McClellan: Bush Admitted He Authorized Betrayal of Secret CIA Terror Weapons Program
Jon Ponder | May. 29, 2008
Pensito Review
The latest revelation from Scott McClellan’s book proves what has long been suspected: Despite earlier statements professing ignorance about the conspiracy among his top officials, including Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, to betray a covert CIA program tracking the international black market for weapons of mass destruction, Bush knew about it all along:
The White House deftly distracted public attention away from the true scandal here — the treasonous acts of the president’s men — by focusing on the vivid personalities of the covert agent, Valerie Plame, and her husband Joe Wilson.
McClellan recalled a day in April 2006, when the unfolding perjury case against Libby revealed that the president had secretly declassified portions of a 2002 intelligence report about Iraq’s weapons capabilities to help his aides deflect criticism that his case for war was weak. Some of the most high-profile criticism was coming from Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
The president was leaving an event in North Carolina, McClellan recalled, and as they walked to Air Force One a reporter yelled out a question: Had the president, who had repeatedly condemned the selective release of secret intelligence information, enabled Scooter Libby to leak classified information to The New York Times to bolster the administration’s arguments for war?
McClellan took the question to the president, telling Bush: “He’s saying you yourself were the one that authorized the leaking of this information.”
“And he said, ‘Yeah, I did.’ And I was kind of taken aback,” McClellan said.
(Continued here.)
Pensito Review
The latest revelation from Scott McClellan’s book proves what has long been suspected: Despite earlier statements professing ignorance about the conspiracy among his top officials, including Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, to betray a covert CIA program tracking the international black market for weapons of mass destruction, Bush knew about it all along:
The White House deftly distracted public attention away from the true scandal here — the treasonous acts of the president’s men — by focusing on the vivid personalities of the covert agent, Valerie Plame, and her husband Joe Wilson.
McClellan recalled a day in April 2006, when the unfolding perjury case against Libby revealed that the president had secretly declassified portions of a 2002 intelligence report about Iraq’s weapons capabilities to help his aides deflect criticism that his case for war was weak. Some of the most high-profile criticism was coming from Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
The president was leaving an event in North Carolina, McClellan recalled, and as they walked to Air Force One a reporter yelled out a question: Had the president, who had repeatedly condemned the selective release of secret intelligence information, enabled Scooter Libby to leak classified information to The New York Times to bolster the administration’s arguments for war?
McClellan took the question to the president, telling Bush: “He’s saying you yourself were the one that authorized the leaking of this information.”
“And he said, ‘Yeah, I did.’ And I was kind of taken aback,” McClellan said.
(Continued here.)
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