What the hell is going on with this story?

Proof comes out linking GOP White House ‘reporter’ with gay military escort services; Scantily-clad profile photograph traced

For the non-sensational answer to the question, "who's Jeff Gannon?" try:

White House Correspondents Criticize Alleged 'Softball Thrower' -- and Jeff Gannon Fires Back

There was an article about him in the WaPo this morning, before this latest story broke.

[ February 09, 2005, 11:28 AM: Message edited by: twin58 ]

Aside from the more salacious angle of the gay porn/pimp/prostitute angle is a very real question of this man's legitimacy as a reporter (incidentally, he announced his resignation early this morning, and reports are that Talon News has deleted all his articles). Apparently Gannon was the only reporter who saw an internal CIA memo that linked Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA operative unmasked by Novak, and her husband's Nigeria trip. The suspicion is that the story on Plame's actual identity may have been leaked through Gannon, and that Gannon may be a plant placed in the Press Corps by the GOP.

The blogs are all over it, but I consider them about as believeable as the tooth fairy. If half of what I've read is true....

but he is a hottie

did y'all see the picture of him in his boxers?

yum!

I'm tired and I can't think of anything deep and meaningful to post on this so I'll go with cheap and sleazy

Oh yes! Reporting for duty, sir!

What a great country we live in! Why make the career choice between right-wing hack mouthpiece and hot gay military stud when you can do both! Inclusion wins!

The funny thing about this to me is that I live in DC, I'm a Republican, somewhat conservative, I sort-of work in politics, I stay up to date on issues, personalities, etc., most of my friends work directly in politics, in the house and senate and in campaign positions, the majority of them in press jobs, and I have never ever once heard of this guy or of this site he allegedly works or worked for or whatever, this Talon News thing or what not. At the risk of sounding arrogant, if he and this news site were that important I would know about them. This is all news to me, and reading this site that has "outed" him, whoever he is, reminds me of the scene from Ferris Buellers Day Off where the girl's like "My best friend's sister's cousin's boyfriend..." etc. If this is the best conservative hypocrite plotline these guys have right now, they're really running on fumes.

This is funny Wm cuz I don't live in DC and I've heard of this guy from a while back, when they were smearing Wilson regarding his wife and the yellowcake. I've even heard them broadcast his questions during the few and far between press briefings.

Interesting, I thought the Wilson/Plame kerfuffle was overserved from day one so that would explain why I wasn't familiar with the people serving it. Perhaps this guy gets more play outside the beltway, or maybe he's one of these who's famous among those who hate Bush. Don't know, but he's not on Wm1865's radar, and it's a pretty nice radar. At first glance I thought this was a thread about the Oakland QB. Whatever.

You are probably right about him being popular with those who don't like Bush. We've been on to him for some time now.

*cough*

I don't live in DC, but every day, the Washington Post gets delivered here at the crack of dawn. I have no idea how I'm going to get the paper when the Virginia legislature makes the crack of dawn illegal.

Political Perspectives With Tunnel Vision



[ February 09, 2005, 09:16 PM: Message edited by: twin58 ]

Yep, didn't he also ask the question at the recent press conference in which he slammed Senator Ted Kennedy? Yet another self-loathing Quisling, but it seems like they're legion among the GOP hacks, so they'll just have to be exposed for what they are.

My favorite page (it made me laugh out loud):
GOP Pedophilia

And so many more...the Taliban don't have a thing on these folks!

If you're that well plugged in to the media zeitgeist of DC, how did you miss someone who's had the privilege of asking questions at a presidential news conference? Whether he's a GOP hack or not, it is not a contention that he did not work for Talon News or that he did not ask the question, so I'd have to say your radar doesn't have as broad a scope as you seem to think.

The question in question does appear to be fairly partisan, beside being bad journalism. A quick perusal of talonnews.com shows that every story there redirects to the GOPUSA website, so I find it odd that a reporter for the organization would be unaware of the affiliation if for no other reason than he would have had to go to the GOPUSA website in order to download his own clips.

