This article originally provided by
The Guardian
February 17, 2005
A hireling, a fraud and a prostitute
Bush's agent in the press corps has given
spin a new level of meaning
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday February 17, 2005
The Guardian
The White House press room has often been a cockpit of
intrigue, duplicity and truckling. But nothing challenges
the most recent scandal there.
The latest incident began with a sequence of questions
for President Bush at his January 26 press conference.
First, he was asked whether he approved of his
administration's payments to conservative commentators.
Government contracts had been granted to three pundits, who
had tried to keep the funding secret. "There needs to be a
nice, independent relationship between the White House and
the press," said the president as he called swiftly on his
next questioner.
Jeff Gannon, Washington bureau chief of Talon News, rose
from his chair to attack Democrats in the Congress. "How are
you going to work - you said you're going to reach out to
these people - how are you going to work with people who
seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"
For almost two years, in the daily White House press
briefings Gannon had been called upon by press secretary
Scott McClellan to break up difficult questioning from the
rest of the press. On Fox News, one host hailed him as "a
terrific Washington bureau chief and White House
correspondent". Gannon was frequently quoted and highlighted
as an expert guest on rightwing radio shows. But who was
Gannon? His strange non-question to the president inspired
inquiry. Talon News is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a group
of Texas Republicans. Gannon's most notable article had
asserted that John Kerry "might some day be known as 'the
first gay President'".
Gannon also got himself entangled in the investigation
into the criminal disclosure of the identity of covert CIA
operative Valerie Plame. Plame is the wife of former
ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent by the Bush
administration to discover whether Saddam Hussein was
procuring uranium in Niger for nuclear weapons. He learned
that the suspicion was bogus; appalled that the
administration lied about nuclear WMD to justify the Iraq
war, he wrote an article in the New York Times about his
role after the war.
In retaliation, Plame's CIA cover was blown by
administration officials. Gannon had called up Wilson to ask
him about a secret CIA memo supposedly proving that his wife
had sent him on the original mission to Niger, prompting the
special prosecutor in the case to question Gannon about his
"sources".
His real name, it turned out, is James Dale Guckert. He
has no journalistic background whatsoever. His application
for a press credential to cover the Congress was rejected.
But at the White House the press office arranged for him to
be given a new pass every single day, a deliberate evasion
of the regular credentialing that requires an FBI security
check. It was soon revealed. "Gannon" owned and advertised
his services as a gay escort on more than half a dozen
websites with names like Militarystud.com, MaleCorps.com,
WorkingBoys.net and MeetLocalMen.com, which featured dozens
of photographs of "Gannon" in dramatic naked poses. One of
the sites was still active this week.
Thus a phony journalist, planted by a Republican
organisation, used by the White House press secretary to
interrupt questions from the press corps, protected from FBI
vetting by the press office, disseminating smears about its
critics and opponents, some of them gay-baiting, was
unmasked not only as a hireling and fraud but as a gay
prostitute, with enormous potential for blackmail.
The Bush White House is the most opaque - allowing the
least access for reporters - in living memory. Every news
organisation has been intimidated, and reporters who have
done stories the administration finds discomfiting have
received threats about their careers. The administration has
its own quasi-official state TV network in Fox News;
hundreds of rightwing radio shows, conservative newspapers
and journals and internet sites coordinate with the
Republican apparatus.
Inserting an agent directly into the White House press
corps was a daring operation. Until his exposure, he proved
useful for the White House. But the longer-term implication
is the Republican effort to sideline an independent press
and undermine its legitimacy. "Spin" seems quaint. "In this
day and age," said press secretary McClellan, waxing
philosophical about the Gannon affair, "when you have a
changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide or try to
pick and choose who is a journalist." It is not that the
White House press secretary cannot distinguish who is or is
not a journalist; it is that there are no journalists, just
the gaming of the system for the concentration of power.
· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to
President Clinton and author of The Clinton Wars
sidney_blumenthal@yahoo.com |
