Late night open thread

Off to bed Read More......

Video of NBC Nightly News on Gannon/White House

An excellent report from NBC, I think. The video misses the intro which basically said the story was the talk of the town in DC. Watch it here at Crooks And Liars, then consider giving them some turkee (i.e., cold hard cash) to help pay for their bandwidth. They've been recording EVERYTHING about Gannon, and every other big story, and making it available to the rest of us for free. It would be great if we can help them out (once you get to their page, scroll down and there's a very small button in the right-hand column that says "Make a Donation"). Read More......

Whose Ass is Ari covering now?

He's baaaaacccckkkk....

Ari has returned to clear up the situation. Hmmmmm...

According to Editor & Publisher (who btw has really been on top of this issue), Ari had concerns about Gannon but those were assuaged by the Texas Republican who ran GOPUSA and Talon:

"I found out that he worked for a GOP site, and I didn't think it was my place to call on him because he worked for something that was related to the party," Fleischer said in a phone interview. "He had the editor call me and made the case that they were not related to the Republican Party. He said they used the GOP name for marketing purposes only."

He said he resumed calling on Guckert, who used the alias Jeff Gannon, after Bobby Eberle, owner of both GOPUSA and Talon News, "assured me that they were not part of the Republican Party." Eberle is a Texas Republican activist and served as a delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Yep, Ari went straight to the source and cleared the whole thing up. But, not exactly:

Fleischer said he did not know much about Guckert and could not recall exactly when he started covering press briefings. He said he played no part in approving Guckert's requests for daily press credentials (which were handled by his office) and could offer no further comment on that.

But he said he did not know at the time that Guckert had been using a false name and did not know if Scott McClellan, now press secretary but then Fleischer's aide, had known then either. "It came as a surprise to me, because I always knew him as Jeff Gannon," he said. Fleischer said he did not know of any other White House reporters using aliases.

He said he did not know the method the White House Press Office used to keep records of those, like Guckert, who received daily press passes. White House Press Office officials did not respond to several requests today for such information.

Ok. So Gannon shows up. And, Ari, you're concerned about him so you call Eberle. You don't ask any questions like "how the hell did he get in here in the first place?" or "who let that guy in?"

Bringing back Ari means the White House is circling the wagons. They are in full spin mode. That means there is more to this story. Ari didn't answer a lot of the questions that needed to be answered. He just gave us the sense that there is more to this story....and the answers lie not with Gannon, but with someone in the White House. For example, McClellan said he knew Gannon used a fake name. How did he know when Ari didn't? Who in the press shop cleared Gannon into the White House? It wasn't Ari, he says.

The plot thickens even more. Read More......

NBC Nightly News, Hardball and Anderson Cooper all covered the Gannon/WH story tonight

This is now a real hard-news story. If all goes well, tomorrow should be nuts. Read More......

Open thread

What's up? Read More......

BREAKING: Gannon appears to have had a "hard pass" to the White House

UPDATE: Looks like my caveat at the bottom of this post was correct. I've communicated with two sources who have confirmed that the White House hard pass for correspondents is different than the one Gannon was wearing in that photo. The head shot is in the wrong place, the words, etc. This still begs the question of exactly what ID was he wearing, since it's not clear he was working for anyone at the time.

But how? You can't get one with the FBI background check, and Gannon reportedly never got one, and if he did get one, they obviously didn't do a good one.

Great catch from DailyKos.com. Gannon appears to be wearing a hard pass, i.e., photo ID, on March 3, 2003, which is reportedly before he started working for Talon News. You can see some kind of photo ID around his neck in this pic the Kossaks found:



It might be possible that this is a second photo ID he had around his neck - for example, I think my reporter friends have photo IDs that prove they're reporters for whatever newspaper - but since we're pretty sure Gannon wasn't working for Talon at the time, then what company's photo ID would he be wearing? Or, was this a White House hard pass, and how did he get it? Read More......

