Joe Klein - Later Career

Later Career

In December 1996, he joined The New Yorker to write the "Letter from Washington" column. In 2000 he published The Running Mate, a sequel of sorts to Primary Colors. In March 2002 Klein published The Natural: Bill Clinton's Misunderstood Presidency, an account of Clinton's two terms in office.

In January 2003, he joined Time to write a column called "In the Arena" on national and international affairs. It appears in Time's upfront "Notebook" section and has been criticized for its reporting about then Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic opposition to warrantless wiretapping. The column has been the source of several retractions by Time.

Klein is a regular blogger on time.com's Swampland blog. In November 2007, Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald wrote about factual errors in a Klein story about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Klein reported that the Democratic version of the FISA bill "would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court" and that it therefore "would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans." Time later published a comment: "In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't." Greenwald noted that the text of the legislation does not require court review of individual targets, and that Time's response disregards this fact. Klein's response was, "I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right."

Later, Greenwald reported that Time "refused the requests of two sitting members of Congress ... to correct Klein's false statements in Time itself". Greenwald has reported that Senator Russ Feingold has been informed by Time that his letter rebutting Klein will be published in a forthcoming issue.

In October 2012, Klein was criticized by Glenn Greenwald for revealing on MSNBC's Morning Joe program his advocacy of U.S. drone strikes resulting in the death and mutilation of young children. Klein stated that the bottom line in the end was to ask "whose 4-year-olds get killed? What we're doing is limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here will get killed by indiscriminate acts of terror."