The McClellan puzzle

CNN:

The White House Wednesday said it was "puzzled" by a former spokesman's memoir in which he accuses the Bush administration of being mired in propaganda and political spin and at times playing loose with the truth.

In excerpts from a 341-page book to be released Monday, Scott McClellan writes on the war in Iraq that Bush "and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war."

"[I]n this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security," McClellan wrote.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called McClellan's description of his time at the White House "sad." Read excerpts from the book »

"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," Perino said. "For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew."

McClellan's former White House colleagues had harsher reactions to McClellan's book.

Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security adviser to Bush, said advisers to the president should speak up when they have policy concerns.

"Scott never did that on any of these issues as best I can remember or as best as I know from any of my White House colleagues," said Townsend, now a CNN contributor. "For him to do this now strikes me as self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional."

Fox News contributor and former White House adviser Karl Rove said on that network Tuesday that the excerpts from the book he's read sound more like they were written by a "left-wing blogger" than his former colleague.

...

McClellan appears to be a guy who has gone over to the dark side. When the Plame story broke he got assurances from Rove and Liddy that they were not the source for the Novak piece. In fact, they were not, it was Richard Armitage. Some reporters apparently did call them and got an "I heard that too" comment. That is not even confirmation much less sourcing for an article. It is merely an admission that they had heard the same hearsay comments that the media had.

But when the media attacked McClellan because he did not disclose these contacts McClellan felt betrayed and his body language and some of his statements appeared to put him on the side of the media attack dogs that were mad dogging him at the time. From the excerpts seen so far of his book it appears that he has joined his critics in the media. It is a mistake. They were just using him. They don't respect him and that is not likely to change.

Rove responded on Fox.