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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

McClellan implicates Bush in lies

By Ken Herman | Tuesday, November 20, 2007, 11:47 AM

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan is speaking up about President Bush’s involvement in misleading the American people about the involvement of former administration aides Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in leaking the identity of then-CIA Agent Valerie Plame.

McClellan’s comments come in a teaser excerpt from his upcoming book entitled “What Happened,” due for April publication. The book carries the subtitle “Inside the Bush White House and what’s wrong with Washington.”

“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.”

Public Affairs, the publisher of the book, says in an online blurb that the “refreshingly clear-eyed book” was “written with no agenda other than to record his experiences and insights for the benefit of history.”

McClellan served as White House press secretary from 2003 through August 2006.

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Turkey time at the White House

By Ken Herman | Tuesday, November 20, 2007, 11:07 AM

bushturkey.jpg

It’s another White House election nailbiter.

May and Flower narrowly edged out Wish and Bone in the White House on-line election to name the turkey (and an alternate) granted the traditional presidential Thanksgiving pardon. The winners pulled 24 percent of the vote, a single percentage point more than Wish and Bone. Wing and Prayer were third at 20 percent.

Other nominees: Jake and Tom (15 percent), Gobbler and Rafter (12 percent), Truman and Sixty (6 percent). FYI, Truman and Sixty were a nod to President Truman who performed the first turkey pardon 60 years ago.

Vice President Cheney’s favorite names: “Lunch and Dinner,” Bush said.

White House press corps favorite: Scooter and Libby. And that would have had to have been a commutation, not a pardon.

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