Bush backers deluge former aide Scott McClellan with scorn

WASHINGTON — Scott McClellan was the ultimate Bush loyalist. He was hired by then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in 1999, helped him reach the White House in 2000 and defended him for six years on such issues as the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina.

But McClellan's new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," prompted a fierce counterattack Wednesday from some of his oldest colleagues, who accused the former White House press secretary of disloyalty and questioned his credibility.

McClellan alleges that the Bush administration waged a "political propaganda campaign" in favor of an "unnecessary" Iraq war and bungled the response to the storm that devastated the Gulf Coast. He writes that he retains great admiration for Bush but portrays the president as stubborn and isolated.

McClellan also drops a personal bombshell, recounting a phone conversation between Bush and a supporter in which, he says, he overheard the president address "ridiculous campaign rumors" about charges of cocaine use. "We had some pretty wild parties back in the day," McClellan writes, recounting Bush's words, "and I just don't remember."

Dana Perino, the current White House press secretary, said Bush was "surprised" by McClellan's assertions. "He is puzzled, and he doesn't recognize this as the Scott McClellan that he hired and confided in and worked with for so many years," Perino said, adding that the president was "disappointed that if he had these concerns and these thoughts, he never came to him or anyone else on the staff."

Break with tradition

Martha Kumar, a Towson University expert on presidential communications, said she could not recall a previous White House press secretary making such policy-based criticisms of a president.

"Generally, there is a tacit understanding that when you leave you don't make a lot of waves," she said.

Kumar said one thing is clear: "He has burned a lot of bridges, ones that he has used through his lifetime."

To that end, several former Bush aides took to the airwaves Wednesday to blast McClellan and his book — already No. 1 on Amazon.com's best-seller list.

"For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional," Fran Townsend, former head of the White House's counterterrorism office, told CNN.

Former top Bush aide Karl Rove compared McClellan to a "left-wing blogger."

"If he had these moral qualms," Rove told Fox News Channel, "he should have spoken up about them."

Two former Bush aides who preceded McClellan in criticizing the president offered support. Richard Clarke, a former counterterrorism adviser who published a 2004 book critical of the administration, told CNN he received the same treatment from former associates.

"I can show you the tire tracks," he said. (Ironically, as press secretary, McClellan targeted Clarke: "Why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?" McClellan said then.)

In Austin, Texas, Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for Bush's 2004 re-election campaign and a former longtime political adviser to Bush, was similarly rebuked by other aides last year when he criticized the president's Iraq policy and leadership.

"[McClellan's] learned what's happened when you tell the truth," Dowd said. "All kinds of people he's worked with for years and years have turned on him." Dowd's advice: "Stick with his guns. This is about his integrity; just stick with it. The loudest voices are probably going to be ones of anger, but other voices will be kinder."

When Dowd went public with his Bush criticism, then-White House counselor Dan Bartlett said Dowd, who had endured some family travails, was on a "long personal journey ... in his private life."

On Wednesday, Bartlett said the McClellan book seems like an "out-of-body experience."

Bartlett also said McClellan has turned on Bush and others who defended him "when a lot of people said he wasn't good at his job." He added that McClellan now offers credence to long-standing criticism from the left about Bush.

On the campaign trail, John McCain, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, was asked if he believed that Bush used propaganda or deception regarding the Iraq war. "I have no information on that fact. I am glad for one that Saddam Hussein is no longer there," McCain said, referring to the former Iraqi president. He declined to comment on other assertions in the book.

Democratic front-runner Barack Obama's campaign, meanwhile, cited McClellan's report as one more reason to ask: "Do we continue George Bush's failed policy in Iraq or do we change it?"

Several former Bush administration officials have written tell-all accounts. But none was as close to Bush or his inner circle as McClellan, 40, an amiable Texan known for his cautious demeanor. He started out in politics by managing several state election campaigns in the 1990s for his mother, who became Texas comptroller, and was recruited to the governor's mansion by Bush confidante Karen Hughes.

Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary before McClellan took over in 2003, said he first met McClellan in 1999 when the two worked on Bush's presidential campaign.

"That's one of the reasons this book comes as such a shock," Fleischer said. "It comes from the last person that anyone would have thought would have said these things or written these things. ... All you can do is scratch your head when you see how far he's turned."

McClellan's mother, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a former Austin mayor who ran for governor in 2006 under the slogan "One Tough Grandma," defended her son: "Scott felt a real responsibility to tell the truth." She described her son as "an intellectually honest kid" who wanted to tell people where things "went off track, so we can make it better for the future."

McClellan declined to comment, but is scheduled to appear this morning on NBC-TV's "Today" program. He also will be a guest on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" and liberal commentator Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" show on MSNBC this week, to be followed by a book tour starting next Wednesday in New York.

McClellan suggests in his preface that he expected a negative reaction: "My friends and former colleagues who lived and worked or are still living and working inside that bubble may not be happy with the perspective I present here."

Fingering Rove, Libby

If he was "disgruntled," McClellan makes clear, it was about how Rove and vice-presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby misled him — and apparently Bush — when they said they were not involved in leaking a CIA operative's name. Libby and Rove later acknowledged they had spoken to reporters about Valerie Plame, the wife of Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador who was highly critical of Bush's claim that Saddam was seeking materials for weapons of mass destruction.

For months, McClellan — after receiving assurances from Rove and Libby — insisted neither was involved. In the book, he wrote that then-chief of staff Andrew Card instructed him to say Libby was not involved, just as he said Rove had not been.

McClellan said Card told him that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney "want you to give the press the same assurances for Scooter that you gave for Karl."

"President Bush would not have deliberately misled me," McClellan wrote. "While I wish I could say the same about the vice president, I simply don't know for sure."

McClellan wrote that he spoke with Libby by phone and received his assurance that he had not been involved. McClellan also suggests that Rove and Libby may have met improperly to discuss the case. Perino and other officials sharply criticized that assertion Wednesday.

In March 2007, Libby was convicted of lying to and obstructing federal prosecutors investigating the case. Bush commuted the prison sentence. McClellan wrote that he was "disappointed" by that decision.

Compiled from The Washington Post, Cox News Service, The New York Times, The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today.