"We’re all quite a bit shocked, Matt..."

McClellan: Plame leak case was turning point

By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 1 hour, 59 minutes ago

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24861380/

Ex-press secretary says he had hoped Bush would change Washington

White House adviser Dan Bartlett, who appeared after McClellan on TODAY, said he still considers McClellan a friend but believes his former colleague resorted to the same rhetoric in the book that McClellan claims to disdain. He said McClellan makes bold claims about the administration “shading the truth” and deceiving the public in Iraq, but provides little evidence.

“Fundamentally, I believe what Scott was saying in his book was wrong. It’s patently false. I would not participate in a process in which we’re misleading the American people,” Bartlett said.

“We’re all quite a bit shocked, Matt, to say the least, about some of these revelations and the feelings he now is sharing with the American people that he never shared with us personally,” Bartlett said in describing the reaction of McClellan’s former colleagues.

He also said that when the decisions to invade Iraq were being made, McClellan was the deputy press secretary for domestic affairs. “He was not in those meetings,” Bartlett told Lauer. “He did not hear the deliberations when the president was deciding whether to send troops into Iraq.”

But in a second interview with Vieira, McClellan said that he was, in fact, in some of those meetings when he filled in for his boss, Ari Fleischer, while Fleischer took 10 days off for his honeymoon. Fleischer was married in November 2002.