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So where's the Jeff Gannon/James Guckert story at these days? [Note: The pseudonym Gannon will be used for the rest of the article]
Even as the blogs investigating this story have continued to play the gay sex/escort/prostitution angle for all it's worth, focusing on the the ancillary allegations shows how marginal the story actually is.
Allegation - Jeff Gannon received a special permanent White House press "hard pass."
Fact - The bloggers who made that allegation have now retracted it. It appears that Gannon received day passes under his real name just as he has previously indicated.
Allegation - The White House should not have credentialed Gannon because he was a conservative shill not a real reporter.
Fact - Ari Fleischer, in an interview with Editor &Publisher, notes, "It is a slippery slope for any press secretary in any administration to pick and choose who gets a credential based on ideology, so long as they are a legitimate reporter." A debate on the merits of Gannon's journalistic credentials is beyond the scope of this post, but he certainly wrote and published stories at an online news organization, regardless of ones opinion of the relative quality of Talon News.
Allegation - The White House should have know about Gannon's sexual history and barred him from the White House.
Fact - Ari Fleischer, in an interview with Editor &Publisher, notes, "The last thing our nation needs is for anyone in the White House to concern themselves with the private lives of reporters. What right does the White House have to decide who gets to be a reporter based on private lives?"
Allegation - Gannon had full access to the White House and was running around unchecked in the White House for years.
Fact - To make it scarier the blogs perpetrating this angle of the story need to mention the sexual angle, but on its face it's a ridiculous claim. Regardless of how you try to spin it a day pass to the White House press briefings is not an all access pass. I don't know it for sure, but they probably hustle you right out of there when the events of the day are over.
Allegation - Gannon got a press pass while others were rejected.
Fact - Gannon was denied the only passes that matter in this story - the Capital Hill pass issued by the Standing Committee of Correspondents and the White House hard pass, which allows ongoing access to the White House press briefings. The White House hard pass requires a pass first be issued by the Standing Committee of Correspondents. Gannon was left to apply for the only other type of pass available, the daily pass. The daily pass, like its name implies, is good for one day only and by all indications does not have the same restrictions as to who may receive a pass as the the others do. While goofy Maureen Dowd complains that her pass was rejected, she most certainly was writing about a hard pass or a Standing Committee pass, which Gannon too was denied. If Dowd really wanted to cover the White House she could have stood in line for day passes too...
Allegation - Gannon attended a press briefing before Talon News was founded.
Fact - This appears to be true. Gannon appears to have attended a press briefing under the auspices of GOPUSA. From Ari Fleisher's interview it's not hard to imagine that Talon News was created to insulate the press coverage that GOPUSA decided it wanted to do from it's organization. This likely occurred in response to questions from Fleisher about whether GOPUSA was a party organization.
Allegation - Gannon received the Valeria Plame memo and was subpoenaed by the special prosecutor in the Plame case.
Fact - Highly unlikely. Tom McGuire and The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin debunk that myth pretty convincingly.
Allegation - Gannon asked softball questions.
Fact - True. This is the essence of the Gannongate story. Gannon was "outed" (not sexually) by mainstream media types with the help of David Brock's Media Matters For America. The reporters got their wish when Gannon quit. The bloggers continuing to pursue the story only "succeed" is they can claim a scalp besides Gannon's, which is why they continue to search for new angles to implicated ANYONE else...
bush lover said:Mr Gannon, I would like to point out, and Mr Bush's spokesman are only ALLEGEDLY gay lovers, and in fact, this charge came from the dirty liberal media bloggers. They will stop at nothing to smear our President Bush, who is almost certainly NOT gay, and he GAVE UP drugs and drinking!!! I mean, he served our country in the NATIONAL GUARD and performed valuable service for us during the Vietnam War against the DIRTY COMMUNISTS in Texas or Alabama. And he was consulting with his father in Maine, and the liberal press alleged that he got a DUI there!!! To me, this is just one more reason to regulate the Internet lefties, who make up all kinds of lies to smear us Republicans. I did not serve in Vietnam or the other places, but I have an "I love my troops" magnet on my Mercedes!!!!
