Open thread

Well that was a busy day. I believe Howard Kurtz is doing another article for the Wash Post Saturday morning, so keep your eyes peeled. Jeff talks some more, and I think you'll be sufficiently ticked off at what he says. Read More......

Video of Gannon on Anderson Cooper

Courtesy of Media Matters.

And here's the transcript.

Same video also posted at Crooks and Liars. Read More......

If this is your "past," then why are the hooker profiles still live?

If this is his past, then why are the profiles still live on at least three Web sites?

http://www.studfiles.com/dc007.html
http://www.workingboys.net/5624388350/dc007.html
http://www.meetlocalmen.com/titlebar.html (you have to click on Meet Local Escorts, then on DC, then click through 17 "nexts" to find Jeff DC)

And why did his main escort Web site, www.usmcpt.com, stay live until at least April 17, 2003 - months after he started showing up at the White House? This was hardly his "past" as it was up while he was at the White House. And according to customer reviews on his other escort sites, he had a customer as recently as November, 2002 - he showed up at the White House in February 2003. That's a hell of a meteoric change in careers.

I don't mean to beat a dead horse here, but this bullshit about Gannon's "past," when it seems to be continuing into the present, needs to be addressed. Not to mention, since when is your business your private life? Especially when that private life would get you stopped from entering the White House, were it known to them? Read More......

Anderson Cooper is my God

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 bullshit. 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?

- 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, 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. Read More......

Gannon is on Anderson next

Help keep track of the lies, half-truths, deceptions, diversions, and admissions. Read More......

I'm running to Joe's to watch Anderson - weigh in here

This should be interesting. I forgot to mention that Gannon lied AGAIN today to E&P.; I knew he was going on CNN by like 1 o'clock today. E&P; talked to Gannon after that, and he vigorously denied it. Now we find out he is doing the show. I'm dying to see what side he stakes out tonight. Read More......

Gannon, who isn't speaking to the media, speaks to Editor and Publisher magazine

Weird.

Five days after telling E&P; that he was no longer speaking to the press because it was not helping him, former White House reporter James Guckert, a.k.a Jeff Gannon, said today that he had changed his mind and was seeking the right media outlet to tell his side of the story.

Asked this afternoon about reports that he was scheduled to appear on the Anderson Cooper's CNN show tonight, he denied it strongly. One hour later, a CNN spokesman told E&P;, "He's taping it right now."

Read More......

CBS: Rove-Gannon connection?

For a little ole reporter who didn't really know Rove or McLellan well, and had obviously just changed careers (assuming he'd left his old job), Gannon sure became mister inside-politics-guy quite quickly, didn't he. So again, we ask, who was his mentor, who was his contact, who was hit go-to guy in the White House?

From CBS:

[W]hat 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.

Read More......

Talon News on the "so-called 'hate crime' against Matthew Shepard"

As if there were any doubt that Jeff Gannon worked for a virulently homophobic, pro- religious right organization, take a look at this little ditty that Talon News published this past December:

NBC Stands Behind Couric's Anti-Christian Comments
By Jimmy Moore
Talon News
December 14, 2004

COLORADO SPRINGS, CO (Talon News) -- A network executive with NBC News sent a letter to conservative Christian group Focus on the Family last week refusing to comply with their request that "The Today Show" host Katie Couric apologize for her anti-Christian comments during a broadcast just days after a so-called "hate crime" was committed against Matthew Shepard.

Focus on the Family said Couric commented that Biblical teachings on homosexuality incited the 1998 murder of Shepard. But, a recent news report on ABC's "20/20" program revealed that Shepard's death was not an anti-gay "hate crime" as has been popularly promoted for the past six years.

Katie's crime? Asking if religious right anti-gay ads may have helped create a culture of anti-gay prejudice. It's bad enough they call Matthew Shepard's murder a "so-called 'hate crime'," but they're also beating up Katie Couric for something she said, quite justly I might add, six years ago. And who picks up on this non-story? Talon News.

