Scott McClellan, the beleagured Bush White House press secretary who resigned in April 2006, is apparently the latest politico to come out with a tell-all book on the bad things he saw and did in Washington.
His publisher, Public Affairs, carried a brief excerpt of his new memoir "What Happened" on their website containing part of McClellan's "confession" on the Valerie Plame/CIA leak case. He says both Bush and Cheney knew Plame was CIA and told him to lie to reporters.
(In case you don't know what happened, Valerie Plame's husband, ambassador and Africa expert Joe Wilson, was critical of the Bush Administration's evidence that Saddam was seeking nuclear material from Niger. Plame happened to be a CIA agent, though her level of secrecy is still being debated, and the Administration outed her to reporter Judith Miller and columnist Bob Novak. No one was actually charged with this crime though- only the Veep's chief of staff "Scooter" Libby was charged with lying about the incident and sent to jail. Until Bush commuted his sentence. Oh, and Judith Miller spent several months in jail protecting her source.)
But anyway, this raises a larger question-When a White House press secretary is told to do something unethical, should he wait until the highest bidder offers him a book deal to reveal it? OK, maybe I'm being a little idealistic here where idealism is never a sound footing to analyze what goes on in Washington. But should a press secretary stay loyal to his boss, like Ron Ziegler to Richard Nixon, or should he feel free to express his disagreement with his boss, like Jerry terHorst (a former News guy) resigning from the Ford administration when Ford pardoned Nixon?
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