^"The Greatest Vendetta on Earth". Salon.com. August 30, 2001. Archived from the original on May 14, 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-04. On a gloomy Veterans Day in 1998, Janice Pottker answered an unexpected knock on the door of her home in Potomac, Md., a woodsy, upscale suburb of Washington. Standing there was a man she'd never seen before, a private detective who introduced himself as Tim Tieff. He told Pottker, a freelance writer married to a senior government official, that he had a discreet message from Charles F. Smith, a former top executive with Feld Entertainment, owner of the Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circuses, Disney Shows on Ice, and other subsidiaries that make it the largest live entertainment company in the world.
^Leiby, Richard. "Send In The Clowns". Washington Post. Retrieved 2008-08-04. The tale begins on a summer day 15 years ago when CEO Kenneth Feld opened his copy of Regardie's, a slick magazine that covered the Washington business scene. He turned to Page 44 and began reading a lengthy article about himself. It was written by Pottker, a freelancer who had once interviewed him for a book about corporate heirs. Headlined "The Family Circus," the piece began flatteringly enough, portraying Feld as a hands-on executive committed to providing quality entertainment.