"Jeff Gannon": Putting the ho back in media wh0re

[RPankn]

Gannon/Guckert was called upon by Bush at that January 26 press conference. This was the first time Bush recognized him, and Gannon/Guckert had been at the White House since 2003. [So what? What does that prove?] Moreover, Bush has demonstrated his ability to stumble through press conferences, not truly answering question, without assistance from a friendly member of the press corps. [Apparently, Corn doesn't think this is cause for concern either] I doubt the White House press operation saw Gannon/Guckert as a lifeline for either McClellan or Bush. If he received preferential treatment from the White House, my hunch is that he did so due to sloppiness on the part of the press office or because he was viewed as simpatico. [Or David, perhaps some of them were "clients" of Gannon/Guckert and were scared he would give up the dirt on their proclivities]


******


Don't forget about DAVID CORN's BLOG at www.davidcorn.com. Read recent postings on David Horowitz, Democrats and Iraq, and more. [This tells us all we need to know about where Corn is coming from]


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In addition to the White House's inadequate vetting of Gannon/Guckert, there is another serious angle in the Gannon/Guckert story. In October 2003, Gannon/Guckert interviewed former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a Bush critic whose wife months earlier had been outed in a Robert Novak column as an undercover CIA (news - web sites) officer by unidentified administration officials. During this interview, Gannon/Guckert cited "an internal government memo prepared by US intelligence personnel that details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports." The question is, how did a hooker-turned-reporter end up with this leak of classified information? [Isn't it funny how Corn can do his job when he wants to?] Did White House officials hand it to Gannon/Guckert because he was in cahoots with them? Gannon has refused to say if he had a copy of this memo or if someone had read him what it said. In December 2003--when he was not under fire--Gannon/Guckert wrote that this "information did not come from inside the administration," and he strongly hinted that his source was on Capitol Hill, referring to the Senate intelligence committee. Indeed, the Senate intelligence committee ended up quoting this document in a report released the following July. (The CIA claimed the memo was inaccurate.)

Gannon/Guckert has noted that FBI (news - web sites) agents working on the Wilson leak probe did contact him and that he would not tell them the source of the information. Apparently, he has not been subpoenaed by Patrick Fitzgerald, the Justice Department (news - web sites) attorney investigating the Wilson leak. Is it possible Gannon/Guckert was being truthful? If he had received the information from a congressional source, then Gannon could be beyond the reach of Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is looking into the initial leak and not whether GOP congressional investigators who were probing the Wilson affair subsequently disseminated information to undermine Wilson.

There has been some public confusion about this aspect of the Gannon/Guckert story. Representative Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat, has called upon Fitzgerald to "investigate the leaking of a classified Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) memo containing the identity of undercover agent Valerie Plame to a man at the center of the White House Press Briefing Room scandal, 'Jeff Gannon.'" The classified memo came not from the CIA but from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and by the time its contents reached Gannon, Valerie Wilson (nee Plame) had already been identified as a CIA officer.

Gannon/Guckert, according to the record so far, was a bit player in the Wilson affair. The leak he received was an after-the-fact leak. [of a document that was still classified, David] But it is certainly rather curious that this particular reporter obtained any classified information from any government source. Slaughter and others are justified in calling for an investigation. It is not beyond belief that partisans in the White House or on Capitol Hill saw Gannon/Guckert as a safe outlet. But it is also possible his involvement in the Wilson affairs was more a sideshow than anything else.

The Gannon/Guckert affair--which has yielded serious questions the White House needs to address--has generated much chest-pounding within the world of liberal bloggers. I don't begrudge the bloggers their victory lap--but it would not be good form to show too much glee. And Gannon/Guckert might be a smaller prize than assumed. (He's no Dan Rather--or Armstrong Williams.) Then again, perhaps I am wrong; maybe pulling on this string will cause a larger scandal to unravel. I don't discourage anyone from trying. Yet it could be that this story--regrettably--is mostly about a wannabe than the powers that be. [Why are wh0res like Corn so scared of bloggers that they feel this compulsive need to disparage them at every turn?]


*******************


news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/thenation/20050215/cm_thenation/32196_1

[Moses]

This isn't the first time Corn has been Kurtz-like. I think he and Kurtz printed similar efforts to down-play the Iran-Contra scandal.

Corn was tepid in his opposition to the Iraq war (if he was opposed at all).

If I'm not mistaken, Corn is pro-Israeli.

Corn doesn't seem to be a bit ruffled by having a prostitute -- a male prostitute who associates his sexual favors with the Marine corps-- remember, this is also illegal for a member of the military to be at all public with their homosexuality-- being a member of the WH press corps? He doesn't think it likely that Gannon was still engaged in this doubly illegal business? Prostitution is still illegal, am I right?

This is mind-boggling.


So-- so far we have Kurtz, Blitzer and Corn trying to downplay the story, along w/ the Chicago Sun Times (editorial?).

We know that two of these are members of the neocon cabal....

[Moses]

Guckert...tip of DOD entrapment net?

