PropaGannon - Secret Service Logs on Guckert show 202 White House visits

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conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
0
Originally posted by: bozack
who are you fooling steeple, if it weren't for conjur's constant bumping of this thread it would have died a long time ago....

love all the mainstream media coverage this ground breaking story is getting :)....

what a joke.

Thanks for the bump again, bozack! But, go ahead and keep your head in the sand and keep apologizing for this GOP shill.
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
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House Democrats eye new maneuver on Gannon; A final gambit?

Democrats set to play new card in ?Gannon? scandal
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=142
3/2/2005
House Democrats will force vote on Gannon investigation as it relates to outed agent
Filed under: General? site admin @ 9:05 pm


Democrats set to play new card in ?Gannon? scandal

READ THE RESOLUTION: PDF

By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor

House Democrats say they will force a vote in the House Judiciary Committee to put the Republican majority on the record with regards to investigating discredited White House correspondent Jeff Gannon who allegedly had access to confidential information, including a memorandum naming CIA operative Valerie Plame, RAW STORY has learned.

The procedure, called a Resolution of Inquiry, will be directed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and departing Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, senior House aides say. Ridge has jurisdiction over the Secret Service, which is responsible for presidential security; Gonzales oversees the FBI, whose databases are used for criminal background checks.

The resolution requests all documents on how Gannon was personally cleared and repeatedly allowed access to the White House, aides tell RAW STORY. It also calls for any information the departments have on White House policies about how an applicant would go about getting clearance in general.

Among those supporting the resolution include ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), ranking Rules Committee Democrat Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and ranking Government Reform Committee Democrat Henry Waxman (D-CA). Other Judiciary Democrats are also expected to sign on.

The Judiciary Committee will be forced to decide whether to demand that all records from the respective agencies relating to Gannon?s credentialing be turned over to Congress.

If the Committee does not vote after fourteen legislative days, the resolution goes to the floor for a vote of the full House.

Democrats used this maneuver before, in Feb. 2004, to force four House committees to vote on whether to demand the Justice Department, the State Department and the Department of Defense released all documents relating to the outing of Valerie Plame.

Largely along party lines, the Republican-led committees quashed the resolution.

Democrats expect Republicans to vote down the new measure, but feel it might provide leverage in future Congressional elections, as it will force members to go on the record as to whether they support the investigation and its relation to the outed CIA operative.

Plame, formerly an undercover CIA employee, is married to former U.S. ambassador Joe Wilson. Wilson vexed the Administration after reporting that Iraq had not tried to obtain uranium from Niger and his wife was subsequently ?outed? as an undercover operative by conservative columnist Robert Novak.

Critics saw the outing of Plame as retribution.

The correspondent in question, who wrote under the name

Jeff Gannon, referenced the 2002 CIA memo naming Plame in an interview with her husband. He later suggested he read about it in the Wall Street Journal.

Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Louise Slaughter have already filed a Freedom of Information Act Request with Homeland Security and the Secret Service demanding all documents relation to Gannon?s credentialing. To date, they have received no response.

Correction: Due to a miscommunication, the first version of this article stated that four House committees would vote on the resolution. An aide said late Wednesday that only the Judiciary Committee would be asked to vote on the matter.
But, I suppose this is too conspiracy theorist for bozack. It's just our Congress getting involved.
 

Gaard

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
8,911
1
0
I would think that when security is in question, all would be in favor to determine how it failed. Why would anyone not want to fully investigate this?
 

kage69

Lifer
Jul 17, 2003
28,682
40,036
136
I would think that when security is in question, all would be in favor to determine how it failed. Why would anyone not want to fully investigate this?

This is the same bullsh1t we got from this admin building up to and during the 9/11 Hearings! It's disgusting - but remember! It's the dems who put their careers ahead of the wellbeing of the country!


Fvckin sleazy ass hypocrits! :|
 

Harvey

Administrator<br>Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
35,057
60
91
Originally posted by: Gaard
I would think that when security is in question, all would be in favor to determine how it failed. Why would anyone not want to fully investigate this?
What? And jeopardize their < ahem > ... credibility? :shocked:

Nope. They value their hold on power and political advantage far more than trivial issues like national security. :|
 

Gaard

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
8,911
1
0
Originally posted by: Darkhawk28
John Aravosis has an op-ed letter in the LA Times.

Linky-poo.

:thumbsup:

Sex, Lies and Spies: This Isn't News?

