Fact or fiction? Kelley's tell-all on Bush family draws attention
So far, Kitty Kelley's gossipy new book about the Bush family is a publisher's and author's dream. For the White House and the Bush-Cheney campaign, it's a potential nightmare. But judging from some reaction in journalism and media circles, uneasiness about Kelley's methods and veracity have called the book into question.
Coming in the wake of "Unfit for Command," the best-selling book by the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that attacks John Kerry's Vietnam record, and the controversy over CBS News' use of documents concerning President Bush's National Guard record, Kelley's books raises the temperature in the furious debate about the character and pasts of the two presidential candidates.
Even before its release this week, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty" was ranked No. 1 on both
.com and Barnes & Noble, and publisher Doubleday (a division of the Random House empire) has gone back to press twice, printing a total of 720,000 copies. Kelley has made the TV rounds, including an appearance on NBC's "Today" show. "It's a book filled with garbage that was discredited, disavowed, and dismissed years ago," White House press spokesman Scott McClellan said last week. The New York Times reported that a White House official had tried unsuccessfully to dissuade NBC from having Kelley on "Today." Meanwhile, Sharon Bush, former sister-in-law of President Bush, vehemently denies statements attributed to her in the book about alleged cocaine use by the president.
Kelley and her publisher aren't backing off. "I'm so comfortable with it," Kelley said of the drug allegations in a telephone interview yesterday. "I know it's true. If anything was not corroborated, it didn't get in."
Added David Drake, a spokesman for Doubleday: "We absolutely stand behind Kitty's reporting on this book."
Among a steady stream of statements about the character and actions of members of the Bush family, reaching back several generations, the 634-page book alleges that President George H.W. Bush had affairs; that first lady Laura Bush used and sold marijuana while in college; and that the current president Bush used cocaine at Camp David, the presidential retreat, while his father was president from 1989 to 1993.
The book has encountered resistance from some mainstream media outlets. CNN's Larry King declined to have Kelley as a guest, and both Newsweek and Time balked at giving the book early publicity. Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker told The
Kelley quotes two unidentified men as saying that President George W. Bush used cocaine during his student days at Yale. But two months before the presidential election, the much more recent Camp David claim is potentially the most explosive. The book says: "George's sister-in-law Sharon Bush [ex-wife of the president's brother Neil] alleged that W. had snorted cocaine with one of his brothers. . . . `Not once,' she said, `but many times.' "
Sharon Bush issued a statement this week, through her lawyer, saying, "I categorically deny that I ever told Kitty Kelley that George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David or that I ever saw him use cocaine at Camp David. . . . I cannot allow this falsehood to go unchallenged." Doubleday replied with its own statement naming the time and the place of Kelley's lunch interview with Bush, citing a second interview in the presence of Kelley's editor, Peter Gethers, adding that the publisher "believes that everything [Kelley] attributes to Sharon Bush . . . is an accurate account of their discussions." A third party present at the lunch, Lou Colasuonno, told the Times that "I do not dispute" Kelley's account of the conversation. Kelley did not tape-record the conversation.
The argument over what Sharon Bush said overlooks the question of whether the allegation is true. Asked yesterday whether Sharon Bush had said she had witnessed George W. Bush snorting cocaine, Kelley said, "No. It was me who brought it up. I already had the story, but not on the record." Asked whether someone else had told her of witnessing the cocaine-snorting, she said "yes." But she would not say who. "The lawyers have the name," she said. Asked why she doesn't mention or identify the other source in the book, Kelley said: "To protect him." Of course, anonymity also protects him from other reporters.
Kelley apparently regards Sharon Bush's hearsay remark -- if she made it -- as sufficient corroboration. She also seems to take the view that the Bush family is obligated to disprove her statements. "I have challenged the family to step forward and discredit the book," she said. Kelley also cites the involvement of lawyers as a kind of corroboration. "This went through four sets of lawyers," she said.
Controversy no stranger
"The Family" is the latest in a series of controversial books by the 62-year-old writer, who started her career in the press office of 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, then became a researcher for The Washington Post's editorial page before setting out as an independent reporter. (She has never been a newspaper reporter.) She has written books on Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, the British Royal family, and Nancy Reagan.
Her books are known for startling allegations, often hotly denied by the principals, such as the 1991 suggestion in "Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography" the former first lady had had an affair with singer Frank Sinatra and had abused her daughter with a hair brush. Kelley wrote that actress Elizabeth Taylor, while married, had an abortion after becoming pregnant by Sinatra.
Kelley's book about the royal family said the queen mother had had her children by artificial insemination and suggested that Prince Edward, brother of Prince Charles, is gay. There have been lawsuits against Kelley, including one by Sinatra that tried to halt publication of her 1986 book about the singer, and another by Sinatra's lawyer, cited as a source in the Reagan book. None have succeeded. There was even a book that gave her the Kelley treatment, the 1991 "Poison Pen: The Unauthorized Biography of Kitty Kelley" by George Carpozi Jr.
Whether denied or not, Kelley's allegations are often unconfirmed by other writers, or by mainstream journalists, perhaps because she relies so heavily on unnamed sources, isn't shy about using hearsay, and apparently doesn't always take account of reporting that undercuts her thesis.
In a typical example from the Bush book, Kelley writes that Colonel Bill Burkett, a Texas National Guard officer, "is said to have been present during a speakerphone call" in 1997 between an official with then-Governor George W. Bush's office and another Texas Guard officer.
"Burkett said he overheard" the official tell the officer to "make sure there were no embarrassments" in the governor's Guard record. The two officials denied the conversation, Kelley concedes, but she cites another former Guard officer who expresses belief in Burkett's veracity. She doesn't list Burkett as an interviewee.
Burkett had made the charge, and others like it, over several years. However, his credibility has been challenged, and his statement about the overheard phone call was contradicted by other witnesses, including one interviewed and quoted by Globe reporter Michael Rezendes in a Feb. 13, 2004, story.
Despite the timing of the book, Kelley denies any political agenda, and insists she has the highest standards of truth and accuracy.
"It would be morally reprehensible not to tell the truth," she said. "I am trying to do the best, most far-reaching biography I can do. Everything I have written has stood the test of time. I follow what John F. Kennedy said, that the enemy of truth is not the lie, but the persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic myth."
David Mehegan can be reached at mehegan@globe.com.