Could the lynchpin of all this be nothing more than the use a piece of classic tradecraft known as “journalistic cover” in a domestic intelligence operation? Whether it’s being run out of a broom closet in the Executive Office Building or some Army counterintelligence front at a Salvadoran restaurant in Arlington doesn’t matter since neither the Dems nor the major media have the cojones to amp up the story. Operating callboy networks and gay military sex sites like www.hotmilitarystud.com and encouraging US military personnel to join them portends the kind of entrapment operation that those organizations authorized to do domestic spying are not unfamiliar with. Even the movie "The Aviator" showcased Howard Hughes' use of call girls to influence US military men to approve his defense contracts.
One can argue that from the point of view of the Junta, it’s in the interest of national security for US assets to run the gay liaison sites, the porn sites and sell the recreational drugs; you don’t want the fuggin commos or antichrists or those “linked” to Al Qaeda doing it. Trenchermen like Guckert provide the dirty laundry that fills the Item 58-B “ways to influence” section of most DOD 1496 biography dossiers and FBI profile workups. Conventional wisdom dicates that you entrap your own before the “enemy” can do it. You test on your own before the “enemy” can do it… that’s the part of “tune in, turn on, drop out” and “MK Ultra” that West Pointer and former US Army Major Timothy “I was an LSD guru” Leary didn’t tell us about before he checked out. How many military and political careers did Astraglide Guckert ruin before getting upped to his “temporary” White House press corps assignment? And who in the White House press corps has he been getting the goods on? This guy is the Juntagate equivalent of Watergate ratf**ker Don Segretti. The irony is that even an ingrate like Nixon wouldn’t have stooped this low… not even Colson or a homophobe like Liddy. Legend has it that J. Edgar Hoover proclaimed “there is no organized crime in America” because New York liquor magnate Louie Rosenstiel had some compromising photos of the FBI topper dressed in drag. If you wanna believe that Guckert/Gannon acted alone like Lee Harvey Oswald and is not part of a larger operation, go right ahead, it’s a free country… behave accordingly. Before you do, however, you might file a FOIA to check out what’s in your DOD 1496/Item 58-B “ways to influence” report.

[RPankn]

[Here's another take on the honeypot scenario, especially if you're ready to go down a rabbithole. This is the first time I've heard that "Gannon" wrote articles for AEI, too.]

Gannongate threatens to expose a huge GOP pedophile and male prostitution ring

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

February 18, 2005—Now that is has been discovered that "Jeff Gannon" (real name James D. Guckert), a "reporter" for Talon News Service, a front operation run by the conservative Republican-oriented GOPUSA.com, was using an alias as a cleared White House reporter, details are emerging that threaten to immerse the Bush administration in a major scandal.

"Gannongate," which is only now being mentioned by the mainstream news media, threatens to expose a potentially damaging GOP pedophile and male prostitution ring dating back to the 1980s and the administration of George H. W. Bush. James D. Guckert, using the name Jeff Gannon and possibly other aliases, was also running gay porn sites, one with a U.S. Marine Corps theme that solicited males for prostitution.

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said he did not realize Gannon was using an alias until recently. However, rumors in the gay community are circulating about McClellan frequenting gay bars in Austin, Texas. Gannon bypassed established Secret Service security controls, including a background check requiring a social security number, to obtain a White House press pass that identified him by an alias, an action seen by many seasoned Washington journalists as only being possible if he had favorable treatment from White House staff, especially McClellan.

Gannon bypassed established Secret Service security controls, including a background check requiring a social security number, to obtain a White House press pass that identified him by an alias, an action seen by many seasoned Washington journalists as only being possible if he had favorable treatment from White House staff, especially McClellan and his predecessor, Ari Fleischer. One White House reporter expressed revulsion over the fact that it was Fleischer who took away press credential from the late long-time White House correspondent Sarah McClendon and handed them to Gannon.

GOPUSA.com is run by a right-wing Texan and Bush friend named Bobby Eberle. In 2003, GOPUSA.com launched a vicious anti-Semitic attack against international financier George Soros, a leading philanthropist for progressive causes and a major contributor to the Democratic Party.

In 2003, Gannon was reportedly given access by White House staff to a classified State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research memorandum regarding a CIA meeting involving the dispatch of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate claims, which turned out to be false, that Iraq had attempted to procure yellowcake uranium from the West African country. The Wilson case ultimately led to a leak to the media by unnamed White House staff of Wilson's wife's name and identity as a covert CIA agent.

It was also revealed that Jeffgannon.com had been registered by the same Delaware-based company that had registered other Republican-oriented web sites, along with those catering to pornographic military gay themes and male escort services.

TalonNews.com and GOPUSA.com are both registered to Endeavor Media Group LLC, operating from Post Office Box 891354 in Houston, Texas. The phone number provided is 999-999-9999. The registrant for a series of web sites, including Jeffgannon.com, Theconservativeguy.com, Exposejessejackson.com, Militaryescorts.com, militaryescortsm4m.com, and hotmilitarystud.com is Bedrock Corporation of 4001 Kennett Pike in Wilmington, Delaware. Bedrock is owned by Jim Guckert, the apparent real identity of Jeff Gannon. The administrative contact for Bedrock was listed as "J. Daniels," possibly another alias.

