Criticism[edit]
Klein has been criticized for his biography of Hillary Clinton, titled,
The Truth About Hillary: What She Knew, When She Knew It, and How Far She'll Go to Become President, which was released on June 21, 2005.
Politico criticized the book for "serious factual errors, truncated and distorted quotes and overall themes [that] don't gibe with any other serious accounts of Clinton's life."
[9] The book was attacked not only by liberals, but by a neoconservative as well.
John Podhoretz wrote in the
New York Post, "Thirty pages into it, I wanted to take a shower. Sixty pages into it, I wanted to be decontaminated. And 200 pages into it, I wanted someone to drive stakes through my eyes so I wouldn't have to suffer through another word."
[10] In
National Review James Geraghty wrote, “Folks, there are plenty of arguments against Hillary Clinton, her policies, her views, her proposals, and her philosophies. This stuff ain’t it. Nobody on the right, left, or center ought to stoop to this level.”
[11]
Kathryn Jean Lopez of
National Review asked Klein in a June 20, 2005 interview, "Why on earth would you put such a terrible story in your book...that looks to be flimsily sourced at that?," regarding his suggestion that
Chelsea Clinton was conceived in an act of marital
rape.
[12] Facing criticism from both the left and right for making the claim, Klein eventually backed away from the insinuation in an interview with radio host
Jim Bohannon on June 23, 2005
[13]
The British newspaper
The Guardian pointed out a number of verifiable factual errors in Klein's 2014 book
Blood Feud.
[14]
Questions of credibility of sources in work[edit]
Klein has also come under fire for his use of anonymous quotes, purported to be from the subjects of his books, which he claims he received from anonymous insiders. The credibility of such quotes has been questioned by writers such as
Joe Conason,
[15] Salon's Simon Malloy
[16] and conservative commentators
Rush Limbaugh[17] and
Peggy Noonan.
[18] "Some of the quotes strike me as odd, in the sense that I don't know people who speak this way," Limbaugh said of Klein's work, describing the sources as "grade school chatter."
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