Tuesday, November 20, 2007
McClellan’s tell-all implicates Bush in Plame scandal
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan will publish a memoir in April titled “What Happened.” In an excerpt posted by his publisher, McClellan implicates “the President himself” in the Valerie Plame scandal:
McClellan, who orchestrated the White House’s stonewalling of the investigation into the leak, later said he was lied to by those directly involved.“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
“There was one problem. It was not true.
“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”