Bloggers uncover that someone working as a reporter in the West Wing is also advertising himself as a $200-an-hour gay escort ? someone whose name, a year earlier, had appeared in the U.S. attorney's subpoena of White House documents during the investigation of the Valerie Plame-CIA scandal.

The mainstream media, including the Los Angeles Times, remains largely silent. Why?

The story of James D. Guckert (a.k.a. Jeff Gannon) broke Jan. 26. It started as a blip of a controversy over a little-known "reporter" for a conservative website asking a kiss-up question at a White House briefing. Bloggers investigated "Gannon's" identity and found that he had little training in journalism and an apparent connection to male prostitution. Bloggers wanted to know how someone with this background had for two years received White House "day pass" press credentials. Within days, the story exploded online, yet it took a month for The Times to give the story a mention, and then its coverage was a textbook case of how not to write the news.

The piece cited or quoted by name five sources as well as an unnamed media critic ? none expressing any outrage ? as well as Guckert himself. It failed to quote the bloggers who broke this story ? including me ? or anyone who thought Guckert's ability to waltz through security with a pseudonym and get within a few feet of the president during a time of war might be a serious issue.

That's not to say we Internet sleuths didn't get an honorary mention. The story called us "left-wing bloggers" and "gay activists" (not all of us are), diminishing our credibility and helping to keep our ample and well-sourced evidence out of public discourse.

It's not as if bloggers were the only ones on the case. Democratic Sens. Harry Reid, Richard Durbin, Edward M. Kennedy, Frank Lautenberg and John Kerry have asked the White House to investigate. And senior House Democrats have called on the federal prosecutor investigating the leaking of the identity of CIA agent Plame to subpoena Guckert's diary.

In labeling the story "White House Notebook" and treating it largely as a look at the imprecision of attempting to define "journalist," The Times missed the more serious news angle ? the apparent breach of White House security by someone with a troubling past.

And then there are the obvious questions about whether he might somehow fit into the Bush administration's ongoing campaign to neutralize the media by paying off pundits like Armstrong Williams. If nothing else, there's a story too in the fact that the administration has said nothing since the story broke about its pressroom ally's extracurricular activities ? a rank case of family values hypocrisy.

I can think of three possible reasons The Times didn't cover this obviously major story with any vigor:

(1) Trepidation about gays, sex and power. In the age of wardrobe malfunctions, news organizations are extra cautious about covering anything involving s-e-x. And a gay angle only makes things more confusing. Would you be anti-gay or pro-gay if you wrote about an allegedly homophobic journalist who happened to be gay? Answer: Allegations of prostitution aren't just about someone's private life, they're about a crime that can lead to blackmail, especially if state secrets are involved. And in any case, your readers are adults ? give them the facts and let them decide for themselves.

(2) Reverse liberal guilt. Too sensitive to right-wing accusations of being liberal, traditional media have overcompensated by becoming too timid in covering certain stories. They seem loath to aggressively report on scandals involving Republican politicians, in general, and this White House in particular.

(3) Blogophobia. Liberal bloggers scare the mainstream media. Media critics fret over our supposed lack of professional credentials, even though many of us are journalists. They doubt our facts but don't independently investigate the stories.

The lack of coverage plays into the hands of the White House. Mainstream media editors act as if our investigation of Guckert is about prurience and lacks merit. But there is more than enough evidence to make any reporter want to check out the possibilities of White House deception and media manipulation.

The Times' editors shouldn't allow themselves to think they are above the fray. In truth, they are failing to speak truth to power.
 

BBond

Diamond Member
Oct 3, 2004
8,363
0
0
Another excellent article from Frank Rich of the NY Times on the "news" in America -- such as it is today.

Gonzo Gone, Rather Going, Watergate Still Here

Two weeks ago Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide. Next week Dan Rather commits ritual suicide, leaving the anchor chair at CBS prematurely as penance for his toxic National Guard story. The two journalists shared little but an abiding distaste - make that hatred in Thompson's case - for the Great Satan of 20th-century American politics, Richard Nixon. The best work of both was long behind them. Yet memories of that best work - not to mention the coincidental timing of their departures - only accentuate the vacuum in that cultural category we stubbornly insist on calling News.

