Phoenix, May 28 : Former White House press secretary Scot McClellan has been critical of his one-time boss President George W Bush, saying that he was often found engaging in “self-deception” to justify his political ends.

In a critical new memoir about his years in the West Wing, McClellan writes that the decision to invade Iraq was a “serious strategic blunder,” and yet, in his view, it was not the biggest mistake the Bush White House made.

The New York Times quotes McClellan as saying in his book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” that top White House officials deceived him about the administration’s involvement in the leaking of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson.

He says he did not know for almost two years that his statements from the Press Room that Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Junior were not involved in the leak were a lie.

McClellan, 40, went to work for Bush when he was the Governor of Texas and was the White House Press Secretary from July 2003 to April 2006.

Mike Allen first reported the revelations in the book, to be published by PublicAffairs next Tuesday on Politico.com. Mr. Allen wrote that he bought the book at a Washington store. The New York Times also obtained an advance copy.

McClellan is also harsh about the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, saying it “spent most of the first week in a state of denial” and “allowed our institutional response to go on auto pilot.”

McClellan blames Rove for one of the more damaging images after the hurricane: Bush’s flyover of the devastation of New Orleans.

When Rove brought up the idea, McClellan says he and Dan Bartlett, a top communications adviser, told Bush it was a bad idea because he would appear detached and out of touch. Rove, however, won out, McClellan adds.

He also criticises Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for being too accomodating” during her first term as National Security Adviser. She also had a deftness about protecting her reputation.

McClellan does not exempt himself from failings — “I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be” — and calls the news media “complicit enablers” in the White House’s “carefully orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval” in the march to the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003.

He does have a number of kind words for Bush, particularly from the April day in 2006 when Bush met with McClellan after he learned he was being pushed out.

“His charm was on full display, but it was hard to know if it was sincere or just an attempt to make me feel better,” McClellan writes.

“But as he continued, something I had never seen before happened: tears were streaming down both his cheeks,” McClellan adds. (ANI)