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Former White House press secretary discusses his upcoming testimony on the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. (1:46)
 

Full Interview (22:25)
 

Tavis: Scott McClellan, of course, served as White House press secretary in the Bush administration from 2003 to 2006. His much-talked-about new book about his time in the White House debuted yesterday at number one on "The New York Times" bestseller list.

The book is called "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception." Scott, nice to have you in the studio.

Scott McClellan: Tavis, thanks for having me today.

Tavis: It's good to see you. We talked on the radio show.

McClellan: Yes.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you here in the studio in Los Angeles to talk about the book. On the first page of this book - I was re-reading this for our TV conversation - and on the first page of the book you write these words: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." A very popular bible verse that most of us know.

McClellan: Right.

Tavis: What made you put that biblical text on the first page of the book?

McClellan: Well, part of it was my connection to the University of Texas, where it adorns the tower at the University of Texas in the center of campus there. But more than anything else, this book, this process of writing this book, was a search for the truth for me, so that I could come to grips with some of the hard realities of why this administration went so badly off-course and what we can learn from those experiences as well.

And so I thought it was appropriate to start with that, that nothing is more important than constantly trying to seek the truth and understand what we can learn and how we can grow from that.

Tavis: After a couple of weeks of talking about this pretty much everywhere, do you feel freed or you feel more imprisoned now than ever before?

McClellan: I feel liberated. (Laughter) I'm very, very liberated. It's tough getting there. I know that this has caused some of my former colleagues to get a little upset about things. But a number of former colleagues have also sent me words of support, quietly, and they know where I'm coming from, they know who I am. You tend to find out who your true friends are during times like this.

Tavis: You had to know, obviously, in writing this book that it was going to get you in some hot water with some of those friends, maybe even the president himself, and the decision was made to do it anyway because?

McClellan: Because I want to see Washington change. I want to see Washington change the way it governs for the better, that's first and foremost. These weren't easy words to write. It was tough, coming to understand some of these hard realities about how things went so badly off-course. But I want to make sure we don't repeat the same mistakes and I want to make sure that Washington can change the way and improve the way it governs, so that we can move forward in a better way in the future.

Tavis: It's been fascinating for me and for some of my staff around here to watch the way some of your former colleagues - I won't say former friends; you can assess that for me - but certainly former colleagues inside the White House.

It's been fascinating for us to watch how they have responded to you on this book tour. I have not seen people altogether trying to slam Scott McClellan. What I have seen rather consistent in the talking points they must have all gotten, Karl Rove included, is that this is not the Scott McClellan we knew. I'm sure you've been tracking this as well.

They're all saying the same thing: "This is not the Scott McClellan we knew." What do you make of that? Are they saying that something happened to you, you snapped somewhere? What are they saying?

McClellan: Well, it's history. No one's refuting the larger themes and perspectives in the book. Instead, they're trying to attack me personally or discredit me in some way, and to some extent it was to be expected. I've been surprised by how personal some of it has been, but if they want to know who I am, all they have to do is read this book.

Because I go through my upbringing and my life and the perspective I'm coming from, and I think readers get a good sense of the type of person that I am. And if anything, I'm returning to my roots and the values I was raised on. I was raised in a political family with a mother in elected office, and taught the importance of speaking up, taught the importance of getting involved and making a difference, doing what you can to make a positive difference.

And I hope that this book is viewed as a continuation of my career in public service, and a way to continue making a positive influence on things.

Tavis: We started out going biblical; we tried to unearth the hermeneutics behind that biblical edict, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." Let me offer another biblical scripture that comes to mind, which is to train up a child in the way that he shall go, and when he's old he won't depart from it.

You raised the issue now of your roots and wanting to get back to those roots. If your time in the White House took you away from what you knew to be the truth - your better (unintelligible) your morals, your values, your ethics - how'd you get away from it?

McClellan: Well, I think at times it did. I think a lot of good people go to Washington for the right reasons. They want to get involved in politics; they want to make a positive difference. We have elected leaders on both sides of the aisle that I think originally go there for the right reasons but they get caught up in this destructive culture. It's a very poisonous atmosphere, as you know, where it becomes more about power and influence and winning the next election than about finding ways to work together and bipartisan deliberation and compromise and solving problems.

