Former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown on her ex-employee, Ed Klein:

In those days I appreciated his zesty pursuit of headline stories, even when he was totally unqualified to write them. A Klein hazard, however, was a Clouseau-like imperviousness to social temperature. I am afraid it was I who first assigned him to write a cover story about Jackie O in 1989 on the strength of his avowed friendship with the former first lady. Given her closely guarded privacy, it surprised me when Klein reported that Mrs. Onassis was "perfectly amenable" to his writing the piece. "What did she say when you called her?" I asked. "She said, 'Oh Ed, give me a break,' " he replied.

If true (and I'm doubting Ed, not Tina), that was probably one of the handful of times Klein ever spoke to Onassis. In the course of reporting for NY Mag in '03 that Jackie O had sent Klein a cease-and-desist letter to stop him from writing about her, I asked Klein to recall to the best of his ability every instance of interaction he ever had with Jackie. He didn't even make it into the double digits and a number of the interactions had occurred while he was still editor of the Times magazine, when she had a book out and there was some discussion of the magazine possibly excerpting it.

And when the line of questioning went in that direction, he was livid. He yelled. He demanded to know who assigned me the piece and threatened to call my then-editor, Caroline Miller. (I reciprocally threatened to transfer him directly.) He said nasty things about a third party completely unrelated to the story (then later called to "take it back.")

John Jr's best friend later told me that John's creepily prescient first impression of Klein was, "That guy will have three lunches with my mother and turn it into a career."