You're apparently gay, and a gay hustler, and you work for people who are trying to besmirch Matthew Shepard's memory because they hate gay people. And you don't have a problem with that. Do you understand why, putting aside the whole White House/Valerie Plame issue, people might have a problem with that?

Jeff, in tonight's interview, look at David Brock's example. Disown these people who hate you. You may be a conservative on many issues, fine. But you worked for anti-gay jerks, and your articles were often written to defend the indefensible (defending Rick Santorum's man-dog sex comments comes to mind). Don't just tell us you're sorry, don't just tell us you've made mistakes, don't just tell us you're a Good Christian. And most of all, don't expect sympathy because we exposed your hypocrisy. You need to recognize that you were helping people who hate you, who hate us. Whatever your politics, that is never acceptable. Read More......

GannonGuckert going on CNN tonight with Anderson Cooper

Apparently he's scheduled to tell it all, or at least some of it, to Anderson Cooper tonight on CNN. From what I'm hearing, expect to hear that he's sorry, he's made mistakes, he's a good Christian and God has forgiven him, and the White House had nothing to do with it.

More in a sec. Read More......

A note about outing gay reporters

I just did a segment on CNN with Howard Kurtz for his "Reliable Sources" show that runs this coming Sunday, and another guy on the show was this John fellow with Powerline blog, or something like that. He decided to attack me for "gay-baiting," which I always find a fun charge coming from a right-wing Republican. Oh that the GOP was as concerned about gay-baiting in every other aspect of life as they are in the Gannon case.

Anyway, someone just reminded me that, while we're on the topic of how horrible is it to out gay reporters, the White House is the one that raised this skill to an art just a few years ago. Remember Jeffrey Kofman of ABC News? In case you don't recall, here's the GOP's favorite wingnut news source, WorldNetDaily, helping the story along (note especially how they put the word "gay" in quotes - what, is Jeff just pretending to be gay to help his career?):

A Canadian-born correspondent for ABC News is the reported target of a White House smear campaign after broadcasting a story on plummeting U.S. troop morale in Iraq, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

Published reports suggest the Bush administration retaliated by notifying Internet news sites and other media outlets that Jeffrey Kofman is not only Canadian but also an openly "gay" man.

A headline on Matt Drudge's website Wednesday evening read: ''ABC News correspondent who filed troop complaints story is openly gay, Canadian.''

Drudge also provided a link to a profile of Kofman in The Advocate, a gay-issues magazine.

Despite White House denials, Drudge told the Washington Post he received a phone call from the White House communications department tipping him off to the information on Kofman, reports the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Read More......

Hardball on Gannon/Guckert

Crooks and Liars has the video, or much of it. Again, try to donate to them if you can, we're really eating up their bandwidth. Read More......

Indecency Police Censor the Soldiers

Newflash: soldiers use profanity.

However, in America, don't expect to see that on your t.v. PBS has to censor a documentary about the war, because, the soldiers use swear words, the LA Times reports.

The producers of a "Frontline" documentary about U.S. combat troops in Iraq on Thursday criticized a PBS decision to send member stations an edited satellite feed of the program that cut out profanity used by soldiers.

This is out of control. Congress talks a good game about supporting the troops. The right-wingers talk a good game about supporting the troops. But, don't let the American people see an uncensored television show about the troops.

It's okay for Cheney to tell Leahy to go fuck himself on the Senate floor, but we have to pretend that American soldiers aren't using that kind of language. If any of the chicken hawks found themselves patrolling the street of Baghdad, they might use an expletive or two. Of course, that's never going to happen.

Cut out the profanity, cut out pictures of coffins of our dead soldiers, cut out any visual images of death and destruction. In the end, the American people have very sanitized view of a war in which there is a lot of death and destruction on both sides. Read More......

Time for an open thread

Open thread. Read More......

Far right blows a gasket over Gannon

Two weeks of silence from the far right has finally exploded like Vesuvius. This comes from CNS, the Cybercast News Service - basically, another pro-far-right "media" outlet:

Make no mistake, Jeff Gannon, or James Guckert, or whatever his name is, is no conservative. Anybody who publishes sexually explicit photos of himself on a website in hopes of making money as a hooker is no conservative. Not in this lifetime. Not on this planet. The person in those photos is a pig and a pervert.

