Scott McClellan Hits White House in New Book

BBB, Cheney would have had to resign as well. They still should be driven out. Prosecuted.

It is absolutely a waste of time to discuss issues with a shill and that's all Tico has ever been. Please continue with your discussion, Hawkeye.

Scott McClellan as Whistleblower-- NOT!

after putting down my dog Vanilla, on Friday, I wrote an article about it, and feeling in a forgiving mood, spoke kindly about Scott McClellan. I decided to write more about it today, especially after reading right winger Peggy Noonan, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, who says,

"When I finished the book I came out not admiring Mr. McClellan or liking him but, in terms of the larger arguments, believing him. One hopes more people who work or worked within the Bush White House will address the book's themes and interpretations. What he says may be inconvenient, and it may be painful, but that's not what matters. What matters is if it's true. Let the debate on the issues commence.

What's needed now? More memoirs, more data, more information, more testimony. More serious books..."

And I got to thinking and wrote, on Friday that there was something good in what McClellan did. Some readers agreed with me. So today, after seeing him on Meet The Press, with Tim Russert, I thought I'd write a bit more about it. After a few paragraphs, in which I was moving toward calling McClellan a whistleblower-- not a clean one, but a stinky one who, nonetheless was doing some good, I decided to ask one of my whistleblowing heroes-- Sibel Edmonds. Fortunately, she straightened me out, making it clear that he made money and really didn't disclose anything new. We ended up having a half hour conversation.

Sibel told me she absolutely did NOT see him as a whistle blower, based on the entire community of whistle blowers she's involved with-- the National Security whistleblowers coalition. She told me,

"We call these people opportunists, because that's exactly what he is. "

"He is not a whistle blower. It just makes me sick to see that much coverage of this guy."

She told me that real whistleblowers don't seek book contracts because, first, the government agencies can do major editing, and second, the editors themselves do more editing based on their own agendas. She cited Ann Wright's book, Dissent: Voices of Conscience, as an example of whistleblowers telling their story without censorship, but also without making any serious money. To be a whistleblower who makes a difference, she says, you really can't go for a big contract.

-- opednews.com

Waxman wants transcript of FBI Cheney interviewNick Juliano
Published: Tuesday June 3, 2008

Publication of Scott McClellan's tell-all memoir last week has reinvigorated congressional inquiries into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Now House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman is getting in on the act, calling for Attorney General Michael Mukasey to hand over unredacted copies of FBI interviews with top White House officials, including President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Waxman's committee already has received partial transcripts of interviews with officials who were involved in disclosing Plame's identity, including I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Karl Rove and others.

"In his interview with the FBI, Mr. Libby stated that it was "possible" that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about Ambassador Wilson's wife to the press," Waxman wrote to Mukasey Tuesday. "This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter. It cannot be responsibly investigated without access to the Vice President's FBI interview."

Waxman also cited "additional questions" that were raised in McClellan's new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, regarding Cheney's involvement in the leak of Plame's identity.

"Mr. McClellan has stated that '[t]he President and Vice President directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby.' He has also asserted that 'the top White House officials who knew the truth ?- including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney ?- allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie,'" Waxman wrote. "It would be a major breach of trust if the Vice President personally directed Mr. McClellan to mislead the public."

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, whose committee also investigated the Plame matter, is mulling calling new hearings to explore McClellan's revelations. Two Judiciary Committee members already have said such hearings are needed.

McClellan, Bush's former spokesman, has faced substantial heat from his former colleagues and right wing commentators for revealing the inner workings of the Bush White House. Conservative columnist Robert Novak, who first made Plame's identity public in a July 2003 column, said McClellan got the details wrong about the Plame leak, because he glosses over the fact that former State Department official Richard Armitage was his original source for the CIA officer's identity.

Waxman said the Justice Department has no reason to withhold his requested documents now that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation has ended. Libby was the only official convicted in that probe, but President Bush summarily commuted his prison sentence.

Waxman's full letter is reprinted below: link

Will McClellan Book Change Press/White House Relations?
Will McClellan Book Change Press/White House Relations?
By Joe Strupp - E & P
Published: June 03, 2008 12:50 PM ET

A week after former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's book revealed he misled reporters, and was himself misled, those covering the president disagree over how such revelations will affect future press-spokesperson relations.

Some, such as Chicago Tribune Washington bureau chief Michael Tackett, say it will spark some closer scrutiny by both sides of how they relate to each other. "Any time something like this happens, it places a greater burden on the White House press secretary and the White House Press Corps," he said. "The former to be more truthful and the latter to be more skeptical."

Adds Tackett: "I don't think any White House press secretary in history batted 1.000 when it came to delivering the truth. You are only as good as the information you are given. That is why you should not rely on what the press secretary says, it is the difference between reporting and stenography."

Terence Hunt, an Associated Press White House correspondent since 1981, worries that such revelations might cause administration officials to withhold information from press secretaries. "This might put some more distance between the president and the press secretary," he stated. "That might be an unfortunate result of the book, if it drives a bigger wedge between them."

Hunt, who said he is still reading the book, added that "there is always tension, a suspicion between the White House and the president." But, he said, "the thing that was striking was that McClellan, the ultimate loyalist, is now on the other side. It is not the kind of book people thought he would write."