I don't care what credentials they had, but they're obviously not a terribly important news source, unless you're a conspiracy theorist or a particularly rabid Bush-hater (one can be both, of course). Anybody with half a brain would see the redirects to plantetGOP or wherever it went and know that the "news" reported there is not to be taken seriously, and that the credentials issued to its reporter are another in a long line of efforts by politicians at all levels to control/shape the news. (I know this is shocking to yall, I'll give you a moment to regain your composure. Democrats do this to, controlling the news right now. At the moment your peeps are almost completely powerless, so they don't have many opportunities to control anything, much less the news, but if they did, they would, but they can't, so they don't. Oh, dear, I'm sorry, do you need to sit down? I know this is all a shock to you.)

For what it's worth, it's on drudge now, so people will be talking about it.

[ February 10, 2005, 06:06 AM: Message edited by: William1865 ]

The zeitgeist? Uh-uh, don't go there...

The funny thing about this is...I dont live in DC, I dont pretend to be a reporter, I dont go by a fake name, I dont work for GOPUSA, but I do have access to CNN, Boston Globe .

Dear Mr. "Gannon,"

Thanks for the good work, check's in the mail.

Love,
BushCoInc

cc: Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Michael McManus

If this guy was such a nobody, why would the President single him out to ask a question? We all know how tightly scripted the White House is.

Yes, Raze, and bravo for mastering the Internet, but you'll notice these articles were both posted AFTER this whole brouhaha broke out. I'm saying before that I had never heard of him, and you just didn't hear people up here saying "Hey, did you see what Jeff Gannon wrote today," or "Wow, did you see that story on the News Talon or whatever?" So everybody's patting themselves on the back and acting like this is some big blow to the conservative movement and it's just not. (I had heard about the "divorced from reality" question but what I read about it didn't highlight the asker.)

I don't think President Bush personally issues White House press credentials - perhaps Halliburton has a contract for that? Again, it's so cute that yall are just stunned that anybody in Washington might make some effort to steer the news in a particular direction. That's just precious.

Of course this guy, referred to only as "Mister G" on Olbermann's Countdown last night, is a nobody, and was working for an "unimportant" "news" agency - that's the whole point. Here you have a man who has admitted he had Zero journalistic experience before working for "Talon News" (which is closely affiliated with, if not the same organization as, GOPUSA - and apparently they have a parent owner that, until Monday, didn't actually exist) an agency that was created in March 2003 - yet "Gannon" got his first press credentials in early April 2003 - days after the creation of a "news agency" that has no readership or circulation.

Not only is this man lobbing questions both at McCelland and Bush that insult the term "softball" - from the rundown on Olbermann's show last night the questions seemed to be taken from GOP talking points - but he's taking whole chunks of White House press releases verbatim and putting his byline over it. Once these "stories" are out there, of course, anyone can reference them as if they were legitimate journalism, and then suddenly the White House spin becomes "fact."

In addition, "Gannon" is apparently one of only a few "journalists" who were given access to a confidential CIA document that purported to link Valerie Plame to the decision to send her husband to Nigeria. EXCEPT, the CIA insists the version of the document "Gannon" referenced was doctored, because the individual who allegedly makes the claim that Plame suggested her husband for the job could not have been present when Plame supposedly suggested it. You may remember that, at the time of Ambassador Wilson's revelation that the White House had the information to discount the yellow-cake story, but included it in the SOU address anyway, the "spin" on Wilson was that he was a unqualified diplomat who only got the Nigeria job because his wife was a CIA operative (that's how she was "outed").

"Gannon," BECAUSE he was from a brand-new "news agency" also provided cover to the administration, which was claiming that Plame's status as a covert operative was "common knowledge" at the time Novak revealed the information - if "Gannon" knew that information, it must be "common knowledge" - right? (Except Wilson insists not even their close friends and family members knew of Plame's real job until Novak revealed it).

So, we have an completely inexperienced "reporter" working for a "news agency" that was so clearly a fraud the "reporter" couldn't get standard credentials from Congress (although reporters, including Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, insist "Gannon" was issued a standard "hard" White House press credential, in his fake name, and was not getting daily credentials, as reported), parroting the GOP line, with White House language AND providing both the President and his Press Secretary a "lifeline" during press conferences, because they knew the type of question he would ask would lighten the mood and change the subject. In fact, in one of the video clips with an example "Gannon" question, the rest of the press corps starts to laugh when "Gannon" is called on - before he can even ask the question! They knew a load of bull was going to come out of his mouth.

