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Washington: For years here and in Texas, Scott McClellan was the consummate loyalist, exhibiting faithful, unquestioning devotion to his boss, George W. Bush.
As White House press secretary, he scrappily presented the administration's talking points on everything from domestic policy to the Iraq war.
No longer.
In a new memoir, McClellan has presented chapter after chapter of accusations that some of the administration's most senior officials regularly lied to the public, conducted a "permanent campaign" to advance Republican political interests and managed the debate leading up to the invasion of Iraq in a way that "almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."
While criticism from a former official is not unheard of, such sharp words from someone like McClellan had the political world buzzing on Wednesday, stirred outrage in the blogosphere and drew a tart but wounded brush-off from the White House. President Bush, however, maintained a public silence.
The title of McClellan's 323-page account said it all: What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception. And the outcry surrounding the disclosure of its contents went on and on.
Former White House political strategist Karl Rove, reacting to an assertion that senior officials had misled McClellan on the legal problems of Vice-President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I.Lewis "Scooter" Libby, told Fox News:
"If he had these moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them. And frankly, I don't remember him speaking up about these things. I don't remember a single word," Rove said.
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