WASHINGTON — Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Friday, said he was suspicious of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's denial that he had leaked the name of a CIA agent but had no choice but to go along with it.
McClellan's testimony came shortly after his author's tour for "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," the memoir that created a stir in the capital when it was published last month.
McClellan told the panel that former White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. asked him to publicly exonerate Libby from involvement in the case, as McClellan had done for White House political advisor Karl Rove. Libby was then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
"I was reluctant to do it," McClellan said. "I got on the phone with Scooter Libby and asked him point-blank, 'Were you involved in this in any way?' And he assured me in unequivocal terms that he was not."
Libby was later convicted of lying to investigators about his role in leaking the identity of then-CIA operative Valerie Plame in an effort to discredit her husband, longtime diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Bush administration's stated reasons for invading Iraq. Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison, but President Bush commuted his sentence.
In opening remarks before the committee, McClellan repeated the charge in his book that the White House had tilted the evidence to convince the public of the need for war in Iraq. "It's public record that they were ignoring caveats and ignoring contradictory intelligence," he said.
"I do not know whether a crime was committed by any of the administration officials who revealed Valerie Plame's identity to reporters," he said. "Nor do I know if there was an attempt by any person or persons to engage in a cover-up during the investigation. I do know that it was wrong to reveal her identity, because it compromised the effectiveness of a covert official for political reasons. I regret that I played a role, however unintentionally, in relaying false information to the public about it."
He was particularly biting about Rove, saying that he doubted the former White House advisor would tell the truth to the committee, which has asked him to testify about his role in the Plame leak.
"I would hope that he would be willing to do so," McClellan said. "Based on my own experiences, I have some doubts. He lied to me."
