Ex-Bush Spokesman’s Book Nails White House “Propaganda”

A new book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan will be available in most bookstores on Monday, June 2. However, a few Washington, DC, shops broke the embargo, and a copy of What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception (Public Affairs, $27.95) made its way to Politico.com yesterday. Since last night, the media have been devouring its contents because Mr. McClellan finally told the truth about his former colleagues.

One is hesitant to review a book one hasn’t read (although it happens more often in publishing than most innocent readers might think), but the revealed contents are quite damning and are consistently so. It would appear that they are not taken out of context because they all tend to agree with one another.

On the war in Iraq-Nam, Mr. McClellan still believes that the president was “terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.” The evil advisor ploy has existed since at least the time of the English Civil War to explain why a divine right monarch makes mistakes. He adds that Mr. Bush “and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war.”

He also blames the “liberal media” for not doing a better job of holding the administration to account, “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq . . . . The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. . . . In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

On the Katrina disaster, he blames Karl Rove for the picture of the president flying over the drowned city of New Orleans. “Karl was convinced we needed to do it — and the president agreed. One of the worst disasters in our nation’s history became one of the biggest disasters in Bush’s presidency. Katrina and the botched federal response to it would largely come to define Bush’s second term. And the perception of this catastrophe was made worse by previous decisions President Bush had made, including, first and foremost, the failure to be open and forthright on Iraq and rushing to war with inadequate planning and preparation for its aftermath.”

His most interesting revelation has to do with the leaking of the identity of CIA operative Valeria Plame. He writes,

There is only one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss. It was in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, and it sticks vividly in my mind. . . . Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], . . . Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby. I have no idea what they discussed, but it seemed suspicious for these two, whom I had never noticed spending any one-on-one time together, to go behind closed doors and visit privately. . . . At least one of them, Rove, it was publicly known at the time, had at best misled me by not sharing relevant information, and credible rumors were spreading that the other, Libby, had done at least as much. The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. . . . I don’t know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people’s involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence.”