Rick Perry Fell for a Prank Call, but He Is Not the First

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/rick-perry-prank-call-ukraine.html

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Earlier this month, Energy Secretary Rick Perry spoke by phone for more than 20 minutes with a man he thought was Volodymyr Groysman, the prime minister of Ukraine. They talked about coal exports and sanctions against Russia, the Paris climate accord and a Russian natural gas project. By all accounts, the tone of the conversation was positive.

The only problem was that Mr. Perry was not actually talking with the prime minister of Ukraine.

Like several other politicians and public figures before him, Mr. Perry, whose department manages the United States’ nuclear program, had been duped by international pranksters. In this case, it was Vladimir Krasnov and Alexei Stolyarov, a pair of comedians known as the Jerky Boys of Russia.

It all made for a snicker-worthy story when the audio was posted online. But Mr. Perry was not alone in falling for a high-profile prank call. Here are a few other victims.

On Nov. 1, 2008, just a few days before Barack Obama defeated Senator John McCain in the presidential election, Sarah Palin, Mr. McCain’s running mate, received a call from a Canadian comedian posing as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.

Ms. Palin, then the governor of Alaska, spoke at length with the prankster, Marc-Antoine Audette, one half of a pair known as the Masked Avengers. She said that she and Mr. Sarkozy “could have a lot of fun” hunting together, and promised to “be a careful shot” after Mr. Audette brought up then Vice President Dick Cheney’s accidental shooting of a friend in 2006, which happened on a hunting trip. Mr. Audette even got her to weigh in on the appearance of Mr. Sarkozy’s wife, Carla, a former model who he said was “so good in bed.”

Ms. Palin responded: “You know, I look forward to working with you and getting to meet you personally, and your beautiful wife. Oh my goodness, you’ve added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours.”

A spokeswoman for Ms. Palin, Tracey Schmitt, said in a statement afterward: “Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy and other celebrities, in being targeted by these pranksters. C’est la vie.”

Mr. Audette was less gracious. “I wanted to see how she was on an intellectual level,” he told the Canadian Press news agency. “You can see that she’s, well, not really brilliant.”

In an episode reminiscent of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War, a man posing as Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee of India called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan in late November 2008 and declared that India was preparing to retaliate against Pakistan for that month’s devastating terrorist attack in Mumbai. In response, Mr. Zardari put the Pakistani military on full alert, bringing two nuclear-armed nations to the brink of war.

“I had made no such telephone call,” Mr. Mukherjee said in a statement later. “It is, however, worrying that a neighboring state might even consider acting on the basis of such a hoax call, try to give it credibility with other states, and confuse the public by releasing the story in part.”

A flurry of calls in the ensuing days — including from the American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice — revealed that the call had been a hoax, averting what could have been an international catastrophe.

A Buffalo-based blogger and satirist named Ian Murphy got a scoop in February 2011 when he called Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and identified himself as David H. Koch, the billionaire Republican activist.

At the time, Democrats in the State Legislature were fighting a push by Mr. Walker and his Republican colleagues to eliminate collective bargaining rights for public workers. In a last-ditch effort, Democratic senators left Wisconsin, denying Republicans a quorum. In the phone call with Mr. Murphy, the governor suggested that he might lure the legislators back on false pretenses, promising to sit down and “listen to what they have to say if they will in turn, but I’ll only do it if all 14 of them will come back and sit down in the State Assembly.”

“If they’re actually in session for that day, and they take a recess, the 19 Senate Republicans could then go into action and they’d have quorum because it’s turned out that way,” Mr. Walker said. “If you heard I was going to talk to them, that’s the only reason why.”

In a statement, Mr. Walker’s office said the call “shows that the governor says the same thing in private as he does in public, and the lengths that others will go to disrupt the civil debate Wisconsin is having.”

In at least one case, a celebrity-related prank call took a tragic turn.

In December 2012, Jacintha Saldanha, a nurse at King Edward VII’s Hospital in London, took a phone call that she believed was from Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles. Asked about the Duchess of Cambridge, who was being treated for severe morning sickness, Ms. Saldanha divulged medical details, including that the duchess had been given intravenous fluids and was no longer vomiting. As it turned out, she was actually speaking to Mel Greig and Michael Christian, a pair of Australian radio hosts. The news of the call rocketed around the world, and Ms. Saldanha, a mother of two, killed herself less than a week later.

“At the moment in time, with that voice, I couldn’t even think of anything else. It’s all my fault,” she wrote in an email to a co-worker the day after the call. In a suicide note, she said: “I hold the radio Australians Mel Greig and Michael Christian responsible for this act. Please make them pay my mortgage. I am sorry.”

Ms. Greig and Mr. Christian apologized for the prank, saying they had never expected their call — which featured exaggerated accents and a remark about “those bloody corgis” — to be taken seriously. “We are shattered,” they said.