But Gannon did rile up the Left, and it's because they felt betrayed, certain that the only reliable, no-questions-asked, no-strings-attached home for such individuals is in the liberal wing of the establishment media or Democratic Party.

The Left wants this controversy to be about a Republican White House letting in a ringer to ask questions and get access to sensitive information so he could write up favorable stories on the Talon News website. But if Jeff Gannon was a heterosexual, I suspect his questions for the president would have drawn scant attention. He wouldn't have made many friends in the White House press room, but almost nobody would have cared.

Homosexuality, at its core, is about narcissism and self-loathing. But the Left is demonstrating another of its common characteristics in the Gannon flap - denial. They want the world to believe that exposing Gannon's journalistic bona fides, or lack thereof, is their ethical responsibility.

But don't be fooled. The Jeff Gannon controversy is about sex and turning the political tables on Left Wing ideologues he should have known would seek revenge and personal destruction. It's nothing more than that.

Yeah, because obviously CNS has true love in its heart for Jeff.

It's really not worth responding to a "defense" of Gannon that also calls him a "pig and a pervert." Even we horrible leftwing bloggers didn't go that far. But I will say one thing. No one knew he was gay. David Brock launched this story out of concern over Gannon being a fake journalist. We didn't have a clue he was gay - not a bit of my gaydar went off when I saw him on TV. So spare us the "were he heterosexual it wouldn't be an issue" crap. Were Gannon a heterosexual hooker the mainstream media would have reported on this days ago. And were Gannon a heterosexual hooker in the Clinton White House, CNS would have been the first media outlet to report on it. So spare me.

Finally, this article should send a message to Gannon and other closeted Republicans. You're working for and with people who hate you. We might be pissed because you're selling yourself out. They're pissed because they loathe who you are. Big difference. Read More......

BREAKING NEWS: Gannon reportedly knew about Iraq attack four hours before it happened

UPDATE: RawStory.com has posted an article detailing more instances of Gannon claiming to have had exclusives on various big stories. At this point he's either incredibly well connected, or a good liar, or both. I also have had feedback from several reporters who say that many people know the attack was coming in advance, so it is possible that again Gannon was trying to sound "in the know" when he wasn't any more in the know than anyone else. Just wanted to report back on all of this, to help folks decide for themselves what to believe. JOHN
---------------------------

A news producer for a major network's local affiliate just told me that Gannon told the producer the US was going to attack Iraq four hours before President Bush announced it to the nation.

According to the producer, Gannon specifically told them that in four hours the president was going to be making a speech to the nation announcing that the US was bombing Iraq. The producer told me they were surprised that Gannon, working with such a small news outfit, could have access to such information, but "what did you know, he was right," the producer said today. The producer went on to say that Gannon often had correct scoops on major stories, including information about Mary Mapes and the Dan Rather BUSH/AWOL scandal that this news outlet got from Gannon before any had the information publicly.

This more than a few questions and points:

1. Assuming this news producer is telling the truth, and I have no reason to believe they are not, how did Gannon get access to such highly classified information as to when the US was going to bomb Iraq?

2. Even if Gannon were part of a press gaggle that was told embargoed information about the war by the White House, this producer alleges that Gannon would have broken any such embargo, which is a security risk to the operation, and more generally shows that concerns about Gannon's White House access posing a risk to national security might now be warranted.

3. How would someone on a day pass, who hadn't gotten the requisite 3-4 month FBI background check that other full-time White House employees get, get access to such highly classified information? Certainly the White House didn't include someone with simply a day pass in the highly-classified pre-briefing about details of the war (assuming such a briefing even occurred)? If the White House did a briefing and Gannon were included, this would mean ANYONE could walk in off the street, say they're a reporter, and provided by they don't have a criminal record, the White House will simply tell them at what hour we're launching a major attack? And if there was no briefing for reporters, then how did Gannon allegedly find out?

