Explain this Gannon thing, I'm ignorant.

[skippythwndrdog]

OK, here are my questions.

1: Who is Gannon?
2: Why is he important?
3: What did he (allegedly?) do?
4: Anything else of relevance?

I've seen nothing on any of the news channels about this. Fill me in.

[Demit]

1. Google is your friend!

[NYCGirl]

2. There's a whole section about Gannon here:

http://mediamatters.org/

[WI_DEM]

3. there was a thread yesterday that there was supposed to be

a new bombshell today. Anything yet?

[grumpy old fart]

4. New to the internet?

I mean, with all the resources out here how can you possibly be in the dark?

[progressoid]

5. CNN did a couple little bits about it

or so I heard. I avoid MSM - it's a waste of time.

I'm not surprised that you haven't seen anything about it. Besides the Michael Jackson trial is more important.

[Bouncy Ball]

6. Advanced Search is your friend.

(That comment was directed to other DUers, not skippy.)

[skippythwndrdog]

7. What in God's name are you talking about?

[grumpy old fart]

8. might ask you the same thing....ignorant about Gannon????

How could anyone with a computer be in the dark about this???

[skippythwndrdog]

10. Because I don't see it on the news.

Yes, I'm a sheep, I get most of my news from the TV, newspaper, and radio.

[Bridget Burke]

11. Gun Rights is not the only forum at DU....

Please check out the rest of the site.

[skippythwndrdog]

12. I do, but it's fun to go over there.

Basically, since I didn't keep up with it from the get-go, I got hopelessly behind. I'm still trying to piece everything together, since the regular press isn't covering it much.

[grumpy old fart]

19. Yikes!!

Why on earth would you cripple yourself that way? Unless, of course, you buy into "ignorance is strength"......

[skippythwndrdog]

26. It is more of a time thing. I don't really have the time...

...to go check out the blogs, and I'm really not all that good of a computer user. If somebody could give me some other news sources, I'd appreciate it.

[Bouncy Ball]

27. And we don't necessarily have the time to tutor everyone

who shows up, amidst HUNDREDS of Gannon threads to give you a nice summary.

Go start checking out the rest of this forum. It isn't really that hard. Click and read.

[skippythwndrdog]

28. The problem is that I lose the timeline, and it seems disjointed.

[Bridget Burke]

9. Yes, it can be quite useful!

(It explains a lot.)

[demgrrrll]

14. Joe Conason has a very concise readable round up in the Observer

today. <http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp> He makes some very good points regarding the Guckert link to the Plame case and the fact that whatever was found out about Mr Guckert's personal life was placed in public forums by Mr. Guckert himself.

[Spazito]

15. Thanks for the link!

Joe Conason is right on point, imo. His set of questions need to be answered:

"How did this character obtain a coveted place in the White House? What did the White House press staff know about him? How does his story fit within the larger scandal of payola punditry, with federal funds subsidizing Republican propagandists in the press corps? Did someone in the Bush administration give him a classified document?"

There is some discussion regarding whether the memo 'Gannon' refers to was CIA or, as Joe Wilson has said in an interview with Will Pitt, an INR document but, imo, who was responsible generating the 'memo' is moot, the memo existed and was leaked.

[rman]

13. from Democracy Now, New York Times:

"White House Under Fire Over Right-Wing Blogger
The White House is facing fresh accusations of a clandestine propaganda campaign after it emerged this week that it granted regular access to a rightwing blogger with a habit of asking President Bush easy questions. Jeff Gannon, who represented a rightwing site owned by a Texas-based Republican activist, had been a regular at White House briefings since 2003 but aroused reporters" suspicions after posing ideologically loaded questions. The fake White House correspondent quit his job at the Talon News site on Wednesday after bloggers found he had been operating under a pseudonym, and that he was linked to several gay pornographic web domain addresses under his real identity, James Guckert; web sites such as hotmilitarystud.com and militaryescorts.com are registered to the same owner as Gannon's Web site, jeffgannon.com. White House spokesman, Scott McLellan, has dismissed charges that Gannon was part of an underground propaganda effort as "just a wild conspiracy theory". But questions remain about why the White House suspended the normally rigorous vetting process to issue daily passes to an organization rejected by the Senate last year for not being a legitimate media outlet. The extent of Gannon's links to an earlier White House scandal - the leaking of the name of the CIA operative Valerie Plame - also remained unclear yesterday. Gannon has been targeted for questioning in that case. Gannon's unmasking comes only weeks after the Bush administration admitted paying handsome sums to three conservative commentators to promote its social programs in print, radio and TV."
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/11/1545211&mode=thread&tid=25

New York Times:
Democrats Want Investigation of Reporter Using Fake Name
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: February 11, 2005

"Two Democrats in Congress are pressing for investigations into how a Washington reporter who used a pseudonym managed to gain access to the White House and had access to classified documents that named Valerie Plame as a C.I.A. operative.

