Ari Fleischer speaks out on McClellan’s book
Westchester native and former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was once Scott McClellan’s boss at the White House. During an interview with Alex Chadwick on NPR News’ “Day to Day”, Fleischer said he was “heartbroken” over McClellan’s new book.
“Scott was always a great deputy to me, very reliable, trustworthy, and never once did he come up to me and express any misgivings that he had or to anybody else that I know of about the war or the manner in which the White House prepared for the war,” Fleischer said.
A full transcript of the interview, courtesy of NPR, follows the jump.
ALEX CHADWICK: Ari Fleischer was President Bush’s first press secretary up through the early days of the Iraq war. His own book about that time is “Taking Heat.†Ari Fleischer, what went through your mind when you read reports of this book?
ARI FLEISCHER: Well, there’s just something about it that doesn’t make any sense to me, and I’m heartbroken about this. Scott was always a great deputy to me, very reliable, trustworthy, and never once did he come up to me and express any misgivings that he had or to anybody else that I know of about the war or the manner in which the White House prepared for the war.
MR. CHADWICK: He uses the term propaganda. That’s quite a term. And he’s talking about President Bush. I think he’s talking about you as well. He’s talking about the message from the White House.
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, that’s what really struck me is if Scott thought it was propaganda, then Scott should not have accepted the job as White House press secretary. If Scott viewed what the White House was saying was so irresponsible or wrong that it rose to the level of propaganda for him, it’s not a job he should have accepted. He should on principle have declined it.
MR. CHADWICK: Did you have any discussions with him about this at the time about what you all were saying about the war in Iraq, about getting ready for it?
MR. FLEISCHER: I did, and Scott was 100 percent fully on-board. Scott helped me prepare for the briefings. Scott and I would talk about what I was going to say. His job should have been to report them to me. He worked for me. He should have said, I wouldn’t say that if I were you, Ari. Or, I’m not sure I could say that, Ari.
MR. CHADWICK: Here’s a specific that Mike Allen quotes. And we spoke with Mike about this. Larry Lindsay, the chief economic advisor to the president, is quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying – this is before the war starts – as saying the war might cost 100 to $200 million. And the president gets very angry and tells Scott McClellan he shouldn’t be talking about that.
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, I remember that. And I remember it well. And I think Scott has told that accurately. The president’s direction to the staff was if America goes to war, we go to war for moral reasons, regardless of the financial cost. And so he didn’t want people talking about what dollars and cents might be. You either go to war or you don’t go to war. And I remember standing at the podium, when I got asked about that; Scott helped me prepare for that briefing.
MR. CHADWICK: Well, in this recounting of it, it’s part of this propaganda. Don’t talk about how much it’s going to cost. Indeed the administration said it’s going to cost much less than that. In fact, it has cost much, much more than that.
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, that’s why again, the president’s guidance was if America goes to war, we go to war whether it’s a dollar or a trillion dollars because it saves lives. It’s not an economic decision; it’s a moral decision.
MR. CHADWICK: You’re speaking about the obligations of the role of the press secretary. What about someone who feels that they’ve been misled by the administration, that they have lied for the administration, and that people above them knew they were lying. That’s a charge that Scott McClellan levels in this book, I believe – I haven’t read the book yet, but in Mike Allen’s account – in regards to the Valerie Plame affair, the CIA agent whose identity was revealed.
MR. FLEISCHER: Right, and I think Scott has legitimate grounds for complaint about the way the White House staff told him about that. There’s no question about that. He does. And Scott made it clear in this book that the president was also misled by the staff. And those staff members are no longer there.
But it’s the statements that he made about the war and the propaganda that I just don’t understand. Those are the issues that I think rise to the level of, if that’s what you think, then don’t take the job. This has happened before – press secretaries have resigned on principle. But if it’s not in your heart, you can’t do a good job from that podium.
And it always was in Scott’s heart. Scott took the podium. He repeatedly defended the war and the approach to the war. Even after Scott left the White House, he went on TV shows and defended President Bush and the war. So I don’t know what changed so dramatically for Scott in the last few months, several months, that led him to write a book that was so different from everything I saw about Scott personally and privately.
