Former White House press secretary Scott McLellan's memoirs have leaked, and he has blasted his former employer's handling of the Iraq war.
The other current and former minions of Dubya have fought back.
The cries of betrayal from former aides served as a stern warning to other potential turncoats that, despite some well-publicized cracks, the Bush inner circle remains tight. Their language was so similar that the collective reaction amounted to a big inside-the-Beltway echo chamber.
All seemed to take their cues from Dana Perino, the current press secretary. Ms. Perino used the words “sad” and “puzzled” to describe the White House response, as if Mr. McClellan had undergone some kind of emotional breakdown, while making the case that if Mr. McClellan had problems with Mr. Bush he should have raised them while in the president’s employ.
And all seemed to suggest that maybe Mr. McClellan had been hijacked by liberal New York book editors who prodded him to turn out a memoir that did not reflect his own beliefs.
“This does not sound like Scott; it really doesn’t,” Mr. Rove said on Fox News Channel.
“You’ve heard the way Scott briefed — it doesn’t sound like him,” Mr. Fleischer said. He said he could not wait to hear Mr. McClellan talk about the book on television, “to see if there’s a written Scott and an oral Scott.”
I would note that Dubya didn't exactly appear to welcome dissent. Most people who disagreed with him found themselves elsewhere is fairly short order. But here's McLellan speaking for himself:
Responding to criticism that he did not voice his objections when he was in the White House, Mr. McClellan said that he was swayed at the time by his affection for the president and respect for the president’s policy team. “I gave them the benefit of the doubt, like a lot of Americans,” he said. Mr. McClellan said he later concluded that “things went terribly off course” in Iraq after he left what he termed “the White House bubble,” where outside views often were not considered.
Also speaking Thursday morning on “Today,” Dan Bartlett, a former counselor to the president, sought to minimize Mr. McClellan’s participation in events leading up to the Iraq war, noting that during that time he was deputy press secretary for domestic affairs. He said that Mr. McClellan’s assertion in his new book that intelligence was shaded to justify the war “is wrong.”
Mr. McClellan responded that, as deputy press secretary at the time, he often filled in as press secretary and he participated in meetings leading up to the war.