A primer on Gannon for nonblogreaders
Feb. 15th, 2005 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eyelessgamePolitics. But no one seems to know the story, and Merlin suggested I post it for friends to read...
Jeff Gannon... reporter. Shows up to press gaggles regularly at the White House.
Asked an absurdly softball question to Bush three weeks ago to get him out of an awkward jam: 'Harry Reid is talking about soup kitchens, Nancy Pelosi is talking about high unemployment, yet both are saying Social Security is so healthy it needs no fix whatsoever. Is it hard to work with Democrats who are so divorced from reality?'
That was so over the top that some blogs got curious and started looking into him.
First they noted he's been called on by the press secretary regularly for rescuing softball questions. Clearly Scott McClellan knows him and has relied on him.
Then they looked into his employer, 'Talon News'.
Gannon isn't credentialed as a reporter. He's been getting 'day passes' for the White House, daily, for two years.
He gets day passes (normally for out-of-town big-paper reporters) because he wouldn't pass vetting for regular Washington reporters. Why not, you ask?
Partly because his organization, Talon News, sprang into existence two years ago (four days before Gannon got his first day pass) and consists of, as far as anyone can tell, four people, whose work largely consists of reprinting GOP press releases as news, and who came over to start Talon directly from working for GOPUSA. In other words, Talon is a front.
But also because 'Jeff Gannon' is not his real name -- his real name is Jim Guckert. He's been entering the White House under an alias, specifically prohibited by Homeland Security rules. A couple congressmen have send Tom Ridge a FOIA request asking how this happened.
Gannon was pretty trusted. Not only was he called on regularly by the press secretary, he's also one of the reporters who was leaked information on Valerie Plame... you know, the CIA operative who was outed as retaliation for her husband questioning the Niger uranium story, and then was smeared as a nepotist afterwards.
That's enough to make Gannon a serious scandal, right?
Oh, wait, I forgot one other minor detail. Wait for it...
Gannon/Guckert is also a male prostitute, running (among other sites) 'militaryescortsm4m.com'. Bloggers have the explicit pictures from his original site -- and copies of the invoices for some of his escort services.
some links for the curious:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/politics/11gannon.html? for the non-sex part
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html for the censored but still non-worksafe m4m pictures and invoices
Jeff Gannon... reporter. Shows up to press gaggles regularly at the White House.
Asked an absurdly softball question to Bush three weeks ago to get him out of an awkward jam: 'Harry Reid is talking about soup kitchens, Nancy Pelosi is talking about high unemployment, yet both are saying Social Security is so healthy it needs no fix whatsoever. Is it hard to work with Democrats who are so divorced from reality?'
That was so over the top that some blogs got curious and started looking into him.
First they noted he's been called on by the press secretary regularly for rescuing softball questions. Clearly Scott McClellan knows him and has relied on him.
Then they looked into his employer, 'Talon News'.
Gannon isn't credentialed as a reporter. He's been getting 'day passes' for the White House, daily, for two years.
He gets day passes (normally for out-of-town big-paper reporters) because he wouldn't pass vetting for regular Washington reporters. Why not, you ask?
Partly because his organization, Talon News, sprang into existence two years ago (four days before Gannon got his first day pass) and consists of, as far as anyone can tell, four people, whose work largely consists of reprinting GOP press releases as news, and who came over to start Talon directly from working for GOPUSA. In other words, Talon is a front.
But also because 'Jeff Gannon' is not his real name -- his real name is Jim Guckert. He's been entering the White House under an alias, specifically prohibited by Homeland Security rules. A couple congressmen have send Tom Ridge a FOIA request asking how this happened.
Gannon was pretty trusted. Not only was he called on regularly by the press secretary, he's also one of the reporters who was leaked information on Valerie Plame... you know, the CIA operative who was outed as retaliation for her husband questioning the Niger uranium story, and then was smeared as a nepotist afterwards.
That's enough to make Gannon a serious scandal, right?
Oh, wait, I forgot one other minor detail. Wait for it...
Gannon/Guckert is also a male prostitute, running (among other sites) 'militaryescortsm4m.com'. Bloggers have the explicit pictures from his original site -- and copies of the invoices for some of his escort services.
some links for the curious:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/politics/11gannon.html? for the non-sex part
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html for the censored but still non-worksafe m4m pictures and invoices