After the Gannon story broke, militaryescorts.com and hotmilitarystud.com were redirected to a secure log-in site at Cupertino, California-based www.dividezero.net/, which was registered to GKG.Net, which had a contact email in College Station, Texas, the home of Texas A&M University and the George H.W. Bush presidential library. Dividezero.net had a secure log-in window but no subscription information. Experts who track illegal content on the web, including child pornography, report that such sites are common where log-in information is provided separately by regular mail so that the identities of subscribers cannot be easily tracked by online enrollment and entry of credit card information.

Gannongate is reminiscent of a huge political scandal that surfaced in Nebraska in 1989 when it was learned that Lawrence King, the head of Franklin Community Credit Union in Omaha and a rising African American star in the GOP (he sang the national anthem at George H. W. Bush's 1988 nominating convention in New Orleans), was a kingpin—along with top Republicans in Nebraska and Washington, DC, including George H. W. Bush—in a child prostitution and pedophilia scandal. King was later convicted and jailed for fraud but pedophile and prostitution charges were never brought against him and other Nebraska Republican businessmen and politicians.

[Continued in next post]

[RPankn]

The scandal, investigated by Nebraska State Senator Loran Schmit, his assistant John DeCamp (a former GOP state senator), State Senate Committee investigator Gary Caradori, and former CIA Director William Colby, reached the very top echelons of the George H. W. Bush administration and GOP. Child prostitutes from Boys Town and other orphanages in Nebraska as well as children procured from China were reportedly flown to Washington for sexcapades with Republican politicians. GOP lobbyist Craig Spence and a number of GOP officials in the administration and Congress were implicated in the scandal, including Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole's liaison to the White House. Young male members of the military in Washington, DC, were particularly sought after by the prostitution ring. During the early 1980s, a number of naval officers were implicated in a child pornography ring that extended from Oregon to the San Francisco Bay area and to Chicago and Washington, DC. The story about that ring was covered up by then-Secretary of the Navy John Lehman.

The Nebraska pedophile scandal was similarly covered up on orders from the highest levels of power in the senior Bush White House. Caradori and his young son were killed in a suspicious plane crash in Illinois in 1990. Colby was found floating dead in the Chesapeake Bay, near his home, in 1996. Craig Spence allegedly committed suicide in 1989. Witnesses, many of whom were abused themselves, were intimidated and subsequently jailed in Nebraska and the investigation of the pedophile scandal eventually collapsed. The entire military aspect of the King-Spence scandal is now being repeated in Washington in Gannongate.

Last year, a senior source on the Washington Times editorial staff (the same paper that broke the GOP pedophile scandal in 1989) linked White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to gay activities involving top Republican political strategists in Washington, DC.

Gannon (Guckert) has been a major player in GOP and fundamentalist Christian politics in Washington and around the country. In 2004, "Jeff Gannon" was a featured speaker at a Capitol Hill Bible reading sponsored by anti-abortion Operation Rescue head Reverend Rob Schenk. In 1995, Schenk was the spokesman for the American Center for Law and Justice, an anti-abortion group funded by Pat Robertson. Schenk was also a major supporter of former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, who was removed from office for refusing to comply with a federal court order.

Schenk, who attended prayer meetings at John Ashcroft's Capitol Hill apartment after Ashcroft came to Washington in 1994, established his Pentecostal National Community Church at the dilapidated Giddings School in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Southeast Washington. One of his congregants was Ashcroft. The Hill newspaper ran an article on July 30, 2003, about a controversy surrounding plans by the community development Eighth Street Main Streets Project to place park benches in a small triangular park at 8th and I Streets in Southeast Washington, opposite the U.S. Marine Corps Barracks. The paper reported that a "community activist" named Jeff Gannon vehemently opposed the park bench plan claiming it would attract "vagrants, alcoholics, and other 'problem personalities.'" The park is located just five blocks from the school where "reporter" Gannon's friend Schenk first located his Pentecostal church.

Gannon hosted a web-based radio program called "Jeff Gannon's Washington," broadcast on his own web site, Jeffgannon.com, and Righttalk.com, a conservative GOP site whose registrant is based in Watsonville, California. Gannon's only journalism credentials were his attendance at a two-day seminar at the Leadership Institute's Broadcast School of Journalism in Arlington, Virginia. The head of the Leadership Institute is Morton Blackwell, a former Reagan administration official and a one-time head of the College Republicans, a post that Karl Rove also filled.

Gannon seemed particularly interested in South Dakota politics. GOP Senate candidate John Thune appeared on Gannon's radio webcast program. On February 4, 2004, while being served softball questions by Gannon, Thune called Daschle an "obstructionist and antagonist to President Bush."

