McClellan's Words Friday to be Under Oath, Not Merely Behind Podium

(Released June 18)

WASHINGTON — When he goes before the House Judiciary Committee on Friday, Scott McClellan will begin with an oath to tell the truth or face criminal charges for lying to Congress.

But what about the three years McClellan spent as spokesman for President Bush? Does the public have the right to expect the truth from someone who speaks from the White House podium?

"I believe that people should presume that a press secretary for the president of the United States would never lie or mislead them," said Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., one of the committee members who will grill McClellan on Friday. "But sorrowfully, unfortunately, Scott McClellan's actions reveal that we should not trust without verifying."

As they ready themselves for Friday's hearing, Republicans are crafting questions aimed at undermining McClellan's credibility.

"He said and did one thing for a couple years in the White House and apparently he didn't much mean anything that he said," charged Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. "He's hurt his credibility by the way he's conducted himself and by what he's said."

Democrats, though, will be asking questions designed to spotlight weakness in the Bush approach to the war in Iraq, where 4,100 U.S. troops have died and 30,250 have been wounded since Bush ordered the invasion in March, 2003.

"There's nothing like testifying under oath," said Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., another committee member who will question McClellan on Friday.

"What a presidential spokesperson says behind the podium, all Americans have the right to believe that is the truth, certainly," said Wexler. "But, obviously, in a legal and constitutional sense, testifying under oath is yet a different category."

The Judiciary Committee will have something missing from the White House press gallery — the force of law.

"When he speaks under oath, he's subject to perjury prosecution if he lies," said Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State law professor and former Justice Department attorney.

"When he speaks from the podium, there's no legal significance to what he says, so he can't be prosecuted even for lying," said Kinkopf. "It's not ethical, but it's not illegal."

For three years, McClellan was the public face of the Bush presidency, denouncing its critics, holding forth on administration policy and responding to, if not always quite answering, reporters' questions during the daily White House news briefing.

From behind the podium, McClellan was a stalwart defender of Bush and his decision to launch the war in Iraq.

When White House officials secretly revealed the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame - derailing her career as a spy after her husband publicly criticized Bush - McClellan assured the public that senior White House officials like political counselor Karl Rove and the vice president's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were clean.

In his freshly published memoir, though, McClellan dons a very different mantle - and delivers a very different message.

"The Iraq war was not necessary," he writes, calling it instead "a serious strategic blunder."

In making its case for the war, he continues, the administration waged "a propaganda campaign" and "made a decision to turn away from candor and honesty."

Rove and Libby - who both played key roles in the outing of Plame - misled him, McClellan asserts.

"The top White House officials who knew the truth - including Rove, Libby and possibly Vice President (Dick) Cheney - allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie," he wrote.

Critics have suggested McClellan juiced up his tale at the behest of his publisher to boost book sales, a charge the author denies.

"These are my words and my views," said McClellan. "This is my book."

In some ways, it will be the job of press secretary itself that goes under the committee microscope on Friday, and the way the post straddles two separate functions of White House communications operations.

The first is the advocacy operation, the officials who write presidential speeches and choreograph his events in ways meant to cast the man and his policies in a favorable light. The second is the information operation, the side that exists to respond to news developments by placing accurate and truthful information before the public.

"That part is not supposed to be an advocacy operation," said Martha Kumar, a political science professor at Towson University, near Baltimore. In the Bush administration, "I think the two halves collided," said Kumar, author of the 2007 book, "Managing the President's Message: The White House Communications Operation."

The clash, said Kumar, was disturbing - both to the White House and to the American public.

"It does an administration harm when the truth is not told, because the people doubt the credibility of the whole administration," she said. "And then people wonder what they can believe."