Freedoms Phoenix

In an administration plagued by a case of "didn't knows" the latest seems to be the true feelings of Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary from 2003 – 2006.  Describing him as "disgruntled" and "the Scott we didn't know", spokes-bureaucrats and neocon mouthpieces are climbing over one another to take a shot at McClellan.  Since the hysteria surrounding McClellan's new book, What Happened, is sure to make it a national best-seller, it will be interesting to read the accounts from the book on what else the White House didn't know and the inevitable rebuttals noting that they just didn't know.

I suppose we can forgive the liberal media for their tangible excitement over the possibility that McClellan did know what was going on in the West Wing (if only someone had known the emails weren't being archived) but spin-meisters are already putting the brakes on that idea.  Karl Rove noted on Hannity and Colmes that there was no way that McClellan could have known what was going on in meetings between him and Scooter Libby, painting a verbal picture of a press secretary who merely stood in the hall waiting for tidbits of gossip to pass on to the assembled press.

But, if that picture is correct, then how would anyone in the White House know what Scott McClellan was like?  And, how do they know that the tales he tells in his book are out of character?  It's all so confusing.

It's eerily reminiscent of early 2005 when Doug Wead aired tapes of George W. Bush talking about his marijuana and cocaine use, tapes that Bush didn't know were made.  At that time the White House didn't go on the offensive against Wead, leading some to believe that the playing of the tapes was meant to distract from the fact that the White House didn't know that one of the credentialed press was a gay prostitute.  While Wead entertained the masses and "shocked" evangelicals with his releases, Jeff Gannon (Guckert) was quietly shooed off the south lawn.

Gannon, who was noted for his series of softball questions, now intimates on his blog, in a post entitled "Scott, We Hardly Knew Ye", that he was given White House press credentials because he was a close personal friend of then-press secretary Scott McClellan. 

What I hear about the book does not sound like the Scott McClellan I knew for two years. I can say without fear of contradiction, that I knew Scott better than any other White House correspondent or Washington reporter.

Well, at least somebody knows something.