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.” Louis J Sheehan
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