What's missing from News is the news. On ABC, Peter Jennings devotes two hours of prime time to playing peek-a-boo with U.F.O. fanatics, a whorish stunt crafted to deliver ratings, not information. On NBC, Brian Williams is busy as all get-out, as every promo reminds us, "Reporting America's Story." That story just happens to be the relentless branding of Brian Williams as America's anchorman - a guy just too in love with Folks Like Us to waste his time looking closely at, say, anything happening in Washington.

In this environment, it's hard to know whom to root for. After the "60 Minutes" fiasco, Mr. Williams's boss, the NBC president Jeff Zucker, piously derided CBS for its screw-up, bragging of the reforms NBC News instituted after a producer staged a truck explosion for a "Dateline NBC" segment in 1992. "Nothing like that could have gotten through, at any level," Mr. Zucker said of the CBS National Guard story, "because of the safeguards we instituted more than a decade ago." Good for him, but it's not as if a lot else has gotten through either. When was the last time Stone Phillips delivered a scoop, with real or even fake documents, on "Dateline"? Or that NBC News pulled off an investigative coup as stunning as the "60 Minutes II" report on Abu Ghraib? That, poignantly enough, was Mr. Rather's last hurrah before he, too, and through every fault of his own, became a neutered newsman.

Hunter Thompson did not do investigative reporting, but he would have had a savage take on our news-free world - not least because it resembles his own during the Nixon era, before he had calcified into the self-parodistic pop culture cartoon immortalized by Garry Trudeau, Bill Murray, Johnny Depp and most of his eulogists. Read "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72" - the chronicle of his Rolling Stone election coverage - and you find that his diagnosis of journalistic dysfunction hasn't aged a day: "The most consistent and ultimately damaging failure of political journalism in America has its roots in the clubby/cocktail personal relationships that inevitably develop between politicians and journalists." He cites as a classic example the breathless but belated revelations of the mental history of George McGovern's putative running mate, the Missouri Senator Thomas Eagleton - a story that had long been known by "half of the political journalists in St. Louis and at least a dozen in the Washington press corps." This same clubby pack would be even tardier on Watergate, a distasteful assignment left to a pair of lowly police-beat hacks at The Washington Post.

Thompson was out to break the mainstream media's rules. His unruly mix of fact, opinion and masturbatory self-regard may have made him a blogger before there was an Internet, but he was a blogger who had the zeal to leave home and report firsthand and who could write great sentences that made you want to savor what he found out rather than just scroll quickly through screen after screen of minutiae and rant. When almost all "the Wizards, Gurus and Gentlemen Journalists in Washington" were predicting an unimpeded victory march for Edmund Muskie to the Democratic presidential nomination, it was Thompson who sniffed out the Muskie campaign's "smell of death" and made it stick. The purported front-runner, he wrote, "talked like a farmer with terminal cancer trying to borrow money on next year's crop."

But even Thompson might have been shocked by what's going on now. "The death of Thompson represents the passing from the Age of Gonzo to the Age of Gannon," wrote Russell Cobb in a column in The Daily Texan at the University of Texas. As he argues, today's White House press corps is less likely to be invaded by maverick talents like a drug-addled reporter from a renegade start-up magazine than by a paid propagandist like Jeff Gannon, a fake reporter for a fake news organization (Talon News) run by a bona fide Texas Republican operative who was a delegate to the 2000 Bush convention.

Though a few remain on the case - Eric Boehlert of Salon, mediamatters.org, Joe Strupp of Editor and Publisher - the Gannon story is fast receding. In some major news venues, including ABC and CBS, it never surfaced at all. Yet even as Mr. Gannon has quit his "job" as a reporter and his "news organization" has closed up shop, the plot thickens. His own Web site - which only recently shut down with the self-martyring message "The voice goes silent" - has now restarted as a blog with Gonzo pretensions. The title alone of his first entry, "Fear and Loathing in the Press Room," would send Thompson spinning in his grave had he not asked that his remains be shot out of a cannon.

As a blogger, Mr. Gannon's new tactic is to encourage fellow right-wing bloggers to portray him as the victim of a homophobic left-wing witch hunt that destroyed his privacy. Given that it was Mr. Gannon himself who voluntarily exhibited his own private life by appearing on Web sites advertising his services as a $200-per-hour escort, that's a hard case to make. But it is a clever way to deflect attention from an actual sexual witch hunt conducted by his own fake news organization in early 2004. It was none other than Talon News that advanced the fictional story that a young woman "taped an interview with one of the major television networks" substantiating a rumor on the Drudge Report that John F. Kerry had had an extramarital affair with an intern. (Mr. Kerry had to publicly deny the story just as his campaign came out of the gate.) This is the kind of dirty trick only G. Gordon Liddy could dream up. Or maybe did. Mr. Gannon's Texan boss, Bobby Eberle, posted effusive thanks (for "their assistance, guidance and friendship") to both Mr. Liddy and Karl Rove on Talon News's sister site, GOPUSA, last Christmas.