AND we have this same neophyte reporter apparently getting pretty good access to some senior administration officials (whoever leaked Plame's name), including the first confirmation of documentation that the CIA insists has been doctored.

When you add in the fact that he was working under a pseudonym, and was clearly an unsavory character, who may have been an accessory to the criminal act of prostitution, you have to ask, how did he get into the press corps?

Then when you add in the known activities of the White House, including sending out fake news reports on video AND paying pundits to push their policies, you see the potential of a wide-ranging propaganda campaign that may have included the creation of a ficticious news source to push said propaganda.

The questions now become, what is this "Talon News," who is actually running it, how did they get "Gannon," and why is the White House apparently cooperating?

edited to add:

DailyKos, which broke the story, has a great rundown of the timeline that implicates "Gannon" in the wider effort to discredit Wilson:
DailyKos timeline

I should also note that the first wind of this fake reporter came a year ago, and stories about him have only been circulating among journalists and real political junkies since that time. It was the "divorced from reality" question (which, quite frankly, was one of his fairer ones) and a subsequent Boston Globe piece that opened up scrutiny and cast doubts about his actual identity and purpose in the press corps.

[ February 10, 2005, 09:59 AM: Message edited by: CPT_Doom ]

Dear William,

Thanks for the backing us up, check's in the mail.

Love,
BushCoInc

cc: Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, Michael McManus and whoever's next

No, I got Inauguration tickets. You didn't?

Mr. "Gannon": Mr. President do you love Jesus, fetuses, cute 'lil kitties and puppies and stem cells?

Chimp: Why yes James, uh, I mean Jeff, I do.

Reply to: anon-59212458@roveslist.org
Date: 2003-12-10, 1:36PM CST

Lookin for quisling asap, gay preferable, work with front organization, spread propaganda, disseminate rnc scripts as journalism, out cia agents, screw over other queers, great pay, other opportunities as they come

[ February 11, 2005, 08:56 AM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

Since we're into letter writing now, here's my take: that Gannon's a TKE explains it all to me!

365gay.com has an interesting take on this Gannon's gay military websites. They suspect he's been giving the names of people who respond and are in the military to the authorities. Lets hope this is not true as that would be so terrible.

From the E&P article cited at the start of this topic:
So Gannon got in through the back door. So to speak. wink

That "Gannon" is a republican explains it all to me.

Sorry if this is a dumb question but what is a TKE?

TKE= Tau Kappa Epsilon
A fraternity.

Thanks js. Not being a frat guy (unless Phi Tappa Kegga counts) I'd have never figured that out.

Mystery Anti-Gay 'Journalist' Goes Underground

At this point the blogosphere has connected "Gannon," "Talon News," GOPUSA, MillionsofAmericans.com, and a bunch of other GOP-related sites, which seem to all have a connection to Robert Eberle, whose (brother?, uncle?, cousin?) Bruce, in Texas, is linked to the Tom Delay fundraising scheme. Apparently most of these groups started as direct mail or fundraising orgs.

It has also been confirmed that "Gannon" was turned down for a Congressional pass in April 2004, after applying in December 2003, because he could not prove that "Talon" and GOPUSA were different, and because he was not getting his full-time salary from "Talon." Interestingly, to bolster his original application for Congressional credentials, GOPUSA or "Talon" promised to pay 1/2 his salary if that would meet criteria. This begs the question "what was 'Gannon's' source of income prior to that?

They have also linked "Gannon" to the CBS/Mapes controversy (in which old documents were recreated and fed to CBS) - "Gannon" appears to have been one of the "journalists" who first suggested "forgery" of the documents (don't think you can really call them "forged" when they existed at one time in the past).

"Gannon" is also linked to the dirty dealings in South Dakota, where a shill for Thune (who beat Dashle in the Senate race) apparently was being paid to set up a false blog - which referenced "stories" written by "Gannon."

It appears, at this time (and research continues) that "Gannon" is linked to a whole host of GOP media-related dirty tricks. We'll see how it all breaks out.

