Should Plame Investigator Fitzgerald Give Gannon a Call?

(I'm elevating this post back up - was having Blogger issues. Original post below.)

Gannon has given another interview, this time with Editor and Publisher magazine. Some of the more interesting tidbits include this:

He also threw into question media accounts suggesting that he had seen a classified CIA document critical to the Plame case, saying he had made references to the internal memo, but adding, I never said I had it or had seen it. But when asked if he had in fact seen it, he declined to say.
...
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.
...
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 let me get this right. He talked about an "internal memo" but says he didn't see it. When asked if he saw it, he won't answer the question. Hmmm, maybe Patrick Fitzgerald should check back in with Jeff Gannon -- it seems that the rest of his investigation has gone quiet, something Jeff Gannon is not!

An interesting inconsistency in his story:

Guckert claimed that his family began being harassed a week ago. Asked how this was possible, when his real name didn_t even surface until late Monday, he held to the view that "it was out there a week ago, and that is when it started. My mother and my brother and his wife in Pennsylvania were being harassed with phone calls and threats."

At least someone is asking him the right questions. Take his answers as seriously as you took his "journalism."

As I said in my previous post, I think that the reason he's out there talking so much is to deflect attention from something or someone else. It's a good article. Read it. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Have at it Read the rest of this post...

Mark Twain worked with escort services? Who knew?

From Crooks and Liars:

On Special Report with Brit Hume 2/10, Hume and his panel got aroundto discussing the Guckert/Gannon flap.

Bill Sammon from the Moonie/ Washington Times said:

Sammon:...his real name first of all is James Guckert, but he changed his name to, sort of a nom de plume(pen name) I guess...

Hume: It's an honorable tradition you know(unintelligble)..Mark Twain

Sammon called it a plot from the liberal bloggers and press to supress a conservative voice; which will be the new republican talking point on the issue.

Jeff Birnbaum hinted at the truth, while Krauthammer laughably compared Talon News to Slate, and the Nation.

Read the rest of this post...

Anyone know what this might mean?

Don't know if anyone has dug this up yet on our friend Jeff, and I have no idea what it means, but go here to this page titled INEVITABLE:

http://members.aol.com/jdg17/myhomepage/personal.html

It's another page hosted on AOL by jdg17. I have no idea what this image is, what inevitable might mean. Anyone have a clue? Read the rest of this post...

Way Off Topic -- My New Website

When I'm not honing my political rants on Americablog, I work as a freelance entertainment journalist in New York. I've just launched my website which contains more than a thousand articles, features, reviews, essays and more covering movies, music, books, theater, television, DVDs and anything else pop culture-related. I've also just posted my lists of the best movies and CDs of 2004. John was kind enough to suggest I post a link here for anyone who might want a break from politics at the end of the week. You can go to the website at:

www.michaelgiltz.com

or jump right to the Best CDs of the year here or the Best Movies of the Year here. Thanks for taking a look. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Off to do some real work. Back in a bit :-) Read the rest of this post...

Govt. to Consumers: You're on Your Own - Class Action "Reform"

Pam's House Blend has a great piece on WHY it is that class action lawsuits came to be what they are today - a significant consumer protection. Phrases like "risk assessment" aren't about risks to the consumer, they are risks that companies calculate to determine how safe they REALLY need to make a product to make money above and beyond any lawsuits they may encounter. Without the threat of large class action suits, how much extra money are manufacturers really going to spend on consumer protection? Let history be the judge - Pam has great info collected on the Ford Pinto for those of you too young to remember. Check it out. Read the rest of this post...

Outstanding questions about Jeff Gannon - please submit some yourselves

1. When did GannonGuckert adopt the pseudonym?
2. If GannonGuckert did nothing wrong, and this is just a liberal witch hunt of some poor innocent guy who's only crime is being a conservative, then why did Talon News and GOPUSA delete all of Gannon's old articles, and a slew of other articles dealing with gay issues?
3. Who was this "client" who Gannon bought the Web addresses MilitaryEscortsM4M.com and MilitaryEscorts.com?
4. What was the client intending to do with those addresses?
5. As a self-professed Christian, conservative, and reporter who tends to only report the anti-gay viewpoint in his articles, why did Gannon accept a client that was clearly interested in escort services, and gay military escort services at that?
6. Who is paying the ongoing costs of maintaining the domain registrations for MilitaryEscortsM4M.com and MilitaryEscorts.com?
7. Who is J. Daniels, the other name associated with these domain names? If it's a fake name, why did Gannon use yet another fake name in this instance?
   