And that's what I was raised on, that politics is a way to solve problems and make a difference for a large majority of people, to really find a way to compromise and build consensus.

Tavis: You used the word "campaign" in your last answer here, which brings to mind, of course, one of the themes, maybe even the major theme of this book with regard to the White House, which is that they are always in a permanent campaign. What do you mean by that?

McClellan: That's right. The permanent campaign is something that started well before this president came into office, but to some extent I think we institutionalized it like never before and took it to even new levels. The permanent campaign is where the focus is on manipulating public opinion by shaping the narrative to your advantage, to each side's advantage.

And both parties engage in this, to some extent. What I talk about is how this becomes destructive when you transfer that permanent campaign mentality, where it's all about political spin and manipulation and trying to shape the narrative to your advantage. When you transfer that to the war-making process, then it becomes particularly problematic because the American people need to have the truth of the situation as we go into war, and understand the risks and the consequences and the potential cost up front.

If not, then you see what's happening today - the expectations are out of whack, we see the irrevocable consequences in the terms of lost troops and lost Iraqi - innocent Iraqi lives as well.

Tavis: Is there one party over the other that is worse, more guilty of this permanent campaign inside the Beltway?

McClellan: That's an interesting topic to research, and it's not something I could do in my book. I said instead of pointing blame one way or the other, what I'm trying to do is look at the cultural problem in D.C. and how we can get beyond that. We have to understand it first in order to fix the problem, and then how we can move beyond that.

I'm very encouraged that both presidential candidates have been talking about this very subject. Just before my book came out Senator McCain talked about ending the permanent campaign. Senator Obama, of course, has been talking about changing the way Washington works since the beginning - messages not unsimilar from the one the president ran on when he was governor, and when I went to work for him as someone who was a bipartisan uniter who could get things done. Ad it turned out that that idealism and that hope I had in him was misplaced, unfortunately.

Tavis: Speaking of change, how did you see - you talk about it in the text, but just top line for me how you saw the president, this man who you knew, change once in the White House?

McClellan: Well it's interesting, because when he was in Texas he had 70 percent plus approval rating. That's unheard of, really, anywhere. He was viewed as a bipartisan leader, and that's what attracted to me, as much as anything, that he - that maybe we could bring that same sort of bipartisan spirit to Washington, D.C.

And I think initially, he made an effort to do that with No Child Left Behind, education reforms, working with Senator Ted Kennedy and other - Congressman Miller and others. But what happened was is I think he saw his father and his father's time in office and he said, "You know what? He got destroyed by this Washington game."

I'm going to come in, I'm going to play the game the way it's played, under the same rules, and I'll only go so far. But this is the way the game is played in Washington, and I'm going to play it just better than anybody else. And it may have worked in the short term to help us get reelected. In the long term, it really hurt his credibility and damaged his presidency.

Tavis: Speaking of credibility, when did you - I have been in this situation, and anyone who's ever been in it will familiarize with what I want to talk about now, which is when you know in a particular setting that you aren't comfortable, that this isn't right for you, that there are too many compromises being made, I have got to get out of here - now that usually happens before you actually make your exit.

McClellan: Right.

Tavis: When does Scott McClellan start to feel uncomfortable about the stuff he writes about in the text?

McClellan: Well, the last 10 months of my time as press secretary was a period of increasing disillusionment, when I realized that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove had knowingly misled me, allowed me to pass along false information to the American people, saying that they were not involved in the Valerie Plame leak episode, when in fact they were.

And then I later learned that the president of the United States had actually secretly declassified, authorized the vice president to secretly leak parts of the National Intelligence Estimate - not Valerie Plame's name, but the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, and we had been decrying that for two years or three or four years, saying that people should not selectively leak classified information.

And there I find out the president had done the very same thing, and that was just before I left. And so that was a moment when I said, "You know what? It's going to be time for me to move on." I thought I'd do so quietly and do so later in the summer, but then we were going through changes and I left a little bit earlier than I expected.

But it wasn't until really getting into the book and thinking through all this and my assumptions at the beginning were not where I came to my conclusions. My conclusions were different from some of the things I embraced at the beginning.

But I had to go through a very tough process and think through these issues and look back and reflect on that time to come to some of these conclusions, and hopefully it will help contribute in a positive way to changing things.