Mr. Gannon, a self-promoting airhead, may well be a pawn of larger forces as the vainglorious Mr. Liddy once was. But to what end? That Kerry "intern" wasn't the only "news" Mr. Gannon helped stuff in the pipeline during an election year. A close reading of the transcripts of televised White House press conferences reveals that at uncannily crucial moments he was called on by the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, to stanch tough questioning on such topics as Abu Ghraib and Mr. Rove's possible involvement in the outing of the C.I.A. spy Valerie Plame. We still don't know how this Zelig, using a false name, was given a daily White House pass every day for two years. Last weekend, Jim Pinkerton, a former official in the Reagan and Bush I White Houses, said on "Fox News Watch," no less, that such a feat "takes an incredible amount of intervention from somebody high up in the White House," that it had to be "conscious" and that "some investigation should proceed and they should find that out."

Given an all-Republican government, the only investigation possible will have to come from the press. Which takes us back to 1972, the year of Thompson's fear and loathing on the campaign trail. That was no golden age for news either. As Thompson's Rolling Stone colleague, Timothy Crouse, wrote in his own chronicle of that year, "The Boys on the Bus," months of stories by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein failed to "sink in" and only 48 percent of those polled by Gallup had heard of Watergate by Election Day.

Some news organizations had simply ignored The Post's scoops "out of petty rivalry," wrote Mr. Crouse. Others did so because they "feared the administration or favored Nixon in the presidential race." Others didn't initially recognize the story's importance. (The New York Times played the Watergate break-in on page 30.) The White House's pathological secrecy and penchant for threatening to use the Federal Communications Commission as a battering ram on its broadcast critics took care of the rest. According to a superb new history of the Washington press corps, "Reporting from Washington," by Donald A. Ritchie, even Mr. Rather, then CBS's combative man in the Nixon White House, "left the Watergate story alone at first, sure that it would fade like 'a puff of talcum powder.' "

For similar if not identical reasons, journalistic investigations into the current administration rarely "sink in" either. Early stories in The Boston Globe and Washington Post on what Jeff Gannon himself (on his blog) now calls "Gannongate" faded like that puff of powder. So did Eric Lichtblau's recent Times report on the White House's suppression of the 9/11 commission finding that federal aviation officials ignored dozens of advance warnings of Al Qaeda airline hijackings and suicide missions. But we've now entered a new twilight zone: in 1972, at least, the press may have been stacked with jokers but not with counterfeit newsmen.

Today you can't tell the phonies without a scorecard. Besides the six "journalists" we know to have been paid by the administration or its backers, bloggers were on the campaign payrolls of both a Republican office-seeker (South Dakota's Senator John Thune) and a Democrat (Howard Dean) during last year's campaign. This week The Los Angeles Times reported that Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration, "taking a cue from President Bush's administration," had distributed fake news videos starring a former TV reporter to extol the governor's slant on a legislative proposal. Back in Washington, the Social Security Administration is refusing to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests for information about its use of public relations firms - such as those that funneled taxpayers' money to the likes of Armstrong Williams. Don't expect news organizations dedicated to easy-listening news to get to the bottom of it.

"Reporting America's Story," NBC's slogan, is what Hunter Thompson actually did before the phrase was downsized into a vacuous marketing strategy. As for Mr. Rather, he gave a valedictory interview to Ken Auletta of The New Yorker in which he said, "The one thing I hope, and I believe, is that even my enemies think that I am authentic." The bar is so low these days that authenticity may well constitute a major journalistic accomplishment in itself.

 

Steeplerot

Lifer
Mar 29, 2004
13,051
6
81
another bush-whore bump! bam! How long before the corprate media gets their collective thumbs out of their ass? tick...tick...tick
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
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CONFIRMED: Jeff Gannon was an adult porn webmaster
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/3/8/123054/5928
Thanks to the excellent investigative work of blogslut, here , we now have definite confirmation that James Dale Guckert aka "Jeff Gannon" was an adult porn webmaster. Read her entire post for the background, but here is the official statement of MALECORPS, one of the sites to which James Guckert signed up as an affiliate:
A few years ago, www.MaleCorps.com provided individuals and affiliates with the option to have their own home page on the site for marketing purposes. Potential members would see each individual/affiliate's personal page and subscribe to see their photos. The revenue would then be shared between the affiliate and www.MaleCorps.com. This is the full extent of the relationship between www.MaleCorps.com and Jeff Gannon. All his photos were removed from the site about two years ago.

