> we were based primarily out of Cambridge because of our close partnership
> with the university. This was a total falsehood, made up on the fly. But
> for Nix, truth was whatever he deemed true in the moment. As soon as he'd
> said we had a Cambridge office, he started referring to it all the time,
> urging Bannon to stop by.
>
> "Alexander, we don't have a Cambridge office," I said, exasperated with his
> insanity. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
>
> "Oh, yes we do, it's just not open at the moment," he said.
>
> A couple of days before Bannon's next visit to the U.K., Nix had the London
> office staff set up a fake office in Cambridge, complete with rented
> furniture and computers. On the day Bannon was scheduled to arrive, he said,
> "Okay, everyone, we're working out of our Cambridge office today!" And we
> all packed up to go out there and work. Nix also hired a handful of temps
> and several scantily clad young women to staff the would-be office for
> Bannon's visit.
>
> The whole thing felt ludicrous. Gettleson and I messaged each other, sharing
> links about Potemkin villages, the fake Russian towns set up in old tsarist
> Russia to woo Catherine the Great when she visited in 1783. We christened
> the office the Potemkin Site and made relentless fun of Nix for coming up
> with such a stupid idea. But when I walked around the fake office with
> Bannon, two months after I first met him in a Cambridge hotel, I could see
> the light in his eyes. He was buying it and loving every moment of it.
> Fortunately, he never noticed that some of the computers weren't actually
> plugged in or that some of the hired girls didn't speak English.
>
> Nix set up the Potemkin Site every time Bannon came to town. Bannon never
> caught on that it was fake. Or if he did, he didn't mind. It fit the
> vision. And when it came time to name the new entity the Mercers were
> funding, Bannon chose Cambridge Analytica--because that was where we were
> based, he said. So Cambridge Analytica's first target was Bannon himself.
> The Potemkin Site perfectly encapsulated the heart and soul of Cambridge
> Analytica, which perfected the art of showing people what they want to see,
> whether real or not, to mold their behavior--a strategy that was so
> effective, even a man like Steve Bannon could be fooled by someone like
> Alexander Nix.
