The Ballad of "Jeff Gannon"

here's where some Wonkette links/bits about this are

since April 2003 (the start of the war), a guy going by the name of "Jeff Gannon" and purporting to be a reporter for "Talon News Service" has appeared in the White House press room during the press secretary's daily (or near-daily) briefings. Talon is an acknowledged conservative news organization. "Gannon" has no journalism background to speak of, is unable to establish credentials to get access to the press gallery on Capitol Hill, and some suspect he is using an alias, which he does not deny. circa July 2003, Scott McClellan takes over as Press Secretary and begins to regularly call on this guy, in particular when he is facing difficult questions from real reporters or wants to end a briefing. "Gannon" feeds him softball questions that lean far enough to the right that Scotty has to pull back to the center sometimes.

also circa July 2003, Robert Novak outs Valerie Plame, the CIA agent, as payback for her husband Robert Wilson's turning against the administration on the subject of the Niger yellowcake, which forced the administration to acknowledge that Bush knowingly used bad information (i.e. lied) in the state of the union. if people in the administration leaked Plame's name to the press, they are subject to criminal liability, and there are numerous suggestions that Karl Rove or persons in Dick Cheney's office are responsible. Gannon begins to push the story that there was no crime because Plame's identity was already public. in an interview with Wilson, Gannon refers in a question to a memo (implying that he is aware of its contents) revealing Plame's identity that supposedly was public before Novak published the name. Gannon later appears - along with members of the mainstream media to whom the name was given before it was published in the mainstream press - on a list of persons subpoenaed by the special prosecutor investigating the leak.

at the same time as he is "reporting" on the White House, "Gannon" is writing articles about other topics that fit in with right-wing political efforts, including the CBS national guard story (in which he may have been the first to question the CBS producer who eventually resigned) and the effort to unseat Tom Daschle. he also develops a number of web domains, including a number that appear to be intended to gain the interest of gay military officers.

in the course of the last 10 days, after a particularly egregious Gannon softball, some in the mainstream and left-wing press started again raising the issue of Gannon's identity, and a poster at DailyKos advanced the theory that Plame's name had been leaked to this fake reporter before it was leaked to the real ones, such that administration figures could plausibly deny breaking the law in leaking the name to the real reporters. liberal bloggers then began to focus their attention on the story and, using basic web and other search techniques, eventually discovered what appears to be Gannon's true identity and a number of potential connections between him and various GOP-related groups. today, "Gannon" resigned from reporting and Talon News shut down.

So his actual identity, is that relevent, or just his links?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/09/white.house.reporter/index.html

This has been an interesting ride over at dKos. I don't think Eberle is linked directly to the Swift Vets, aside from common use of the Free Republic site, and his brother Bruce Eberle making some donations - which pale in comparison to what they got from Texas millionaire/billionaires Harold Simmons and Rich Perry of Perry Homes. The Swift Vets according to the database I checked spend $31 million with one media firm in the last election cycle, but only (only!) raised $17-22 million or so, and I can't figure out how those figures add up.

The Plame case is like the Holy Grail of liberal bloggers. Unfortunately (cf Democratic Underground) it often leads to massive hours devoted to spinning wide-ranging conspiracy theories involving everything from Russian arms dealers to Iranian dissidents to the Carlyle Group.

I mean, most Americans weren't even outraged by Watergate, at least not until it had been trumpeted in their faces for months and months. What really did Nixon in was he pretty unlikable and had made a lot of enemies even in his own party. A guy like Bush would skate on Watergate.

I have had great fun reading about Gannon/Guckert/whoever the last few days though.

How? Because Bush is going to be so shocked and appalled that he'll demote Karl? You must be thinking of some other president.

It would be nice to see Rove get fired. Left with just his stained blue dress to auction on Ebay, and a career as a 3rd tier quasi-celebrity. Oh sorry, wrong prez, wrong scandal. (Right job description tho).