For the past few years, many steps were taken to avoid such occurrences, including the removal of all personal web pages, classifieds and listings from www.MaleCorps.com, as well as the cancellation of the affiliate program in order to keep a better control over the Male Corps trademarks and copyrighted information. As it stands, the site solely provides erotic photos and videos of models on their own, not involving any sexual activity, as well as links to third party providers. It is also noteworthy that the Male Corps web site has never been an escort service.
Because few of us are familiar with how the adult webmaster business works, blogslut has graciously written a Porn Biz for Dummies explanation:
Adult Affiliate Links: How They Work

Adult webmasters sell porn any way they can. They build little pages. They submit galleries to TGPs (thumbnail gallery posts). They make mini-paysites via an AVS system. Some go bigtime and create a paysite but most adult webmasters make a living by selling other people's porn. It's called an affiliate program and this is how it works:


-The webmaster finds an affiliate program either by clicking a WEBMASTERS link on a porn site, searching for a program via a search engine or by visiting an adult webmaster resource site.

-The webmaster signs up for the affiliate program by submitting personal information. A webmaster living in the US is required to provide full name and mailing address as well as either a social security number or tax id number. The webmaster must agree to the terms of service of the affiliate sponsor. If the webmaster is approved by the sponsor, the webmaster will receive a confirmation, primarily by email.

-Once approved, the sponsor will issue a UNIQUE REFERRER ID to the affiliate webmaster. This ID is the lifeblood for the affiliate webmaster. If a webmaster neglects to include this ID on any text links or graphic banners that lead to the sponsor, there is no way to track sales generated by the site. The affiliate webmaster creates an adult page and places text/graphic links for the sponsor on that page. Sponsor/Affiliate links look like this: http://mysponsor.com/referrerID=1234 or this: http://mysponsor.com/ID=me or even this: <removed>

-The affiliate webmaster creates a page and embeds the REFERRER ID into all the links that lead to the chosen sponsor. Then the affiliate webmaster promotes that page in the method preferred for the type of site. If all goes well, the affiliate gets a lot of traffic to their page and some of the visitors click the REFERRER ID links. For example, links from Gannon's USMCPT site take the surfer to the sponsor's site, MALECORPS. From there, the surfer decides whether or not they want to buy what MALECORPS is selling. The sponsor's product could be membership to a paysite or adult ezine. The product could be membership to an online personals site. The product could be adult toys. Whatever the product, once the surfer buys, the affiliate webmaster gets a credit because the surfer used his UNIQUE REFERRER ID. Jeff's unique referrer ID for his affiliate page to MALECORPS.com was <removed>. (NOT a work-safe link.)
Profile Pages vs. Affiliate Pages

Many of the Guckert links are online profiles. Some of these profiles might be from sites that offer a free listing to anyone who signs up. They are not necessarily affiliate/sponsor accounts. These profile sites are a lot like the phone book, everyone gets listed but the ones who pay have their entry highlighted so it stands out among the other listings. The profile sites make their money from their paying members and they use the images and profiles of those members to draw in more surfers, etc.

Guckert absolutely submitted his profile to these sites, but he may not have made any money from the effort. Keep in mind that the profile sites like StudFiles and MaleTreasures probably don't set appointments between escorts and clients. If they do, they're in big trouble. I imagine that their members sign up and then are able to exchange emails or chat with other members. If the members hook up, it's not the site's problem.

My guess is that Guckert used these profile accounts to troll for members. From all I can tell, Jim/Jeff never built an actual, working paysite of his own. He built free adult pages either through these profile sites or he built pages to market his affiliate sponsor. In my opinion, James was a crappy adult webmaster. He should have dumped the profile sites and just stuck with the affiliate sponsors. But, I digress.

Here's the easiest way to tell the difference between a profile page and an affiliate page:

Look for a button or text link or banner that reads: WEBMASTERS

If you see that, you know Jeff was using this page to make money from Internet porn.

