Washington, D.C. ? President Bush broke his promise to the country by refusing to fire aide Karl Rove for leaking a CIA agent’s identity, said Scott McClellan, the president’s chief spokesman for almost three years.

“I think the president should have stood by his word and that meant Karl should have left,” McClellan said Sunday in a broadcast interview about his new tell-all book, a scathing rebuke of the White House under Bush’s leadership.

McClellan now acknowledges he felt burned by Rove, Bush’s top political adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff. He said Rove and Libby assured him they were not involved in leaking CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity, and he repeated those assurances to reporters.

In fact, both men had discussed Plame’s identity with reporters, as confirmed in a later criminal investigation. Rove’s lawyer maintains Rove never volunteered that information or actively sought to have it published. Libby resigned from office, but Rove remained and eventually stepped down on his own terms in August 2007.

White House press secretary Dana Perino declined comment Sunday about McClellan’s comments, as did Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin.

The White House had said in 2003 that anyone who leaked classified information in the case would be dismissed.

By July 2005, Bush qualified his position, saying he would fire anyone for leaking classified information if that person had “committed a crime.”

Rove was never charged with a crime.

Current and former White House aides have disputed McClellan’s account of a White House that pushed aside candor and honesty as needed.

McClellan appeared on “Meet the Press” on NBC.