According to Roll Call, Gannon also served as an official of the Free Speech Foundation, an organization that helped defend ProBush.com from a lawsuit by former South Dakota Democratic Senator James Abourezk. The web site features a "Traitor's List" that includes Abourezk. The former senator and Navy veteran sued ProBush.com for defamation. Abourezk asked for $5 million in damages and a public apology after sending a cease and desist letter to the web site owner, a 21-year old suburban Philadelphia resident named Mike Marino, who registered the site using a post office box address in West Point, Pennsylvania. After Abourezk's lawsuit threat, Gannon came to Marino's assistance. Other names on the Traitor's List include President Jimmy Carter, Susan Sarandon, Viggo Mortensen, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Howard Stern, John Kerry, Edward Kennedy, Martin Luther King III, Rep. Cynthia McKinney, Michael Moore, The Dixie Chicks, and former Democratic Rep. Gary Condit of California.

Gannon was also wired into the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He wrote a pro-Iraq war article for the March 1, 2004, issue of their magazine, American Enterprise. AEI employs such ardent neo-conservative figures as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Lynne Cheney. Ironically, many of Gannon's articles were anti-gay rights, such as one that insinuated that John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" would make him the nation's "first gay president."

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author, and columnist. He is the author of the forthcoming book, "Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates" and wrote "Genocide & Covert Operations in Africa: 1993-1999" (Mellen Press).


www.onlinejournal.com/Media/021805Madsen/021805madsen.html

[RPankn]

If anyone wants to see some professional trolling at work, to distract from certain aspects of the "Gannon" story, this thread on the Madsen article at DU is a good example: www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x107013

Just a little background info. "The Magistrate" is a Zionist hack that usually trolls the Sept. 11th forum and attacks anyone questioning the official mythology. In other forums, he or she will disrupt and/or derail threads which cast doubt on the "conventional wisdom" parted to us by the "mainstream" media. I find it odd that he or she has chosen to troll a thread which mentions the King/Franklin Community Credit Union child prostitution ring, when many of the facts re: that story have already been established. Further, his or her schtick is to write in the syntax of a pretentious 19th Century jurist. Personally, I find it creepy that someone could write thousands of posts like that day after day for about 4 years.

"Dookus" is simply a Democratic Party hack. Like "The Magistrate's" intervention in that thread, I find it curious that "Dookus" has chosen to troll there, which confirms my belief that anyone investigating the "Gannon" story should follow the honeypot angle. Obviously, when the hacks start circling the wagons, there's probably something there. My guess is that if anyone starts digging into "Gannon's" prostitution ring, certain members of the Dem leadership will be implicated, which itself would probably explain why the Dems have been figuratively, and literally, rolling over to the fascists who hijacked this country.

DU has started to become a lot like SC just before the invasion of Iraq; note all the recent saber rattling against Syria and Iran. Although the purging of members not towing the party line hasn't happened yet, a lot of threads, like this one, have been locked for arbitrary reasons; especially topics re: Sept. 11th. If I had to speculate and take a wild guess, I'd say we're seeing Gannongate now (note how it seemingly came from nowhere) because certain current and former members of the intelligence community are trying to blow the cover on some of the misdeeds of this administration in an attempt to stop any further incursions in our big Middle East adventure. What better way to get the public's attention than a sex scandal. I don't think all the embarassing revelations surrounding "Gannon" have come out yet, and this is probably the first of many embarassing revelations to come which will bring down key members of this administration.

[Moses]

"Gannon", a male prostitute that specializes in military escorts or services to the military, and displays a Marine Corps emblem on his solicitation site, is hooked up to an organization that has been associated w/ murder/terror, located near/across from the Marine Barracks?! Hello! He, a prostitute specializing in Marines, is then quoted as an "activist" opposed to community improvements across from the Marine Barracks?!

And Blitzer, defender of Jonathan Pollard, Kurtz, part of the neocon Washington Post Writers Group propaganda ring, are right out front defending Gannon? !

And he is PUBLISHED by AEI, the center of neocon activity?

[Moses]

I noticed that Corn's article mentioned that Gannon said he got the Plame memo from a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. So he was hooked into "Operation Rescue" a violent, anti-woman organization that has been associated w/ murder, the WH, and the Senate Intelligence Committee. He was very very busy. No wonder he didn't actually write anything but only stuck his name on the WH press releases.

[Moses]

Intelligence Committee members:
(list of suspects -- I'm thinking Orin Hatch -- he LOVES Arnold Schwartzeneger, and was close to Ashcroft and that crowd, and the hypocrisy fits-- he's also a dirty-dealer who would do this sort of thing-- why isn't he chair of Judiciary any longer, btw? )


Pat Roberts, Kansas

Orrin G. Hatch, Utah
Mike Dewine, Ohio
Dianne Feinstein, California
Christopher S. Bond, Missouri
Trent Lott, Mississippi
Evan Bayh, Indiana

Chuck Hagel, Nebraska
Jon S. Corzine, New Jersey
Saxby Chambliss, Georgia

[RPankn]

CBS News: Rove- Gannon Connection?

WASHINGTON, Feb. 18, 2005

(CBS) Dotty Lynch is the Senior Political Editor for CBS News. E-mail your questions and comments to Political Points
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Karl Rove took a victory lap at an SRO lunch at the Conservative Political Action Committee meeting at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington on Thursday. After a glowing introduction by Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association, Rove proclaimed "conservatism as the dominant political creed in America," but warned Republicans not to get complacent or grow "tired and timid." He recalled the dark days when the Democrats were dominant and cautioned that that could happen again if they let down their guard. The new White House deputy chief of staff also called on conservatives to "seize the mantle of idealism."