4. Even if the White House had simply told the press pool that Bush was speaking to the nation in a few hours, and the press had figured out that this meant were were attacking Iraq, was the information about the upcoming speech embargoed? Was the information about the upcoming speech also announced to the public four hours before? Or did Gannon get access to inside information concerning the war simply because of his presence in the White House - a presence that should have required an FBI background check considering how often he was there?

5. How would Gannon get inside information on the Dan Rather scandal BEFORE the rest of the major media? Assuming the producer is correct, did it come from a White House source, and if so, what does this say about possible White House involvement in creating this scandal in the first place?

According to my source, Gannon's insider tidbits were always on the mark. "Gannon's stuff was always golden," the producer says. My source says they kept asking themself, "how does this small news outfit get this info?"

How indeed. Read More......

Morning Gannon update

Ugh. I'm up so I can do a radio interview on a liberal radio station in Detroit.

Here's a summary of today's Gannon news:

- Seattle Post-Intelligencer covers Gannon (Cox News Service).

With the mystery of "Jeff Gannon" deepening, Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., yesterday renewed her call for the White House to explain its relationship with a conservative ex-reporter linked to an online gay escort service.

- NY Daily News, again

The latest media-manipulation scandal emanating from the Bush administration isn't just outrageous - it's downright sleazy. The man in the photo is a pro-Bush political operative named James Guckert, who until recently wrote for two conservative Web sites under the alias Jeff Gannon while apparently leading a double life in the world of gay porn and prostitution. Guckert got a pass to enter the White House, where the President called on him at briefings....

It boggles the mind to think that a gay prostitute using a fake name might have passed through security screens to join a public Q & A session with the leader of the free world. Equally sensational is the possibility, suggested by members of Congress and major news organizations, that the White House deliberately helped set up Guckert with credentials and privileged information.

It gets stranger.

Guckert's name has popped up in the Valerie Plame affair, in which Plame's status as an undercover CIA agent was leaked to columnist Robert Novak - in violation of federal law - and published in 2003. The leak - whatever its source - is widely thought to be an act of political retaliation against Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, a former acting ambassador to Iraq who publicly questioned the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

- The Washington Blade confirms the gay angle to the story.

- New York Times - Of course, the NYT refuses to mention the escort issue. Still, it helps a lot that they're writing about this.

- Great editorial from the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Heard about the Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert muck-up in Washington? If you are an aficionado of the blogs, you've heard plenty. They're having a field day with it. But underneath all the fun lies a serious problem that hasn't got its due from the mainstream press: This White House employs a lot more kinds of fakery than the budgetary smoke and mirrors described in the editorial above....

So the question becomes, just how did this character get White House press credentials, despite supposed post-Sept. 11 security requirements? Bruce Bartlett, a conservative columnist who worked in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, says that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." In other words, the White House wanted him at those briefings and wanted him to ask his softball questions, most likely to divert attention when legitimate reporters were getting too pushy.

- Leonard Pitts, jr. in the Miami Herald Read More......

Now it's the farmers who are crying about Bush

Please tell me that the farmers, who received massive handouts in the first term, did not actually believe Bush was going to give them more after the election. With the black hole of spending in Iraq, the Christian-right program spending, the corporate welfare, etc., etc., surely they knew that Bush was going to throw a few people under the bus. What ever happened to farmers being conservative anyway? Did they think that they could keep taking taxpayer welfare forever? Read More......

Greenspan still reaching for past glory, says plenty of nothing

What surprises me the most about Greenspan is that the markets continue to listen to this guy anymore. What the hell did he actually say about the privatized retirement accounts? In theory, sure privatized anything always strikes a cord with the public and people will listen but saying that you agree in theory with the program at 30,000 feet and then getting specific about where you would have issues is another sad dodge by the once-great Greenspan.

How about commenting on the fear that many of us have with this program, that Wall Street charges will consume any benefits to account holders? This is nothing more than corporate welfare dished out by the master of corporate welfare handouts. If Greenspan can't be specific about this one he sad shadow of his former self ought to head out too pasture and let someone else do it. Read More......