...Gannon's real crime isn't hypocrisy -- it's his contempt for honest journalism. "I asked a question at a White House press briefing and this is what happened to me," Gannon told the Wilmington, Del. News Journal. "If this is what happens to me, what reporter is safe?" We know that's a hypothetical, but we'll try to answer it anyway: Real reporters are safe. It's just the ideological warriors masquerading as fair-minded journalists who should be wary. Some conservatives don't see a distinction; according to Glenn Reynolds, "If working for a biased news organization disqualifies you, a lot of people have a lot to be worried about. If being involved in a dubious business venture is disqualifying, I suspect a lot of people have a lot to be worried about."

But this isn't a media bias issue, no matter how hard you spin it. (And there isn't much these days that critics won't try to spin as a media bias issue.) No one, after all, is trying to ban Fox News or Helen Thomas from the briefing room. Gannon asked questions designed not to get information from Bush but to demonstrate his allegiance to him, not to mention his disgust with Democrats and his own ostensible colleagues. Real journalists, the ones who belong in press conferences, know that access to a president is a rare gift, and they know enough not to squander it. Gannon threw away his opportunity in favor of self-aggrandizing partisan spectacle. He put himself and his agenda ahead of the public good, and he did it in a manner so egregious that he left little doubt of his intentions. If both sides of the debate, blinded by partisan zeal, don't realize that's the real reason he had to go, they've missed the point.

-- gypsy mothra (meetm...), February 10th, 2005.

So otmfm!

TV's hottest new "reality" show

Let's imagine that Bill Clinton were in office, and say, sometime during the Kosovo situation it had come to light that a male prostitute had been regularly admitted to the White House press room in a manner to evade the normal certification procedures.

Then let's further imagine that the hooker was working for a Democratic partisan group financed by people in Arkansas with long-standing ties to Clinton's prior campaigns, and that the White House press secretary made sure to call.

And let's further imagine that the hooker, while posing as a reporter, had been involved in the calculated smear of the spouse of one of Clinton's harshest critics, and that the smear had involved blowing the cover of a CIA agent.

And then let's further imagine that the prostitute, given special access to the White House during wartime, specialized in the wearing of military uniforms for their erotic effect.

Now tell me that Fox News and CNN and every other network and newspaper wouldn't have been all over that story. The silence of the news media over the story of the male prostitute with a White House press pass is deafening.

What most gets me is that actual reporters should be furious about this, on professional grounds alone. Planting a stooge with a pseudonym to ask ridiculous softball questions? Any self-respecting press corps would rip Rove a new asshole on principle.

Gypsy, your comment upthread about most americans not being too bothered by Watergate at the time was very helpful at snapping me out of some false comparisons. It really was his lack of backup in government that sank him, not the simple fact of the story coming out. I have a friend at the SF Chronicle who mentioned that all her friends in journalism are incredulous and exhausted, stories that should be sinking this administration ten times over are getting published everywhere, and nothing seems to make a difference.

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html

At last month's press conference, Jeff Gannon asked Mr. Bush how he could work with Democrats "who seem to have divorced themselves from reality." But Bush officials have divorced themselves from reality.

They flipped TV's in the West Wing and Air Force One to Fox News. They paid conservative columnists handsomely to promote administration programs. Federal agencies distributed packaged "news" video releases with faux anchors so local news outlets would run them. As CNN reported, the Pentagon produces Web sites with "news" articles intended to influence opinion abroad and at home, but you have to look hard for the disclaimer: "Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense." The agencies spent a whopping $88 million spinning reality in 2004, splurging on P.R. contracts.

Even the Nixon White House didn't do anything this creepy. It's worse than hating the press. It's an attempt to reinvent it.

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

Tom Stoppard's greatest work!

The recent public focus on Talon News, while much of it malicious, has indeed brought some constructive elements to the surface...

http://pageoneq.com/news/2007/Young_Republcan_National_President_resigns_Says_sex_with_man_was_consensual_not_harrass_0808.html

oh yeah, and the Florida state republican(and head of McCain's florida campaign) who was so "intimidated" by a "stocky" black undercover cop that he wandered into a stall at a rest stop and offered the cop $20 if he could take certain liberties.

http://www.miamiherald.com/775/story/196990.html

I avoid becoming a statistic whenever I can.

now, now, what fun is that?