Posted on 05/28/2008 10:59:12 PM PDT by paltz
When Scott McClellan was named George Bush’s White House press secretary in 2003, The New York Times referred to his “tell-all-dad,” Barr McClellan.
Hint: Click in map to explore connectionsStory continues below interactive map 
An attorney, Barr McClellan had used information about his former partners at a Texas law firm as the basis of a book asserting Lyndon Baines Johnson had directed the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Scott McClellan has now written his own “tell-all” book, a chronicle of his time in the George W. Bush White House.
Entitled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, the volume is no valentine to a former boss.
McClellan writes that Bush was not “open and forthright” going into the Iraq War.
He also writes that he was misled by Bush aides, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby, in connection with the leaking of information about Valerie Plame, a CIA operative.
And McClellan pictures the White House as in a “state of denial” during the first week after the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Dana Perino, the current White House press secretary, was reported in the Times online edition today as characterizing McClellan’s book as the work of a “disgruntled” ex-employee.
“For those of us who fully supported him before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is said,” she said. “This is not the Scott we knew.”
McClellan’s book is officially published next week. Copies had been sent to some reporters with the understanding that their stories not come out before Sunday.
Politico’s Mike Allen, who did not agree to the embargo, purchased a copy in a Washington book store and wrote about it Tuesday. Since then, reports have flooded out.
A native of Austin, Texas, McClellan, 40. was part of Bush’s gubernatorial administration in Texas, serving as Bush’s deputy communications director and spokesman.
He was also the traveling press secretary for Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. He was appointed White House press secretary in July 2003, and served in that capacity until he resigned in April 2006.
As press secretary, McClellan was seen as mild-mannered, even shy, not as eager to be front and center as his predecessor, Ari Fleischer, or as his successor, Tony Snow.
McClellan comes from a well-known Texas family. His grandfather, W. Page Keeton, was the long-time dean of the University of Texas Law School.
His mother, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, is the former three-term mayor of Austin and the former Texas comptroller.
In 2006, Strayhorn was an unsuccessful independent candidate for governor in Texas.
Strayhorn and Barr McClellan, her first husband, had three other sons.
Mark McClellan, a physician and economist, was the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration during Bush’s first term.
In March 2004, he became the administrator for the government’s Medicare and Medicaid services. He is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The two other McClellan brothers, twins Brad and Dudley, are lawyers in Texas.
How much will he hold to what’s in his book when he is called to testify under oath before Congress? Will he lie to Congress as Kerry did during the Vietnam war about attrocities he claimed to witness and claimed to have participated in? Claims that he now calls the embelished words of an angry young man?
Hard to “tell all” when you don’t have anything to tell.
What’s reported so far is a huge nothing, just Scott McClellan echoing Soros-’Rat talking points. No great revelations, not even any minor revelations. Just SM’s worthless opinions on a few controversial issues. He has added nothing of value to the national debate, nothing.
Unless there’s something juicy in the book that has not yet been referred to, this is merely the mindless spite of a pitiful hack has-been, whose only significance in life was provided by his temporary proximity to George W. Bush.
I’m waiting for any evidence that SM is anything but a reptilian little not-a-has-been-cause-he-never-was.
Nothing needs to be added to what you said....AMEN.
More Scotty info ping
I wish I could say I'm surprised here but it only solicited a knowing eye-roll when I saw the story about the book on Drudge.
Does anyone know who hired this guy in the first place?
He always looked uncomfortable..
This is posted on blog “little green footballs”
The Soros-McClellan Connection
Wed, May 28, 2008 at 7:28:40 pm PDT
The hat tip for this post goes to LGF reader John Williams in Texas.
The company that published Scott McClellan’s new Bush-bashing book is Public Affairs Books, and their Editor at Large is a guy named Peter Osnos: About The Century Foundation.
The owner of Public Affairs Books is a company called Perseus Book Group. Here’s their ownership tree: Perseus Books Home.
The firm is owned by Perseus Funds Group, (holding company Perseus LLC) a capital management firm that grew from about $20 million in 1995 to over $2 billion now. Big infusions of cash seemed to help it grow exponentially and it closed funds almost as fast as it opened them. The board has tons of liberals from the Clinton and Carter Administrations with credentials that almost put Osnos’ to shame as far as far left causes go. Their website is here: PERSEUS - merchant bank and private equity fund management.
If you go to the New York Department of State web site and enter “Perseus” in the “Business Organization” search, you get this on page 2 of the results:
Hi, George!
He won't have to hold to anything...because he'll barely be given a chance to talk. He and his baseless book are mere pretext and props for this "hearing"--which will be nothing more than an endless harangue about all things Bush, all things Cheney. He'll just have to sit there sipping water and blinking as democrat after democrat sermonizes and spews a stream of bile and lies and deranged ravings. On and on and on and on...
With investigations of Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker under way and according to some including JFK secretary Evelyn Lincoln JFK planned to drop LBJ in 1964 -- thus opening up LBJ to all kinds of prosecution especially from Attorney General RFK -- I've always asked, instead of who had the most to gain if JFK was no longer president the question is: who had the most to lose if JFK remained president? Barr McClellan makes sense to me.
In the case of Scott McClellan, Dems have been known to blackmail. The latest widely talked about instance (that I know of) was the attempt to blackmail Electoral College delegates to vote for Gore.
I don’t mind “tell all” as long as it’s accurate. I suspect this was written by his publicist.
As much as I find SM a little weasel and a failed spokesman for the President, I have to wonder that the blame is GWB’s lack of ability to pick his team by competence and results as effective leadership requires.
His style of loyalty above all has predictable results.
Who paid him off? Soros?
I think Scott is Gay and David Brock, with Soros’s money, has FLIPPED him! Ask Jeff gannon if Scott is gay,
Good find. Here’s another.
http://www.cfr.org/bios/548/richard_c_holbrooke.html
Follow the membership!
Actually...yes
That was my first instinct as well. But here is an excerpt from a Washington Post profile in 2003:
"McClellan's wife, the former Jill Martinez, volunteers part time in the White House. They were married in November 2003, live in Arlington, have no kids, no iPods, two cars, two dogs and three cats -- all of them rescued strays and none of which McClellan has ever kicked.
McClellan, a Methodist, is reading Rick Warren's bestseller, 'The Purpose-Driven Life.'
He was a varsity tennis player at the University of Texas, often wakes -- at 5 a.m. -- to a BBC radio broadcast, then switches to NPR, then alternates between news radio and country music for the 15-minute commute to work in his Chevy Tahoe."
Take away from that what you will....
I was best friends with Barr McClellan in high school and his campaign manager for Senior Class President.
So I read his book. I never could overcome the feeling that the book was written in retaliation for his exit from the law firm under dubious circumstances.
Most critics apparently felt the same way and panned it.
Cats and NPR are a dead giveaway!! Wonder if the “wife” is a lefty.
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