The memoir is called What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What’s Wrong with Washington. The headline on the catalog page says: “With unprecedented candor, one of George W. Bush’s closest aides takes readers behind the scenes of the Bush presidency and what exactly happened to take it off course.” On the facing page was this fragment from the book:

“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White House briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

“There was one problem. It was not true.

“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice-President, the President’s chief of staff and the President himself.”

Re-reading the excerpt now, I can see why it was so exciting. But what was amazing about the response was that it became a huge story before anyone pursued its context. McClellan is still at work on his book. At PublicAffairs, it is not unusual for writers to be finishing their books at the time we announce publication because the sell-in to stores has to take place months before the books actually arrive. The large chains want about six months to prepare for release, deciding on how many copies to take and what kind of promotion to support. The chapter cited in the catalog has been drafted. It is a meticulous account of the period at the start of McClellan’s tenure, when he had to handle the flap over the disclosure that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative, collateral damage in the Washington fracas over blame for the Iraq war blunders.

McClellan defended the White House then because, aside from that being his job, he believed what he was told by senior officials, two of whom we now know were lying. What Happened is McClellan’s forthright telling of what, on reflection, took place in that period as the justification for the Iraq war unraveled, Katrina became a national disgrace, and overall, the Bush administration’s claim to candor and competency was destroyed. Before taking on his book, my colleagues and I talked to White House correspondents and reporters in Texas and were assured that if McClellan said he would write a book without fear or favor, he would. And he is. (The Associated Press put out a story under the headline “Aides Choose Royalties over Loyalties,” listing the press secretaries who have written memoirs for large advances. I can assure you, as anyone familiar with PublicAffairs will attest, that lucre is not McClellan’s incentive to work with us.)

Back to the media maelstrom. The first reaction to the excerpt was that McClellan, by saying they were “involved,” was accusing the president and vice-president of deliberate deception. The rejoicing among administration critics was palpable. Senators. Schumer and Dodd and the outed Valerie Plame herself were immediately available to denounce the president. This is the first line of pages of Google News entries: “Here’s hoping McClellan’s book brings down Bush” (Aspen Times); “So, did Bush knowingly tell McClellan to lie?” (Kansas.com); “Congress, ask Bush: Did you order Scott McClellan to lie?” (Salon). We conferred with McClellan and decided that he was better off working on his book than grappling with the media (I did not immediately realize that there was a firestorm on the Web and cable) and when our intrepid publicity director, Whitney Peeling, began forwarding reporters to me, I explained that the chapter reports that McClellan believes that Bush, at least initially, did not know he was telling his press secretary to relay a series of howlers about who said what to whom. The full story must await publication.

The backlash then ensued: “McClellan’s Publisher Does Damage Control” (Truthdig). Roger Ailes, the eminence grise of Fox News, wrote on his blog that it was all a case of publisher “hype.” Based on my perusal, coverage of the episode in the print versions of the major newspapers seemed to be confined (if included at all) to wire accounts of McClellan’s assertion that he was misled and so was the president. But the newspaper Web sites, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, joined in the fray with blog entries and chat sessions conveying full sound and fury and the “deflating” fact that McClellan was not accusing the president of deliberate deception.

So what does it all add up to?

Scott McClellan is writing a responsible book about his moment in history. Much of our popular media, including some leading brand names, apparently shoot first and ask later. The blogosphere and cable news operate in a universe of their own in which frenzy and vituperation are the major currency. As for the known perpetrators of the Plame leak, whatever they may have done to McClellan and the pursuit of truth, they seem to have gotten away with it. Karl Rove is now a contributing columnist for Newsweek and is getting a substantial book contract. Libby was convicted of perjury but excused from jail time by President Bush.

Peter Osnos is Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation. Sign-up to receive Osnos’ columns weekly by email here. Read past columns here.