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Scott McClellan Continues Book Tour–Now On Capital Hill!
Disgruntled former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan is continuing his dubious book tour today, this time on Capital Hill. McClellan is appearing today before the House Judiciary Committee to testify about claims made in his book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”
McClellan claims in his book that the Bush Administration used “propaganda” to sell the war to the American people. He also alleges that there was a cover-up of the Plame leak investigation that he only fully became aware of after leaving the administration.
Trent Duffy Says Scott McClellan Is A Damn Liar
Here’s what Trent Duffy says about Scott McClellan and his ridiculous book. Duffy worked for McClellan as Deputy Press Secretary.
· Was it the truth or a lie when you told me, during a series of personal discussions in your West Wing office in late 2005 and early 2006 (at the apex of what you now call your period of “disillusionment” and “dismay”), that you were happy in your job and proud to serve President Bush and that you had no intention of leaving soon? What about in April 2006, when rumors swirled about a change at the podium, and you again told me you wanted to stay?
· Was it the truth or a lie when you told me around Christmas that the excerpts released by your publisher were being “taken out of context” and that your book wasn’t going to be a hatchet job?
· Was it the truth or a lie when you assured your former deputies that you wanted our “full participation” in the book?
· Was it the truth or a lie when, after countless briefings, you complained that the White House press corps was too tough, unfair, over the top and didn’t get it? ….
When the first “teaser” excerpts of your book hit the press in December, my phone lighted up with calls from reporters. Before responding, I called you; you said the publisher had taken liberties, you didn’t mean to attack the president and to point reporters to your 2006 interview with Larry King as your genuine take on things. You told me that your book was still about the poisonous partisan atmosphere in Washington and didn’t breathe a hint about Iraq or Hurricane Katrina. This was long after you were outside the White House bubble, amigo.
You also assured me, when we’ve talked the past two years, that you wanted your deputies to review the book and share our thoughts. Thinking you actually meant what you said, I reached out to you two months ago to take you up on your offer. Radio silence. Why didn’t you keep your promise to me and the other professionals who gave years of their lives working for you?
It certainly looks like Scott McClellan’s version of events during his time at the White House are completely different everyone else’s.
It’s so painfully obvious that Scott and his publisher sexed up his book by adding every single liberal talking point ever uttered by a Bush-hating blogger.
The McClellan Book: A Weapon Of Mass Deception
An article in today’s Washington Post reveals startling new details about just how Scott McClellan’s book came to be.
Peter Osnos , the founder of Public Affairs, the left-wing company that published “What Happened,” described Scott’s initial book ideas as a “a not-very-interesting, typical press secretary book.”
Osnos said McClellan just needed “editorial guidance” to tell the story he wanted to tell all along. Which sounds to me like a pretty stunning admission.
Roughly translated, Osnos is saying that Scott initially turned in a boring (and likely accurate) book and those books don’t sell. So Osnos gave Scott some “editorial guidance” and together they produced the hatchet job your reading today!
To further prove my point, Osnos told the Washington Post this:
“First we had to ascertain what kind of book he wanted to write,” said Osnos, a former Washington Post reporter and editor. “We are journalists, independent-minded publishers. We weren’t interested in a book that was just a defense of the Bush administration. It had to pass our test of independence, integrity and candor.”
Yet another stunning admission from Osnos. He’s basically saying that Public Affairs wasn’t interested in publishing a defense of the Bush Administration. Scott’s book needed to pass their test of “independence, integrity, and candor.”
The “integrity, independence, and candor” Osnos refers to means that Scott’s book would have to conform to specific liberal talking points if Public Affairs was going to publish the book.
Which explains why Scott’s former boss Ari Fleisher said he was blind sided by the book. Fleisher said he kept in touch with Scott and spoke to him several times over the last year. He said Scott told him the book would be complimentary to the President, but admitted taking some shots at Rove and Libby.
Then when he saw the book he couldn’t believe what he was reading. Moreover, everyone who knows Scott says the way the book reads doesn’t sound like him at all. Bartlett, Rove, Perrino, and Fleisher all say that he doesn’t write like that and it sounds like someone else.
Clearly, Scott’s publisher took the book and did a complete overhaul on it. Nearly every accusation leveled at the administration by left-wing blogs concerning the Iraq war, Valerie Plame, and more, over the last few years is included in the book.
The final icing on the cake is the George Soros connection to all this. PublicAffairs Books is owned by Perseus Books Group. Perseus Books Group is owned by Perseus Funds Group. Perseus Funds Group has a holding company called Perseus LLC which has several joint ventures with George Soros.
Scott McClellan: Finished At 40
The more I think about Scott McClellan’s book, the more I wonder what his motives are. I’m far too cynical to believe he just wants to “do the right thing” and “come clean.” In fact, that’s the least likely motivation but one the Democrats are sure to play-up.
Whether or not the allegations in the book are true is irrelevant, it’s McClellan’s motivation for basically spitting on every person who helped him get ahead over the last 10 years that I wonder about. Scott is only 40 years old, but his book will guarantee that he never works in Washington ever again, at least not for any Republican.
I’ve actually met Scott’s mother, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a few times when she was running for Governor here in the great state of Texas. Scott got his start working for her after he graduated from college when she was running for Mayor of Austin.
So Scott’s roots in Texas politics run deep and the most powerful family in Texas is of course the Bushes. George W. Bush’s longtime friend and confidant Karen Hughes hired McClellan to be then Governor Bush’s deputy press secretary.
To make a long story short, for someone who wants a career in Republican politics, working for the Bush family is about as good as it gets. So Scott worked for Bush throughout his two terms as Governor of Texas and continued through the 2000 election.