Tavis: If it took you until the last 10 months of your tenure and post your tenure to drill down on some of these realities that you share in the text, would I be wrong to call you naïve prior to that time, even while you were the White House press secretary?

McClellan: I think to some extent. To some extent I was naïve when I signed on with Governor Bush and thought that we could come to Washington and change the atmosphere and change the tone and bring about a bipartisan spirit. For the last two decades, really, it's been pretty bitter partisan warfare in Washington, and particularly in a time of war you need that bipartisan spirit.

So I think I was a little naïve in that respect, and probably in some other ways as well. It was certainly a political education for me, the whole time at the White House.

Tavis: As you look back on it now, do you ever think that you were at one point - and I say this respectfully - in over your head for how the game is played in Washington, were you in over your head?

McClellan: Maybe. I wasn't from Washington, I was from Texas, and we did things a little bit differently there. And certainly I'm more experienced now in the ways of Washington and there are definitely things I would do differently. And I think it was a mistake for us to try to engage on the terms that the culture in Washington is set.

I think we should have tried to transcend that partisanship, and what you have to do to do that is first and foremost you have to have openness and candor. You have to embrace it to a high level of openness and candor, and we turned away from that. Not because people were sitting around in some conspiracy, saying, "Let's go and mislead the American people."

I don't think Colin Powell was sitting in those meetings saying, "Let's go mislead the American people." We just got caught up in this permanent campaign culture and said, "Well, this is the way it's done, we're going to try to use manipulation to turn things to our advantage and to sell war to the American people -" a political marketing approach to the war, which is just very troubling, in the end.

Tavis: What do you think of the widely circulated and widely talked and even heralded notion that part of the reason why President Bush has gotten in the mess that he's in is because he relied on a close-knit group of people who told him what he wanted to hear. You were a part of that group, obviously, at one point in time. Any truth to that?

McClellan: Right, right. Absolutely, I think there's some truth to that. And certainly, in any White House there becomes this group-think mentality which is problematic in itself, and you've got to compensate for that. But even more so, you get right to the point - when you have the vice president, Secretary Rumsfeld, some other neoconservative thinkers like Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, pushing the president in a certain direction.

Now the president bears responsibility; this was his - Iraq was his decision, and the way we went about it, that's ultimately his responsibility. But you had these advisers around him that encouraged him in that direction instead of compensating for his instinctive style of leadership and saying, "Let's bring in some differing views, let's explore some of the real consequences that are involved here." And I think that was a very problematic part of this administration.

Tavis: I've been wanting to ask you, as I will now, because you were so close and you saw stuff that we didn't see. You mentioned earlier that you didn't think that Colin Powell was sitting in those meetings saying, "Let's go mislead the American people," but you knew some of this stuff before we knew it.

What was - now that you're out, you can actually answer this question honestly - what's Scott McClellan's view on the Iraq situation that we've gotten ourselves into?

McClellan: My view today?

Tavis: Yeah.

McClellan: Even a year ago or I guess over a year ago, a year and a half ago, when the Iraq Study Group came out with Baker and Hamilton, this bipartisan approach to try to bring it to a responsible end, I actually encouraged the White House, you ought to embrace that. And I think they should have fully embraced that.

My view today is that our troops have done everything they've been called on to do, they've succeeded in every way possible, and that they've been there for longer than anyone should have to serve there, serving multiple tours of duty.

Ideally, I would like to see it come to a successful conclusion in Iraq, but there's only so much we can do. It's now up to the political leaders in Iraq to make this a success, and we need to find a way to bring this to a successful and responsible conclusion in a relatively short amount of time. We need to not let this continue to drag on for years and years in an endless war.

Tavis: Juxtapose that view now, Scott, to the way you were feeling about Iraq when you were spinning us every day for the White House.

McClellan: Right. Well, back then I was advocating - I was speaking and advocating on behalf of the president and his decisions. When you're spokesman, you don't get to pick and choose. You defend the president's policies and his decisions.

But even then I was talking about, to some extent, I was saying no matter where you stood before we need to work together. And one of the biggest problems, I think, for this president was the fact that we weren't open and candid in the lead-up to the war. It prevented us from sustaining the necessary bipartisan support to make this a more successful and shorter war.

