about my past. How easy
is it to get a job when you have to say, 'Hey, I'm a criminal. Can I
have a job?' "

"My probation officer would call and say, 'Does he have access to
cash?' I can't understand how people on probation can ever get a
job."

Mitnick talks briefly about his futile attempts to find work in
Vegas, and then he hits that scratch in his record. He's talking to a
journalist. Bad memories come back.

"I don't want you to paint me as an evil personality," he steams.
"It's just not true. Katie [Hafner] said, 'Talk to me or else.' I knew
she was going to be well paid for the book. All I wanted was five
thousand dollars for an interview."

Katie Hafner and her former husband, John Markoff of the
New
York Times,
are coauthors of the book
Cyberpunk.
I've read the
book, and it's not hard to understand why Mitnick isn't terribly
fond of it. The book chronicled hackers who spied for the KGB and
the son of a National Security Agency code breaker who crippled the
Internet with a terrifying computer worm. But the authors portrayed
Mitnick more harshly than perhaps any other hacker in a section
entitled "Kevin: The Dark Side Hacker."

"I'm not half as vindictive as Katie makes me out to be," Mitnick
insists. "The book makes it out like my whole life was harassing
people!"

■ ■ ■

Talking to Kevin Mitnick is like channel surfing. He skips from topic
to topic, sometimes interrupting himself midsentence. But nearly ev-
erything he says is intriguing, especially when you consider he's
wanted by the FBI.

Suddenly, Kevin Mitnick is giving me a primer on how Pac Bell
wiretaps people like, well, Kevin Mitnick.

"When they want to wiretap somebody, Pac Bell calls the people
in the [company's] dial group number assignment and says they need
a number. They are given a phone number and a LEN [line equip-
ment number].

"On the frame, there's a wire, let's say the number is 555-1212.
They'll get you a line, put a half tap on your line. On the frame they put
a special box they can dial from their security room in San Francisco.

"The phone line up there [in San Francisco] is carrying a conver-
sation on the line. They place a DNR up there [a dial number re-
corder, a simple device that prints out all the numbers dialed from a
phone]. But nothing prevents them from listening to your calls."

It's sort of like John Dillinger giving a lecture on bank security.

"It's scary. If Pac Bell wants to, if they believe you're up to no
good, say you subscribe to 2600 [a phone hacker 'zine], they can
monitor your line. Wiretap your line! And Pac Bell doesn't need a
court order."

This sounds implausible, but Mitnick rattles off the federal stat-
ute. He's memorized this, too, just like the numerous phone numbers
he's recited within the last hour.