Tired and timid are two adjectives never applied to Rove. The architect of the Bush victories in 2000 and 2004 came through the ranks of college Republicans with the late Lee Athingyer, and their admitted and alleged dirty tricks are the legends many young political operatives dream of pulling off. So when Jeff Gannon, White House "reporter" for Talon "News," was unmasked last week, the leap to a possible Rove connection was unavoidable. Gannon says that he met Rove only once, at a White House Christmas party, and Gannon is kind of small potatoes for Rove at this point in his career.

But Rove's dominance of White House and Republican politics, Gannon's aggressively partisan work and the ease with which he got day passes for the White House press room the past two years make it hard to believe that he wasn't at least implicitly sanctioned by the "boy genius." Rove, who rarely gave on-the-record interviews to the MSM (mainstream media), had time to talk to GOPUSA, which owns Talon.

GOPUSA and Talon are both owned by Bobby Eberle, a Texas Republican and business associate of conservative direct-mail guru Bruce Eberle who says that Bobby is from the "Texas branch of the Eberle clan." Bobby Eberle told The New York Times that he created Talon to build a news service with a conservative slant and "if someone were to see 'GOPUSA,' there's an instant built-in bias there." No kidding.

Some of the real reporters in the White House pressroom were apparently annoyed at Gannon's presence and his softball, partisan questions, but considered him only a minor irritant. One told me he thought of Gannon as a balance for the opinionated liberal questions of Hearst's Helen Thomas. But what Gannon was up to was not just writing opinion columns or using a different technique to get information. He was a player in Republican campaigns and his work in the South Dakota Senate race illustrates the role he played. It is also a classic example of how political operatives are using the brave new world of the Internet and the blogosphere. Gannon and Talon News appear to be mini-Drudge reports; a "news" source which partisans use to put out negative information, get the attention of the bloggers, talk radio and then the MSM in a way that mere press releases are unable to achieve.

One of Gannon's first projects was an attempt to discredit the South Dakota Argus Leader, South Dakota's major paper, and its longtime political writer, David Kranz. According to the National Journal, which reported on this last November, Gannon wrote a series of articles in the summer of 2003 alleging that Kranz, who went to college with Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle, was not only sympathetic to him but was an actual part of the Daschle campaign. These articles then got a huge amount of play on the blogs of John Lauck and Jason Van Beek, and were picked up by other conservative sites and talk radio. The paper was bombarded with messages about its bias and acknowledges that these had an impact on its coverage.

Daschle opponent John Thune's campaign manager was Dick Wadham, an old political crony of Karl Rove's; the kind of pal Rove could ask to hire his first cousin, John Wood, a few years back. Wadham put the bloggers on the campaign payroll and the symbiotic relationship between the campaign, the bloggers and "reporter" Gannon” continued. On September 29, Gannon broke the story that Daschle had claimed a special tax exemption for a house in Washington and the bloggers jumped all over it. According to a November 17 posting on South Dakota Politics – a site that Van Beek, who has become a staffer for now-Sen. Thune, has bequeathed to Lauck – "Jeff Gannon, whose reportage had a dramatic impact on the Daschle v. Thune race (his story about Sen. Daschle signing a legal document claiming to be a D.C. resident was published nearly the same day Thune began to run an ad showing Daschle saying, "I'm a D.C. resident) has written an analysis of the debacle."

Daschle aides told Roll Call, "This guy (Gannon) became the dumping ground for opposition research." The connections are so strong that there is an FEC challenge which could be a test case on the limits of the use of the Internet in federal campaigns.

Gannon also had Thune on his radio show "Jeff Gannon's Washington," and the White House correspondent for Talon became touted as the "resident D.C. expert on South Dakota politics" by the bloggers. Thune and Wadham (who has been hired by aspiring White House Republican Sen. George Allen) have become go-to guys on the use of blogs in campaigns. Thune was cited in The New York Times as introducing "Senators to the meaning of 'blogging,' explaining the basics of self-published online political commentary and arguing that it can affect public opinion."

This week Democrats, who have serious case of Rove envy, went a little nuts and started sending around information and graphic pictures of Gannon and his porn Web sites. But it is the more routine part of Gannon's life that deserves serious scrutiny. Planting or even just sanctioning a political operative in the WH press room is a dangerous precedent and Karl Rove's hope to become a respected policymaker will be hampered if the dirty tricks from his political past are more apparent than his desire to spread liberty around the globe. [What in the hell is she talking about?]


©MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.


www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/18/opinion/lynch/main675050.shtml

[RPankn]

Radio Producer Could Always Count on 'Gannon' for Tips

By Joe Strupp

Published: February 18, 2005

San Antonio radio producer Susan Farris could always count on James Guckert, a.k.a. former White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, to pitch an appearance on the shows she produces at conservative talk station KTSA.

He was not only anxious about pushing his story of the day, but seemed to always have some kind of inside knowledge about the White House, as well.

