Scott McClellan Biography

Scott McClellan (born February 14, 1968) is a former White House Press Secretary (2003-2006) for President George W. Bush. Born in Austin, Texas, McClellan is the youngest son of Carole Keeton Strayhorn, former Texas state comptroller and former 2006 independent Texas gubernatorial candidate, and attorney Barr McClellan.

McClellan's brother Mark McClellan headed the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and formerly was Commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration. McClellan is the grandson of the late W. Page Keeton, longtime Dean of the University of Texas School of Law and renowned expert in tort law.

Mr. McClellan graduated from The University of Texas at Austin, where he was president of the Sigma Phi Epsilon Texas Alpha Chapter. He received his bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Texas.

McClellan was the three-time campaign manager for his mother. In addition, he worked on political grassroots efforts and was the Chief of Staff to a Texas State Senator.

Mr. McClellan began working as a gubernatorial spokesman for then-Governor Bush in early 1999 and he served as the traveling press secretary for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign.

Karen Hughes, Governor Bush's communications director, hired McClellan to be Bush's deputy press secretary. McClellan served as Governor Bush's traveling press secretary during the 2000 Presidential election. McClellan became White House Deputy Press Secretary in 2003. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, who stepped down as White House Press Secretary on July 15, 2003.

McClellan announced his resignation as Press Secretary on April 19, 2006. Many newspapers at the time reported that McClellan was forced to resign due to the Valerie Plame issue. On April 26, it was announced that Fox News pundit Tony Snow would succeed him in the position.

At a press briefing on October 10, 2003, McClellan asserted that the allegations of Karl Rove's and Scooter Libby's involvement in the leak of CIA Valerie Plame's identity were false. However, in excerpts from his book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, published in the spring of 2008 by Public Affairs Books, McClellan alledged that the statements were untrue.

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. There was one problem.

It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself.”

— Scott McClellan, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, 2008.

McClellan unexpectedly and harshly criticizes the Bush administration in his memoir What Happened. He accuses Bush of "self-deception" and of maintaining a "permanent campaign approach" to governing rather than making the best choices.

McClellan stops short of saying that Bush purposely lied about his reasons for invading Iraq, writing that the administration was not "employing out-and-out deception" to make the case for war in 2002, though he does write that the administration relied on an aggressive "political propaganda campaign" instead of the truth to sell the Iraq war. The book is also critical of the press corps for being too accepting of the administration's "propaganda" on the Iraq War and of Condoleeza Rice for being "too accommodating" and being very careful about protecting her own reputation.

The Bush administration responded through Press Secretary Dana Perino, who said,

"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. We are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew."

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article, Scott McClellan