Something changed. And there are parts of this book that just don’t sound like Scott. Scott, to me, will always be a friend and somebody who I always relied on. And I don’t know what could have led him to have such a dramatic change of heart.
And I talked to Scott yesterday.
MR. CHADWICK: You did?
MR. FLEISCHER: Yeah, and Scott and I remain close. And that’s one of the reasons I’m so heartbroken about this. Scott told me that this book really did change. And he said this book ended up a lot different from the way it got started. He told me he didn’t know if he could write a book like this a year ago.
MR. CHADWICK: So when this story broke, you called him and spoke with him.
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, actually, I called Scott because Scott and I frequently – we periodically have kept in touch ever since he left the White House. And when Scott and I, we got together – gosh –a year and a half ago for breakfast. And I remember talking to Scott about the book and he told me how good it was going to be for President Bush.
MR. CHADWICK: Well, you had a private conversation with a friend who has written this book, which you know is about to become very, very public. And in the course of that, you don’t develop any greater understanding about why he says what he did over the course of a time that was critical to both your lives?
MR. FLEISCHER: He told me it was going to be a tough and honest book is how he put it to me. He said there would be things in here that the press is really going to focus on. They’re going to focus on the criticisms is what he told me. And he told me that he always thought the president was well intentioned, but on the big picture that the president and Scott were not in line.
At that point, the story did not appear in Politico. So I hadn’t seen yet just how tough and rough this book was. And Scott didn’t read to me any of the passages in it. And then I saw the Politico story.
MR. CHADWICK: Well, did you ask him in that conversation, what do you mean tough and rough? What happened? Why are you doing this?
MR. FLEISCHER: I didn’t say why are you doing this. I wish I had said to him, Scott, why are you doing this? What changed? I wish I had asked him that. I think if I had seen the Politico story before my conversation with him, I surely would have.
MR. CHADWICK: Are you going to call Scott McClellan again today?
MR. FLEISCHER: Yeah, I think I probably will. And I will always – I will always on a personal level wish Scott well. Scott was a great deputy to me. Scott was reliable. And I’ve nothing but good memories of the time we worked together. And I’m sure Scott is going to be very busy right now. And I think he’s uncomfortable, too. In our conversation yesterday, you could tell he was a little bit uncomfortable because he was about to – but you could tell he was a little bit uncomfortable because he knew he was going to be out of sync with the people he used to work for.
MR. CHADWICK: Ari Fleischer runs Ari Fleischer Communications. It’s a consulting company in New York. Ari, any more books coming from you?
MR. FLEISCHER: (Chuckles.) I had one book in me and I think that’s probably about it.
MR. CHADWICK: It was “Taking Heat,†his account of the White House years. Ari Fleischer, thank you.
MR. FLEISCHER: Thank you.
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scott realizes now not then that the war was the fantasy
of the neocons who owned cheney..and who in turn influenced
bush….they attempted to impose a democracy on a country
which had absolutely no democratic history…it didn;t
work..and what is worse is that they manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion…unfortunately
ari fleishher, joe lieberman, paul wolfawitz, ed koch
and others still think the war was a good idea…
I wonder why?
Because the tide has turned, that’s why. But you keep beating on that same drum. Why do you think Iraq has almost vanished from the headlines? It’s because the tide has turned, but much of the media doesn’t want to admit it.
But there finally was a big AP story today or yesterday pointing out all the progress.
As for McClellan, there is something wrong with this picture. Very possibly, since he had never once voiced any misgivings in private, he is trying to make a quick buck. Not very honorable. But he is a guy with an ax to grind. He was replaced as press spokesman, remember?