Rep. Slaughter demands White House "Stop Stonewalling" over Jeff Gannon

Now THAT's my kind of Democrat!:

For Immediate Release
February 17, 2005

Rep. Slaughter Demands Answer:
Why was Jeff Gannon in the White House Before Talon News Even Existed? Slaughter to White House - "Stop the Stonewalling!"

Washington, DC - During the February 10 White House briefing, Press Secretary Scott McClellan stated that Jeff Gannon, "...like anyone else, showed that he was representing a news organization that published regularly" in order to receive his day pass to press briefings. It has been confirmed that Jeff Gannon was in the White House briefing room, actively participating in these briefings, as early as February 28, 2003 a full month before Talon News even existed.

Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (NY-28), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Rules, who has lead the call for answers in this matter, today called on the White House to explain their relationship with the discredited "reporter" once and for all.

"It has been a week since I wrote President Bush seeking answers in this matter. I have not yet received a reply. With each new revelation it becomes more and more clear that the relationship between the White House and Jeff Gannon was anything but typical," said Slaughter. "It is time for this Administration to stop the stonewalling and come clean with the American people," she added.

Read More......

Time for a little investigation -- Bush Appoints Negroponte as National Intelligence Director

George Bush has appointed John Negroponte as the nation's first National Intelligence Director. From AP:

President Bush on Thursday named John Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and currently the administration's top representative in Iraq, to be America's first national intelligence director.

Announcing the move, Bush said that Negroponte understands global intelligence needs because he's had a long career in the foreign service. Bush said he wants Negroponte to be his clearinghouse for intelligence and make decisions on the intelligence budgets for 15 government agencies.

"John will make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information we need to make the right decisions," the president said.

From Iraq to National Intelligence Director. Wow, the guy must have a great resume to be entrusted with our nation's intelligence gathering.

Uh, yeah. If you think that this is okay. From the Baltimore Sun in 1995, when journalists actually did their jobs:

A dangerous truth confronted John Dimitri Negroponte as he prepared to take over as U.S. ambassador to Honduras late in 1981.

The military in Honduras -- the country from which the Reagan administration had decided to run the battle for democracy in Central America -- was kidnapping and murdering its own citizens.

"GOH [Government of Honduras] security forces have begun to resort to extralegal tactics -- disappearances and, apparently, physical eliminations ` to control a perceived subversive threat," Negroponte was told in a secret briefing book prepared by the embassy staff.

The assertion was true, and there was worse to come.

Time and again during his tour of duty in Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was confronted with evidence that a Honduran army intelligence unit, trained by the CIA, was stalking, kidnapping, torturing and killing suspected subversives.

A 14-month investigation by The Sun, which included interviews with U.S. and Honduran officials who could not have spoken freely at the time, shows that Negroponte learned from numerous sources about the crimes of the unit called Battalion 316.

The Honduran press was full of reports about military abuses, including hundreds of newspaper stories in 1982 alone. There were also direct pleas from Honduran officials to U.S. officials, including Negroponte.

A disgruntled former Honduran intelligence chief publicly denounced Battalion 316. Relatives of the battalion's victims demonstrated in the streets and appealed to U.S. officials for intervention, including once in an open letter to President Reagan's presidential envoy to Central America.

Rick Chidester, then a junior political officer in the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, told The Sun that he compiled substantial evidence of abuses by the Honduran military in 1982, but was ordered to delete most of it from the annual human rights report prepared for the State Department to deliver to Congress.

Those reports consistently misled Congress and the public.

There is so much more. Read the whole story.

I think that it's time that we start digging into Mr. Negroponte before we have the same kind of "intelligence gathering" that Negroponte seemed not to care about in Honduras:

According to Florencio Caballero, a former sergeant in Battalion 316, Alvarez demanded torture as "the quickest way to get information."