"I said, 'How do you have such great sources?' and he just laughed it off," she told E&P Friday. "Now we all know how."

Farris, who has worked in San Antonio radio for more than a decade, said she came across Guckert first at GOPUSA.com, then later read his work on Talon News, his online home prior to his recent resignation. "I would call [GOPUSA] for people to use on the air and they suggested him when I asked about White House coverage," she recalled. "They called themselves a re-write service. They would take other people's work and put it up on their site." (Among the charges against Guckert was that he often simply rewrote White House press releases as news stories.)

Guckert, she said, frequently passed on what he clearly thought was insider information, during his 12 appearances on KTSA during 2003 and 2004. She first heard from him the expression "shock and awe" to refer to the massive U.S. bombing attack at the start of the Iraq war, and he fingered Mary Mapes as the producer of the so-called "Rathergate" segment on "60 Minutes" before she had seen that mentioned elsewhere.

"He very often called me and offered to be on the show to talk about his stories," she said. "I used to book him all the time. We used him on tons of White House stuff." She said she "had no idea" that Gannon was not Guckert's real name.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Strupp ([e-mail]) is a senior editor at E&P.


209.11.49.220/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000808600

[RPankn]

[I wouldn't call Cooper a god because he's just another dime-a-dozen media sleeper. But it's telling the corporate media is starting to pick up this story and asking critical questions.]

Friday, February 18, 2005

Anderson Cooper is my God
by John in DC - 2/18/2005 08:16:00 PM

Oh my God. I want to have Anderson Cooper's children.

That was some of the most fun I've had in years. Anderson Cooper just ripped Jeff Gannon to shreds. Not that I wanted to see Jeff ripped to shreds, but I wanted to see a real journalist ask Jeff the hard questions, and Anderson did.

In a nutshell, Gannon didn't say a thing. It was 20 minutes of [b.s.]. He wouldn't answer any real questions. Challenged us to get answers from the White House and from GOPUSA. First, Anderson asked him about his name, and he said he used a pseudonym because his real name is hard to pronounce. Anderson answered "Jeff is hard to pronounce?" Gannon said, no Guckert is. Anderson replied, yeah but you changed James to Jeff, James isn't hard to pronounce. That set the tone for the entire interview.

I'm sure Crooks and Liars and others will have the interview up shortly, but the highlights are:

- Gannon admitted to making a mistake of a "very personal and privatge nature." Well, no, you worked as a male escort from at least 1999 to, well, your profiles are still live today. What part of that was a mistake? The entire career? And why are many of your escort profiles still live, and why did someone update your other escort URLs you own just two months ago? [Good to see Cooper connected "Jeff Gannon, reporter" with "Jeff Gannon, gay military escort." As late as yesterday, Howie the wh0re was implying to Judy Woodruff (personally can't stand her) that it wasn't confirmed that both were one and the same.]

- Gannon said people are going after him simply because they "disagreed with the question I asked" the president two weeks ago. Hardly. I'm going after you because you worked for an incredibly homophobic publication and wrote articles defending horribly anti-gay positions while being a gay man and a gay escort. Others are ticked that you're not a real journalist, more on that soon.

- Anderson then said that the issues surround hypocrisy and the White House vetting. Gannon then answered pure Clinton: he said gave them all the info they asked for, the info they asked anyone who got a daily pass. But of course that begs the question of how he got a daily pass for two years. That's like getting a free afternoon pass to try out a new gym to see if you want to become a member, then you return every day for the next two years and keep getting the same free pass. At some point you're supposed to get the real pass and you didn't. Why not? And who let you in? We don't know.

- Then Gannon said "I suppose that they aren't interested in a reporter's sexual history either," Gannon said of the White House. Yeah? Love to see if they'd take him back now.

- No one in the White House was aware of his private activities, he said. Ok, well that's pretty definitive. Though of course, his other job isn't a private activity so he still may be hedging here.

- He can't recall when he first attended a WH briefing.

- He says he first attended the briefings working for GOPUSA. Anderson then skewered him saying GOPUSA wasn't a media organization, "GOPUSA was a clearly partisan organization," Anderson said, so how did he get in?

- When was your first article published? You'll have to ask GOPUSA. They won't answer our calls. Well I can't help you.

- Then Gannon defended his journalism, he used to take transcripts and press releases and report them unvarnished, the whole truth, so real people could judge the info for themselves. Anderson replies: "That's called faxing." I almost shat in my pants!

- Then when asked about the Plame memo, he said he never said he got the memo. Then when asked how did you find out about the memo, Gannon replied something to the effect of, you know the memo was referred to in a Wall Street Journal article. Well, yes, Jess[Aravosis needs an editor!], it supposedly was. But that wasn't the question, was it. The question was WHERE did YOU find out? That answer was pure Clinton.

- Then Gannon concluded by saying that if someone disagrees with you you're now fair game, blah blah blah. "People's personal lives" are now fair game, he says. Well, uh, this is your business and the profiles are still live, and the domain names were updated two months ago. So, how is this personal and how is this past?

I actually thought he might come clean tonight. He did nothing of the sort. It's not at all clear why he went on TV at all. He didn't really come clean about anything. And actually he kind of had a chip on his shoulder. I have no idea what he thought he was trying to do. He has no clue what he did wrong.