That is the case with Jeff's MALECORPS profile. Clicking the "WEBMASTER" link in that profile sends you to this page. (Screen capture of MALECORPS affiliate sign-up page linked from Jeff's USMCPT profile from archive.org)

It is confirmed that Jeff was an adult webmaster with an affiliate page on MALECORPS. There are many Gannon profile pages on the net and we're in the process of determining which of them are affiliate pages and which of them are Jeff's personal profile sites and the purpose of each site. A sample of sites that are being checked out (NOT WORK SAFE LINKS!) HERE.
(ED:This is linked to separate page acct. offensive links.)

We almost hated for this part of the investigation to move forward now, because Jeff will of course whine that selling porn on the internet is a personal lifestyle choice and that we're picking on him for having gay porn affiliate pages all over the internet in addition to his apparent escort sites. In his latest apologetic posted on his only journalistic outlet at the moment, Jeff says,"They dug deep for dirt, dredging up things long past and erecting a fantasy world worthy of a Vince Flynn novel. What they found is domain names and sexy pictures..." No, what we found was an adult webmaster who had affiliate pages for a gay pornography site who used nude pictures of himself to sell gay porn and to sell himself. As for "digging deep", it's all a mouse click away. Dig here. As for "long past", two years ago MALECORPS pulled Jeff's affiliate page for their own reasons and not by Jeff's request at a time when he was already lined up for his White House day pass as a "conservative correspondent" for GOPUSA.


In the first page on Jeff Gannon's old website TheConservativeGuy.com, he writes, "But I'm not a bad person, and the values I have are the same as those of conservatives......But the truth is conservatives are Americans who share a basic set of core values." Jeff put that statement online in June of 2002 when Bulldog was actively flogging gay porn on the internet.

What values do the known self-proclaimed conservatives Jeff Gannon is most closely associated with - at GOPUSA.com - share? Let's look at a couple of quotes dealing with Jeff's line of work, pornography, from his fellow GOPUSA writers:
Christopher G. Adamo......only a few feet away inside the library, pedophiles and pornography addicts are enabled to indulge in their cravings for indescribable perversity over the Internet...link

Jimmy Moore...The unashamed and in-your-face activists involved in the gay agenda, the millions of people, including children as young as 12, having sex outside the sanctity of marriage, multitudes of married men and women who are actively engaged in adultery, the spread of pornography, especially on the Internet and many other forms of sexual perversion have sent our country on a one-way ticket to destruction....link

Jeff himself wrote, in an article about "rape rooms" in Iraq, "An adjacent room is where the rapist will prepare himself by viewing pornography...." (ed.... Maybe he looked at Bulldog pictures on the internet!)

The issue for those of us investigating Gannon is not that he is a pornographer, but the hypocritical spectacle of a person who claims to represent the anti-pornography, anti-gay Moral Values "conservatives" being a webmaster who trades in gay pornography.

This investigation is, as they say, developing.....
What a tangled web [Guckert] weaves....
 

BBond

Diamond Member
Oct 3, 2004
8,363
0
0
Do you want a good barometer of just how completely subverted our *free* press has become?

The Gannon/Guckert/McLellan/Ebbers/Bush story should be among the top stories in every newspaper and on every MSM broadcast channel.
But it isn't.

If this had happened during previous administrations you can bet the ranch that it would have been. ;) We'd be hearing "impeachment" already.

Thanks for keeping us updated, Conjur. We sure as hell won't hear about it on CNN.

 

PatboyX

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2001
7,024
0
0
im just annoyed he has the gall to title the bit "fear and loathing..."

ok...other things annoy me...


2:
he should stop acting the part of the victim and start showing some accountability.
"My greater sin in their eyes, however was that I dared to suggest that two Senate Democratic leaders held an illogical view of the economy?s weakness and the strength of Social Security"
either he is being purposefully ignorant or he doesnt listen.
the "sin" in their eyes is that someone with no credentials, under an assumed name with a past that apparently no one looked into sat 20 feet from the president of the united states. someone with no credentials found themselves with a free pass to white house press conferences, as rare as those are, and then ran away when he was investigated in the same fashion that he is now touting as the job of investigative reporters.

3:
stop deflecting legitimate conerns and questions with false cries of "hate" and "if i were liberal" and other hypotheticals.

