Scott McClellan worked as a loyal press spokesman for George W. Bush for eight years, ultimately becoming White House Press Secretary . He resigned from that position in 2006, in the wake of the controversy over the Valerie Plame leak scandal.

In his new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," he offers a harshly critical portrait of the president and his administration. Going to war in Iraq was a mistake, he concludes. But an even more fundamental mistake was the administration's...