Bush Blamed in Plamegate

Bush's ex-press secretary says he falsely exonerated Scooter Libby and Karl Rove in the outing of a CIA agent in 2003 because the president told him to, Salon reports. A leaked excerpt of Scott McClellan’s upcoming memoir says that his misinformation came from "the president himself" when McClellan claimed the two men were innocent of outing Valerie Plame.

“Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president’s chief of staff, and the president himself" were all "involved" in his fib, according to the excerpt from What Happened. "The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost" after the WMD scandal, McClellan writes. "There was one problem. It was not true." (More Valerie Plame stories.)