McClellan stays on message

Democrats wanted more details about life in the White House than former Press Secretary Scott McClellan gave in his best-selling memoir. They didn’t get much.

McClellan said he does not believe President Bush was directly involved in the leaking of CIA Agent Valerie Plame’s identity to the press, but he could “not rule it out” that Vice President Cheney might have been.

{mosads}That was about as far as McClellan was willing to go in responding to a wide-range of questions from Democrats and Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, where he testified for approximately four hours on Friday about his tell-all book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”

Under persistent and repeated questioning from Democrats curious for more details about how Plame’s name came to be leaked, who was intent on covering it up, and how the administration used or misused intelligence prior to the invasion of Iraq, McClellan made clear that he was only going as far as he’s already gone.

“As I wrote in the book,” was a phrase McClellan used at least a dozen times in beginning his answers.

McClellan, for all intents and purposes, stuck to his talking points.

But that did not stop the questions from coming.

“Do you think either [the President or the Vice President] or both of them knew about the leak or had any role in causing the leak to happen?” asked Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.).

“I do not think the President, in any way, had knowledge about it, based on my conversations with him back at that time…. In terms of the Vice President, I do not know, there is a lot of suspicion there. As Patrick Fitzgerald said in the trial of Scooter Libby, there is a cloud that remains over the Vice President’s office, but it’s because Scooter Libby put it there by lying and obstructing justice.”

From there, the questions turned to Iraq.

“In terms of the buildup to the Iraq war,” asked Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas),” would you describe it as telling an untruth?”

“It was not completely truthful, that’s the way I would describe it,” McClellan said.

Jackson Lee and Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) also wanted to know if McClellan would support the impeachment of Bush, Cheney or both, based on the premise that they were untruthful with the American public about Iraq.

Jackson Lee had not even finished her question when McClellan interjected, “Congresswoman I do not support impeachment based on what I know.”

The closest McClellan got to giving what Democrats seemed to be looking for came in response to questioning from Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.).

Davis asked McClellan if it surprised him that Karl Rove had agreed to appear before the Judiciary Committee only under extraordinarily limited conditions.

“It doesn’t surprise me, and I think it’s all part of an effort to stonewall the process,” McClellan said.

“Would you trust Mr. Rove if he were not under oath?” Davis asked.

“Well, based on my own experience, I could not say that I would,” McClellan said.

Republicans were able to say that having a witness who stuck to his script with such discipline only reinforced their argument that a hearing on McClellan’s book was a monumental waste of time.

In his opening statement, Ranking Republican Lamar Smith (R-Texas) welcomed everyone to the Judiciary Committee’s new “Book of the Month Club.”

And during the hearing, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) put it even more succinctly.

“I have to say that I don’t think there’s anything enlightening to be gained from your testimony today,” said Goodlatte.