NEWS LITE : UNMASKED WRITER CALLS HUNT SCARY.

The once-anonymous author of ``Primary Colors'' says he didn't expect his first novel to be so successful or the hunt for the writer to be so intense.

``It was a weird, unique, once-in-a-lifetime experience,'' Joe Klein said in an interview with CNBC's Tim Russert. ``I'm sure I did things wrong, but you know, the reaction to it, it was such a shock.''

Klein was a CBS news consultant and Newsweek columnist when he was unmasked a year ago as the author of ``Primary Colors,'' a fictional behind-the-scenes look at the 1992 presidential primaries.

He now writes for The New Yorker.

``I didn't expect that it was going to take off the way it did, and I didn't expect that the hunt for Anonymous was going to become this enormous thing,'' said Klein. ``It was scary and it was mind-bending. And, you know, a year later, it is amazing how little my life has changed.''

Gibson interviews self for magazine

He's thoughtful, courteous and magnanimous and not the least bit goofy. That's what Mel Gibson thinks of Mel Gibson.

The Academy Award-winning actor-director turns the table on himself in the September issue of US magazine and interviews himself.

``At a recent meeting of the Extremely Wealthy and Successful Celebrities Club (the EWSCC to those important enough to belong), the topic was the media and what could be done other than having them all stripped of their skin while we throw salt and Tabasco. The answer: We interview ourselves,'' Gibson says in the introduction.

Gibson, 41, whose latest movie is ``Conspiracy Theory'' with Julia Roberts, makes it clear what he thinks of celebrity interviews.

``For us to sit back and endure your slings and arrows, and all the while we have to keep smiling and dress nice. You try coming up with an outfit knowing Joan Rivers is waiting at the end of the line,'' Gibson writes.

Honest-to-goodness princess visits war victims in Bosnia

Princess Diana lent a sympathetic ear Saturday to mothers of children killed or maimed by land mines.

In the second day of her visit to Bosnia in a campaign to ban land mines, Diana traveled from village to village in north-central Bosnia, visiting with land-mine victims and their families along her route.

In Gracanica, 60 miles north of Sarajevo, the family of 29-year-old off-duty Bosnian army soldier Nedim Brkic, who was killed by a mine in May, awaited her visit.

``I am honored with the visit of the princess,'' said Brkic's mother, Fatima, while she waited for Diana with her son's widow, Persija. ``It means somebody is thinking about us, the little people.''

Persija, the mother of a 5-year-old son and 3-1/2-year-old daughter, said she knew little about Diana. ``I only know that the princess also has two children,'' she said.

``Oh yes,'' said Fatima, ``she knows what a mother feels.''

Diana, dressed in jeans and a white shirt, did not speak to reporters during her stops, and the actual visits with mine victims were private.

One girl, Amela, wasn't sure what was happening when police blocked traffic for Diana in the girl's hometown of Dobrnja, but exhibited a worldliness far beyond her 9 years.

``Every time cameras come to our village,'' she said, ``someone gets a prosthesis.''

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos

PHOTO (1) Princess Diana kisses Persija Brkic goodbye after visiting the young war widow and her two small children at their home in Gracanica, Bosnia.

Associated Press

(2) Meryl

(3) Hillary

(4) Bill

(5) Tom

(6) Joe Klein