'Meet the Press' transcript for June 1, 2008

MR. RUSSERT:  You write in the book, "The campaign to sell the war didn't begin in earnest until the fall of 2002.  But, as I would later come to learn, President Bush had decided to confront the Iraqi regime several months earlier.  Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz all saw September 11th as an opportunity to go after Saddam Hussein, take out his regime, eliminate a threat, make the Middle East more secure.  And Bush agreed.  ...

"Message discipline sometimes meant avoiding forthrightness--for example, evasively dismissing questions about the risks of war as `speculation,' since the decision to go to war supposedly had not yet been made."

And certainly, you were part of that.  August 2002, Scott McClellan:  "I think it's premature to speculate about--premature to speculate because the President has made no decision about any particular course of action."

A decision had already been made, you said.

MR. McCLELLAN:  I, I--well, I came to learn later that that decision was made.

MR. RUSSERT:  When?

MR. McCLELLAN:  I was deputy press secretary at that time.

MR. RUSSERT:  When did you learn?

MR. McCLELLAN:  Well, when the president did interviews with Bob Woodward for his book, when the--when I heard the president talk in world leader meetings after I became press secretary about how passionately he cared about spreading freedom and democracy in the Middle East.  The real driving motivation, as you've touched on there, was trying to transform the Middle East and spread democracy throughout it.  And Iraq would be the linchpin for doing that.  Now, that was not something that we emphasized.  It was something that was mentioned, but it was downplayed in the lead-up to the war.  And I later came to learn that very clearly when I was press secretary.  There are, there are elements to that earlier on when I would participate in some meetings for my predecessor and hear that as well.

MR. RUSSERT:  But again you write this:  "The administration ...  shaded the truth; downplaying the major reason for going to war, emphasizing a lesser motivation that could arguably be dealt with in other ways; ...  trying to make the WMD threat and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appear just a little more certain, a little less questionable, than they were; quietly ignoring or disregarding some of the crucial caveats in the intelligence, minimizing evidence 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 has an active nuclear weapons program) and other things that were overplayed or completely wrong (such as implying Saddam might have an operational relationship with al Qaeda) ...

"The goal was to win the debate, to get Congress and the public to support the decision to confront Saddam.  In the pursuit of that goal, embracing a high level of candor and honesty about the potential war--its larger objectives, its likely costs, and its possible risks--came a distant second."

And yet again, here's Scott McClellan, September 2003, in front of the American people.  Let's watch.

(Videotape)

MR. McCLELLAN:  Saddam Hussein possessed and used chemical and biological--used, used chemical weapons against his own people.  He had a history of possessing and using...

Unidentified Woman:  Thirteen years before?

MR. McCLELLAN:  ...using weapons of mass destruction.  He had a history of invading his neighbors.  He had large unaccounted-for stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.  He defied the international community for 12 years and some 17 resolutions.

Woman:  ...tell people that there was an imminent, direct threat.

MR. McCLELLAN:  The president made it very clear that we need to act to confront threats in a post-September 11th world before it's too late, before those threats reach our shores and it's too late.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Were you shading the truth?  Were you part of the innuendo? Were you part of the propaganda campaign?

MR. McCLELLAN:  I was part of this propaganda campaign, absolutely.  And, Tim, let me mention a couple of things.  First, you know, there's--there was the legendary British economist John Maynard Keynes who used to be accused of frequently changing his positions.  When one accuser attacked him, he responded, "When the facts change, I change my mind.  What do you do, sir?" And when I was able to step out of that White House bubble--when you're in that White House bubble, it's all-consuming.  You know what it's like, 18-hour days.

MR. RUSSERT:  And yet, when you were in the White House, you had some of these doubts but apparently didn't express them.  The president was on MEET THE PRESS February of 2004.  I asked a question, he responded.  Let's watch.

(Videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  In light of not finding the weapons of mass destruction, do you believe the war in Iraq is a war of choice or a war of necessity?

PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH:  I think it's--that's an interesting question.  Please elaborate on that a little bit.  A war of choice or a war of necessity?  I mean, it's a war of necessity.  We, we, we--my judgment, we had no choice when we look at the intelligence I looked at that says the man was a threat.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  You write in your book, "I remember talking to the president about this question following the MEET THE PRESS interview.  He seemed puzzled and asked me what Russert was getting at with the question.  This, in turn, puzzled me.  Surely this administration between--this distinction between a necessary, unavoidable war and a war that the United States could have avoided but chose to wage was an obvious one that Bush must have thought about in the months before the invasion.  Evidently, it wasn't obvious to the president, nor did his national security team make sure it was." It was being debated everywhere...

MR. McCLELLAN:  True.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...all across the country, is this a war of choice, or a war of necessity?  The president seemed unaware of that.

MR. McCLELLAN:  Yes.  As, as you know, I was sitting right there off to the side, and after the interview had ended, I did walk back into that room, and, and it struck me.  That was--and I write about it in, in the book in some detail.

MR. RUSSERT:  Why didn't you say to him, "Mr. President, this is the fundamental issue confronting our country." Why didn't you go to your superiors and say, "Guys, ladies and gentlemen, we have a problem here.  This is the fundamental issue, choice or necessity, and the president seems unaware of it."

MR. McCLELLAN:  In retrospect, I probably should have.  I probably should have said something more about it.  But, again, there's so many issues going on, you get caught up in advocating and defending the president's stance.  And he'd already made the decision, and the president's someone that, once he makes a decision, as you know, he expects everyone to march in lockstep.  I don't--you know, it's tough to go there and try to challenge those views inside an administration that is so insular like that, but it also goes to the president's decision, that he had made this decision to confront Saddam Hussein, and it was going to be either he comes clean or we go to war very early on.  That's they way the president operates.  He makes the decision, and then it's how do you implement that decision?  And I think that happened late in 2001, and then his advisers, from my perspective, I don't think challenged him like they should have about the necessity of going to war.  And from my standpoint, it's a moral view, we shouldn't be going to war unless it's absolutely necessary.  Now there are--there was justification that could be made to remove Saddam Hussein, separate and apart from that, and plenty to argue there, but we overplayed and overstated the case for war.

MR. RUSSERT:  This was Scott McClellan in January of '04 talking about intelligence.  Let's watch.

(Videotape)

MR. McCLELLAN:  Intelligence is something that we take very seriously in this administration.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  "Intelligence is something we take very seriously." That's what you're telling the American people.  And yet, on an airplane, with the president, you write this:  "According to Scooter Libby's grand jury testimony, President Bush had actually engaged in selective declassification himself.  He authorized the use of parts of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate in an effort to discredit Joe Wilson's attacks on the credibility of the administration.  Now, with those three simple words, `Yeah, I did,' the president was telling me that my public statements about the sanctity of classified intelligence rang hollow." Why didn't you then say, "Mr. President, I've had it."

MR. McCLELLAN:  I'll tell you why.  I...

MR. RUSSERT:  "I'm out of here.  I can't do this anymore.  I'm out there saying that we have intelligence, we take it seriously, and it's being selectively declassified and leaked to attack political opponents."

MR. McCLELLAN:  I, I was stunned by his reaction.  I walked off an Air Force One, and he asked what the reporter was shouting at him, and I said, "He, he said that you had authorized the selective leaking of this classified information," which the president has legal authority to do.  And no one else in the administration knew, other than the vice president and Scooter Libby. Not the director of Central Intelligence, the national security adviser or the chief of staff.  It was very compartmentalized, and that's part of the problem with this White House as well.

But the reason I didn't was because that was the final 10 months of my time in the White House, when my disillusionment increasingly set in.  I became dismayed beginning in July of 2005 with the revelations that I had been knowingly misled by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, and then ending with the NIE. And I had made a decision at that point, right around that--right after that, that that was the final straw, that I would leave the administration.  My intent was to do it at my three-year mark in July of 2003, just a couple months later, that I'd do it quietly and leave, because I could no longer continue to go through this when I had been decrying the selective leaking of classified information for years, as had the president.

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