Bush fingered in CIA scandal
21/11/2007 19:30  - (SA)  

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Washington - Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan blames President George W Bush in a book for his dissemination of false information about a CIA leak scandal that rocked the administration.

McClellan, who was Bush's chief spokesperson between 2003-2006, had told reporters in October 2003 that top White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby had not been involved in leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media.

But in a book due out on April 21, McClellan said he had unknowingly stated false information about the leak, which led to Libby's conviction on perjury and obstruction of justice charges in the case earlier this year.

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," McClellan said in the book, according to a short excerpt on the website of his publisher, PublicAffairs.

I lied

"So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

"There was one problem. It was not true," he wrote in What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What's Wrong with Washington.

McClellan went on to name Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney as part of the officials responsible for his dissemination of false information.

"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," he wrote. Andrew Card was Bush's chief of staff at the time.

Bush in July spared Libby from spending 2½ years in jail, commuting his sentence.

Libby was found guilty in March of lying to federal investigators in a case probing whether White House officials had leaked Plame's name. Libby was not convicted of leaking Plame's name.

Bush critics said her name had been leaked to the media in July 2003 by White House officials to avenge criticism of the Bush administration's rationale for the war in Iraq by Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

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