The New York Times had an interesting item today about how Scott McClellan’s credibility has taken a serious hit. He took to his podium, repeatedly for two years, and said Karl Rove and Scooter Libby weren’t involved in the Plame leak. Now we know they were, which causes “trust issues” between the press corps and the press secretary. McClellan claims he wants to set the record straight, and insists he never knowingly lied, but has been “unwilling or unable to acknowledge that his previous statements are, to use a phrase famously invoked by a predecessor, inoperative.”
This touches on a point that’s come up on a few occasions during press briefings: when, exactly, will the White House explain its side of the story in this scandal? Starting in July, McClellan shut down all public comments about the investigation and stopped responding to questions, saying only that the WH wouldn’t comment on an ongoing investigation.
McClellan, for a while, blamed Patrick Fitzgerald, saying he asked the White House not to discuss the matter. Some conservatives even said the WH staff was under a “gag order.” There wasn’t. As Fitzgerald himself said last week:
“I think the average person does not understand that the rule of grand jury secrecy binds the prosecutors and the grand jury, it binds the agents who come across the grand jury information, it binds the grand jurors. Any one of us could go to jail if we leak that information.
“It does not bind witnesses. Witnesses can decide to tell their testimony or not…. [T]he person who went into the grand jury could walk out and hold a press conference on the front steps.”
But McClellan had his script and he stuck to it. He’d love to tell reporters all the scintillating details about the scandal and what he knows, but gosh darn it, that Fitzgerald investigation is still ongoing.
Of course, now that Fitzgerald has said “the substantial bulk of the work in this investigation is concluded,” reporters started assuming that McClellan could soon start talking. Yesterday, McClellan decided to move the goalposts a bit.
Q: You repeatedly say that you’ve been instructed not to comment on the CIA leaks case, because there’s an ongoing investigation. Can we infer from that that when Fitzgerald announces his investigation is completed you will be in a position to comment?
McClellan: I said I’d be glad to talk more about it after it’s come to a conclusion.
Q: Well, would that mark the conclusion?
McClellan: Would what?
Q: The end of the Fitzgerald investigation.
McClellan: Well, there’s an investigation and legal proceeding. And the comments I make —
Q: So now you’re adding court cases.
McClellan: Well, Bob, I think any time there’s been a legal matter going on, we’ve said, that’s a legal matter.
Q: No, what you said is, you can’t comment on an ongoing investigation.
McClellan: No, I think what I said last — and look what I said —
Q: So you’ve added the words, ‘legal proceeding.’
McClellan: Well, now there is a legal proceeding.
Q: So you’re adding the words, ‘legal proceeding,’ to the formulation.
McClellan: That’s not — any time there is a legal proceeding such as that, we don’t discuss it. I mean, I think you can look back at —
Q: Because —
McClellan: Because it’s a legal matter, and it’s before the courts.
So, McClellan wants to tell the White House’s side of the story, but at a minimum, he’ll have to wait until Scooter Libby’s trial — and probably his subsequent appeals — are complete.
I figure, by 2014, we should be getting some real answers out of these guys.