Drawn into the story

Newsweek editors say her research methods make them too queasy to cover Kitty Kelley and her new tell-all tome “The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty.” On the “Today” show, the president’s ex-sister-in-law disavows one of the book’s most sensational statements -- that George W. Bush used cocaine at Camp David while his father was president. Even CNN’s Larry King, who dotes on controversy and scandal, rejected her as a guest on his show.

Hurricane Kitty has struck again.

Kelley, the 62-year-old doyenne of muckraking bestsellers on luminaries such as the British royal family, the Reagans, Frank Sinatra and Jackie Onassis, hits bookstores today with a 634-page, indexed and annotated mix of stories describing the Bushes as a power-obsessed, substance abuse-riddled, tasteless family with a Mafia-like ability to protect secrets.

“I see this as a tale of two families -- the public image that they’ve [the Bush family] constructed over 40 years and the private realities,” Kelley said in a phone interview Monday from New York. “I’ve connected the dots to give you a more realistic picture.”

Whether that picture is realistic or illusory, there’s no doubt that Kelley herself becomes part of the story whenever she writes. What attracts readers and rankles critics is Kelley’s knack for blending celebrity journalism and gossip with the appearance of scholarly history. “Kitty Kelley has the art of the innuendo down fairly cold,” says Jim Kelly, managing editor of Time magazine.

Among the not necessarily new allegations contained in “The Family”:

* George W. and one of his brothers snorted cocaine at Camp David while their father was in office, a time that would have been years after the current president has said he quit drinking.

* George W.’s disappearance from the Texas Air National Guard in 1972 coincides with the Guard instituting random drug tests, including nasal swabs.

* First Lady Laura Bush sold marijuana as a student in the ‘60s at Southern Methodist University.

* The Bushes are so controlling of their public image they airbrushed divorcees and mentally handicapped relatives from their family tree. Before a family portrait at her son Neil’s wedding, Barbara Bush told his new wife, Sharon, “I’m sorry, we don’t want you in this picture.”

Naturally, there are those -- many named Bush -- who strongly disagree. A White House spokesman has said the book “appears to be the same trash that was discredited, disavowed or dismissed years ago.” Administration officials called NBC officials last week apparently to discuss Kelley’s three-part interview with Matt Lauer on “Today” that opened Monday with sparks flying over the cocaine allegations.

On the show, Sharon Bush, the ex-wife of Neil, the president’s younger brother, denied having told Kelley that George W. and one of his brothers snorted cocaine at Camp David. Kelley, however, contends that Sharon confirmed family secrets in front of a third party during her divorce when Sharon thought she was being disowned by the family. A second source had made the original allegation, says Kelley’s publisher, Doubleday.

The controversy makes for good TV, says Kelley’s publicist David Drake. Already, “The Family” ranks No. 2 on Amazon.com and No. 6 on Barnes&Noble.com.;

The initial printing has been increased from 600,000 to 722,500.

Controversy abounds

“The FAMILY” isn’t the first of Kelley’s unauthorized biographies to make headlines before publication. Sinatra filed, and then dropped, a lawsuit to stop her from publishing the 1986 “His Way: The Unauthorized Biography of Frank Sinatra,” which included sensational tidbits about Sinatra’s cruelty to lovers and his mother’s abortion practice. Editors at the New York Times published, then later publicly regretted, allegations contained in the 1991 “Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography” suggesting among other things that the first lady carried on an affair with Sinatra.

Time magazine’s Kelly credits Kelley with being “a tireless researcher, a tireless interviewer. She vacuums up every possible item about a person’s life and then presents it in a fairly brisk, gossipy style. She seems to come from the school of thought that if anyone says anything about anybody, it’s worth reporting.”

But there are problems with that method.

“It’s very difficult for the reader to come away knowing what is undeniably true and what is gossip and what is simple speculation,” he notes. Time’s 1991 cover story “Nancy Reagan: Is She Really That Bad?” concluded she wasn’t that bad, he says.

The Nancy Reagan book “made folks gun-shy about how to do these stories without looking like they’re retailing the allegations,” Kelly says.

Like the Monica Lewinsky story, the sensational allegations in “The Family” make up the sort of story in which legitimate news outlets all want to be second, says Robert Lichter, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Media and Public Affairs. At the same time, “Everybody hopes the allegations stand up enough to keep the subject in play. There is a certain hypocrisy at play,” he says.

“People leave it up to the [book] publisher to vet these things. The publishers only vet allegations to protect themselves from lawsuits, not to discover the truth.”

Kelly has not read “The Family,” and says Time will wait to assess the book’s effect and then decide how to cover it.

Newsweek managing editor Jon Meacham would not comment on the issue. Earlier, Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker told reporters his magazine passed on the chance to do a story based on an advance copy of the book because “we weren’t comfortable with a lot of the reporting.”

No regrets

In the eye of the storm, Kelley is calm, amiable and sarcastic.

“Oh please,” she says about criticism of her work by others in the media. “They’re not comfortable? They’re not comfortable alienating their access,” she says, implying the reporters are bowing to White House pressure. Kelley says King’s producer told her “it’s important for him to keep these friendships.”

As for Sharon Bush, “she’s scared, very scared,” Kelley says. The Bushes are a family with a “large, long reach,” she says.

Kelley, a registered Democrat who lives in Washington, D.C., says she has no problem with her book coming out in the final weeks before the election. “The public does have a right to know who they’re putting into office,” she says.

“We need to know who he is, his character, how he makes his decisions.”

In four years of research, Kelley says she found a pattern of “missing files, redacted files, mysterious fires, SEC files gone.” She says the George Bush Presidential Library stopped responding to her requests; that it took two years and a lawyer to shake loose a Freedom of Information Act request about James Smith Bush, a black-sheep relative who died 25 years ago.

When allegations of his past drug use surfaced in the 2000 campaign, Bush remarked, “Enough is enough when it comes to trying to dig up people’s backgrounds in politics.” He admitted making mistakes when he was “young and irresponsible” -- a line repeated teasingly by his twin daughters during the Republican National Convention.

“He’s right, in one sense,” Kelley says. “But not for a book like this. History is history.

“The U.S. president works for us. In that sense, he is the hired help of the country. He’s put himself out for our vote. I don’t think anything should be off limits for a president.”

Especially this week. CBS News’ “60 Minutes” is defending its own story about Bush’s Texas National Guard service against charges of forged documents. In addition to “Today,” Kelley is scheduled to appear on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” and the syndicated entertainment news show “Extra.”

“By the end of the week, this will be one big dirty snowball,” Time’s Kelly predicts.

“Like all dirty snowballs, a lot will melt away, and even will elicit some sympathy for the Bush family.”

The climate has changed in the 13 years since Kelley’s book about Nancy Reagan, Kelly says. “We’re so much more deeply immersed in the culture of wild allegations and gossip” that the book may barely cause a ripple.

In any case, like Nancy Reagan and the British royal family, the Bushes can handle her unauthorized tales, Kelley says. She’s sure she will eat lunch in Washington again. “I look forward to it,” she says.

*

Times staff writer Robin Abcarian contributed to this story.