4:
he might want to ask himself "why doesnt the white house press corps take me seriously?"
one may find that its not because of his conservative views but because he uses references to vince flynn books.
(this may conflict with my original complaint. but something tells me he never read any hunter s. to begin with)

5:
the liberal media is just another mutation of the old racist standard "jewish controlled media."
its offensive and ignorant. it shows a lack of desire to do research. one may argue that a majority of reporters or those working on the lower levels of the "media" are liberal...but you should have noticed that the corporations that own that media are owned by conservatives.
the conservatives cant in one breath say "we are the party of the majority" (ie: popular win/mandate) and in the next one bring up how they are the underdog, being stepped on by the liberals who control everything. (persecution)
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
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Originally posted by: PatboyX
im just annoyed he has the gall to title the bit "fear and loathing..."
I think that's a poke at the blogosphere that's working on an apparent link between Guckert/Gannon (some think he was Johnny Gosch) and that pedophile ring in N.M. which, again allegedly, Hunter S. Thompson was involved in (as a victim, supposedly)
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
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New proof of "Gannon"'s early WH access
http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/extra/archives/001469.html
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 -- speaking at rallies 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 Daily Kos, which along with 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 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 ex-Marine? Hmmmm.

But Gannon/Guckert and al-Taee had something in common: a secret past (Berg Met With Shady Iraqi). 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 the many conspiracy theories 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, 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?

There are also suggestions that Aziz was also involved in the prostitution rings during the Reagan/Bush years and may be linked to Todd Blodgett.
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/04/14/reconstruction/


Digging deeper on this Al-Taee we find quite the character:

Outspoken Philadelphia Man From Iraq Defends Past
Aziz Al-Taee Pleaded Guilty To Making Plastic Envelopes Used For Cocaine
http://www.nbc10.com/news/2098489/detail.html
On Tuesday, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that some Arabs suggest that Al-Taeez may not be setting a good example. He is not a U.S. citizen, but a permanent resident who could be deported.

Al-Taee pleaded guilty in the 1990s to selling empty plastic envelopes commonly used to package crack. He also pleaded guilty to buying stolen computers. He was sentenced to three years of probation, fined $3,000, and forced to forfeit $17,673 in profits.


So, al-Taee was involved in crack distribution, was involved in a gay prostitution ring, fed false intelligence to the US but yet was handpicked by Wolfowitz to be one of only a few dozen Iraqi exiles working to head up a new Iraqi government.

Wow.


Honor and integrity, eh, George?

 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
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Photographer for White House child sex ring arrested after Thompson suicide
http://tomflocco.com/modules.php?name=N...=article&sid=107&mode=&order=0&thold=0
WASHINGTON -- March 13, 2005 -- TomFlocco.com -- Photographer Russell E. "Rusty" Nelson was recently arrested two days after journalist Hunter Thompson reportedly committed suicide four weeks ago on February 10, according to two phone interviews with attorney John DeCamp last week.

Nelson was allegedly employed by a former Republican Party activist to take pictures of current or retired U.S. House-Senate members and other prominent government officials engaging in sexual criminality by receiving or committing sodomy and other sex acts on children during the Reagan-Bush 41 administrations.

Hunter Thompson?s death and the news blackout of Rusty Nelson?s simultaneous arrest raise questions that someone may be attempting to limit Nelson?s freedom or threaten him, since according to testimony, both men had allegedly witnessed homosexual prostitution and pedophile criminal acts in a suppressed but far-reaching child sex-ring probe closely linked to Senate and House members--but also former President George H. W. Bush. [In U.S. District Court testimony, Rusty Nelson told Judge Warren Urbom he took 20,000 to 30,000 pictures, 2-5-1999, p.52]

Pedophile victim Paul Bonacci--kidnapped and forced into sex slavery between the ages of 6 and 17--told U.S. District Court Judge Warren Urbom in sworn testimony [pp.105, 124-126] on February 5, 1999: "Where were the parties?...down in Washington, DC...and that was for sex...There was sex between adult men and other adult men but most of it had to do with young boys and young girls with the older folks...specifically for sex with minors...Also in Washington, DC, there were parties after a party...there were a lot of parties where there would be senators and congressmen who had nothing to do with the sexual stuff. But there were some senators and congressmen who stayed for the [pedophile sex] parties afterwards...on a lot of the trips he took us on he had us, I mean, I met some people that I don't feel comfortable telling their name because I don't want to --- ...Q: Are you scared?...Yes..."

