said he spoke to them before telling reporters they were not involved. I had allowed myself to be deceived into unknowingly passing along a falsehood, he wrote. It would ultimately prove fatal to my ability to serve the president effectively. McClellan wrote he did n't realize what he said was untrue until reporters began digging up details of the case almost two years later. A former spokesman for Bush when he was governor of Texas, McClellan was named White House press secretary in 2003, replacing Ari Fleischer. McClellan had previously been a deputy press secretary and was the traveling spokesman for the Bush campaign during the 2000 election. He announced he was resigning in April 2006 at a news conference with Bush. One of these days, he and I are going to be rocking in chairs in Texas talking about the good old days of his time as the press secretary, Bush said at that conference. And I can assure you, I will feel the same way then that I feel now, that I can say to Scott, job well done. CNN's Ed Henry contributed to this report.