Very very sad.

PS I talked to a friend in NYC who knows Anderson and told him to pass along our thanks for being the first REAL journalist to grill this guy, and he's looking into options for us to get some flowers to Anderson.


americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/anderson-cooper-is-my-god.html

[RPankn]

CNN transcript from Anderson Cooper interview with "Jeff Gannon"

COOPER: For the past two years, a man known as Jeff Gannon regularly showed up at the White House. He got a daily press pass and worked as a reporter. No one paid much attention to him, until a few weeks ago when he asked the president a question during a White House press conference. Since then, his past has been laid bare, he's resigned from his job, and more questions continue to be raised about how and why he got into the White House in the first place. Details now from Howard Kurtz of CNN's "RELIABLE SOURCES."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HOWARD KURTZ, HOST, RELIABLE SOURCES (voice-over): In a White House press corps filled with well known faces, no one paid much attention to this man. Jeff Gannon worked for two Web sites, Talon News and GOPUSA, owned by a Texas Republican activist. He was a self- described conservative reporter who generally asked friendly questions of spokesman Scott McClellan.

And when President Bush called on him last month, Gannon asked an inaccurate question with this unflattering description of Senate Democrats.

JEFF GANNON, FORMER TALON NEWS REPORTER: How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

KURTZ: How did he get White House press credentials? Gannon says he didn't have a permanent pass, which requires a full FBI background check, but was admitted day by day, by giving the Secret Service his real name.

Was he a Bush administration plant? He says his questions were his own.

Was his writing anti-gay? He denies that. But the questions keep mounting. Did White House officials know of his salacious activities? Did they give him special access to information? How could he call himself a journalist?

Gannon has become a symbol for the president's critics, and for the bloggers who have shown once again they can take people down with warp speed.

Howard Kurtz, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: I spoke with Jeff Gannon earlier this evening. I started by asking him why he doesn't use his real name?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GANNON: I use a pseudonym, because my real name is very difficult to pronounce, to remember and to spell. And many people who have been talking about me on television have yet to pronounce it correctly.

COOPER: But I mean, your real name is James and you used the pseudonym Jeff.

GANNON: Yes.

COOPER: How is James so much harder than Jeff?

GANNON: No, no, I meant my last name.

COOPER: Well, your real last name is Guckert, and the pseudonym you used is Gannon.

GANNON: Yes. It's easier to pronounce, to remember and to spell.

COOPER: But when you would go into the White House to get a pass for a briefing, you would use the name James Guckert.

GANNON: Yes, because that's the name on my driver's license.

COOPER: And then -- but then you would switch to Jeff Gannon to ask questions?

GANNON: Because that is the name that I do my reporting under. It's not uncommon for journalists, authors, actors, to have pseudonyms.

COOPER: There are those who have said that the reason perhaps you are using a different name is that there is stuff from your past that you did not want people to know about or find out about.

GANNON: How I'll address that is that I have made mistakes in my past. And these are all of a very personal and private nature that have been -- that have been all brought to the surface by people who disagreed with the question I asked at the presidential press conference several weeks ago. And is -- the effect of this has been that we seem to have established a new standard for journalists in this country, where if someone disagrees with you, then your personal life, your private life, and anything you have ever done in the past is going to be brought up for public inspection.

COOPER: What your critics say, though, is that while a lot of this may be politically motivated, that liberal bloggers who didn't like the question you ask or don't like you in general are targeting you and revealing things about your personal life, that there are legitimate questions to ask. And in fact, they say that things in your personal life in fact just point to, A, a certain level of hypocrisy on your own part, but also serious questions about the White House vetting process.

GANNON: Well, I can't speak to the White House vetting process. All I can say is that they received all of the information that was asked for, that they ask every journalist for who applies for a daily pass into the White House. I suppose that they don't -- they aren't interested in reporters' sexual history either.

COOPER: Let me give you a chance just to respond to what you want to respond to. You had previously stated that you had registered a number of pornographic Web sites for a private client. That's what you had said publicly. You said the sites were never activated. A man now has talked to "The Washington Post," who said that you had essentially paid him to create some Web sites for an escort service, and you are yourself offering yourself as an escort.

GANNON: Well, like I said, there's a lot of things being said about me out there. A lot of things that have nothing to do with the reporting I have done for the last two years.

COOPER: Your critics bring up your past, that whether or not you did work as an escort as going to your credibility, that you know, should somebody who perhaps was working as an escort was getting access to the White House and being passed along through the Secret Service. Was your employer aware of your past activities?

GANNON: My employer was never at any time aware of anything in my past beyond the writings I did, because, frankly, it isn't relevant to the job I was asked to do, which was to be a reporter.

COOPER: Was anyone at the White House aware of your private activities?

GANNON: I would say that -- I would say no, absolutely, categorically no.

COOPER: There are many questions that have been raised about whether or not -- people raising the specter that you are somehow a White House plant. Are you a White House plant? Were you (UNINTELLIGIBLE)?

