Everybody is talking about this tiny excerpt from Scott McClellan's upcoming book. Let's consider the three paragraphs and what they say -- and do not say.

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. So 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 senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. 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.

First, let's note that this tells us absolutely nothing that we did not know 24 hours ago, namely that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove were sources -- after Plame was outed by Richard Armitage -- of information about the lying Plame/Wilson couple.

What's more, we already knew that Bush, Cheney, and Andrew Card were involved in formulating a response to questions. So again, nothing new here.

And, of course, all five of those individuals were involved in formulating the responses to questions about the disclosure of information -- but we already knew that, too.

The question, left unanswered by the excerpt, is that of who knew what and when. Nothing in the excerpt comes close to answering that question. There is no claim that the President knew that what he said to McClellan was not correct. There is no claim that the President was attempting to mislead McClellan rather than having been misled by others.

Interestingly enough, we do have evidence that McClellan is NOT accusing the President of intentionally misleading him -- courtesy of Larry King and CNN.

KING: Scott, were you lied to?

MCCLELLAN: Well, Larry, I 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. As you heard me say in that clip, I said that those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. I did speak directly with them and I was careful about the way I phrased it at the time, even though I believed what they had told me to be the truth.

The excerpt from the book gives no indication that McClellan has changed his position since giving that interview in March. If one therefore interprets the excerpt consistent with what McClellan said in that interview, then it is just telling us that George W. Bush was misled by others, and that he directed his press secretary to pass on information that he believed to be true. That shouldn't surprise anyone.

In other words, this is excerpt is a big nothing-burger -- but one which the talking heads will try to use to generate lots of hot air during the slow news period between now and the Monday after Thanksgiving.

UPDATE: Told you so!

A 151-word excerpt from the memoir of Scott McClellan, chief spokesman to President Bush in 2006, was not meant to be as tantalizing as it sounded, according to the publisher of the book.

After a day of wide coverage and swift reactions on the Web, the publisher, Peter Osnos of PublicAffairs, told MSNBC that Mr. McClellan “did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him” about two senior aides’ roles in leaking the identity of Valeria Plame Wilson, a C.I.A. operative, to the conservative columnist Robert Novak and others in 2003.

How does that square with the book excerpt, where Mr. McClellan wrote that “the President himself” was “involved” in his offering false information to the press about the leak? Mr. Osnos offered an explanation to Bloomberg News:

“He told him something that wasn’t true, but the president didn’t know it wasn’t true,'’ Osnos said in a telephone interview. “The president told him what he thought to be the case.'’

When we wrote about this yesterday, that was clearly one of the possible outcomes, although one that will disappoint opponents of the president who were hoping for him to be directly tied to one of the biggest scandals of his administration.

“Sorry, suckers,” Greg Sargent wrote at The Horse’s Mouth, “It looks like McClellan will actually exonerate Bush for his role in Plamegate.”

In other words, as I said to begin with, these it is all a nothing-burger with a side order of hot air.

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Posted by: Greg at 05:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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