The Democrats, Representatives John Conyers Jr. of Michigan and Louise M. Slaughter from Rochester, wrote yesterday to Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent prosecutor appointed in the Plame case, seeking an investigation into how the reporter, James D. Guckert, who used the name Jeff Gannon, had access to classified documents that revealed the identity of Ms. Plame."

<more>
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/politics/11gannon.html

[Spazito]

16. An interesting aside, Howie Kurtz has referred to Talon News...

as a news outlet yet a committee of congressional reporters known as the Standing Committee of Correspondents, who are responsible for issuing Capital Hill credentials needed to obtain a 'hard pass' refused 'Gannon's' request because the Committee determined that Talon News was not a legitimate news organization.

So here's Howie conferring credibility to a faux news outlet that had been determined not credible by congressional reporters. Gee, Howie couldn't be running cover for 'Gannon' et al, could he? Nah

[DulceDecorum]

17. In a nutshell

Whenever they are holding a press conference at the White House and the Press corps is asking pointed questions, they turn to Jeff Gannon who says nice things and takes his time about it so that no-one else gets a chance to nail them.

So the other day, Gannon went over the top and commiserated with Bush over having to work with Dems who have "divorced themselves from reality."
So everyone went "WHA?? Who is he already!!"

Turns out that Jeff Gannon works for Talon News which only exists in its own mind and on one website which is very connected to GOPUSA which is a bunch of Bushlovers from Texas.
Then it turns out that Jeff Gannon isn't his real name.
Then it turns out that he is a conservativemilitarygaysexforhire webmaster.
Oops.
So the question is,
WHAT THE EFF is the Secret Service doing letting a person like that into the White House Press Room?
Then it turns out that Gannon couldn't get a hard pass to save his life and had to be let in through the back door on a daily basis.
Which explains the conservativemilitarygaysexforhire part.

So the question is now, who is at the bottom of this,
and how much tax money was spent on making this hard bargain
with someone who then defaulted on his own taxes?

[Stephanie]

18. Also >

Not only did he own conservativemilitarygaysexforhire websites, he himself posed nude for his own website advertising his services as a m4m "escort."

AND he is involved in the Dan Rather memogate scandal, in that he was the one who first promoted the idea that the documents were fake. (Still not proven.)

AND he is involved in the Valerie Plame scandal, in that he claimed to have knowledge of a secret memo that identified her as a CIA operative and also (according to Gannon) claimed that Wilson was sent to Niger at her suggestion. No one is sure if this memo exists.

In short, he was placed in the WH, we don't know by whom, to ask pro-Bush slanted questions whenever McClellan or Bush called in him, and to pull dirty tricks, again we don't know at whose direction. All the while he is hiding his secret life as a male prostitute.

How's that?

[Griffy]

20. PROPAGANDA.. its the blood that feeds these liars!

Thats what its about.. how many examples of payola and sheer propaganda will it take to wake the public.. The task of everyone reading this is to expose the propaganda to everyone you can. From Fox to Talon these people purposfully distort the truth to achive there fascist gaols! WE WILL NOT LET THEM SUCCEED!

[Griffy]

21. PROPAGANDA!!!!! seriously, thats the bigger picture!

[Griffy]

22. PROPAGANDA .. echo chamber, understand how it works..

Multiple sources with the same lie makes it hard to convince others of the lie. And LIE BIG!! But these republican put out specific guides as to what to say... ECHO CHAMBER!

[Griffy]

23. PROPAGANDA ignore real issue, distract or characture assasinate!

Detail never reach the people.. and they can be distracted easily, like do you really think Scott Peterson trail was the most important thing at the time.. a time a war?

[Griffy]

24. PROPAGANDA ..and then theres all the untold stories....

and thats where the web comes in.. we stay informed, like only '30 germans wish they could have. The government is leading the people into the dark, we will provide the light. try this..

http://www.thebattleforamerica.com/

theres so much.... if you want real... try this

http://www.zonaeuropa.com/01467.htm


fight for the truth!

[Roland99]

25. This might help explain it