At an October 2003 press briefing, a reporter reminded McClellan that he personally went to Karl Rove and Scooter Libby to ask if they were involved with the Plame scandal. McClellan said he’d been given every assurance that they were not responsible.
“They’re good individuals, they’re important members of our White House team, and that’s why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt of that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it’s accurate before I report back to you, and that’s exactly what I did.”
It was one of a series of important moments in which McClellan put his credibility on the line to tell the nation that Rove and Libby played no part in the leak of classified information. We now know that what McClellan said wasn’t true.
We don’t, however, know if McClellan was lying or was repeating a lie. As of today, as Think Progress noted, it sounds like McClellan is going with the latter.
Q: Scott, a couple of years ago you told us that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove had nothing to do with the CIA leak. It appears that you may have gotten bad information before you made that statement.
Now today we learn through extrapolation that, when the vice president said in September of 2003 that he didn’t know who sent Joe Wilson to Niger to investigate the claims that Iraq was trying to buy yellow cake, that he was not speaking the truth.
My question is: Can we be confident that when we hear statements from the White House in public that they are truthful?
McClellan: I think you can be, because you know that our relationship is built on trust. And I have earned that trust with you all. As you pointed out, you pointed back to some past comments that I made, and I’ve talked to you about the assurances that I had received on that. (emphasis added)
If they’ve lost McClellan…