Computer Picks Anonymous Author -- `Primary Colors' Writing Style Matched With Newsweek Reporter

The anonymity of Anonymous suffered a blow yesterday with disclosure of a computer analysis that indicated the author of the No. 1 fiction best-seller "Primary Colors" is Newsweek writer Joe Klein.

The claim, to be published in the issue of New York Magazine going on sale Monday, was developed by Donald Foster, the Vassar College professor of English who recently set the authoritative Modern Language Association on its ear by identifying a previously obscure elegy as the work of William Shakespeare.

In a message on his office answering service, Klein denied that he had written the book and said the magazine had "hired the wrong expert and the wrong computer."

Klein, a Newsweek columnist and CBS commentator who formerly wrote for New York magazine, said the book may have been written by "someone who has read my column or has seen me on television."

To those seeking the author, he added, "Good hunting."

Meanwhile, next week's edition of Newsweek speculated that the author is Luciano Siracusano, a former speechwriter for New York ex-Gov. Mario Cuomo. Siracusano resigned last month as a speechwriter for Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros.

Newsweek quoted Siracusano as saying, "I haven't confirmed it and I haven't denied it, but I am interested in having the book sell."

Foster came up with Klein's name by performing computer cross-correlations of the novel's text with hundreds of thousands of words from other writings by Klein and more than a dozen others who have been mentioned as possible authors of the novel about the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign.

The data led Foster to conclude: "Joe Klein wrote this book, or else it's an almost impossibly clever hoax by someone who wanted his work to be taken for Joe Klein's."

"Primary Colors" is a fast-moving novel in the voice of a narrator who is the candidate's press secretary. It is mainly delivered in dialogue, much of it vulgar, cruel, colorful and disdainful of decencies and ethics.

Foster, in his work for New York Magazine, wrote that "while no single word or group of words establishes Klein's authorship, the profile of his active vocabulary forms a matrix closely matching that of Anonymous."