I was searching in the archives but can't find any of the old threads I remember. It was quite something at the time. A lot of people very angry at FR because they'd created an "enemies list" naming Nick's family as members of International A.N.S.W.E.R. just a week or so before Nick was arrested in Iraq.
(picture of Aziz al-Taee speaking at a Free Republic pro-Iraq war rally in Washington DC, I believe in January, 2003)
February 19, 2005
Update: Our "Gannon" hunch was right..."Gannon" did take part in the Jan. 18 Free Republic/Marines pro-war rally, the one where Aziz al-Taee may have spoken.
http://www.theconservativeguy.com/NYT/NYTimes.htm">Here's a post about it <inactive link> from his original blog, theconservativeguy.com. Also, he refers yet again to living on Capitol Hill -- since he's not listed there on Autotrak, whom did he live with?
SIDEBAR: WHY I KNOW I'M RIGHT ABOUT THE TIMES
On the occasion of the January 18 anti-war rally in Washington, DC, I hosted members of Free Republic.com and MOVE-OUT (Marines and Other Veterans Engaging Outrageous Un-American Traitors) in my home on Capitol Hill. A reporter from the Washington Post assigned to cover their Patriots' Rally earlier in the day and their counter-demonstration at the Marine barracks at 8th & I arrived with them. In the course of my conversation with the reporter, I began my usual rant about the liberal media. I cited the New York Times as an example of a completely slanted publication. She was quick to remind me that the conservative William Safire writes for the Times. That's the point! Safire is so obviously a token at the Times that everyone can name him as a knee-jerk response to charges of bias but no one can mention another staff member who is a conservative.
Posted 07:42 PM |
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New proof of "Gannon"'s early WH accessYesterday, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, in self-defense mode,
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20910FF3A5E0C7B8DDDAB0894DD404482">claimed that he had suspicions about reporter "Jeff Gannon" and his ties to a group called GOPUSA, and that he stopped calling on him at White House briefings.
That may be so, but Campaign Extra! has unearthed proof that Fleischer called on "Gannon" for a softball question at a White House press briefing on March 4, 2003 -- some 25 days before the Talon News website
http://reports.internic.net/cgi/whois?whois_nic=talonnews.com&type=domain">was registered.
What's more, "Gannon"'s "journalism" in early March of 2003 raises new questions about his role in the propaganda drive leading up to the invasion of Iraq. And, for the conspiracy minded among you, it also raises questions about the connection between the journalist, whose real name is J.D. Guckert, and one of the last known people to see Iraq beheading victim
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/8654371.htm">Nick Berg <link no longer active> alive.
The story starts in
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030304-13.html">the White House briefing room on March 4, when Fleischer, at the end of a long briefing, was asked this question:
This is about Iraq. On Saturday, I interviewed Aziz al-Taee, Chairman of the Iraqi-American Council. He detailed a compelling body of evidence about the holocaust being waged against the Iraqi people. Why hasn't the administration focused on this aspect of Saddam's regime to justify intervention without U.N. approval? After all, it was the Clinton administration that used ethnic cleansing as a pretext to bomb and send troops into Kosovo.
Sound a lot like slo-pitch champion Gannon/Guckert? It was.
Six days later, "Gannon" published
this article <inactive link> on the GOPUSA News Web site, entitled: Saddam's History of Torture: The Other Case For Regime Change in Iraq A GOPUSA Special Report." The article includes this passage, which included the answer to that March 4 question quoted above:
When asked for a comment by GOPUSA News, White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer said, "This is something the President remarks about from time to time. What about the cries on the basis of human rights for the people of Iraq who are suffering under the hand of Saddam Hussein? That is an important issue for the world to face."
Many have long suspected that the timing of the sudden appearance of Gannon/Guckert at the White House was related to a pre-war propaganda push by the Bush administration. A key player in that push was al-Taee, the head of the Iraqi-American Council, a group with a number of crosslinks to the Iraq emigree community that was banging the war drums in 2002-03.
