Misadventures on K Street: My Decade with the Architects of Modern Political Scandal

Summary

A former Washington lobbyist tells all.

Misadventures on K Street recounts Riva Levinson’s decade embedded with high-powered Washington lobbyists—Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly—from its rise in 1985 to its shuttering a decade later. At twenty-four years old, Riva was the lone woman in the room at a firm that operated as a privatized, rogue Department of State. While her partners pulled the strings from their offices on the Potomac, Riva was on the front lines, facing real-world danger. Courageous and fiercely loyal, she fought relentlessly for her firm and her clients—only to be ultimately betrayed.

Riva’s narration moves from the boardrooms and back channels of D.C. to the proxy wars of the Reagan era, offering readers an insider’s look at a world few Americans have ever seen. She discloses, with original archival detail, the campaigns for controversial clients (UNITA/Savimbi; Kashmiri activists; Somalia’s president), and recounts her dangerous foreign missions (Angola, South Africa, Somalia, Pakistan, Indian-occupied Kashmir, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka), ethical compromises, and a political theater that reshaped US foreign policy. Personal arcs intertwine—the pride and shame of her family history, a near-reckless restlessness, sexual harassment, abandonment, love, and motherhood—illustrating how ambition and idealism clashed with scandals, personal danger, and betrayal.

Levinson exposes the world of privatized influence, covert operations, and the human fallout of high-stakes geopolitics, probing accountability and survival amid power, deep-seated corruption, and historical consequence, with lasting international ramifications today. As one of the few survivors of the era she witnessed, Riva uses her book to bring back to life the friends and colleagues whose stories—and lives—were cut short.