Full Exposure: PR King Spins News for Cash To Brit Tabloids

Clifford started out in the early 1960s with EMI, the British recording company that handled the Beatles, and later joined a small firm that handled the Bee Gees, Tom Jones and Cream. Eventually he went out on his own, serving as British representative for Frank Sinatra and a host of other musical acts and movie stars, as well as corporate clients.

Part of his job, he says, was keeping big-name stars, many of them Americans, out of the press while they engaged in extramarital affairs, recreational drug use and other risky business. "I was a gamekeeper long before I became a poacher," he says.

That began to change in the late 1980s, he says, when he was approached by a friend who was about to be exposed by the News of the World for supplying female escorts to movie stars and politicians. Clifford contacted the newspaper and steered it toward a juicier story -- that a House of Commons researcher named Pamella Bordes was selling her favors to prominent politicians and media celebrities. When Bordes eventually sold her story to the press, Clifford got the credit, even though he says Bordes was never his client.

"People started to phone me up," he says. "There was a trickle, then a steady flow. And then in the last five, six, seven years a flood of people started coming forward with everything under the sun."

Cash is crucial, he says. The British tabloids are willing to pay good money for genuine scoops. No one seems to worry whether checkbook journalism taints the sources of information.

"The News of the World makes no secret of the fact that we pay," says Neville Thurlbeck, one of the tabloid's ace scandal-busters. "We've done it for 160 years."

"Somewhere along the line someone always gets paid, and we pay more than anyone else," he says.

David Beckham, who gets paid an awful lot to play soccer, is handsome, chiseled and soft-spoken, a man of golden locks, a mischievous smile and few words. He has transcended athletic stardom to become one of Europe's biggest heartthrobs. A best-seller has appeared under his name and he has appeared in countless commercials. On display at the National Portrait Gallery here there's even a 107-minute videotape of him sleeping.

In the world of celebrity, fame often equates with virtue -- and Beckham's fans have assumed he is faithful to his wife of five years, Victoria, who was once Posh of the Spice Girls, a short-lived pop music phenomenon. They have two small children and an entourage of security guards, nannies, publicity agents and luggage bearers.

When Beckham abandoned local favorites Manchester United for Real Madrid, he broke millions of British hearts. He set up shop in Spain, but Posh and the kids remained behind while she attempted to revive her music career. Rumors of infidelity quickly followed, and soon Neville Thurlbeck was on the case.

He says he began pursuing the story last September after he saw photos of Beckham and Loos, who was assigned to look after Beckham by his sports management firm, exchanging warm glances at a Madrid nightspot. "We took a photo that clearly indicated a level of intimacy that perhaps went beyond what one would expect of an employer and employee," he says.

Thurlbeck says he spoke to many friends of both parties and got eyewitness accounts of their growing intimacy. But he needed more. "When you are exposing someone like David Beckham for marital infidelity, there are huge repercussions on us as journalists if we get our facts wrong," he says. "We went on until the jigsaw was absolutely complete."

What he eventually got were sexually explicit text messages sent from Beckham's cell phone to Loos's, as well as similar messages the soccer idol had sent to a previous alleged mistress, Sarah Marbeck. "In effect we had a telephonic signed confession," says Thurlbeck.

He insists he did not approach Loos until early April, just two days before publication, for fear she might go to a rival tabloid and spoil his scoop.