8. According to WHOIS, those domain names were updated just two months ago, this past November. Did Gannon update those names?
9. Who paid Gannon's salary? Who paid Talon News' bills? Who pays for GOPUSA's budget?
10. Gannon says he refused to divulge to the FBI who slipped him the CIA information about Valerie Plame. Other journalists were threatened with jail for taking that position - why wasn't Gannon (or Novak, for that matter)?
11. According to court documents, Gannon owes some $20k in Delaware, from a judgement ten years ago. What's up with that?
12. GannonGuckert says he's been harassed and stalked since the day he spoke out during the White House press conference two weeks ago. But according to Atrios, Gannon's real name wasn't discovered and made public until 10:54PM this past Monday night. How did people track him down at church and phone his family if no one knew his name? Not to mention, this story wasn't even a big story until just about 2-3 days ago.
13. GannonGuckert says he has 750,000 subscribers to his news service. Really? Love to hear more details about that factoid.
14. Is Gannon married?
    

More? Read the rest of this post...

OP/ED: What really happened with the Jeff Gannon Story

What is the Jeff Gannon story, really? It's about the grassroots rising up, organizing, and getting into the mainstream media with the story they want talked about. It's an amazing thing to watch, really.

Think about it for a moment.

How many people have contributed pieces to this story? Think about all the research that has been done by so many people. Think about the blogs, who came together and gave that research a platform. Think about the members of Congress who picked up, ran with it, and started asking the White House for some accountability. Think about the blogs that hosted all clips of Gannon's ridiculous "questions" putting a picture to the words and telling the story.

And then what happened. The mainstream media started to at least talk about it. Three weeks ago, this wasn't on anyone's radar screen. In the first month of this Administration, we've stood up and had an impact. We've gotten the story back, and it’s on our terms. A group of individuals all over the nation, using the Internet to work collectively. And the best part is that the story is starting to turn our way.

Think about Rep. Louise Slaughter. She went on mainstream media and stood her ground and skipped the spin and talked about the issues. Think about the few reporters who have now picked the story up a bit and are starting to really write it. Think about watching John on TV last night, not talking about how crappy blogs are that they went after this guy's personal life (it was his business life and how no one in the White House seemed to notice it, but hey, don't let the facts get in the way of good spin), but talking about how Jeff Gannon is a White House propaganda plant.

Think about how much time and energy has been going into this story and look what it has become. Sure, Gannon's all over the media saying how horrible his life is since this started. Don't buy it. He was a propaganda artist from the get go. (And the blogs have nicely ripped his story to shreds.) So why is he doing it then?

Well, I personally think that he has something to hide. Or something to hide for someone in the White House who still has a job today. The real story hasn't even started yet.

• Why hasn't the Valerie Plame case been brought to prosecution? Someone leaked her name, and that was a crime. The list of possible criminals is pretty short. Why haven't we seen justice?
• How did Jeff Gannon, a man who wasn't even a "journalist" two years earlier, get right into the middle of all of this? Who gave him access to the CIA documents? Did he tell everything he knew to the Justice Department?

So yes, there is more work to do. More threads to unravel and more of the story to tell. Like the Right did with Rathergate, we're doing it with this story. The difference is that our story ends with who committed a crime. An egregious crime against our country.

Someone in the White House put political gain for the President ahead of our national security, exposing an undercover CIA agent who operated covertly in the Arab world. In the middle of a war in the Mideast, someone in the White House diminished our nation's intelligence gathering capability. A crime against our national security at a time of war was committed. And someone needs to be held accountable.

-- Rob in Baltimore Read the rest of this post...

CNN transcript is online now

For those of you who can't use the video link, you can find the written transcript of my appearance on CNN last night here (you'll need to scroll down a bit). Read the rest of this post...

Follow the money...

Who pays Gannon and Talon News and GOPUSA? From MediaCitizen:

Talon News is an on-line news service owned by Bobby Eberle. He said Mr. Eberle told him Talon News is an all-volunteer news service, though since Mr. Guckert’s application was submitted, a stipend was arranged that would provide more than half of Mr. Guckerts [sic] income in an effort to comply with the gallery's requirement that correspondents be paid, full time employees of the organization for which they are applying. Mr. Keenan said Talon News is the primary news supplier for GOPUSA, also owned by Mr. Eberle, and provides its news service at no charge to other organizations.

Read the rest of this post...

Tom Delay and JeffJames GannonGuckert

From The Daily Delay:

Is there a link between DeLay and the Talon News scandal?

Former White House correspondent and "reporter" Jeff Gannon (A.K.A. James Guckert) is on the hot seat along with his former "employer" Talon News. His boss at Talon News, Editor in Chief Robert R. Eberle (A.K.A. Bobby Eberle), also happens to be the CEO and President of Talon's parent organization GOPUSA.com. Eberle also lives and works in Houston, TX--a stone's throw from Sugarland, TX. See where we're going?