[Continued in next post]

[RPankn]

GANNON: Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, how I came to be at the White House is I asked to attend a briefing. I asked the White House press office. They gave me a daily pass to get in.

COOPER: When was that?

GANNON: I don't recall, but it was -- I think somewhere in the neighborhood of two years ago.

COOPER: Because in -- was that for Talon News?

GANNON: At the time, it was called something else, but it -- the name was changed to Talon News shortly thereafter.

COOPER: What was it called at the time?

GANNON: It was called GOPUSA.

COOPER: So -- and that's owned by a Republican activist, Bobby Eberle?

GANNON: It's owned by Bobby Eberle.

COOPER: The first record we have now of you actually being at a White House press briefing was on February 28th, 2003, as you said, before Talon News even existed. So why were you given a White House pass?

GANNON: I was given a White House -- well, you will have to ask the White House that. But I asked to attend the White House briefing because I was -- you know, because I wanted to report on the activities there.

COOPER: But GOPUSA is not a news organization.

GANNON: Well, we were -- we were -- we had established a news division, and it was later renamed Talon News.

COOPER: Because this is news to just about everybody. You know, Talon News wasn't registered I think until, well, March 29th of 2003. I think the first articles didn't appear until April 1st. So I guess the questions that are being raised why were you at -- allowed to go to a White House briefing if you are working for GOPUSA, which is a clearly partisan organization?

GANNON: There are many, many organizations, many people that are allowed to attend the White House briefings. I don't know the criteria they use.

COOPER: But you weren't even publishing anything. You weren't reporting anything.

GANNON: Well, actually, I was at the time.

COOPER: When was the first article you ever published?

GANNON: Well, you're -- I don't know that, because I'm here in your studio here. And I don't know the answer to specific dates. All I can tell you is that -- and frankly, all these questions about Talon News and GOPUSA, you need to ask them about that, because I don't represent them any longer.

COOPER: Yeah, we've asked them. They refuse to talk about it.

GANNON: Well, I mean, they would be the ultimate authority on that.

COOPER: This liberal group, Media Matters, which I'm sure you know well about. They have been very critical about you, really looked into this probably closer than just about anybody. They say that essentially, you are not a real reporter. And it's not even a question of being an advocate, that you have directly lifted large segments of your reports directly from White House press releases.

GANNON: All my stories were usually titled "White House Says," "President Bush Wants," and I relied on transcripts from the briefings, I relied on press releases that were sent to the press for the purpose of accurately portraying what the White House believed or wanted.

COOPER: But using the term "reporting" implies some sort of vetting, some sort of research, some sort of -- I mean, that's called faxing or Xeroxing, if you are just lifting transcripts and putting them into an article.

GANNON: If I am communicating to my readers exactly what the White House believes on any certain issue, that's reporting to them an unvarnished, unfiltered version of what they believe.

COOPER: Did you receive information from the White House that others didn't get?

GANNON: Absolutely not.

COOPER: So there was an article in which you interviewed Ambassador Joe Wilson, and you implied that you had seen a CIA classified document in which Valerie Plame...

GANNON: I didn't do that at all. I didn't do that at all. If you read the question, and I provided -- my article was actually a transcript of my conversation with Ambassador Wilson -- I made reference to a memo. And this...

COOPER: How did you know about that memo?

GANNON: Well, this memo was referred to in a "Wall Street Journal" article a week earlier.

COOPER: So that wasn't based on any information that you had been given by the White House?

GANNON: I was given no special information by the White House or by anybody else, for that matter.

COOPER: You have been very clear that you believe this is politically motivated. And I think just about everyone probably agrees with that, that you asked that question, it was a softball, and liberal bloggers went after you to find out what they could in the public domain about you. But isn't that -- and you say that's unfair. Isn't that -- aren't those the same techniques that you yourself used as a reporter that sort of -- to publish innuendo, to publish advocacy-driven, politically motivated reports?

GANNON: Well, I don't see it that way. But what was -- what's been done to me is far in excess of what has ever been done to any other journalist that I could remember. My life has been turned inside out and upside down. And, again, it makes us all wonder that if someone disagrees with you, that is now your personal life fair game? And I'm hoping that fair-minded people will stand up and say that what's been done to me is wrong, and that -- that people's personal lives have no impact on their ability to be a journalist, you know. Why should my past prevent me from having a future?

COOPER: Appreciate you being with us. Jeff Gannon, thanks very much.

GANNON: Thanks so much.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: That was Jeff Gannon, about an hour and a half ago.

Coming up next on 360, far lighter stories. We want to make you smile going into the weekend. Check out this big cat. It's not a tiger, it's not a lion, it's called a liger. That's right, it's not just (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We'll have one ahead.

Also, Bugs Bunny and friends turning into thugs? What's that about? We take that to "The Nth Degree."


transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0502/18/acd.01.html

[Moses]

Sound familiar?:

White House spokesman Scott McClellan told the trade publication Editor & Publisher that he didn't know Gannon was using a pseudonym until recent weeks and that he was cleared into the White House on a daily basis using his real name. "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors," McClellan said. He said he has discussed the Gannon matter only "briefly" with the president.