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Even if the end product were more balanced and authoritative, Kelley's reporting techniques would raise serious ethical problems. Many supposed sources for the book have denied ever having spoken with Kelley. In many cases interviews for the book were done by researchers working for Kelley but hiding that fact. Others who admit they talked with Kelley were startled to see the way their remarks were embellished and given more weight than they deserved. Gene Nelson, the former actor and dancer who lived with Maureen Reagan for three years, is quoted at length, talking about Nancy's estrangement from her stepdaughter. Nelson remembers being interviewed by Kelley but calls her a "master of embroidery." One of her techniques: "She sets up some of my 'quotes' with 'Nancy told me . . .' But Nancy rarely told me anything directly."
A reporter at People, assigned to ensure the correctness of the facts in a 1988 story by Kelley about Judith Exner and John F. Kennedy, said working with the author was "an absolute nightmare. Kitty did not care about accuracy." Others have said the same thing, but lawyers have found it difficult to nail her on libel grounds. No libel suit, for example, was ever brought over her sensational biography of Sinatra in which she described the singer as a boor who ate ham and eggs off the chest of a prostitute and slammed a woman through a plate-glass window. Says a former Sinatra lawyer: "She has read all the defamation cases very carefully and operates right on the edge."
For all the denials and disclaimers that have greeted the Nancy Reagan book, a number of insiders contend that the overall portrait is surprisingly accurate. Though Patti Davis denied one of Kelley's major allegations -- that Davis had several abortions -- she remarked that "Kitty got a lot of things right, from what I have heard." A former Nancy Reagan aide, after reading the passages in which he was involved, expressed surprise at their accuracy: "I must admit I have more respect for ((Kelley)) now." Jody Jacobs, a former editor for Women's Wear Daily and the Los Angeles Times who is quoted several times in the book, called Kelley a thorough and conscientious reporter and the book "a realistic picture of Nancy."
To be sure, disputes over quotes, anecdotes and interpretations are to be expected when a biography takes a strong point of view on a controversial figure. The question is whether Kelley has done the essential job of the biographer: to weigh all the evidence responsibly, place it in some kind of perspective and attempt to reach a psychological understanding of the subject. And that Kelley certainly has not done. "She will quote anybody who says anything against Nancy Reagan," said historian Garry Wills, author of Reagan's America: The Innocents at Home. "She doesn't put Nancy's actions in context, so you can't tell what's important from what's unimportant. She offers no framework of understanding." Commented Robert Caro, who has written two volumes of a biography of Lyndon Johnson: "A biography is not merely the recording and regurgitating of interviews. It's important to try to assess the impact of someone's life on political and social history."