McClellan stands by barnburner book

MCCLELLAN:  One, you know, I don't know that there's much more benefit to me going before Congress.  I haven't really thought about it.  I'm glad to share my views, and I share them fully in this book. 

I'm not sure exactly what he's calling for me to talk about, but everything I know about the leak episode is in this book.  So I really haven't spent time thinking about it.

OLBERMANN:  Scott McClellan also writes of, quote, “propaganda,” how he was used, how as a result you were used.  When our interview continues next on COUNTDOWN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

OLBERMANN:  We rejoin you with former White House press secretary, Scott McClellan. His first primetime interview after the publication of his book “What Happened.”

All right—propaganda, you write of its use in the book and you write of the supposed liberal media not really doing its job for—not being dubious enough, particularly about Iraq but let me read this.

“Trying to make the WMD and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appeared just a little more certain, a little less questionable, than they were, quietly ignoring or disregarding some of the crucial caveats in the intelligence and minimizing evident that pointed in the opposite direction, using innuendo and implication to encourage Americans to believe as fact some things that were unclear and possibly false (such as the idea that Saddam had an active nuclear weapons program) and other things that were over played or completely wrong such as implying Saddam might have had an operational relationship with al Qaeda.”

I think many in the media—liberal or otherwise, would rant and rave and say no this is not possibly true and then tell you off the record yes, we did lay back, possibly for patriotic reasons, possibly for fear.  A lot of things involved.  But I'm interested because there's no real mention of this in the book, what about the supposed conservative media and obviously the symbol of that is Fox News.

What was Fox News to you and to the White House?  Was it a friendly cousin, house organ, was it the choice for funneling propaganda?  What was it?

MCCLELLAN:  Well—there certainly are allies there that work at Fox News and there's one story that I've told before, I didn't include it in the book, but during the vice president's hunting accident, which was another disillusioning moment for me because I was out there advocating get this news out and get it out now and of course the vice president said, no no, no, and then decided to send it to the Web site where the Corpus Christy Collar Times (ph) Web site, as opposed to getting it out widely to the national media.

OLBERMANN:  I remember.

MCCLELLAN:  And caused me a lot of fun at the podium for three days before the vice president decided that he was going to go out and talk about this after a little nudging from the president.  And we were standing outside the Oval getting ready for a meeting and he looked at me, and he said, you already know why I picked Fox News to do this, because I want everybody else to have to cite Fox News when they do their report.

It's just kind of the attitude of the vice president about things.  We've seen his attitude, that kind of attitude, in other comments he's made when doing interviews as well.  Such as with Martha Radis (ph) when she asked and he responded with the, “So.”

OLBERMANN:  That people don't agree with this policy and it was, “So.”

MCCLELLAN:  Right.  That was his answer.

OLBERMANN:  What did you know, or did you know anything, about the story that “The New York Times” reported last month, that the Pentagon had essentially these quid pro quo deals with retired generals who, while presenting themselves on many of the networks as disinterested observers, in fact were still involved in companies that still had dealings with the Pentagon.  It was a very dicey situation journalistically.

Did you know about it?  Did you know you had a staff of generals working for you in some respect?

MCCLELLAN:  That I didn't know about.  That was pretty much left for the Pentagon to run their way.

OLBERMANN:  The—this next question I know is going to come across and I can't resist it—it's going to come across to some degree as self aggrandizing, but relative to the media, and I'm asking this for every person who ever came up to me on the street and said, I feel like I'm going out of my mind living through this, this cannot be the America that I grew up in.

Were the critics in the media and outside the media of the president largely right?

MCCLELLAN:  In terms of the Iraq war?

OLBERMANN:  Specifically that, and you can go out in any direction you want.  But specifically in terms of Iraq.

MCCLELLAN:  Well—I think certainly in terms of Iraq there was a lot that they were right about.  As I went back and reflected on this, it's not that I'm necessarily aligned with them on some other views and things, but certainly on the buildup to the Iraqi war, we should have been listening some more to what they were saying, the American people should have been listening a little bit closer to some of what was being said.

But I, like a lot of Americans, was caught up in the moment of post 9/11 and wanting to put my faith and trust in the White House and president I was serving.

OLBERMANN:  Does it cost you—and I ask this question sympathetically—does it cost you sleep when you hear about another casualty in Iraq that you would have had that much to do with that war?

MCCLELLAN:  I used to walk, and I talk about this in the book, I used to walk alongside the president when he would visit the fallen.  And it has a very profound effect on you.  Our troops are doing an amazing job.  They have succeeded; they've their job.  And they've done more than they—should have been called on to do in first place.  And they continue to do an amazing job.

But I have been there in the room with the president when he walked in to comfort families of the fallen or walked into—I remember vividly, and I talk about this in the book as well, when the president walked into a room at Walter Reed and you had a young mother with the boy, I think was in the 7-year-old range and his father is sitting there in a wheelchair with bandages wrapped all around his head.  None of us, you couldn't tell if he was knew what was going on around him.

It was just a powerful moment, very moving moment.  The president was moved by it very much so.  I could see in his eyes how moved he was by it.  And I talk about that in the book.  You don't forget those moments.

OLBERMANN:  But about Iraq, you had write in the book, “In the permanent campaign era it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage.”

Was this true about homeland security to your knowledge, to any degree?  Because that has been a suspicion, obviously, of a lot of the president's critics.  Did the White House manipulate at any point, to any degree, the threats of terror for the president's advantage?

MCCLELLAN:  I can't speak to that.  That was more in some policy maker realm that again—in part of the compartmentalized White House.  That's not something I explore in the book because I don't have direct knowledge of some of that.

OLBERMANN:  But there is a press conference—it pertains to the White House and the threat to the nation, and they did not clue you in on it?

MCCLELLAN:  Well there were certainly times when I was involved in some of the threats.  I remember it was over the holiday period, maybe 2004, when there were threats—

OLBERMANN:  Christmas time flights threats?

MCCLELLAN:  Yes, the Christmas time flights. And I did sit in on some national security or counterterrorism meetings then and there was a real concern then.  But I can't speak to some of the other meetings that might have occurred.

OLBERMANN:  One more break then we look ahead with Scott McClellan, the 64,000 person question, the White House did all this for a war in Iraq. Are they now doing all this all over again for a war in Iran?

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