Julia-
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this; I'm assuming Dan has given you a sense of what's going on, but Gregg and I wanted to make sure things played out as we expected before talking to you about this.
We just had a huge weekend that we feel will be perfect for the first chapter - which was originally going to be the January 28th FBI raids and aftermath and then changed to the evening they watch the first Scientology protests unfold live via video (the latter is what's discussed in the most recent TOC/overview you have). By Saturday, though, it started to look like this last weekend would work far better as a first chapter, such that the Scientology evening should be moved back up towards the middle of the book.
So here's what we're thinking now. First chapter starts with Gregg waking up at home; it's over two years since he somehow found himself somewhere towards the center of all this crazy Anon stuff. He's got more press inquiries in his e-mail box this morning than usual - a lot more. Turns out that a couple of Anon's hackers had managed to sit in on a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard in which they discuss their ongoing investigation of Anonymous. That recording has been leaked this morning, and the press is all over it, law enforcement is embarrassed, even a couple of their cases are now compromised. Gregg knows he's going to have to go on TV at least once today and, yep, there's the request to appear on The Situation Room right there.
He keeps going over his e-mail; by this time, he's also checking in with the internet relay chat networks where Anon does a lot of its business, and he's getting info from his contacts on what else is happening - and what may be about to happen. Turns out that Puckett & Faraj, the major military law firm that defended the Marine who admitted involvement in the Haditha massacre, has been entirely hacked by a couple of hackers with whom Gregg has an ambiguous working relationship - website defaced, all e-mails downloaded and about to be leaked to the public. The implications of this gradually unfold throughout the chapter.
As Gregg works behind the scenes to ensure that things go as smoothly as possible while also juggling additional live TV appearances, more goes down. On Friday alone, the Boston PD and several law enforcement bodies in Texas and West Virginia have their sites taken down and their info leaked; one Anon team publishes names, phone numbers, and e-mail accounts and passwords for every local police branch in West Virginia. The Syrian regime is hacked as well, with another Anon team revealing internal communications by Assad's people in which they discuss their public relations strategy vis a vis western news outlets (this comes a few days after the massacre of hundreds of anti-Assad protesters). This itself brings to mind the work Anonymous has done in the Middle East since January 2011, when Tunisian Anons called on the rest of the movement to help bring attention to local protests that would in turn lead to unrest and reform in a dozen other countries across the region. It also reminds Gregg of the Stratfor hack two months previously, in which 5.2 million e-mails were obtained; Stratfor had previously been downplaying the propensity of the Assad regime to engage in massacres.
By the end of the weekend, several more national and local government bodies have been hit in various ways. Even just the initial research into the Haditha law firm e-mails has revealed that former Congressman and 2008 GOP presidential candidate Duncan Hunter and current Congressman Allen West worked behind the scenes with the law firm to try to make the case disappear entirely with help from the second in command at the USMC; the documents in question are provided to inquiring journalists at NYT, Rolling Stone, and Atlantic. This might not have come to light were it not for the fact that hackers in this case retained access to the firm's e-mail server even after defacing the website and downloading existing e-mails; thus it is that when the firm's principals e-mail Allen West to warn him that their past communications are compromised, this becomes instantly know to those of Gregg's associates who pulled off the hack, and thus shortly thereafter to Gregg, who orders a further investigation and begins privately briefing reporters on the issue. Meanwhile, he realizes that his weekend is shot; he's going to have to speak to other contacts in government and various NGOs as well; some of them will come to him with concerns, others with requests for specific information.
To the reader, he notes that, although the last two years have been full of activity, this didn't use to be a typical weekend for him, or for Anonymous; things are accelerating, it seems. And how things got to this point... well, let's take a step back, to childhood. The next chapter, which you already have in the form of a draft, comes next.
This first chapter - which will be short compared to the others - accomplishes several things. It gives the reader a sense of what Anonymous has become, even if the reader still doesn't know exactly what it is and how it got to be that way. It gives the reader a sense of what it's like to be Gregg. It conveys to the reader that Anonymous has been involved in countless incidents with countless enemies - although there is a pattern to this, and the overall struggle may indeed be understood. The reader is inundated with all of these connections, with quick references to complicated conflicts, in order to best convey why it is that Anonymous is among the most important dynamics in play right now by virtue of its own actions and, moreso, by virtue of what it means for the near future at large. Past this first chapter, the book constructs all this, more or less from the beginning, and in such a way as to initiate the reader into something that is otherwise incomprehensible not just from the outside, but often from the inside as well.
Incidentally, the rest of the chapters are in the same order as previously noted. Now that Gregg and I have had a few more discussions and I've had a chance to integrate the entirety of the interviews I did with him into the other chapters, I can provide that TOC for you. Please let me know if Dan's idea on format still works and I'll finish it up for you today.
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Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302