In one highly publicized case of torture and intimidation, human rights attorney Rene Velasquez (no relation to Manfredo) was arrested on June 1, 1982, in front of his law office in Tegucigalpa and taken to a secret jail where he was kept for four days.

"They undressed me, they tied my hands and they put a rubber mask over my face," he said. "They put something on me to attract flies, because those were my companions for four days.

"I was beaten a lot," Rene Velasquez said. "They hit me in the ribs and stomach. ... I could barely endure the pain."

It's time to divide and conquer folks. The Gannon story is now up and running, and I think that it's time that we start into Negroponte. The National Intelligence Director is an incredibly important job. As we saw with Iraq, intelligence needs to be trusted. Would you trust intelligence under Negroponte?

Start digging, and start talking to your Member of Congress and Senator. Read More......

Church of England: Women, Learn Your Place!

Don't be surprised that major religions are struggling with gay marriage and gay priests. For most of them, even women priests are still a radical and divisive idea. The Church of England (the British mother church for Episcopalians) is still struggling with its decision to let more than half the population -- women -- be priests. In just a few years, 1 out of 5 priests are now women, but some 500 parishes still refuse to have anything to do with them.

Now, the Church is embroiled in another dispute: since women are now priests, obviously they should be eligible to become bishops. The General Synod voted yet again to continue discussions, whch means that possibility is one step closer. But traditonalists (also known as narrow-minded idiots) are threatening a schism.

One supporter of women told the Independent in UK quite reasonably, "The vast majority of church members want women bishops. Excluding half the human race is increasingly embarrassing."

So when you're astonished that suggesting gay people are the children of God still creates major agita, remember that women are treated as second class citizens by virtually every major religion in the world. Read More......

Sidney Blumenthal on Gannon

Love this guy:

Thus a phony journalist planted by a Republican operation, used by the White House press secretary to interrupt questions from the press corps, called on by the president for a safe question, protected from FBI vetting by the press office, disseminating innuendo and smears about critics and opponents of the administration, some of them gay-baiting, was unmasked not only as a hireling and fraud but as a gay prostitute, with enormous potential for blackmail....

Lifting the heavy Puritan curtain draping Bush's Washington reveals enlightening scenes of its decadent anthropology. Even as Guckert's true colors were revealed, the administration issued orders that the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender" be removed from the program of a federally funded conference on suicide prevention. But the transparent hypocrisy of conservative "values" hardly deters a ruthless government.

Excellent point from Blumenthal. Gannon's sexual orientation isn't an issue, at the same time Gannon's administration buddies are off deleting the word "gay" from federal information about suicide prevention. This administration couldn't care less about gay kids commiting suicide, but we're supposed to look the other way when they coddle gay hustlers, and gay hustlers coddle them?

Family values, my ass. Time for the Bush administration to start living by their own family values. Explain to use why the president called on a gay hooker. Read More......

Question from some reporter types for you all

How do we know what day Talon News started? I understand it was March 29th or something of 2003. I'd like a link to a source, HARD details about why we know that this is the day Talon News started, and/or this was the day Gannon started with Talon News. Please post your answers in the comments, so the reporter friend can find them. Thanks guy, JOHN Read More......

Salon on Gannon's access to WH in February

Great story from Eric Boehlert:

Thanks to the continued digging by online sleuths, there's now documented evidence that Guckert attended White House briefings as early as February 2003. Guckert, using his alias "Jeff Gannon," once boasted online about asking then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer a question at the Feb. 28, 2003, briefing. The date is significant because in order to receive a White House press pass, Guckert would have needed to prove that he worked for a news organization that, in the words of White House press secretary Scott McClellan, "published regularly," in itself an extraordinarily low threshold. Critics have charged that while Talon News may publish regularly, it boasts a nearly all-volunteer news team which includes not a single person with actual journalism experience. (The team does, though, have quite a bit of experience working on Republican campaigns.) In other words, the outfit is not legitimate nor independent, two criteria often used in Washington, D.C., to receive press credentials.
Click here

But what's significant about the February 2003 date is that Talon did not even exist then. The organization was created in late March 2003, and began publishing online in early April 2003. Gannon, a jack of all trades who spent time in the military as well as working at an auto repair shop (not to mention escorting), has already stated publicly that Talon News was his first job in journalism. That means he wasn't working for any other news outlet in February 2003 when he was spotted by C-Span cameras inside the White House briefing room. And that means Guckert was ushered into the White House press room in February 2003 for a briefing despite the fact he was not a journalist.