Tavis: Back to Valerie Plame, because you're testifying before Congress this Friday and I want to ask you about that in just a second. Before I ask you about your testimony this Friday and what you expect to be asked and what you expect to tell them, earlier you suggested that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove had lied to you.

McClellan: Right.

Tavis: How does a White House press secretary, whose job it is to put the White House's point of view out there, how do you do that job, how do you navigate this journey when you discover that your superiors have lied to you?

McClellan: It's very tough. Now in this instance, I think the president was also misled. In fact, the president told me, I recount a conversation with him in the Oval Office, that Karl Rove didn't do it - "Karl told me he didn't do it," meaning he wasn't involved in it. So I think that he was misled in that instance, too.

I actually thought about whether or not I should resign at that point, but it wasn't the president who misled me. But at the same time, these are top advisers to the president, colleagues of mine on the senior staff, one who I'd worked with as far back as in Texas, and I thought I could trust them.

And it is a real problem for the spokesman when he is given bad information or false information, like it was in this instance. A spokesman has to be able to rely on those around him to provide him with accurate information, and when that doesn't happen, his or her credibility is greatly undermined, as mine was, and I could only stay in that position for so much longer after that had happened.

The counsel's office came in and said, "You can't comment on it now," when it became known that I had passed along false information, and so I couldn't defend myself or set the record straight. That's a tough position to be in.

Tavis: This is my point of view; you don't necessarily raise this in the book, but I want to raise it and get your thought about it. So you're in this uncomfortable situation, this untenable situation where you discover your superiors have lied to you and you've got to go out and do your job or decide to resign.

It's the same decision that Colin Powell had to make. Colin Powell decided, like a good soldier, to stay to the end, but you saw - you saw, as we all saw, how it cost him integrity, how it cost him some of his credibility. So with Colin Powell - and this is as an example to you - why still then decide to stay when you see a guy who had all the credibility, all the integrity, could have been the Republican nominee, perhaps, at one point in time.

McClellan: Absolutely, absolutely. Probably could have won the presidency.

Tavis: Okay, so if you've got Powell as an example, why not resign sooner?

McClellan: Well, I don't know. I think part of it is my personal affection for the president. I like the president personally. There's many things, and I talk about them in the book, that I respect about him, but it's hard to separate - when you're in there, separate your personal like for someone from his policies in governance.

Because I'd worked for him for a number of years, seven and a half years altogether. I had a lot of personal loyalty to him. But ultimately, your loyalty is to the American people and to the truth, more than anything else.

Tavis: Back to Valerie Plame. So you're testifying this Friday before the House Judiciary Committee. What do you expect to be asked about the Plame case, and what are you going to tell them?

McClellan: Well, we'll see. I talked about - essentially I think everything I know about it in the book is really in there, or anything of significance I know about it is in the book, so I suspect they'll be asking me questions about what I wrote in the book. Chairman Conyers invited me to come testify; this is voluntary on my part.

I'm glad to answer their questions. We'll just have to see where it goes. I imagine some might try to get into some other areas as well; I don't know if the White House will try to object to it. But one of the problems here is that during this whole Valerie Plame leak episode, I said, "One day I look forward to telling you what I know, once the legal proceedings are over."

And we at the White House also implied that hey, when this is over, we'll talk to you. But it's now apparent to me that the White House was simply interested in stonewalling that decision and once it was over, they said, "Oh, well, it's no longer an issue for us."

But whether or not it's criminal or not, what happened, it was wrong to expose her identity in this campaign to discredit her husband, and I think the American people are owed the truth. And so I'll tell them exactly what I know about it.

Tavis: And what do you make of the president, who said that if anybody - I'm paraphrasing; you were there, though. You can probably say it verbatim.

McClellan: That's right. Right, I said it for him.

Tavis: If anybody - what did the president tell you to say?

McClellan: That if anybody's involved in this, they will no longer be in this administration. And the president later lowered the threshold to say if anybody was I think indicted or convicted of a crime, then they would no longer be in this administration.

Tavis: And what do you make of his lowering the threshold?

McClellan: I think it was a big mistake. He should have stuck by his word. Like I said, anybody who was involved in this, it was wrong for them to be doing it. Whatever their excuse may be and whether or not it was criminal is a whole nother matter, but it was still wrong and the president should have stuck by his word, and it's unfortunate he didn't.

