Chapter One

Whose Side Are You On?

Mike McCurry was in a good mood. I was in his office on December 10, 1996, my second day in the White House, and he was trying to explain my job as the press's point man on scandal. He was grinning like a Cheshire cat — as if he knew something I didn't know, saw something I didn't see. His feet were on his half-moon desk. Behind him were watercolor paintings by his children, giving a surreal impressionistic backdrop for a tutorial on how to handle the scandal machine.

This is going to be fun, he said, watching me suffer.

Some fun, I said.

I remembered the first time I talked to McCurry about whether I should take the job, just a month or so before. My title was supposed to be "special counsel to the president," but my central responsibility was to deal with the press on behalf of the president and the White House on a variety of "scandal" stories, primarily the ones dealing with the allegations of Democratic campaign-finance abuses. My concern was that since McCurry spoke for the president and the White House, and since I was supposed to do the same, if I took the job how would I k ... read full excerpt from Truth to Tell: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself ebook