McClellan on Plamegate
UPDATE: It's not clear to me what all this amounts to. The guy says he passed along false information. From what little I've found online, the general reaction is "Yeah, who hasn't?" The prevailing idea is that McClellan wants to sell his book, so he says something grand to get people's attention.
What strikes me is how few words have been exchanged on this topic today. I haven't seen any political fallout type discussions going on. So here I go betraying my political naivety once more: Is there something I just don't get? Is this actually a non-issue?
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Holy Political Whiplash, Batman!
In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.
"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. "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."
[snip]
White House press secretary Dana Perino said it wasn't clear what McClellan meant in the excerpt and she had no immediate comment.
Unlike Dana Perino, I think it's exactly clear what McClellan meant. I am, however, still trying to get my head around what it might mean in the immediate future. Count on hearing a lot of people ask a lot of questions.
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