Faces in the Mirror.

Mr. Morris, author most recently of The New Prince: Machiavelli Updated for the 21st Century, was for more than 20 years an advisor to Bill Clinton.

Truth to Tell: Tell It Early, Tell It All, Tell It Yourself: Notes from My White House Education, by Lanny J. Davis (Free Press, 284 pp., $25)

In the Clinton administration, press spokesmen occupy a spot in the pecking order just below janitor. They are considered an alien presence, unwelcome in the inner councils of the White House. To hold such a job is to be pilloried by the media on the outside and cut off from all information on the inside. Apart from a paycheck, and a goodly amount of camera time, the post offers few enticements.

Lanny Davis-who worked in the White House counsel's office, primarily as a press flack, from December 1996 to January 1998-presents a curiously Janus-faced image. One face, he shows in his new memoir, Truth to Tell, which provides a relatively truthful, insightful, and complete account of how the administration fought to keep the facts about its various scandals from the public. But Davis's other face, he shows on television, even when he is promoting his book. There he offers the same cover-ups he rightly deplores in print. It's as if, having written his memoir, Davis has not read it.

So how are we to reconcile the two Lannys-Book Lanny and TV Lanny?

Book Lanny points out how the White House scrambled to avoid releasing the names of the donors who were caffeinated at White House coffees. He writes that he repeatedly argued for release of this information but found himself blocked at every turn. "I started to realize that the resistance I was encountering in getting answers to the reporters' questions was not simply the normal political resistance to cooperating with the press. I began to think that at least some of the DNC legal and finance people were lying to me." No!

Book Lanny is also refreshingly frank about the all-too-obvious purpose of these little White House gatherings: "Those coffees were held to raise money during a political campaign," and "that's a fact." Unlike his former colleagues, Book Lanny avoids White House-speak, admitting that the administration could not acknowledge that these coffees were fundraisers because such an admission might implicate the president in illegal activity. Once these coffees became widely known, the administration-Davis included-tried to spin them as "efforts to build financial support," not fundraisers.

According to Book Lanny, when he tried to get the White House to reveal the names of those who had stayed overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom, he faced a wall of opposition. "The lawyers resisted," he writes. "The answers were not forthcoming from within the White House or the DNC." When he attempted to release information about the administration's extensive contacts with tycoon and big donor Roger Tamraz (who by then was wanted for arrest by Interpol), "the wall of silence seemed to be in place again."

How odd, then, after all this honesty, that Davis should go on television to engage in exactly the sort of cover-up he exposes in his memoir, as he did on May 24, on Fox's O'Reilly Factor. There TV Lanny said, blandly, that the White House "help[ed] reporters write bad stories [about Clinton]," claiming that "we gave them the list of White House coffee names that led to so many embarrassing and damaging stories. We gave them the list of people who stayed overnight in the Lincoln Bedroom. We helped get the Tamraz story out, which involved compromising the CIA and the White House involving a campaign contributor. President Clinton hired me to do that."

So which Lanny Davis are we to believe? Should we read Book Lanny, who confesses that getting at the truth behind the Clinton scandals was like pulling teeth? Or watch TV Lanny, who assures us of the spontaneity and openness of the Clinton White House?

The likely answer lies in Econ 101: Davis's publisher knew that its chances of selling books would drop each time its author aided the Clintons in burying the truth. It probably pressed him to reveal what really went on. Now, though, as Davis contemplates his future career and its likely intersection with the Clintonistas at the White House, he pulls his punches when the all-important camera is on.

Actually, Davis isn't entirely forthcoming even in Truth to Tell. He writes almost entirely in the passive voice. He tells us that information is concealed; that questions go unanswered; that decisions are made not to release facts. Few names-or even pronouns-appear in the story. Who did the concealing? Who decided not to answer? Who wouldn't release facts? Our so-discreet author doesn't say.

When he does identify those behind the stonewalling, we are told about agents, not principals. White House lawyers, the Democratic National Committee, or "the administration" make these decisions. Okay, but who pulled their strings? Who told them what to do? The answers remain shrouded. Even Book Lanny won't tell us.

It is as though Bill and Hillary Clinton didn't exist. Orders somehow descend from on high, and a curtain is pulled over the truth, blocking full or even partial disclosure. Davis offers no clue as to who pulled the curtain shut. His lowly station as the man charged with explaining the Clinton scandals to the press and public, of course, virtually precluded any access to the chief executive. He seems rarely to have spoken to either Clinton. And his book raises more questions than it answers.

So we are left with the big question, What role did Bill Clinton play in his administration's many cover-ups? We don't know, precisely. Does either Lanny?