Edited to add: Daily Kos latest

[ February 11, 2005, 02:25 PM: Message edited by: CPT_Doom ]

I want to know what was the purpose of his gay prostitution sites. I wonder if anyone recently discharged from the service had gone to any of his gay sites. I just can't believe he is gay. He seems like a complete snake, not to degrade snakes so badly.

I want to know as well. He is either severely closeted or he was using it for some entrapment purpose. I don't buy they fact that they were sites that he ran for clients. If that was the case why did they all suddenly go down at the same time when all this hit the fan. If the were actually clients he would have still been obligated to keep them up, he could have transferred ownership, but he couldn't have just brought them down without the real owners of the site raising hell.

I don't think we will ever know. He has crawled into a hole now. I think he will invent another name and in a few months start another blog, but learning from his mistakes he will keep himself well hidden.

Has anyone determined how a person using a false name was able to get a White House press pass--even a daily one--since all visitors to the White House have to be vetted? Who in the WH security chain of command gave "Gannon" the all clear?

~Adam

Adam, Its funny how obvious it all is, huh? Unfortunately most (or at least 52%) of Americans can't seem to add 2 and 2 together and get 4 when it comes to this administration. Ha ha.

Kujhawker, I heard him yesterday on NPR's "On the Media," which danced around many of his trangressions (NPR is toothless these days--Lynne Cheney silenced Terri Gross just last week when she refused to answer questions about her gross hypocrisy surrounding her dyke daughter) and described the gay angle at first as "skeletons in his closet" (WTF?), but HE--Gucker? Gannon? Goebbels Jr.?--was defiant. He was claiming he hadn't done anything wrong and basically framed the entire issue as him being a journalist who wanted to ask the president supportive questions! As CPT notes, he is at the center of a Nixonian-style web of "dirty tricks" that may extend much farther than we realize....

NPR's \"On the Media\" (Scroll down to the bottom for the feed)

Adam, he was issued a press pass by the White House, which knew exactly what it was doing. Initial denials by Scott McClellan have turned into admissions that in fact they did know this aliased creep. As for potential entrapment, would anybody be surprised at this point?

Was this a one week story, or does it have legs into this week?

Well...there is now a pretty strong case that "Jeff Gannon" was working as a male prostitute, even as he was getting his first press passes to the White House.

The question now becomes, how did the most secretive, controlled, secure White House in American history allow a known male prostitue into press briefings, under what appears to be the same alias he used in his "escort" business?

Americablog - scroll down to find \"A Man Called Jeff\"

From Wonkette.com. That beautiful lady in Washington.


Well, we asked for full frontal on fake conservative reporter Jeff Gannon, but we didn't really think we were going to get it. Seriously, looks like all of Karl Rove's plans are coming to fruition! Step one: distract the lefties with pictures of cock!

In any event: Jeff Gannon/JG Duckert is our hero -- and he should be a hero to bloggers everywhere. If a loon hooker, working under a pseudonym for a made-up news organization, can spend his days being buddy-buddy with Scott McClellan and George Bush, why, anything can happen for the rest of us!

So we raise our glasses to Jeff Gannon. We want more ass-f**kers in the White House, not fewer! Also? Anyone who apparently commands $1200 for a weekend of outcalls demands our respect. —C.S.
A man called Jeff [Americablog]

>From Wonkette.com. That beautiful lady in Washington.


Well, we asked for full frontal on fake conservative reporter Jeff Gannon, but we didn't really think we were going to get it. Seriously, looks like all of Karl Rove's plans are coming to fruition! Step one: distract the lefties with pictures of cock! <

Maybe she should have also asked for butt shots!

Just amazing that this guy was able to waltz into the White House like he did.

And to think this guy described himself as a "conservative" reporter.

[ February 14, 2005, 01:07 PM: Message edited by: MPetrelis ]

Follow the links on that blog site. There ARE butt shots. eek!

Joe

If he were a bear, he might interest me.

