If you've been following the bouncing balls (pun intended) as the Gannon/Guckert story has been breaking, you'll be familiar with the major role the small Niagara Falls Reporter newspaper had in convincing
Representative Lousie Slaughter (NY-28) to call for Bush to begin a congressional investigation into this whole affair.
If you haven't, here's how this aspect of the story evolved:
read on...
- The Niagara Falls Reporter posted an editorial containing a letter to Rep. Slaughter on their site.
- catnip (that's me), reads the diary revealing Gannon's true identity, does a quick Google news search to find out who's covering the story, finds the Niagara Falls Reporter's editorial, and e-mails them to tell them Gannon's real name along with relevant links to Daily Kos diaries.
- catnip (that would be me again), is informed by Mike Hudson, Editor-in-Chief (head honcho, big cheese, numero uno) of the Falls Reporter, that Slaughter will be calling for a congressional investigation "within 48 hours". catnip then posts a diary about Rep. Slaughter's actions and is cheered far and wide throughout the blogosphere. (Well...a gal can dream!!)
Fast forward a week to our present point in time, after the more sordid revelations about Gannon/Guckert/bad, naughty "reporter" guy. The Falls Reporter has now published a new, updated
article about the whole expose (safe for work unless the AOL beefcake shot of Guckert in his briefs might get you into trouble or make you vomit) and Mike Hudson has given me permission to repost it here. (Thanks, big guy.)
Check out their cover. Safe for work and eerily disturbing.
SLAUGHTER SPEARHEADS INVESTIGATIONS INTO PHONY WHITE HOUSE 'JOURNALIST'
By Mike Hudson
Call it "Gannongate."
Responding to a Feb. 8 Niagara Falls Reporter editorial, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter last week called on President George Bush to explain how a person operating under an assumed name and with no journalistic background managed to obtain access to the White House briefing room regularly for the past two years.
Additionally, Slaughter and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan have asked Robert Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leaking of an undercover CIA agent's name to the media, to look into allegations that the phony reporter played a hand in that affair.
James Dale "J.D." Guckert, 47 -- using the alias "Jeff Gannon" -- published what were essentially unedited White House press releases under his own byline on his personal Web site and that of Talon News, which has been shown to be a subsidiary of the right-wing organization GOPUSA.
Using his own name, Guckert also ran a number of gay porn Web sites, including one called Hotmilitarystud.com. A beefcake photo of a shirtless Guckert casting a come-hither look was available on his personal AOL site until it was taken down last week.
On the day Slaughter sent her letter to Bush, Guckert announced he had "resigned" from Talon News.
"In consideration of the welfare of me and my family I have decided to return to private life," he wrote in a weepy farewell post.
But Slaughter said her demands for an investigation into the scandal would go forward.
"This matter is growing more serious by the day. We now know that (Guckert) had access to classified CIA documents that contained the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. This is more than an issue of media manipulation by the White House, this is now an issue of national security," she told the Reporter.
In the wake of the Reporter editorial and Slaughter's letter to Bush, major media outlets such as the Washington Post, CNN and "Salon" scrambled to do follow-up stories but, by week's end, it remained unclear how Guckert managed to insert himself into journalism's most elite club.
"What is the White House hiding?" Slaughter asked. "This man should never have been admitted into the White House briefing room in the first place. Someone let him in day after day. Someone gave him access to classified CIA documents. Someone must answer for this."
Records show that Talon News didn't even exist prior to March 29, 2003. Guckert was given his first White House pass just five days later, in apparent violation of the longstanding policy that journalists work for news organizations that "publish regularly."
He was frequently called on by White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan and Bush himself, and was known for lobbing softball questions critical of Democrats. Last month, he attributed a fake quote regarding soup lines to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. The next day, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh bragged to his millions of listeners that he had made the quote up as a joke on his show a few days earlier, and was surprised to hear it mentioned at Bush's press conference.
