started out as a Page Six item. I remember the salacious headline vividly:
“MODELS ATOP A PORNO PARLOR.”
The gossip item told the heartwarming tale of a millionaire entrepreneur from Miami, known as the Phone-Sex King, who had come to New York to open up a combination modeling agency/porn website. What’s not to like about this story? I thought to myself between chuckles. I immediately clipped the item from the
New York Post
and pinned it to the wall
.
The pitch was money: Johnny Casablancas meets Larry Flynt with a gritty Elmore Leonard vibe. The fact that a hustler from South Beach was hawking this rather unorthodox business model around town wasn’t that interesting to me. Far more intriguing was that Mr. Itzler had evidently managed to wrangle a top photographer as a business partner and was taking meetings with some of the key players within the fashion industry. I reread the item: fashion models, online sex, a gorgeous SoHo loft where all of this seductive commerce was to take place. Something didn’t smell right This is a good thing. As any journalist will tell you, the best stories are the ones that smell slightly gamy at the start. This one was still fresh and already it was stinking up the town like a runny wedge of Limburger. That’s when I decided to do the story
.
Jason Itzler didn’t disappoint. He is a flimflam man from the old school: charismatic, earnest, and always working a new scam. There’s no telling how far he would have gone if he had decided to peddle, say, California real estate instead of desperate girls and ecstasy tablets. Groupies will be pleased to know that Mr. Itzler was released from the New Jersey State Correctional System in January 2003 after serving seventeen months and one week of a five-year stretch. Collection agencies, cuckolds, and IRS agents can reach the former Phone-Sex King through the New Jersey Parole Board. He is currently looking for venture capital funds and is available for interviews
.
THE COUNTERTERRORIST
LAWRENCE WRIGHT
T he legend of John P. O’Neill, who lost his life at the World Trade Center on September 11, begins with a story by Richard A. Clarke, the national coordinator for counterterrorism in the White House from the first Bush administration until last year. On a Sunday morning in February 1995, Clarke went to his office to review intelligence cables that had come in over the weekend. One of the cables reported that Ramzi Yousef, the suspected mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing, two years earlier, had been spotted in Pakistan. Clarke immediately called the FBI. A man whose voice was unfamiliar to him answered the phone. “O’Neill,” he growled.
“Who are you?” Clarke said.
“I’m John O’Neill,” the man replied. “Who the hell are you?”
O’Neill had just been appointed chief of the FBI’s counterterrorism section, in Washington. He was 42 years old, and had been transferred from the bureau’s Chicago office. After driving all night, he had gone directly to headquarters that Sunday morning without dropping off his bags. When he heard Clarke’s report about Yousef, O’Neill entered the FBI’s Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC) and telephoned Thomas Pickard, the head of the bureau’s National Security Division in New York. Pickard then called Mary Jo White, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, who had indicted Yousef in the bombing case.
One of O’Neill’s new responsibilities was to put together a teamto bring the suspect home. It was composed of agents who were working on the case, a State Department representative, a medical doctor, a hostage-rescue team, and a fingerprint expert whose job was to make sure that the suspect was in fact Ramzi Yousef. Under ordinary circumstances, the host country would be asked to detain the suspect until extradition paperwork had been signed and the FBI could place the man in custody. There was no time for that. Yousef was
“MODELS ATOP A PORNO PARLOR.”
The gossip item told the heartwarming tale of a millionaire entrepreneur from Miami, known as the Phone-Sex King, who had come to New York to open up a combination modeling agency/porn website. What’s not to like about this story? I thought to myself between chuckles. I immediately clipped the item from the
New York Post
and pinned it to the wall
.
The pitch was money: Johnny Casablancas meets Larry Flynt with a gritty Elmore Leonard vibe. The fact that a hustler from South Beach was hawking this rather unorthodox business model around town wasn’t that interesting to me. Far more intriguing was that Mr. Itzler had evidently managed to wrangle a top photographer as a business partner and was taking meetings with some of the key players within the fashion industry. I reread the item: fashion models, online sex, a gorgeous SoHo loft where all of this seductive commerce was to take place. Something didn’t smell right This is a good thing. As any journalist will tell you, the best stories are the ones that smell slightly gamy at the start. This one was still fresh and already it was stinking up the town like a runny wedge of Limburger. That’s when I decided to do the story
.
Jason Itzler didn’t disappoint. He is a flimflam man from the old school: charismatic, earnest, and always working a new scam. There’s no telling how far he would have gone if he had decided to peddle, say, California real estate instead of desperate girls and ecstasy tablets. Groupies will be pleased to know that Mr. Itzler was released from the New Jersey State Correctional System in January 2003 after serving seventeen months and one week of a five-year stretch. Collection agencies, cuckolds, and IRS agents can reach the former Phone-Sex King through the New Jersey Parole Board. He is currently looking for venture capital funds and is available for interviews
.
THE COUNTERTERRORIST
LAWRENCE WRIGHT
T he legend of John P. O’Neill, who lost his life at the World Trade Center on September 11, begins with a story by Richard A. Clarke, the national coordinator for counterterrorism in the White House from the first Bush administration until last year. On a Sunday morning in February 1995, Clarke went to his office to review intelligence cables that had come in over the weekend. One of the cables reported that Ramzi Yousef, the suspected mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing, two years earlier, had been spotted in Pakistan. Clarke immediately called the FBI. A man whose voice was unfamiliar to him answered the phone. “O’Neill,” he growled.
“Who are you?” Clarke said.
“I’m John O’Neill,” the man replied. “Who the hell are you?”
O’Neill had just been appointed chief of the FBI’s counterterrorism section, in Washington. He was 42 years old, and had been transferred from the bureau’s Chicago office. After driving all night, he had gone directly to headquarters that Sunday morning without dropping off his bags. When he heard Clarke’s report about Yousef, O’Neill entered the FBI’s Strategic Information Operations Center (SIOC) and telephoned Thomas Pickard, the head of the bureau’s National Security Division in New York. Pickard then called Mary Jo White, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, who had indicted Yousef in the bombing case.
One of O’Neill’s new responsibilities was to put together a teamto bring the suspect home. It was composed of agents who were working on the case, a State Department representative, a medical doctor, a hostage-rescue team, and a fingerprint expert whose job was to make sure that the suspect was in fact Ramzi Yousef. Under ordinary circumstances, the host country would be asked to detain the suspect until extradition paperwork had been signed and the FBI could place the man in custody. There was no time for that. Yousef was
Similar Books
