McClellan stands by barnburner book

Keith Olbermann Anchor, 'Countdown' • Profile

In a Countdown exclusive, former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan talks to Keith Olbermann about the allegations in his book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and the Washington Culture of Deception." McClellan writes that while sincere in his defenses the administration as press secretary, he has "since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided."

Below is a transcript.

KEITH OLBERMANN, HOST: The book by former White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, perhaps the most extraordinary collection of revelations about a sitting president since John Dean was sworn in before the Irving committee in 1973, continues today to make the metaphorical ground beneath the Bush White House shudder.  It's author is here for his primetime—his first cable interview.

It's title, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washhington'd Culture of Deception.”  In its pages, Mr. Mcclellan alleging, among other things, that the Bush administration used a political propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq, managing the lead up to the conflict in such  a way that the use of force would be inevitable; that Mr.Bush after vowing to alter the political equation, viewed and ran the administration as if it were a permanent campaign and instead of trying to do it differently, just tried to do it more effectively and more insidiously and more secretly.

Mr. McClellan writes that in defending the administration, although he was being sincere about the things he said in the White House briefing room at the time he said them, he has, “since come to realize that some of them were badly misguided.”

Scott McClellan joins us now.

Thank you for your time tonight.

SCOTT MCCLELLAN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY:  Good to be here, Keith.  Thanks for having me on.

OLBERMANN:  Who is more surprised that you're here, you or me?

MCCLELLAN:  Probably the White House.

OLBERMANN:  That's a good way to start.

That phrase, “you have since come to realize that some of those statements were badly misguided.”  Not to put words in your mouth or insult you, but did you lie as White House press secretary at any point?

MCCLELLAN:  Well, I did when it came to the issue of the Valerie Plame leak episode when I—unknowingly did so.  I passed along false information.  I had been given assurances by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby that they were not involved in the leak.  And it turned out later that they were, but they both unequivocally told me, when I asked them, were you involved in this is any way?  They said, no.

OLBERMANN:  I'm going to get back to Libby.

MCCLELLAN:  And—obviously other times, yes, I got caught up in the Washington game in terms of the spinning and obfuscation and secrecy and stone walling and things like that.

OLBERMANN:  I want to get, as I was saying, back to the entire Plamegate or Plame/Libby story, or Plame/Libby/Cheney story.  But as I suggested in the opening here, this—to me, in reading, so far, about half of this book, it seems it is the Rosetta Stone for understanding the last seven years of American history.

I would like to drop you in and out of key moments in that time. 

And—tell me what really happened and what you saw.

And I want to start more or less chronologically on 9/11, not 9/11 per se but 9/12, the day afterwards, the days afterwards.  Did the president see this as much as a disaster?  Did he see it as an opportunity do you think?

MCCLELLAN:  The September 11 attacks?

OLBERMANN: Yes.

MCCLELLAN:  Well certainly he saw it as an opportunity to look at the war on terror in broad way and to try to implement this idealistic vision that he had of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East.  I think that's what you're getting to.

OLBERMANN:  Yes.  In the sense that it was to some degree used—

MCCLELLAN:  9/11?

OLBERMANN:  What happened after 9/11 was used in this country?

MCCLELLAN:  Well certainly it was to advance the Iraq policy.

OLBERMANN:  The Iraq policy—to advance Mr. Bush's policies.

MCCLELLAN:  Yes.  Well, I don't know what the right word is that I would use, but it was certainly—after 9/11 there was a whole change in attitude by the administration and everything started centering around 9/11 — what we were going to do to respond to that.  And several people in his administration from the vice president to Secretary Rumsfeld to the president himself and some others took this very broad view that they were going to do some things that they wanted to do probably even before 9/11.

OLBERMANN:  To that point, you write on page 127 about Iraq: “Bush pulled Rumsfeld aside in a private one one one discussion in late November 2001, as author Bob Woodward confirmed with the president, and instructed him to update the Pentagon's war plans for Iraq.  Bush made sure this initiative was closely held, known only by a few people who could be trusted not to leak it.  But it meant that, in effect, Bush had already made the decision to go to war, even if he convinced himself it might still be avoided.  IN the back of his mind, he would be convinced on Iraq, as on other issues that, until he gave the final order to commence war, the decision was never final.”

So, the war began when in the president's mind?

MCCLELLAN:  Well, not too long after September 11 — in those few months after September 11, when he made the decision we're going to take a broad view of the war on terror and that Iraq is going to be part of that. I think that the decision had essentially been made, we're going to confront Iraq, and unless Saddam Hussein does something that—really I don't think anybody would expect he would do, like completely come clean, then we were headed on a path to war.

So I think the president, in a lot of ways, boxed himself in and left himself no out, partly because he was determined to go forward with the policy.

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