Scott McClellan

I think I previously indicated that he attended three Hanukkah receptions at the White House. It is actually only two Hanukkah receptions that he attended. [...] I don't get into discussing staff-level meetings.

In this case, the 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.

Q: But if you stand out strongly trying to let the Arab world know that this is wrong and then you have the proverbial spokesperson for the conservative party saying this, doesn't that send a mixed message?
Scott McClellan: The President's views have been very -- have been made very clear. Go ahead.

My impression is... that this is, what I would call from the Watergate days, a modified, limited hangout, and I say that because, not because he was malevolent in his desire to put it out there, but press secretaries know very little in the big picture of what's happening at the White House. They're pretty much told what the policymakers and what the other political people in the White House would want them to know so they don't compromise themselves and they can try to be as honest as possible when they're out there briefing the press. So that's why I think it's pretty limited, but yet fascinating for what it is, and he certainly does nail a few things down. ... I think I've read all the memoirs of everybody who's served at the White House at one time or another, going all the way back as early as I could find them, and this is a very unusual one. My situation was of course testimony. I was under oath; there was an intense investigation going on. This is really not in the same context. I can't really think of anything quite similar. I was thinking of press secretaries. The only one who's become anywhere similar was Ford's press secretary, who resigned over the pardon in his disquiet with the pardon, Jerald terHorst, where he said that he was unhappy with what was going on. Ron Nessen, too, was to a degree fairly frank, but he'd left office. When I look back at all press secretaries, this is probably about the only time I can think of a press secretary coming forward while the President was still there, and laying out some of the ugly truth.

Jeff Gannon: In your denunciations of the Abu Ghraib photos, you've used words like "sickening," "disgusting" and "reprehensible." Will you have any adjectives left to adequately describe the pictures from Saddam's rape rooms and torture chambers? And will Americans ever see those images?
Scott McClellan: I'm glad you brought that up, Jeff, because the President talks about that often.