Mike Abramowitz of The Washington Post said he was disappointed to find out that McClellan did not object more strenuously when he discovered he was misled by higher-level officials. "I would like to think that if that happened in the future, the press secretary would resign," he told E&P. "It seems as if he was being a dutiful soldier."

But Abramowitz said he would not let McClellan's actions tarnish his view of future press secretaries, adding that each must be approached individually, but with clear skepticism.

"Every press secretary is different. Every press secretary starts off with a clean slate with me," Abramowitz explained, offering positive views of former spokesman Tony Snow and current press secretary Dana Perino. "They are both very aggressive defenders of their boss, but I don't think that they lied to us point blank the way McClellan did. One goes into this understanding that everything they tell you is filtered through being an aggressive defender of the president."

Mike Silva, a Chicago Tribune White House correspondent for four years, agreed: "We enter this whole proposition skeptical. That is the way we do things everyday. I don't think you can necessarily transfer Scott McClellan's situation to another press secretary, even in the same administration."

Silva also credited Perino with treating reporters fairly, adding, "the next president's press secretary will have to step up and earn respect. But you can't assume the next press secretary will mislead us just because Scott McClellan did."

Jim Gerstenzang of the Los Angeles Times, a White House reporter off and on since the Carter Administration, believed McClellan's actions were not a good thing, but not completely surprising. "I am not going to say, 'Oh my God, they misled us,'" he said. "I am not going to expect them to lie, but I will not be shocked to find out something like this happened. I don't care for it, but it is the nature of the game."

Re: Will McClellan Book Change Press/White House Relations?


This guy is a reporter?

Of course, Perino is going to put forward the lies that she's given and if these bozo haven't figured out by now that these lies have come with repeated regularity, then they are hardly reporters.

McClelland: Bush should tell all on CIA leak
Former aide: Bush should tell all on CIA leak
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer
6/20/08

WASHINGTON - A former White House spokesman told Congress on Friday that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted him to say that Cheney's chief of staff wasn't involved in the leak of a CIA operative's identity, an assertion that turned out to be false.

Scott McClellan, Bush's spokesman from 2003-2006, said he had reservations about publicly clearing the name of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff at the time. Later, Libby was convicted of obstructing the investigation of the leak of Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

McClellan told the House Judiciary Committee that he doesn't know if a crime was committed. But he had harsh words for the White House, suggesting that the administration is continuing to cover up.

"This White House promised or assured the American people that at some point when this was behind us they would talk publicly about it," he said. "And they have refused to.

"And that's why I think more than any other reason we are here today and the suspicion still remains," McClellan told the panel.

McClellan said he does not believe Bush knew about or caused the leak. When asked about Cheney, he replied: "I do not know. There's a lot of suspicion there."

Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan requested that McClellan appear to give sworn testimony about the account in his book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." The book includes McClellan's claim that he was instructed to mislead the public about the roles of Libby and former presidential adviser Karl Rove in the leak of Plame's identity and its aftermath.

The committee's ranking Republican, Lamar Smith of Texas, ridiculed the hearing as a "book-of-the-month club" that revealed nothing new. Whatever McClellan was instructed to say, Smith said, was typical work of the White House press office.

"It should be of no surprise that there was spin in the White House Press Office," said Smith. "What White House has not had a communications operation that advocates for its policies? Any recent administration that did not try to promote its priorities should be cited for dereliction of duty."

Related to but separate from his comments about the Plame case, McClellan also criticized the Bush administration for its handling of prewar intelligence in making the case for invading Iraq.

"It's public record that they were ignoring caveats and ignoring contradictory intelligence," McClellan said.

On the Plame matter, he said former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card told him that the president and vice president wanted him to publicly say that Libby was not involved in the leak.

"I was reluctant to do it," McClellan said. "I got on the phone with Scooter Libby and asked him point-blank, 'Were you involved in this in any way?' And he assured me in unequivocal terms that he was not."

McClellan also responded to comments by his former colleagues who castigated him for writing a book about his experiences before Bush had left office.

Rather than discuss the substance of the book, former and current Bush aides "sought to turn it into a game of 'gotcha,' misrepresenting what I wrote and seeking to discredit me though inaccurate personal attacks," McClellan said.

He also suggested that Bush could do much to redeem his credibility if he would embrace "openness and candor and then constantly strive to build trust across the aisle."

Libby was convicted of perjury, obstruction and lying to the FBI in its investigation of the leak.

Last July, Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence, sparing him from serving any prison time. "It was special treatment," McClellan said of the commutation.

Plame maintains the White House quietly outed her to reporters as retribution for criticism from her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, of Bush's reasons for going to war in Iraq.

It turned out that both Libby and Rove had discussed Plame's identity with reporters. Libby resigned from office the day he was indicted on charges of covering up the leak. Rove remained, eventually leaving office in August 2007. Rove has never been charged in the case.

The White House had said in 2003 that anyone who leaked classified information in the case would be dismissed. Bush reiterated that promise in June 2004.

By July 2005, Bush qualified his position, saying he would fire anyone for leaking classified information if that person had "committed a crime."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/22/books/review/Heilbrunn-t.html