Crime and Publishing

Mark Singer's inquiry into the denial of a prisoner's rights began as a relatively straightforward magazine story. But as he dug deeper, his project became a morass of deceptions and ethical dilemmas worthy of Dostoyevsky.

by Yvonne Abraham

Part 4

The discovery of Kimberlin's deception transformed the research and writing process for Singer. The book veered away from Malcolm's paradigm, becoming the story of a subject who, rather than playing the credulous widow to the journalist's charming young man, tries to out-charm him. "In our folie à deux," he writes in Citizen K, "there would be no credulous widow, only two ostensibly charming young men." He shifted his focus from the tale to the teller, determined to do what he'd done with so many of his articles: to catch a personality in print. "At a certain point, I realized it was a much better story than I set out to do," Singer says. "Once I realized what he'd done, I admired his gifts all the more."

He gave Kimberlin no hint of his revised objectives, and decided not to confront him with findings that contradicted his stories. He would play Kimberlin's game. "He had set the original terms, and I was leveling the playing field," he writes. "Truth necessitated a kind of counterdeception. Any frontal challenge to Kimberlin, I knew, would provoke only defensive hostility." Without that counterdeception, Singer reasoned, his work would "implode."

He had no contractual obligation to Kimberlin: they'd already agreed that the subject would have no control or veto over the finished product, an agreement Kimberlin had entered into gladly, without consulting his lawyers. "I assumed he assumed he could always stay several steps ahead of me," Singer writes. And later, "As long as I remained in character -- a talented amateur, never quite able to see into the heart of the game -- we could keep the rally going."

And the writer felt no personal obligation to his subject. There were no Joe McGinniss-style letters of outraged anguish at the injustice of Kimberlin's incarceration. "I certainly didn't feel any guilt," Singer says. "I didn't do anything wrong. I had to get the truth. Brett Kimberlin wasn't interested in me at all. I was money in his pocket. I was his meal ticket -- I understood that. I never assumed we were friends."

Nevertheless, Singer's relationship with Kimberlin is more like the emotionally charged and ethically troubling one described by Janet Malcolm than he seems to realize. In the afterword to The Journalist and the Murderer, she qualifies her famous thesis about the reporter's secretly predatory nature:

The fact that the subject may be trying to manipulate the journalist -- and none but the most otherworldly of subjects is above at least some manipulativeness -- does not offset the journalist's own sins against the libertarian spirit.

While Malcolm may not have allowed for someone as intent on making a charming young man of himself as Kimberlin, her point is pertinent -- the journalist, after all, is the one who gets to write the book.

Part 5

Yvonne Abraham can be reached at yabraham[a]phx.com.