GWB is turning out to be more teflon coated than Ronald Reagan. I don't get how incompetence after incompetence doesn't reflect more poorly on this White House. Someone broke a law by revealing secret CIA information to a male prostitute, not mention welcoming that male prostitute into the press room to lob softball questions at the president. They're paying supposedly independent conservative commentators to promote talking points on the administration's agenda. They tried to get an adulterer (not that there's any dearth of those in Washington, but most cover their tracks better than this cop) sworn in as a cabinet secretary. These aren't the mistakes of a new president and his administration misstepping during the changing of the gaurd, though they had those problems too. Remember the claims of vandalism in the White House that the GAO couldn't corroborate because a) the evidence wasn't there, and if it was the administration wouldn't give them access to it?

You're so right about Dubya having better teflon coating than Ronnie, which I can't fathom. At least Reagan had charm and an honest Hollywood smile that was hard for many to resist.

Dubya, on the other hand, is awkward and ill-at-ease most of the time under the lights. How can so many Americans be duped by him and think his agenda helps us or the world at large?

That the Dummycrats were unable to keep him out of the White House first in 2000 and then again in 2004 says more about their rotten ways.

Any ideas how to remove the teflon and stop his agenda?

I'm not convinced the JeffJoe scandal will have lasting impact on changing anything at the White House, other than making daily press passes more difficult to obtain.

That the Dummycrats were unable to keep him out of the White House first in 2000 and then again in 2004 says more about their rotten ways

------------------------------------------------

How so?

That the "dummycrats" get so little support from the people they are trying to help speaks volumes about the American people.

I'm so sick of the whole gay hustler angle of this

on another board I'm on, that's all they can talk about and to me (and a few others) it's bordering on homophobia, but we all know that these good Democrats can't be homophobic

As Rigorous Intuition points out, the "gay hustler" angle is important because it echoes another gay scandal, during the Reagan-Bush years, involving Craig Spence, who was found dead under mysterious circumstances after it became known that he had had young gay male prostitutes touring the White House late at night with the official approval of higher ups in the Reagan administration. (I am not making this up.) There was some thought then about whether or not he was involved in entrapment activities (he claimed CIA links), and so on, and the whole scandal was hushed up very quickly (though the Washington Times, of all papers, did report on it).

Stirring the White House Honeypot



The disinformation campaign involving Guckert/Gannon/Talon/GOPUSA/Eberle, etc. (let's NOT lose sight of this), like the Swift Boasters, and the paid journalists, etc., the waiting to declassify part of the 9/11 report criticizing Condosleazza Rice AFTER she was confirmed, etc., all make very clear that Rove and W Unltd. are far too afraid to leave anything to chance; like Goebbels and his master, they are determined to do everything to dissemble, mesmerize, hoodwink, and con the American people to advance their elitist and deadly agenda. Guckert/Gannon was a pawn in all of this, though I feel no pity for him, because of what he's helped to enable, and we'll all be a lot better off when we wake up and take off the ideological blinders (right and left and otherwise) and look truly at how disastrous this administration really has been (and they still have four more years to screw things up).

theodore'sdaddy,

What's homophobic about being appalled, if not a bit concerned, that a former (or potentially current) hustler had access to the White House when actual legitimate journalists don't have such access? If anything, the "gay hustler angle" puts completely to bed the notion that "Gannon" was ever a legitimate member of the press, which is the entire point.

It also, as fantomas notes, brings up a whole host of problematic issues - if there is a hooker in the White House, who knew him and how did he get there? This man used a "back door" to get into the press corps, through the use of day passes. Why didn't the Secret Service notice the same man coming in on these day passes, clearly attempting to circumvent the normal background process?

Just so I'm up to date on this: The theory is that this Gannon guy was banging a high-ranking and closeted White House official, who's career, marriage, reputation - his life, basically - could be permanently, catastrophically destroyed by revelations of such an affair. This Gannon guy thus chose to leverage this damaging information in an effort to receive...

...a daily White House press pass so he could file news reports on some little-known Republican website? Wow - this guy is nothing if not ambitious. If he'd gotten realy uppity the White House might have been forced to give him a souvenier mug or something. For f**k's sake, Monica Lewinsky got a cushy job at the Pentagon for her troubles, and that was to coverup a run-of-the-mill adulterous relationship. You would think this Gannon guy could at least manage to get a salary.