Almost from the moment of Chandra Levy's disappearance, the Levy family got assistance from the Sund/Carrington Foundation, an organization founded in memory of Carole Sund, Julie Sund and Silvina Pelosso, who were abducted in March 1999. The group helps gain publicity for the families and loved ones of missing persons; it helped organize the Levys' first trip to Washington in May and helped them garner a splash of media attention with early appearances on "Good Morning America," Fox News and other nationally televised programs.

While it's easy to question the motives of families willing to expose themselves to the media glare in moments of anguish or embarrassment, that's a difficult attitude to sustain toward the Levys, since in the unique circumstances of a missing persons investigation every ounce of publicity increases the chance that someone, somewhere may find out about the case and provide a clue that solves the mystery of what happened to their daughter. Time, after all, is of the essence.

But since the middle of June, the public relations orchestration of the case has grown apace -- both in scope and organization. Soon after the Levys hired Washington attorney Billy Martin (who once represented Monica Lewinsky's mother and became one of Monica's closest legal advisors), Martin hired the marquee D.C. public relations firm Porter Novelli to organize the Levy family's public campaign to find their daughter. That was on June 18. Since then, the main strategy has been to muscle Gary Condit into admitting to an affair with Levy with an escalating campaign of leaks to the press.

As any savvy public relations operation would do, the Levy team at Porter Novelli hasn't released all its juicy tidbits at once. It's doled them out day by day, slowly ratcheting up the pressure on Condit, and ensuring that the media won't lose its taste for the story.

"Ever since [the Levy family] worked with the Sund/Carrington Foundation," says CNN national correspondent Bob Franken, who's been covering the story, "it's been highly coordinated. Now they've got a media savvy lawyer, Billy Martin. And a media savvy public relations firm, Porter Novelli. They're actively promoting the idea that this story deserves a special kind of attention. And it's a newspaper strategy. They go right to the papers of record, knowing that television will follow."

Franken points to the press coverage of Linda Zamsky as a particular Porter-Novelli coup. Zamsky, Chandra Levy's aunt, gave a July 6 interview with the Washington Post that copiously detailed Chandra's relationship with Rep. Condit. It was likely the final straw that forced Condit to 'fess up to D.C. police about the affair last Friday night.

Reporters covering the case had actually been talking to Zamsky for weeks. In fact, you had probably already heard of her. Zamsky was the unidentified source -- described as a Levy relative, but not one of her parents -- whose conversations with Chandra about the affair the media had been reporting on for weeks. But Zamsky only went on the record when the Levy team decided it was time to lower the boom, thus making Condit's continued denials all but impossible.

It also was no accident that Zamsky gave her story to a print outlet rather than a TV network. As Franken notes, the Levy team at Porter Novelli has largely been pursuing a print strategy. But there was more to it in this particular instance. The Levy P.R. team decided that Zamsky might not come off very well in the unpredictable conditions of a TV interview, according to several sources close to the situation. So they made sure she spoke to the print press only and let the TV networks make do with stock footage of her tending her garden.

"Some people are not as ready for TV as others," says CNN's Franken, and Zamsky was considered "not as TV ready."

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