Al-Taee, also known as Aziz K. Aziz, also known as "Joe Aziz," criss-crossed the nation in the six months before "shock and awe" over Baghdad --
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:K9ufleLjy9sJ:www.gopusa.com/news/2003/march/0303_dc_rallyp.shtml+%22gannon%22+and+%22al-taee%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8">speaking at rallies <inactive link> sponsored by the pro-Bush radio giant Clear Channel Corp. and making frequent TV appearances on pro-Bush -- er, we meant "fair and balanced" -- Fox News Channel and elsewhere.
Gannon/Guckert's interview with al-Taee -- just a few days after the former gay prostitute declared himself a journalist -- has raised a lot of eyebrows at
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/19/5447/15291">Daily Kos, which along with
http://americablog.blogspot.com/">Americablog has been key in breaking this scandal wide open. It probably shouldn't, though -- because from reading the clips it looks like al-Taee met Gannon at the March 2003 outdoor rally and was simply talking to anyone with a microphone or tape recorder.
But they may have met even earlier. "Gannon" was reportedly a member of the D.C. chapter of Free Republic, the ultra right-wing Web site. And according to
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30566">this article, that group sponsored a January 2003 appearance by none other than Aziz al-Taee. The other sponsor was a group called MOVE-OUT, which stands for Marines and Other Veterans Engaging Outrageous Un-American Traitors (Web site no longer exists). Isn't J.D. Guckert an
http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/extra/archives/001461.html">ex-Marine? Hmmmm.
But Gannon/Guckert and al-Taee had something in common: a
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/8684646.htm?1c">secret past <inactive link>. In the case of al-Taee, he failed to mention in his media appearances that he was a convicted felon for his role in a ring that distributed crack vials, that he's had other brushes with the law, and that the U.S. government was actively seeking to deport him.
But it didn't have to, because by the summer of '03, Al-Taee had left America for his native Iraq, where he had dreams of becoming a cell-phone entreprenuer. His partner in one of his ventures, called Babylon Towers, was none other than American Nick Berg -- the same Nick Berg whose May 2004 beheading, captured on videotape, caused a global outcry.
In fact, a number of reports had al-Taee as maybe the last known person to speak to Berg -- a fact that, given al-Taee's link to the Bush-backed propaganda campaign -- only fueled
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/8703219.htm?1c">the many conspiracy theories <inactive link> on the Web. And now we learn that al-Taee was in cahoots with "Jeff Gannon" -- where will this tangled web stop?
In fact, here's one more freaky coincidence. According to that same World Net Daily article about al-Taee speaking to the Free Republic chapter, both Free Republic and MOVE-OUT were reportedly closely monitoring the activities of left-wing anti-war group A.N.S.W.E.R. On March 7, 2003, around the time of the "Gannon"-al-Taee interview,
http://www.apfn.org/NickBerg/right-wing.htm">a Freeper posted an online "enemies' list," that included Nick Berg's father Michael, who belongs to A.N.S.W.E.R, and Berg's business, Prometheus Methods Tower Service.
And here's yet one more bizarre and newsworthy thing we uncovered: After al-Taee left, or fled, to Baghdad in 2003, he pulled a "Jeff Gannon" of his own. On Aug. 7, 2003, the convicted felon gained access to a briefing by Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez and asked this question (sorry, no link):
Q My name is Aziz Al-Taee, chairman of the Iraqi-American Council, visiting from the States. Actually, I want to take the opportunity to express the thankful feeling among the Iraqi-American community for the great jobs has been done.
The question we have -- obviously, we are concerned about the casualties among the civilians, and also, among the U.S. soldiers and the coalition soldiers. How fast is in your plan to transfer the power and empower the Iraqi Governing Council and try to stabilize the security situation here?
Can this thing get any weirder?
Posted 01:16 PM |
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