DeCamp, a former Nebraska state senator and decorated Vietnam War vet, told TomFlocco.com "there are tons of pictures still left; law enforcement is currently looking for them," adding, "you can also assume there are senators and congressmen implicated; otherwise this would not be such a big issue." But no federal official has stepped forward to protect Rusty Nelson's life, as Congress would be reluctant to hold hearings or force a federal prosecutor to probe its own members for sex acts with children--still punishable by law.


(FPI Link: Book: The Franklin Cover-Up By Former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp)

Oh, if the MSM would just investigate this like it deserves....
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
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Probe of faux reporter voted down
Conservative activist's access to press corps remains an issue
http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/local/11155624.htm
WASHINGTON - Thompson's attempt to begin an investigation into how an online writer was allowed to join the White House press corps is defeated.

A party-line vote Wednesday defeated Rep. Bennie Thompson's (D-2nd District) push to investigate the Bush administration's approval of a press pass for a conservative activist who became a daily fixture at White House press briefings.

Thompson, the House's top-ranked Democrat for homeland security, joined other leading Democrats to call for an inquiry into how James D. Guckert, an online writer with ties to pornographic Web sites, joined the exclusive White House press corps and gained access to an internal government intelligence memo.

"It's unfortunate that the House Judiciary Committee has chosen to politicize the issue of a proper vetting of the White House press corps," Thompson said through his spokesman, Lanier Avant. "Any time a substantive issue is put forth and Republicans first choose to protect the president instead of the American people, there is just cause for concern."

Every committee Republican voted against Thompson's resolution of inquiry, and every Democrat present voted in favor. While the Web sites Guckert was associated with, using the pseudonym Jeff Gannon, including www.talonnews.com and www.hotmilitarystuds.com, have shut down since his identity became public, his case has sparked debate over the legitimacy of Web journal writers, or "bloggers." The first blogger was admitted to the White House press room last week.

Avant said Thompson would not abandon his concern over the Guckert controversy, and that other regulatory agencies could be employed for an investigation if congressional Republicans continued to dissent. Thompson's fellow Democrats concurred.

"This is no less serious than what my (Republican) colleagues thought the proceedings of the Clinton impeachment were for them," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). "I don't believe it can be answered through (White House) self-investigation."
What's wrong with an investigation? If there was no impropriety or wrongdoing, why would the GOP have any reason to be afraid?

More like they're just engaging in their typical hypocritical stances (along with continued support of DeLay)
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
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Turn Up The Heat On Gannon's "21 Club"
http://www.buzzflash.com/mailbag/05/03/mai05074.html
On March 16, 2005, a group of 21 Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee moved to block a Congressional investigation into how male escort Jeff "Bulldog" Gannon gained daily access to the White House for two years under a false name.

Why did they suppress evidence that would show who helped a gay prostitute evade Secret Service background checks and gain compromising access to the President of the United States? Why are these 21 Republicans so desperate to keep "Bulldog's" secrets? Shouldn't they be answering some questions about why they don't want any questions asked?

Here are 21 posters (one tailored for each Rep) asking people to ask these questions. They include their office numbers and the numbers of major news organizations. We need to have these widely distributed -- not only in their districts -- this must become a national issue.

http://agitprops.org/gannon.html

There are also several general GannonGate posters (plus lots on "Hot Tub Tom" DeLay) on the main page:

http://agitprops.org
Hmm...now just why is the GOP working so hard to keep this investigation from happening?
 

kage69

Lifer
Jul 17, 2003
28,682
40,036
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Hmm...now just why is the GOP working so hard to keep this investigation from happening?

Yeah, go figure. Seems so many YABAs didn't have a problem with the White House doing the same thing to the 9/11 Hearings, I doubt an investigation into a gay prostitute will rouse their concern, even if it does represent a humiliating case of our national security being breached.


Can you imagine what FOX would be doing right now if this had happened to a democratic president? Contemplating it boggles the mind! :laugh:
 

conjur

No Lifer
Jun 7, 2001
58,686
3
0
Originally posted by: kage69
Hmm...now just why is the GOP working so hard to keep this investigation from happening?

Yeah, go figure. Seems so many YABAs didn't have a problem with the White House doing the same thing to the 9/11 Hearings, I doubt an investigation into a gay prostitute will rouse their concern, even if it does represent a humiliating case of our national security being breached.


Can you imagine what FOX would be doing right now if this had happened to a democratic president? Contemplating it boggles the mind! :laugh:
They would have had to have spun off a Gannon channel!