McClellan gets religion

The man who spoke for the Bush White House is coming clean in a new book and says the biggest failure of the administration is "a decision to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed."

According to the New York Times, which got an advance copy of the book by Scott McClellan:

Mr. McClellan writes that top White House officials deceived him about the administration’s involvement in the leaking of the identity of a CIA operative, Valerie Wilson. He says he did not know for almost two years that his statements from the press room that Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr. were not involved in the leak were a lie.

“Neither, I believe, did President Bush,” Mr. McClellan writes. “He too had been deceived, and therefore became unwittingly involved in deceiving me. But the top White House officials who knew the truth — including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney — allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie.”

This will be worth a read -- it's the first time someone on the front lines of the Bush administration talks about what was going on inside.

There may be hope for the truth yet.

    -- Jim Grinstead