Simple Scotty Squeals

Exclusive: McClellan whacks Bush, White House By: Mike Allen May 27, 2008 09:34 PM EST

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence. Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95): • 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.

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There is more, more, more at Politico

Hat tip to Mike Malloy for coming up with the sobriquet of "Simple Scotty"