Right. He certainly can’t make any advance money writing a book with a pro-Bush, or an even-handed angle, nor would he get the publicity needed by his publisher to make them enough dollars to even interest them in a book project. Who would have heard of, or have any interest in Benedict Arnold if he simply served honorably and retired to Boca with the Consultant? And that list of his includes those who are astute enough to realize that if we weren’t doing the heavy-lifting in that part of the world, Israel would, and we would be paying $250 a barrel by now and probably be engaged in a much wider war.
quite the contrary….Iraq was a check against Iran..
there was no “al queda in Iraq” before the invasion
Iraq was a dictatorship and a brutal one at that but
that has never been the standard for an amercian
invasion. THis president has deviated from traditional
republican policy..and he has done so on the advice
and urging of a group surrounding cheney called neocons
who believe that democracy can be imposed on a country
like Iraq…not possible because of ethnic rivalries
and because of no democratic tradition…
they were also motivated by the notion that establishing
a democratic mid east would innure to the benefit of
Israel…the oppposite has happened by enabling Iran
to bolden itself and develop nuclear fissile material
whiel the armed forces of the US are stretched to the
point where we are unable to make a credible threat
to stop them …this will go down in history as the
bigget foreign policy blunder ever made..and it was made
on hyped up misleading intelligence that turned out to
be wrong…Had we known that there was no WMD ..the
congress would not have authorized the ivasion…
Scott McClellan’s father, Barr, authored a book a few years ago which claimed Lyndon Johnson orchestrated JFK’s assassination. That is a fact. You can look it up.
I also believe Scott McClellan’s publisher handles all of George Soros’ publishing projects. McClellan took the money and set out to write things, true or not, that would appeal to Bush-haters. That’s who will buy his book. The left-leaning media outlets are salivating to book him. McClellan is a bum. And a hypocrite, and he is going for the bucks at the cost of integrity. Period.
And, the Consultant is becoming a real bore with his constant incorrect statements about Iraq. Every Intel service in the Western world (and Bill Clinton) believed Saddam had WMD. The Consultant’s hatred of the “Neo-Cons” has to be considered when viewing his comments about Iraq.
suggested reading for Wahoo:
The war on Iraq:
Conceived in Israel
by Stephen J. Sniegoski
suggest with all due respect that you familiarize yourself
with just exactly why the US went to war…why they US
changed its foreign policy..why the President was so
anxious to justify the invasion etc….forget about
Scott MccLlen..as Fleisher said..he never expressed
any reservations while in the white house…
However this war is historically a deviation from
CONSERVATIVE POLICY…..
Consultant….Saddam defied 17 UN resolutions. And all the Western Intelligence agencies believed he had weapons of mass destruction. Bill Clinton and his administration also believed he did. I agree the war was handled badly, mostly because the Bush administration tried to fight it in a “politically correct” manner. Ie., not enough troops going in. “Shock and Awe” was a failure.
But, based on all available data at the time, I think the facts show the war itself was justified.
Friends: book publishing is “the arena of many ideas,” as my mentor in the business explained to me some years ago (he had begun his career as President Eisenhower’s editor, then developed WFB as a novelist; Sam Vaughan also was generous with Alex Haley, allowing him ten years to finish “Roots.”)
Twenty years ago, Don Regan and Larry Speakes published their own memoirs, in the last year of the Reagan Administration. Each book (owing to good ghostwriters) contained eye-opening statements about RWR (Nancy’s astrologers, for example).
We Americans are entitled to know the unvarnished truth about our elected officials. History will decide their fate.
As for Public Affairs, Mr. McClellan’s publisher, it has an eclectic list of good books. Its founder is a former Washington Post reporter, a one-time Vietnam correspondent, who has an open mind. (And possibly some of Mr. Soros’ dollars, but publishers need financing.)
As to other voices, you may rest assured there will be a flurry of good controversial books next year on the administration of our president (disclosure: I voted for him). Again, we Americans are fortunate to live in a country where information is open and opinions are debatable. It certainly wasn’t that way in Iraq up until five years ago, eh?
History is the ultimate judge. Our children are its beneficiaries.
ARI FLEISCHER is obviously a liar. Watching him try and defend Bush on CNN is nauseating. As this Presidency grinds to a halt is it not obvious this administration has been deceitful? It must make the Bush camp nervous that McClellan has delivered such a devasting direct hit to their credibility. It is not reasonable to conclude someone on the inside of the world most powerful clique would write a tell all book for a few hundred thousand dollars in publishing royalties. Once these guys leave office they begin careers where they wipe their nose with that sort of money.
Lets not pretend that the military industrial complex, Cheney, Haliburton, and large oil were not driving many of the decisions from this administration.