Sir Evil said:what's the our stuff? your not even of this country! :scratch:
acludem said:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36733-2005Feb18.html
evidence to the contrary for you Kathianne - also allegations continue to be made, there has been NO evidence clearing Mr. Gannon or whatever his name is or investigation into how he got access to the White House and confidential documents. Once again, if this had happened in the Clinton white house, every one of you would be screaming bloody murder right now and don't even try to deny it.
acludem
Gee, nearly everyone I knew had the television on waiting for it to begin, THIS is the best that can be done? I'm sure the DU, Kos, and yourself may come up with 'more allegations', but in the scheme of things, this is just a non-story. ACLU you might wish to contact Bully about a discount for PEST, you both need to seek help. Jeff Gannon Admits Past 'Mistakes,' Berates Critics
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 19, 2005; Page C01
Jeff Gannon, the former White House reporter whose naked pictures have appeared on a number of gay escort sites, says that he has "regrets" about his past but that White House officials knew nothing about his salacious activities.
"I've made mistakes in my past," he said yesterday. "Does my past mean I can't have a future? Does it disqualify me from being a journalist?"
Gannon chastised his critics, breaking a silence that began last week when liberal bloggers disclosed his real name, James Dale Guckert, and a Web page, which he paid for, featuring X-rated photos of himself. "Why would they be looking into a person's sexual history? Is that what we're going to do to reporters now? Is there some kind of litmus test for reporters? Is it right to hold someone's sexuality against them?"
As for his critics, Gannon said: "People have said some of my writing expressed a hostile point of view" toward gays. "These people are willing to abandon their principles on the basis of trying to make me out to be a hypocrite. These are the same groups that cherish free speech and privacy."
John Aravosis, a gay activist who posted the pictures of Gannon on his Americablog.org, said the issue is not Gannon's right to be a journalist but his "White House access. . . . The White House wouldn't let him in the door right now, knowing of his background."
Aravosis said Gannon is guilty of "what I call family-values hypocrisy. Basically, he's asking the gay community to protect him when he attacks us."
Gannon resigned earlier this month as a reporter for two conservative Web sites, Talon News and GOPUSA, both owned by a Texas Republican activist. Gannon became a target after asking President Bush a question that slammed Senate Democrats and contained false information about Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
In the interview, Gannon did not dispute evidence that he has advertised himself as a $200-an-hour gay escort but would not specifically address such questions.
Dismissing speculation that he had a permanent White House press pass, which requires a full-blown FBI background check that usually takes months, Gannon said he could not get one because he was required to first get a pass from the Senate press gallery, which did not consider him to be working for a legitimate news organization. Instead, he said he was admitted on a day-to-day basis after supplying his real name, date of birth and Social Security number. He said he did not use a pseudonym to hide his past but because his real last name is hard to spell and pronounce.
Gannon said he began covering the White House in February 2003, at least a month before Talon News was created. He said he was then working for GOPUSA. Talon was launched as "a marketing consideration to separate the news division from something that could be viewed as partisan," he said.
Suggestions that White House officials coddled him or gave him special access are "absolutely, completely, totally untrue," Gannon said, adding that he was often among the last to be called on at press briefings and sometimes could not ask a question at all. "I have no friendships with anyone there. . . . The White House, as far as I know, was never aware of the questions about my past."
Asked how recently he was putting his photo on escort sites, Gannon said that "so much of this stuff" was "years in the past. . . . Anything that goes on the Internet is there forever," he said. "Every day I learn about another site where there are allegedly pictures of me."
Gannon says he was questioned by the FBI in the Valerie Plame leak investigation after referring to a classified CIA document when he interviewed the outed CIA operative's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson.
But he said yesterday: "I didn't have the document. I never saw the document. It was written about in the Wall Street Journal a week before. I had no special access to classified information."
Aravosis and other critics cite several examples of what they view as Gannon's anti-gay writing. Gannon wrote last year that John Kerry "might someday be known as 'the first gay president,' citing his "100 percent rating from the homosexual advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign" for backing a "pro-gay agenda." Gannon said he was just reporting the facts and playing off suggestions that Bill Clinton was the first black president.
In reporting on comments by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) that legalizing gay marriage could lead to judicial approval of bestiality, Gannon made an issue of the fact that the Associated Press reporter who interviewed Santorum was married to a top Kerry aide and described the comments of gay activists as "predictable responses." Gannon said he was not taking a stand on the issue.
Other allegations, meanwhile, keep surfacing.
Aravosis wrote yesterday on his blog that an unnamed television producer says Gannon told him the Iraq war was going to begin four hours before Bush announced it.
Gannon chuckled at that, saying many reporters sensed an attack was imminent because the White House kept delaying the routine announcement that no more news would be made that day. "You could feel it in the air," he said.
Despite the battering he has taken, Gannon hasn't abandoned plans to work in journalism and hopes to generate sympathy by speaking out.
"People criticize me for being a Christian and having some of these questionable things in my past," he said. "I believe in a God of forgiveness."
