McClellan points finger at President Bush and Karl Rove

By: Mike Allen
Nov 20, 2007 01:05 PM EST

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan names names in a caustic passage from a forthcoming memoir that accuses President Bush, Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney of being "involved" in his giving the press false information about the CIA leak case.

McClellan’s publisher released three paragraphs from the book “WHAT HAPPENED: Inside the Bush White House and What’s Wrong With Washington.”

The excerpts give no details about the alleged involvement of the president or vice president.

But McClellan lists five top officials as having allowed him inadvertently to mislead the public.

“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 seniormost aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby,” McClellan wrote.

“There was one problem. It was not true.”

McClellan then absolves himself and makes an inflammatory — and potentially lucrative for his publisher — charge.

“I had unknowingly passed along false information,” McClellan wrote.

“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."

McClellan says he was in that position because he trusted the president: "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.”

In recent conversations and in his many public speaking engagements, McClellan has made it clear he retains great affection for the president.

But White House sources have long said that Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, allowed McClellan to suggest day after day that they had no involvement in the publication of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Later testimony showed that they did, although neither was the original source of the leak.

A federal jury found Libby guilty of on perjury and obstruction charges, and Bush later commuted his 30-month sentence.

In an appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in March, the day Libby was found guilty, McClellan said Bush did not originally know about the involvement by his aides.

McClellan told King: “I spoke with those individuals, … and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. … said what I believed to be true at the time. It was also what the president believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given. Knowing what I know today, I would have never said that back then.”

Friends say McClellan was privately bitter and hurt.

He and Rove had come to Washington from Texas together.

“Scottie,” as Bush called him, had worked in the Texas governor’s office, making him one of the president’s longest serving aides.

McClellan, an Austin native, was White House press secretary from 2003 to 2006. Before that, he was traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney campaign of 2000.

When McClellan announced his resignation in April 2006, he and the president embraced during a tearful appearance on the South Lawn.

Bush said: “I thought he handled his assignment with class, integrity. ... One of these days he and I are going to be rocking on chairs in Texas, talking about the good old days and his time as the press secretary. And I can assure you I will feel the same way then that I feel now, that I can say to Scott, 'Job well done.'”

Now they’ll have even more to talk about.

The 400-page hardcover, with a price of $27.95, is set for publication April 21.

A Felon Goes Free

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby will not serve a day in prison for his felony convictions of perjury and obstruction of justice. President Bush yesterday commuted Libby's 2.5 year prison sentence, hours after an appeals court ruled that Libby could not delay serving his jail time while he appealed his convictions. Bush's commutation comes at a noteworthy time. Three years ago this week, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson published his New York Times op-ed revealing that the Bush administration had "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

For this act, which began to expose how Bush misled the nation into war, Wilson became the target of an aggressive White House smear campaign that culminated in the outing of his wife Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer. Arthur Brown, a CIA division chief who retired in 1995, described the actions taken against Plame as the "moral equivalent to exposing forward deployed military units." Yet when federal investigators tried to investigate this potential grave national security crime, they ran into a roadblock: Vice President Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald compared Libby's lying and obstruction to throwing sand in an umpire's eyes. "He's trying to figure what happened and somebody blocked their view." Now Bush, who once pledged to "return the highest standards of honor to the highest office in the land," has condoned this criminal conduct, to the cheers of leading conservative politicians and pundits around the country.

SELECTIVE COMPASSION: "I respect the jury's verdict," Bush said in a statement yesterday. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive." This explanation "only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it’s committed by common folk," the New York Times opines.

As governor of Texas, Bush infamously joked about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. ("Please don't kill me," Bush whimpered to a reporter while imitating Tucker, "his lips pursed in mock desperation.") As president, Bush has repeatedly put himself and his administration above the law, on matters from torture and warrantless domestic spying to congressional oversight and the use of signing statements. Bush's treatment of Libby's sentence is extraordinarily rare by his own standards.

"Bush has granted fewer pardons -- 113 -- than any president in the past 100 years, while denying more than 1,000 requests." In addition, Bush has "denied more than 4,000 commutation requests, and hundreds of requests for pardons and commutations are still pending."

A DEEPLY UNPOPULAR DECISION: Bush's disregard for the rule of law is not popular. A SurveyUSA instant poll found just 21 percent of Americans agree with the decision to commute Libby's prison sentence. Sixty percent said Bush "should have left the judge's prison sentence in place," and only 17 percent wanted a full pardon.

'EXCESSIVE' PUNISHMENT: Bush's claim that Libby's sentence was "excessive" doesn't hold water. As Fitzgerald pointed out yesterday, "this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country."

In this case, a federal judge appointed by Bush "considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws," Fitzgerald wrote. "It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals."

Ohio State University law professor Douglas Berman, an "expert on federal criminal sentencing policies," said Bush's excuse is "hypocritical and appalling from a president whose Justice Department is always fighting" attempts by judges and lawmakers to lower the punishment called for under federal sentencing guidelines. Berman said Bush's message amounted to, "My friend Scooter shouldn't have to serve 30 months in prison because I don't want him to."

Libby Found Guilty in CIA Leak Trial

Tuesday 06 March 2007

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Washington - Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to reporters.

Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was acquitted on just one of five charges after a trial that focused renewed attention on the Bush administration's claims of evidence about weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Libby had little reaction to the verdict. He stood expressionless as the jury left the room. His lawyer, Theodore Wells, said they were "very disappointed" with the verdict.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said he was gratified by the verdict.

"The results are actually sad," he added. "It's sad that we had a situation where a high level official person who worked in the office of the vice president obstructed justice and lied under oath. We wish that it had not happened, but it did."
White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said that President Bush "respected the jury's verdict" and said he was "saddened for Scooter Libby and his family."
Perino said there will be no more White House comment because it is an ongoing legal case. She said that Bush had watched the verdict on television in the Oval Office with White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and senior adviser Dan Bartlett.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid welcomed the jury's verdict. "It's about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics," he said.
Although Libby was the one convicted, Reid said, "his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney's role in this sordid affair. Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct."
Asked about that, Perino said, "I'm not commenting on a hypothetical situation" and added that "I'm aware of no such request."