Stone-cold hatchet man

Roger Stone is waiting to become Barack Obama's worst nightmare. He is a political consultant who cut his teeth working for Ronald Reagan and has since become the face of American political thuggery. He is the go-to guy when all else fails and only the real dirt can save the day.

It is an almost invisible face these days. A candidate, he says, must have a "cut-out" so that the really nasty stuff destroys the opposition without blow-back.

He awaits the call on behalf of Republican John McCain. His advice: "The only way he can beat Obama is by running a slash-and-burn campaign." He offered some pointers to the New Yorker magazine: "Obama and his wife are elitists and weak. They don't share middle-class values. Middle-class Americans are proud of their country and they are not. He thinks he's going to sit down with Iran and Hamas: how do you know he's not going to sit down with a suicide bomber? All he's going to do is raise taxes."

Stone, 56, was born in New York, half-Hungarian and half-Italian. He has moved to Miami for a year-round tan and hardball politics with an old-fashioned anti-Communist streak. He works out as a bodybuilder, drinks vodka martinis, has more than 100 suits and sports a tattoo of Richard Nixon's scowling face between his shoulder blades. Richard Nixon, not Ronnie Reagan, is his political hero because he understood the politics of hate and division. "Hate is a stronger motivator than love," he says.

This belief inspired the campaign which destroyed the Democrat Michael Dukakis to give the White House to the first George Bush in 1988, and remains the yardstick for dirty politics. Stone attacked Dukakis for putting dangerous criminals back on the streets with a liberal prisoner furlough programme as Governor of Massachusetts. Stone's colleague Lee Atwater added the photograph of Willie Horton, a rapist who murdered while on parole and looked like a caricature of a scary black man. The campaign was won.

Stone played a role in the Florida recount that cost Al Gore the 2000 election. Bush consigliere James Baker called him in when things looked bad for Dubya. Stone thought the Cubans in Miami were the best bet because if he got them riled up enough they would scare the Florida political establishment into ruling for Bush. He took out radio adverts denouncing the recount as a "left-wing power grab by Gore in the same way as Castro did it in Cuba". The recount was passed to the Supreme Court like a hot potato.

His penchant for "swinging" brought him down while he was working for Bob Dole against Bill Clinton in 1996. The National Inquirer tabloid caught him advertising for partners as "Hot insatiable lady and her handsome body-builder husband, experienced swingers, seek similar couples..." He has since been considered too "toxic" for official contracts.

But he still gets results. Stone found the prostitute who brought down New York Governor Eliot Spitzer while chatting at the bar of a swingers' club called Miami Velvet. He carefully noted the details: Spitzer's penchant for doing it in his socks but without a condom. One sock kept falling down. The FBI had their witness.

Barack Obama - you have been warned. ·