McClellan book flap has familiar ring, Clark says

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Former Bush administration spokesman Scott McClellan's new memoir is shaking up the capital Wednesday, but a one-time White House aide-turned-critic says the reaction has a familiar ring.

"They're saying some of the exact same things about McClellan they said about me," Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, told CNN's "American Morning."

Clarke left government in 2003. The following year, he accused President Bush of ignoring warnings about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and of using the attacks to push for war with Iraq. But Clarke gave McClellan little credit for speaking out now.

"I think the difference with McClellan's book is he's now telling us something we all know - that the war with Iraq was a disastrous war (and) was sold with deception. It's a little different when you say something as I did and a few other people did four or five years ago, when the war was popular and when we were unpopular for saying what we said."

McClellan, who defended Bush's policies through Hurricane Katrina and the early years of the war in Iraq, now blasts his former colleagues for allowing propaganda and spin to overwhelm the truth.