Mistaken identity can confer material access to powerful people

Evidence

It didn’t happen every time. But it happened frequently enough that it felt necessary to develop a self-deprecating schtick, which consisted of me apologizing for disappointing viewers who were expecting a luminous supermodel to prowl into the studio and ended up with a five-foot-six anti-capitalist author instead. On at least one occasion, this unlikely signal crossing worked to my tangible advantage. In 2004, while reporting on the U.S. invasion of Iraq, I received a cache of leaked Carlyle Group documents that seemed to show that the former secretary of state James Baker III was attempting to use his position as President George W. Bush’s envoy on Iraq’s debt to pressure the government of Kuwait into making deals with the Carlyle Group, where he was senior counselor and an equity partner with an estimated $180 million stake. Before publishing my article, I needed verification that the documents I had were real—which wasn’t coming from the Carlyle Group so could come only from the prime minister of Kuwait. Having no contacts in Kuwait, I placed a cold call to the PM’s office, left a message with a receptionist, and fully expected to hear nothing back. To my surprise, I got a call at an ungodly hour from Ahmed al-Fahad, the prime minister’s undersecretary. I lunged for a notepad and quickly got the verification I needed to publish. … Before signing off, al-Fahad made a confession. “Do you know that the only reason I returned your call was because I thought it was Naomi Campbell?” — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 444

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s core: the doubling device as analytic instrument — here confusion with a supermodel accidentally provides journalistic access, a benign precursor to the political confusion with Other Naomi. — connects to: The new enclosures privatize access to identity, as the old ones privatized land