In early 2003, President Bush appointed Scott to the prestigious post of Deputy White House Press Secretary. Later that same year he became White House Press Secretary when Ari Fleischer stepped down.
Then in April of 2006, Scott announced his resignation.
Now in 2008, Scott has apparently decided that everyone he’s ever worked for can just go to hell. He’s decided to adopt nearly every left-wing talking point word for word and throw it at the President in an election season no less.
He’s even decided to commit the ultimate betrayal and appear on Countdown With Keith Olbermann next week to tout his book.
Even if everything McClellan says in the book is true, why would a person be that disloyal? He was part of an ultra-exclusive club in which few people can ever claim membership to.
Once your “in”, the only cost for keeping your membership is simply to “dance with the one who brung you” so to speak.
Maybe I’m just overly ambitious or morally bankrupt, but if President Bush had given me my career and considered me a friend, I would never even think of betraying him like that.
One thing President Bush is known for and his family is known for is their fierce loyalty. If your a loyal “Bushie” they don’t forget that. In fact, Scott’s brother Mark is the current Medicare Director and the former food and drug administrator under President Bush.
The bottom line is that Scott McClellan is a f*cking idiot to have destroyed an otherwise bright future at the ripe old age of 40.
He’s finished in the Republican Party forever, but I guess like everyone else he’s hoping Barack Obama throws him a few bread crumbs. However, I wouldn’t count on it.
-Chris Jones
Scott McClellan Lashes Out At Bush White House In New Book
We’ve heard rumors about former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book titled, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” for some time now.
Just last November McClellan’s publisher released an excerpt from the book that seemed to implicate the Bush Administration in the Valerie Flame Plame leak case.
Just a few days after the controversy erupted that same publisher told the media that McClellan’s statements were being taken out of context and misinterpreted.
Today we learn a very different story. This according to The Politico, which managed to get a copy of the book ahead of its Sunday release.
It seems that excerpts released last year about McClellan’s book were indeed accurate after all.
Here are some of the highlights:
- McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.
- He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.
- He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”
- The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.
- McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
I’m actually pretty surprised McClellan came out with such strong allegations given his long friendship with President Bush. Some of his assertions are standard liberal talking points which is odd coming from a long time Republican.
We now know that the Plame leak originated from Richard Armitage who leaked it to Robert Novak, so that pretty much kills McClellan’s credibility on that issue.
I’m going to read the entire book before I make any judgments, but it sounds like he may be a bitter ex-White House insider with an ax to grind.
You can buy Scott’s book HERE
-Chris Jones
McClellan Publisher Deflates Tantalizing Snippet on C.I.A. Leak, Liberals Cry
Just as I suspected, the snippet released yesterday from Scott McClellan’s book turned out to be a misinterpretation. Although, clearly it was done on purpose to generate buzz and of course it worked.
From the NYT:
A 151-word excerpt from the memoir of Scott McClellan, chief spokesman to President Bush in 2006, was not meant to be as tantalizing as it sounded, according to the publisher of the book.
After a day of wide coverage and swift reactions on the Web, the publisher, Peter Osnos of PublicAffairs, told MSNBC that Mr. McClellan “did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him” about two senior aides’ roles in leaking the identity of Valeria Plame Wilson, a C.I.A. operative, to the conservative columnist Robert Novak and others in 2003.
How does that square with the book excerpt, where Mr. McClellan wrote that “the President himself” was “involved” in his offering false information to the press about the leak? Mr. Osnos offered an explanation to Bloomberg News:
“He told him something that wasn’t true, but the president didn’t know it wasn’t true,’’ Osnos said in a telephone interview. “The president told him what he thought to be the case.’’
When we wrote about this yesterday, that was clearly one of the possible outcomes, although one that will disappoint opponents of the president who were hoping for him to be directly tied to one of the biggest scandals of his administration.
“Sorry, suckers,” Greg Sargent wrote at The Horse’s Mouth, “It looks like McClellan will actually exonerate Bush for his role in Plamegate.”
What this means is that the far left still has no proof that Bush did anything wrong in this matter. We also know that Valerie Plame and her douchebag husband are both publicity whores and left-wing loons.
-Chris Jones
Ex-White House Spokesman Writes Tell-All Book
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has written a 400 page book about his time in the Bush inner circle. The book is called What Happened and it chronicles among other things the Valerie Plame leak case.
His publisher released a little taste of what you can expect in the book:
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.
Scott McClellan has been a close friend of the Bush family for around 15 years, so I have my doubts that he’s gonna drop any bombshells. It should still make for an interesting read.
-Samantha Giles
New Book Says Saddam Admitted His WMD’s Were A Bluff
A new book tells among other things the story of the FBI agent who spent seven hours a day everyday for a year with Saddam Hussein after his capture. They drank coffee, smoked cigars, and talked about everything. FBI Special Agent George Piro says Saddam even cried on their last meeting before his execution.
Saddam admitted that he bluffed the U.S. about his weapons capabilities in hopes of scaring Iran. He didn’t think the Bush Administration would actually attack him. He also told the agent outright that his plan was to wait until the UN sanctions were eventually lifted, and then reconstitute his nuclear program.
Surprisingly, Saddam never used body doubles – as was widely believed – because no one could “play” him, Piro quoted Saddam as saying.
To find out more you’ll have to read “The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack.”
-Chris Jones
Kathleen Willey suspects Clintons murdered husband
In a new book alleging a campaign of slander and intimidation orchestrated chiefly by Hillary Clinton, Kathleen Willey points a finger of suspicion at the former first couple for the death of her husband, who was believed to have killed himself.
Willey, who claims she was groped by President Clinton in the White House, acknowledged in an interview with reporters today that she stands by the speculation she poses about her husband’s demise in “Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton,” set for release later this week.
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