Once in office, Clinton had sacrificed many of his old friends, and the media had carped about this duplicity his entire first term. What if someone within the ranks had sold the Clintons out with half-truths to get revenge? "George Stephanopoulos called me and asked me if I wrote it," political strategist Paula Begala recalls. "He was serious. That's how out of control it was."

While Stephanopoulos reportedly enjoyed the precision with which the character Henry Burton's relationship with Stanton mirrored his own with Clinton, some lay citizens cringed at their unwanted celebrity. Librarian Daria Carter-Clarke filed a $100 million-plus lawsuit against Klein and Random House in December 1996 for defamation of character: In the first chapter of Primary Colors, Stanton is briefed on an adult literacy program by a leggy Harlem librarian during a campaign stop. That night, the two tryst. In real life, on November 23, 1991, Klein was traveling with Clinton when the candidate praised an adult literacy program in Harlem run by the leggy Carter-Clark. The two didn't have sex, but because of the novel, she claims people think they did.

Interestingly, Klein was upset with Clinton that day. After the candidate's speech, Klein angrily told him there would be more of such programs if it weren't for the public employee unions that Clinton supported. That led to a shouting match between Klein and Clinton aide Harold Ickes. With Primary Colors, Klein seemed to have gotten the last word. "The architecture of the novel was as accurate as the writer could make it," rails Begala, who is now counselor to the president. "He had Carville's quirks and idiosyncracies down, and other people loosely based on their real-life counterparts. Within that architecture, he drops big, fat, fundamental lies. The book was sold because it suggested that it told a larger truth, and because the author hid his identity so as to suggest that someone who actually knew these people, and knew them well, had written it. The whole thing was savage."