Tavis: You're going to Austin this weekend on this book tour, after you testify on Washington on Friday. This weekend you're headed to Austin. Tell me about your mother, about your family. I know your mother; I've interviewed her before, and it's really kind of funny to me that you ended up in the Bush White House, given where you came from.

McClellan: (Laughs) That's true. I grew up in a Democratic family in Texas, in Austin. The patriarch of our family really was my grandfather, Dean W. Page Keaton, who was a long-time dean of the University of Texas School of Law, taught there just about his entire life.

And he used to instill in us the importance of public service and he used to teach us that it's not the dollars you make; it's the difference you make. And so we were really brought up on the importance of speaking up and the importance of problem-solving and getting involved in public service and getting involved in politics, whether or not it was directly or voluntary, on the volunteer side of things.

And then my mother, of course, was elected to the Austin school board when I was four years old. This was in 1972. She was later, when I was in third grade, elected the first woman mayor of Austin - the only woman mayor elected in Austin. This was in 1977.

Tavis: Wow.

McClellan: Served three terms. Now in Texas, they were nonpartisan offices, but she was a Democrat and served three terms in that position. So I really grew up - most people choose to get involved in politics; I was born into politics and it's been part of who I am ever since I can remember.

Tavis: How did your mother - I know my mother watches this show every night, and you can say anything you want about Tavis, but if Joyce is anywhere in the vicinity you've got to deal with her. How did your mother process what her baby was going through - you're still her baby.

McClellan: That's true.

Tavis: How does she process what you're going through in the White House when she knows you're in a tight spot? Were you talking to her with any regularity?

McClellan: Yes, and she's been very supportive of what I wrote and what I did. She felt it was very important for me to speak up about this as well. I'm sure she takes it a little more personally than I do, but I reverse that and think back to when I was a kid. I used to take things personally when people would say things about her. When people say it about me, it really doesn't bother me, and I think part of that is because of the way I was brought up.

Tavis: Were you able to confide in her while you were going through this in the White House?

McClellan: Yes, I did. I actually did share some of this with her as I was writing it and asked for her advice on it as well.

Tavis: I got a few words I want to share about Tim Russert here in just a second. Before I let you go, it turns out when one looks at the record, that you were Tim Russert's last one-on-one guest.

McClellan: Yes.

Tavis: You were the last one-on-one guest on "Meet the Press." Your thoughts about Tim Russert?

McClellan: There's only one Tim Russert, and you can't replace Tim Russert. He is a - and few people, I think, achieve that status of giant in broadcast news. He was a giant, and I don't know how we can have a presidential election without Tim Russert. Few people influenced politics as positively as he did, and he will be deeply missed.

Tavis: How was he viewed on the inside of the Bush administration as a member of the media?

McClellan: Well, I think everybody views him as a tough inquisitor, and that was his job. And he really worked hard to hold people accountable and ask the tough questions some of the others wouldn't ask. But he was always fair, and I think off the set people really respected him. One of the most decent people you will ever meet, and as you said I was the last one-on-one interview with him on "Meet the Press," and we had a great conversation, great visit afterwards. He enjoyed reading the book, and I thanked him for all he was doing. I just - it's hard to imagine that this has happened.

Tavis: What would you say to those of us in the media, then, about our complicity in some of these stories that get run amok that you talk about in this text?

McClellan: No, absolutely. And I say there are exceptions to the rule, but as a general matter in the build-up to the Iraq war and just in Washington's poisonous atmosphere, the media becomes almost a complicit (unintelligible). They're not responsible for the atmosphere; the elected officials are.

But the media gets caught up in this horse race mentality that carries over from the campaign - who's up, who's down, who's on the offensive, who's winning the narrative and who's losing the narrative, instead of looking at who's right and who's wrong and what's the underlying truth here.

And that's my biggest concern about the national media. Whether or not they're liberal or not, I don't think that's a big problem. In fact, I would welcome a more liberal media as long as they're fair, because they're going to be more skeptical and challenging of the government, as the media is supposed to do.

Tavis: You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. The new book is "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception" by the former White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Scott, nice to have you on the program.

McClellan: Tavis, thank you, enjoyed it.

Tavis: It's good to see you.