JEFFERSON VALLEY, NEW YORK, U.S.A., 1991 OCT 1 (NB) -- Cyberpunk
co-author Katie Hafner, in an interview with Newsbytes, has responded
to allegations of fabrication raised by Kevin Mitnick, one of the main
subjects of the book.

Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (Katie Hafner
and John Markoff; Simon & Schuster, 1991 - $22.95) devotes the first
section of the book called "Kevin: The Dark Side Hacker" to the
activities of Mitnick and his associates, Lenny DiCicco, "Susan
Thunder" and "Roscoe" (the last two names are pseudonyms; the persons
would be interviewed only under the protection of anonymity). Mitnick,
who served a prison term related to his intrusions into Digital
Equipment Corporation's systems, says in a letter to the Summer 1991
issue of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly that the section concerning him
"is 20% fabricated and libelous."

Mitnick, in the letter, suggests that the authors had motivation for
the alleged unfairness. He said  "It seems that the authors acted with
malice to cause me harm after my refusal to cooperate. Interestingly,
I did offer to participate as a factual information source if I was
compensated for my time, but the authors refused, claiming it would
taint my objectivity. So, consequently, I declined to cooperate."

Hafner confirmed that Mitnick had refused cooperation after his offer
to meet for pay was rejected but denied that his action caused any
malicious or unfair behavior. She said "I feel that the payment of
interview subjects is completely unethical and I have never been
involved in such a thing and did not intend to start then. We
mentioned in the book that Kevin had refused to cooperate but did not
reveal that he had asked for payment. Since he has not brought the
subject up, both in a call to the Tom Snyder radio show when I was on
and in the 2600 letter, I will confirm the fact that his
non-cooperation was due to our refusal to pay."

Hafner continued "Mitnick's lack of cooperation certainly did not lead
to any malice or bias directed toward him. Everything in the book is,
to the best of my knowledge, factual and we did everything possible to
insure its accuracy. We attempted to get a confirming source for
everything we were told and interviewed dozens of persons for the Dark
Hacker section alone."

'Kevin's lack of cooperation did make the job more difficult and, may
have possibly hurt him. If he had been willing to talk, he would have
had an opportunity to respond to other people's statements about him
but, even though we sent him numerous "return receipt" and overnight
letters asking him to meet with us, he refused. Two cases in point: in
the 2600 letter, he says that we described him as always eating in a
computer room while talking on the telephone to Bonnie, his future
wife. He denies this and says that I was trying to 'paint an unsavory
picture'. It was Bonnie who told us that he was always eating while he
was talking -- we didn't make it up -- and without the ability to
speak to him, we had to choose to go on."

Hafner went on: "The second example is his statement that we said that
he taunted USC's Mark Brown when, in fact, he 'never spoke with Mark
Brown'. Brown says that he has definitely spoken to Mitnick and that he
remembers the calls well and can call to mind details from them. If we
had spoken to Mitnick, he would have had a chance to dispute such
statements.

In response to Mitnick's object to the authors' changing of items that
would possibly identify DiCicco as an unemployment cheat, Hafner said
"That was my call. We tried to protect identities wherever it was
desired. Lenny asked us to change the name and we did just as we
also used public aliases for 'Roscoe' and 'Susan Thunder' at their
request. Contrary to Kevin's statement, Lenny has not been travelling
around with us promoting the book and has received no benefit from it
other than the ability to tell his story as he understands it."