Yup. But I have never done the equivalent of going to my clients and asking if they had anything to do with the outing of Plame, and they told me "who, me? No way!". Then, after committing myself to that, it turns out that they were telling a grand jury something different to save their own asses.
I don't know about Plame and Rove. I've seen nothing to indicate there was any wrongdoing there. And I certainly don't know the inner workings -- but I surely wouldn't accept McClellan's view of the matter as gospel.
The point is that it wasn't McClellan's call to make. At all. When you take that job it comes with strings attached, and one of those strings is that you cannot always be as candid as YOU might think you should be; you can't always disclose things that YOU think should be disclosed.
If you hire an attorney, a CPA, a physician, or any professional, you have a reasonable expectation of confidence (in these cases, the expectation is actually contractual, but for other professionals, it may just be implicit). While I've not practiced as a CPA for many years, I think it would be a violation of my responsibility to disclose details of a client's business, even one I had 20 years ago.
It is pretty clear that in this case McClellan sold out for the big payday, and was comfortable in disclosing not only facts, but very loose interpretations of the facts. |