Read More......

ENTIRE Daily Show video here, watch it

It's good. Make sure you watch BOTH videos, do not miss the Moment of Zen. Read More......

Good morning, open thread

I hear the Today Show covered Gannon. That means it's getting legs. Read More......

Senator Specter diagnosed with Hodgkin's

I voted again Specter and don't like the guy at all but I feel bad for his current round of health troubles. That said, I also have to wonder what kind of an egomaniac is 78 years old and is being treated with chemotherapy for Hodgkin's, was recently treated for a brain tumor and has had double bypass surgery yet he has such a pathetic personal life that he wants to stay in DC instead of enjoying life with his family. Being a Senator is a full time job where your decisions have serious consequences so I really wonder about this guy. Read More......

Bush to raise taxes?

It's not taking him very long to screw a few key groups that supported his campaign in 2004. After fooling the senior citizens, now he's discussing the option of raising taxes on the upper income group that also backed him. Now wouldn't that be amusing to hear the grumbles of all of those who supported Bush because he cut their taxes? Read More......

I think I sense a growing Gannon firestorm - Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich

Here's Dowd.

I am very impressed with James Guckert, a k a Jeff Gannon.

How often does an enterprising young man, heralded in press reports as both a reporter and a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net, Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com, get to question the president of the United States?

Who knew that a hotmilitarystud wanting to meetlocalmen could so easily get to be face2face with the commander in chief?

And here's Rich.

The inability of real journalists to penetrate this White House is not all the White House's fault. The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press. Conservatives, who supposedly deplore post-modernism, are now welcoming in a brave new world in which it's a given that there can be no empirical reality in news, only the reality you want to hear (or they want you to hear). The frequent fecklessness of the Beltway gang does little to penetrate this Washington smokescreen. For a case in point, you needed only switch to CNN on the day after Mr. Olbermann did his fake-news-style story on the fake reporter in the White House press corps.

"Jeff Gannon" had decided to give an exclusive TV interview to a sober practitioner of by-the-book real news, Wolf Blitzer. Given this journalistic opportunity, the anchor asked questions almost as soft as those "Jeff" himself had asked in the White House. Mr. Blitzer didn't question Mr. Guckert's outrageous assertion that he adopted a fake name because "Jeff Gannon is easier to pronounce and easier to remember." (Is "Jeff" easier to pronounce than his real first name, Jim?). Mr. Blitzer never questioned Gannon/Guckert's assertion that Talon News "is a separate, independent news division" of GOPUSA. Only in a brief follow-up interview a day later did he ask Gannon/Guckert to explain why he was questioned by the F.B.I. in the case that may send legitimate reporters to jail: Mr. Guckert has at times implied that he either saw or possessed a classified memo identifying Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative. Might that memo have come from the same officials who looked after "Jeff Gannon's" press credentials? Did Mr. Guckert have any connection with CNN's own Robert Novak, whose publication of Ms. Plame's name started this investigation in the first place? The anchor didn't go there.

Read More......

Daily Show video of GannonGuckert coverage tonight

It's good. Once you click, scroll to the bottom of the post and the link is there. Warning: it ain't small, like 20 megs - if anybody wants to take a shot at editing it down, go for it.

Oops - the video only has the second segment. Stewart also does an opening story on Gannon that is hysterical, and Gannon is the moment of Zen. Hopefully somebody can get the rest. Read More......

