White House rankled by ex-aide's new book

"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," said White House press secretary Dana Perino. "For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad ? this is not the Scott we knew."

Perino said the reports on the book, titled What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception, had been described to President Bush, and that she did not expect him to comment.

"He has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers," she said.

He writes that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war. "

Regarding Bush, he writes that the president "convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment," and has engaged in "self-deception" to justify his political ends.

Rove, who was singled out for particularly strong criticism, said the book excerpts are "not the Scott McClellan I've known for a long time."

"It sounds like a left-winger blogger," he said on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes program.

Frances Fragos Townsend, a former Bush administration official, tells CNN that McClellan's claims are "self-serving, disingenuous and unprofessional."

"People need to understand that as an adviser to the president, I or Scott have an obligation, a responsibility, to voice concerns on policy issues," she says. "Scott never did that on any of these issues, as best I can remember, and as best I know from my White House colleagues."

Ari Fleischer, McClellan's immediate predecessor as press secretary, told Fox News he was confused by the book.

"Well there's just something about it that doesn't make any sense, and I say that because Scott never once approached me publicly, privately, to express any misgivings," he said. "I would think if he harbored such deep feelings about things he wouldn't have and shouldn't have accepted the press secretary job in the first place."

Fleischer, however, said he likes McClellan personally and expressed some sympathy with McClellan's tenure in the White House.

"He got dealt a deck of cards that were very tough," he said. "He was the press secretary at a time when the war in Iraq started to go very badly, he had issues inside with staffers who deceived him."

In the book, McClellan accused Rove, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff, of deliberately misleading him about their involvement in leak of a CIA operative's name.

He singled out what he described as a "suspicious" private meeting between Rove and Libby around the time that the story about their possible involvement in the matter was particularly hot.

"The confidential meeting also occurred at a moment when I was being battered by the press for publicly vouching for the two by claiming they were not involved in leaking (Valerie) Plame's identity, when recently revealed information was now indicating otherwise. ? I don't know what they discussed, but what would any knowledgeable person reasonably and logically conclude was the topic? Like the whole truth of people's involvement, we will likely never know with any degree of confidence."

Libby was later convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with the CIA leak case.

McClellan, whose ties to Bush go back to their days in Texas, also strongly criticizes the administration's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and writes that the White House "spent most of the first week in a state of denial."

McClellan blames Rove for engineering a photo-op that shows Bush looking out the window of Air Force One at a devastated New Orleans as the plane flew back to Washington from Texas.

McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped, but that he later was told that "Karl was convinced we needed to do it ? and the president agreed."

In response to the book, Rove said on Fox's Hannity and Colmes show that McClellan was wrong to suggest that a meeting between he and Libby was a rare occurrence. He said the two often discussed policy issues, or speeches or the vice president's schedule. He also denied any improper discussions with Libby involving the CIA leak case

"Both of our attorneys told us not to talk to anybody else in the White House about anything connected with that (case,) so we didn't," Rove said.

Regarding the New Orleans flyover, Rove said the White House faced a "horrible, horrible choice" to either land Air Force One and divert resources from the immediate rescue efforts or to fly to the north of the city and appear to be turning a blind-eye to the tragedy.

"If we landed, we'd have diverted valuable resources from the immediate effort to save people's lives and that was simply not unacceptable to the president," Rove said.

Rove, who described McClellan as "out of loop" on many White House matters, said the former press secretary did not speak up at the time if he had felt strongly about some issues, particularly the war.

"If he had these moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them," Rove said. "And I don't remember him speaking up about them."

Contributing: Associated Press