SOURCE: Hanson, Christopher. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Klein.” Columbia Journalism Review 35, no. 3 (September–October 1996): 47–50.

In the following essay, Hanson addresses Klein's duplicity surrounding the publication of Primary Colors, asserting it reflects “a kind of Jekyll-and-Hyde quality in the news business as a whole.”

As Olympians were scoring gold last summer, Newsweek columnist Joe Klein was reaching for a medal of his own—as The Kindest, Warmest, Most Considerate, Reliable, and Blameless Journalist Ever to Falsely Deny Authorship of a ＄6 Million Book. It was a rather audacious bid. The Washington Post had just confirmed suspicions that he was the famously faceless Anonymous, author of Primary Colors, a roman-à-clef skewering the Clintons. (The paper had discovered Klein's telltale handwriting on an original manuscript.) The scorps, as Klein calls reporters in the novel, were in a biting mood because of Klein's brazen, on-the-record denials of authorship in such major news...