NEW YORK - The author of a book aimed at hurting a potential White House run by Sen.Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Tuesday she would be a "dangerous" president as critics slammed his reporting as flawed muckraking.
Edward Klein's "The Truth About Hillary," published on Tuesday by Penguin's conservative Sentinel imprint, portrays Clinton as a ruthless and ambitious woman who will stop at nothing to become president like her husband.
"I didn't go into this book ... with an agenda," Klein said, citing his 40 years as an "independent" journalist at places such as The New York Times' magazine and Newsweek.
Nevertheless, he told Reuters in an interview, "I do not want to see her become president of the United States. I think that would be a dangerous thing; to have another darkly paranoid president like Richard Nixon, who has an enemies list and is inclined to do illegal things."
Sen. Clinton's spokesman Philippe Reines said, "This is a book full of blatant and vicious fabrications contrived by someone who writes trash for cash."
While Sen. Clinton has not said if she will run for the White House, she is widely seen as a leading contender for the Democratic nomination in 2008. She has been credited with adopting a moderate stance on issues such as the war inIraq in a bid to make her a more attractive national candidate.
"I don't think we need another eight years of the Clintons," Klein said.
Bill Clinton's 1993-2001 presidency was dogged by sex scandals, prompting his wife to complain in 1998 of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" after news broke of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. That scandal led to his impeachment.
Ridiculing her as "The Big Girl," Klein's book offers a 305-page personal assault, asserting without obvious sourcing that she is a cheater, a liar and a back stabber, a late sleeper, and that's only in the first few pages.
The book garnered much pre-publication media coverage because of myriad salacious claims about the Clintons' sex life -- claims many news outlets chose not to report directly.
Some conservatives hope the book will hurt Clinton as much as "Unfit for Command" damaged Sen.John Kerry's prospects. That book questioned Kerry's Vietnam war service during last year's campaign againstPresident Bush and was credited with distracting the Democrat from policy issues.
But early reviews suggested otherwise.
"This book ... will not, as has been hoped or feared, do for any Clinton presidential campaign what 'Unfit for Command' did for the Kerry one," Publishers Weekly wrote.
"This clip and paste job ... is unlikely to change a single mind, let alone vote," the magazine's review added.
David Brock, a journalist who built a career digging up dirt on Bill Clinton's personal life before reinventing himself as a liberal media commentator, wrote an open letter to Penguin calling the book "an obviously false and defamatory tract."
With a print run of 350,000, the book will likely be prominently displayed in most U.S. book stores. It was No. 5 on Amazon.com's bestseller list by early afternoon on Tuesday.
The Washington Post questioned the veracity of Klein's reporting and sourcing.
"Sometimes the author repeats rumors and then footnotes them to a prior author who referenced the rumors" the newspaper wrote, adding that "new, corroborated news seems slight."
On the book's assertion that she knew about her husband's affair with Lewinsky two years before it was made public, the Post said, "Klein doesn't have the goods."
"Instead, he relies on one anonymous Democratic National Committee staffer, who herself doesn't seem to have firsthand or even secondhand information," the review said.
Klein disputed that as "absolutely untrue," insisting he had "several sources on that."
Publisher Adrian Zackheim of Sentinel, an imprint set up to publish conservative political views, said, "We stand 100 percent behind Ed Klein's credibility."