We're looking for help in finding any connection between Tom DeLay and Robert R. Eberle (remember that you may also know him as "Bobby Eberle"). We're also looking for any relationship between DeLay and GOPUSA.com or Talon News.

It's hard to imagine that Houston-based GOPUSA.com, which bills itself as a major conservative destination (or add in a quote from their site), has no relationship with DeLay. Anyone know of any?

If you have any info for them, please post it on their site. Read the rest of this post...

Friday AM Open Thread

So, what's the big story that got missed this week by the blogs while everyone's been doing the media's job for them? Read the rest of this post...

Karl Rove Linked to Gannon Story?

So just how close is Karl Rove to this story? Well, here's a little tidbit. In an article titled "Freewheeling 'bloggers' are rewriting rules of journalism" (USA Today, December 30, 2003), Kathy Kiely writes:

In the past year:

* GOPUSA.com, a Web site run by Bobby Eberle, a Houston engineer with no previous journalism experience, scored an interview with President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove.

Mr. Eberle is the CEO of GOPUSA.com and Talon News, Jeff Gannon's employer. He regularly writes on GOPUSA.com under the byline:

By Bobby Eberle
Talon News

So GOPUSA.com gets access to Rove. Interesting. Gannon/Talon also get access to CIA documents that expose undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. Very Interesting. Is there a link? Only the Justice Department investigation knows. Wonder what's holding up that prosecution? Read the rest of this post...

More White House Deception In The Media a la Gannon

Wasn't John great on CNN last night? It began with a ridiculous lead-in that implied this was all about "new media" and liberals attacking conservatives. But John deftly highlighted the real issues. National security is one good angle: if this guy's background was so shaky he couldn't get credentialed on the Hill, how the hell did a guy with a fake name gain access to the White House? If they can't keep the White House safe, how can they keep the country safe? Of course, they knew exactly who he was -- as the Karl Rove link above makes highly likely.

So this is the bigger picture: Bush repeatedly lies and deceives the American people via the media. By its own admission, the White House has:

1. Planted fake news stories on local TV stations to push its agenda
2. Put journalists on the government payroll.
3. Had supposed independent journalists testify to Congress when they were being paid off by the govt.
4. Paid off journalists to push its agenda in the larger media.
5. Launched unprecendented tactics to subpoena a number of reporters and try and force them to reveal confidential sources -- all about a story concerning a White House member who broke the law by revealing a CIA agent's identity, thus endangering the lives of friends to the US around the world.
6. And now, planted fake journalists in the White House press room and passed them CIA documents to push its agenda.

The latest media manipulation?

Bush appeared at the Commerce Department with what he pretended was an independent expert to push his fight against class-action lawsuits. That person, Walter E. Dellinger III, is no independent expert who has seen the light on this issue: he and his law firm are paid lobbyists, receiving $780,000 in the last few years to push for the legislation. Can you imagine? Bush made a point of saying Dellinger had worked for the Clinton Administration -- as if that proved his bona fides -- but didn't mention the guy was a shill for the people pushing to change the laws. The President lied. This should be scandalous. But they've done it so often it was blown off in an inside story in the New York Times.

And it worked: the legislation passed the Senate, should pass the House soon and will be signed into law by Bush. Read the rest of this post...

Seniors dropping their support for Bush

What ever happened to "older and wiser?" Wasn't this the group that voted for the GOP in November and now they're surprised and upset with the Bush plans to trash Social Security? C'mon, get a clue. Read the rest of this post...

Ok, last thought before going to bed

Don't let me forget. Tomorrow I think we need to launch a phone-in to the religious right about Gannon and the White House. How family values is it for the White House to not be concerned that they gave access to the president to some guy who admits to accepting clients interested in gay male escort services? Sounds to me like the White House is again giving short shrift to those family values that supposedly got them elected. The religious right is not going to like this story, and they're really not going to like the White House's lackadaisical defense of Gannon. Tomorrow (Friday) let's help fan those flames. Read the rest of this post...

NYT picks up Gannon story!

A pretty good article too. Totally different slant. Hits on the angle of Congress demanding an investigation, and that the members of Congress contacted the independent prosecutor investigating the Valerie Plame affair. Nice.

PS The Guardian has the story too, and a very good spin to it.

And the right wing is PISSED!

And nice to know all these family values conservatives have no problem with people taking escort services as clients. The point isn't whether WE have a problem with it - the point is that THEY DO. They're trying to ban porn on TV, in hotel rooms, from magazines. But when one of their own takes a client that has something to do with a male escort Web site, suddenly it's okay. Next time, think twice before you try to jam your family values down our throats - lest you choke on your own jihad. Read the rest of this post...