OP/ED: Was Gannon Called to Testify in Plame Investigation?

Phoenix Woman alerted us to this March 7, 2004 thread from Free Republic. The thread is about, ironically, journalistic standards. (I kid you not.) Here's what "Jeff" had to say:

To: kristinn
Well, as many of you now know, I have been subpeonaed by the Federal grand jury for testimony in the CIA leak probe.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1092073/posts

Somehow, Talon News (an internet based news service) is credible enough to be interrogated. (RKA NOTE: Emphasis mine)

Five Washington Post reporters have also been called, along with Andrea Mitchell and Tim Russert and others.

24 posted on 03/07/2004 6:49:32 AM PST by Jeff Gannon (Listen to my radio show "Jeff Gannon's Washington" on www.RIGHTALK.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies ]

Huh, interesting. Jeff tells Free Republic that he was "subpeonaed" by the Grand Jury. Well, that's not what he told Editor and Publisher Magazine on February 11, 2005:

Guckert said that contrary to many press reports, he was never subpoenaed by the special prosecutor and has never testified before a grand jury in the case. But he said he was interviewed by two FBI agents in his home for about 90 minutes last year.

"I answered their questions truthfully and honestly, but I would prefer not to say more,” he said. “I assume the information was routed back and that is why I was not called to testify."

Although he hinted that he had not seen a classified CIA document after all, he added, "I am not going to speak to that. It goes to something of a nature I do not want to discuss."

So, which is it "Jeff"? Did you testify or not?

Further on down the post, there is this little exchange:

To: Jeff Gannon
I see Walter Pincus is on the list. I wonder who'll pay for his legal representation, The Washington Post or the CIA?
30 posted on 03/07/2004 10:42:47 AM PST by kristinn (Blue Star Mothers' Troop Support Rally March 13 in Wash., D.C.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies ]

To: kristinn
or the World Workers Party!
31 posted on 03/07/2004 11:49:44 AM PST by Jeff Gannon (Listen to my radio show "Jeff Gannon's Washington" on www.RIGHTALK.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 30 | View Replies ]

To: Jeff Gannon
Ouch.
32 posted on 03/07/2004 12:47:47 PM PST by kristinn (Blue Star Mothers' Troop Support Rally March 13 in Wash., D.C.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies ]

To: kristinn
Isn't Pincus the Will Duranty of our generation?
33 posted on 03/07/2004 12:55:08 PM PST by Jeff Gannon (Listen to my radio show "Jeff Gannon's Washington" on www.RIGHTALK.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies ]

He actually meant to say Walter Duranty. Why was he criticizing Walter Pincus? For the same reason that Plame was outed - because someone dared to report on the fact that there was no evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

From the Washington Post, March 16, 2003:

Despite the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress.

Senior intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands from White House, Pentagon and other government policymakers for intelligence that would make the administration's case "and what they say is a lack of hard facts," one official said.

"They have only circumstantial evidence . . . nothing that proves this amount or that," said an individual who has regularly been briefed by the CIA.

Somehow raising questions about a nation's rationale for going to war makes Pincus a Communist sympathizer. I just prefer to call him a journalist, something "Jeff Gannon" was not.

-- Rob in Baltimore

(In case the thread disappears, I've created a PDF archive here.) Read More......

For what it's worth, we found another "Jeff" escort site

This is the same site that the guy in California built, but it's hosted on a different URL. This actually completes the link to 3 of the profiles that link to this OTHER URL that until now I was unable to find.

This is the archive of the site.

And this is the URL that site was on, but it's no longer live:
http://www.xtrememale.com/USMCPT/

Kudos to Richard for putting me on the path to this one. Read More......

Whither Lautenberg?

Come on, Senator. Do the right thing. We need you. And this story is ripe for the picking. Think like a Republican. Get 'em. Read More......