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McClellan: WH wanted him to stay silent
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-29 23:20 Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan, speaking out for the first time since publication of his searing memoir, told NBC's "Today" show on Thursday that he erroneously believed what President Bush was saying about the war but now is answering a higher loyalty: "a loyalty to the truth."
"The White House would prefer that I not talk openly about my experiences," he said in a lengthy, at time combative interview with anchor Meredith Vieira. "These words didn't come to me easy. … I'm disappointed that things didn't turn out the way we all hoped they would." He added: "I have a higher loyalty than my loyalty necessary to my past work. That's a loyalty to the truth." A White House official replied: "No one at the White House ever told McClellan not to talk about his experiences." McClellan said he "believed" what Bush was saying about the war - and the president did, too. "I trusted the president's foreign policy team and I believed the president when he talked about the grave and gathering danger from Iraq," McClellan said. "I believe he believed it was a grave danger, too. He convinced himself of that. When the administration was talking about Iraq, it was talked about as a problem that needed to be addressed. After Sept. 11, it was talked about as a grave danger. You get caught up in the White House bubble, you get caught up in the affection for the man you're serving and defer." Asked if he'll ever talk to the president again, McClellan said: "I don't know. I certainly don't expect it any time soon. I know this is a tough book for some people to accept." McClellan's book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception,"has provoked a furious counterattack from his former colleagues, who call it "sad,""puzzling"and "pathetic." McClellan accused Vice President Cheney of failing his boss. "In a number of ways, he has not served the president well,"McClellan said. "Part of it is the secrecy and compartmentalization … in the White House." And McClellan said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, when she was White House national security adviser, gave in too often to Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "I felt that too often she was too accommodating … of the other strong personalities on the foreign policy team … and too deferential to those individuals,"he said. Former presidential counselor Dan Bartlett, following McClellan on "Today,"said McClellan had used "very inflammatory words"like "propaganda,"with "not a lot of evidence." "He never communicated to us that he had these personal misgivings,"Bartlett said. "There's not a lot of specific evidence about the most explosive charges." Bartlett said the book is "fundamentally wrong"and says he would not personally have participated in a propaganda effort. |
