Anonymous is a New York area author and journalist who has assisted word-stuck C.E.O.’s and other top executives at several companies, including Citigroup. 

There have been times when I’d be sitting in a silent, cavernous, wood-paneled office or in a gilded corporate aerie designed by a starchitect, listening intently to a sonorous, self-confident voice describe a company’s brilliant strategy—or at least a strategy that could plausibly be described as intelligent—and I’d have a Jay McInerney Bright Lights, Big City moment. As I’d nod my head and peck notes on my laptop, I would type, “You are not the kind of writer who does gigs like these.”

But of course I am.

It’s possible you might recognize my byline. It’s somewhat less likely that you have one of my books on your shelves. But it’s very likely that you’ve heard my words spoken from the mouths of others. Yes, I’ve been a speechwriter and ghostwriter for some of America’s top corporate jocks: C.E.O.’s and very senior executives at very large companies, among them a well-known billionaire and a current central banker. The engagements have involved editing remarks as well as writing speeches, testimony, and even a memoir. Don’t expect me to name names, though—including my own. The speechwriter’s creed (and the legal documents he signs) guarantees confidentiality.

But my experience—and some of the experiences shared by other members of this tight-lipped fraternity—has given me a brief peek behind the velvet ropes.

Since chiefs and chairmen are used to having so much of their life handled by others, they’re not self-conscious about discussing personal details in front of people who are essentially strangers. And scribes frequently have to try to write remarkably personal material without much to go on. “In a recent speech, I had to write about the importance of faith to the guy’s marriage and about the first movie he and his wife went to,” reports a colleague, who had few clues regarding the chief executive’s theological views. How did it turn out? “They used what I wrote, no questions asked.”

Humor, frequently a staple of executive speeches, can also be tricky. Mark Katz, founder of the Sound Bite Institute, a one-stop shop for speechwriting and humor, was hired to do a video for Alan Greenspan’s 75th birthday, in 2001. Katz was going to interview former president Gerald Ford and thought it would be fun to do a bit with Ford talking about how the infamous Whip Inflation Now buttons constituted Greenspan’s major contribution to his economic policy. The effort to highlight Ford’s pathetic attempt to combat the economic malaise that gripped his brief presidential term never got off the ground. “Twenty years later, Ford was still not ready to do a joke about the WIN button,” says Katz, whose clients have included President Clinton and top executives at companies such as Walt Disney and Deutsche Bank.