Many of us took note when the Talon website was scrubbed of the pictures and biographies of the "reporters" and "staff" and "directors" a few days ago. The obvious question was were they trying to hide something? And if so, what was it?
I first looked at Steve Findley:
President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Titan Dynamics Systems, Inc., a military technology corporation, located in Marshall, Texas; Chairman of Rules Committee of the Texas State Republican Executive Committee; Delegate to Republican National Convention (2000)
Good stuff but it took me nowhere. He is heavily involved in TX GOP politics and his bio at Allied Defense Group that purchased Titan in 1992 is even more descriptive. alliedUnfortunately nothing about Allied Defense appeared to be directly applicable to this investigation popped out or looked promising to me.
Then took a look at Charlie Weldon:
Associate with Enron Corporation in Houston covering natural gas market research, commodity structuring, and natural gas trading; Board member of the Weldon-Stacey-Blake Corporation, currently serving as Vice President and overseeing corporate portfolio management, shareholder relations, and corporate financing activities.
Worked for Enron - and in the nefarious trading operation. Hmm. I did note this about Enron:
In April 2000, Enron and LJM2 set up an SPE named Talon LLC
Source documents, however, indicate that Talon was never designed to earn profits: it was designed to absorb Enron's mark-to-market losses.
reference Hmm - interesting but likely either coincidental or Weldon just liked the name. Nothing for Weldon-Stacey-Blake Corporation pops up in Google searches, but maybe better researchers would have more luck. Weldon might merit further attention, but nothing here suggests any promising link.
The bio for Richard Powell at GOPUSA didn't look any more promising than the first two.
Founder and president of JPX Interactive Technologies, Inc., a comprehensive technology integration firm offering consulting, deployment and integration services in the business, government and education market segments; Former policy advisor to Texas Governor Rick Perry
(See update - I'm leaving this section in to demonstrate how easy it is to make errors when borrowing from the work of others without checking out either the researcher or the the data.) Lucky for us that someone at DU did look into this and Zapata28 alerted us to it Powell works for Quinn, Gillespie & Assoc. Yes, that Gillespie who headed up the RNC. (And Quinn previously worked for Clinton.) Then Jill Lehnert picked up on Powell's wife Dina who just happens to be the WH director of the presidential personnel office. Now we could all speculate that this is the missing link to GWB/Rove but that would be going beyond the data. What is does give us is a physical presence in DC for GOPUSA other than Guckert. As I don't find Guckert's claim that he became a "reporter" for them based on submitted articles, I've been struggling to understand exactly how Guckert in DC/DEL/PA linked up with a podunk operation in TX; one that couldn't even find any money to pay Guckert until Hill Press Credentials required that reporters receive most of their income from their job - that was in early 2004 and has been described as a stipend with the suggestion that it wasn't much. This is proof of nothing but it is an avenue to explore. When did Powell join Quinn/Gillespie? Is there a link between Powell and Guckert before 1/03? And maybe we need to know a bit more about Powell's relationship with Rick Perry.
For another DC connection, creve couer found something very interesting GOPUSA "sponsored" a conference in DC in September 2004 with the title Issues and Actions and the speaker list is a virtual who's who list of rightwingers. Even more interesting is that they hosted a similar event the year before. That was before Bruce Eberle folded his millionsofamericans operation into Bobby Eberle's GOPUSA in on 3/24/04 (and boosted the "membership" not by millions but more than they had before). So, how was it that all these speaker showed up for a conference in DC put together by a very minor conservative political operation out of TX? How was it that GOPUSA was well heeled enough to put this together when they couldn't pay the Talon News Service enough so that they could pay Gannon or any of the "reporters?" Very curious.
Another avenue of investigation that may have been given short shrift is found in TracieLynn's diary concerning Gannon's public display of religiosity with Faith and Actions bible reading in the capital. Guckert/Gannon was late to adding a specific religious dimension to whatever game was being played. But links between Gannons registered website domains and real fundie operation in DC exis. Some of these were found in previous diaries that are summarized here
Lots of rocks that dKossians might want to start trying to turn over to see what wiggles out from under them.
Update [2005-2-14 3:52:11 by Marie]:
First - Two lessons 1) When it looks too good, take a closer look. 2) Take care when relying upon the research of others.
First the GOPUSA Powell is Richard M. Powell. His bio at Talon bears no resemblance to that of Richard Powell at Quinn/Gillespie. These are not the same person. Second - Dina Habib Powell appears to be married to a Richard Cruze Powell of Quinn-Gillespie -- [see http:www.fundrace.org/neighbors.php] plug in Richard Powell and then Dina Powell and the same address for both appear , she has no marital connection to Richard M. Powell of GOPUSA. Two different Richard Powells. So, we are back to no direct DC-TX physical link for GOPUSA/Talon.