Slaughter said the Guckert scandal is especially troubling coming on the heels of revelations that the Bush administration paid right-wing pundits like Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher and Mike McManus considerable sums to promote its agenda.
"I was already concerned about what appears to be an organized campaign to mask partisan propaganda as legitimate news by your administration," she wrote Bush. "That we have now learned this same type of deception is occurring inside the White House briefing room itself is even more disturbing."
But if Guckert's role as an administration stooge is disturbing, his role in outing undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame is downright sinister.
Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had been sent to Africa by the CIA in 2002 to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellow-cake uranium from Niger in order to construct a nuclear weapon. Wilson determined the stories were false, and reported his findings to Washington.
Wilson was stunned when Bush repeated the false claim in his Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address. On July 6, 2003, Wilson wrote an op-ed for The New York Times entitled "What I didn't find in Africa." The next day, the White House retracted the Niger claim.
Eight days later, right-wing pundit Robert Novak published a column exposing Plame's identity and claiming she had used her influence to have Wilson sent on the African assignment. It is a federal offense to reveal the name of an undercover intelligence operative.
"I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," Novak said at the time.
Many now suspect it was Guckert who did the giving. He was subpoenaed last year to appear before the federal grand jury looking into the affair, and has gone on the record saying he did indeed have access to classified CIA documents relating to Wilson and Plame. In their letter to Robert Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Plame case, Slaughter and Conyers demand answers.
"It appears that the White House was so focused on smearing the reputation of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, that it knowingly leaked his wife's identity to a Republican activist posing as a journalist," they wrote. "Whoever in this administration gave Mr. Guckert the memo risked Ms. Plame's very life and must be punished to the full extent of the law."
Guckert's involvement with several gay pornographic Web sites directed at members of the military has also raised questions. Paul Johnson was one of a number of advocates asking whether the sites were set up as part of an effort by the military to entrap gay service members.
"What has become of any membership list to his gay military sex sites?" Johnson wrote last week. "Were any names turned over to the Pentagon?"
The New York Daily News reported that an inordinate number of Gannon's Talon News contributions consisted of gay-bashing rants, including one detailing John Kerry's "pro-homosexual platform" that was headlined "Kerry Could Become First Gay President."
As the scandal unfolded last week, many in the legitimate news media were outraged. Kelly McBride, a media ethicist at the prestigious Poynter Institute, suspected complicity by the Bush administration.
"The White House shouldn't be putting in ringers to prevent the White House press corps from performing its watchdog duties," McBride said.
Appearing on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," Dana Milbank of the Washington Post agreed.
"The fact is, he was representing a phony media company," Milbank said. "This guy is not a real journalist and he was hanging out there just wasting everyone's time in the press room." Reporter Publisher Bruce Battaglia called White House assertions that they have no control over who gets passes absurd.
"We do 22,000 print copies a week and have nearly a half-million Web visitors," he said. "To think we could walk in and get a pass to see the president is beyond belief. This is something that ought to be of concern to every journalist in America."
Rep. Slaughter deserves all the credit for having the courage to demand the investigations and blowing the lid off the story, he added.
"We brought the matter up and the congresswoman took it and ran with it," Battaglia said.
"Because of her, the Reporter has gotten coverage on CNN, in the Washington Post, 'Salon' and other major media outlets. Gannon's been exposed as the fraud he is and forced to resign. I'm glad we could be a small part of that, but it never would have happened without Rep. Slaughter."
Niagara Falls Reporter www.niagarafallsreporter.com Feb. 15 2005
Thanks for the great article, Mike! (Is my cheque in the mail now??) Seriously though, Mike nailed it with his emphasis on the important aspects of the story.
I asked Mike why he had not included any information about the work of my fellow kossacks who blew this story wide open, because I knew some of you would probably want to know the answer to that question. Here's his answer (on the record):
"This isn't a one-day story and, as a small print publication that comes out weekly, there are space considerations. The piece I'm working on for next week (2/22) goes into how this story came to my attention and, ultimately, to Congresswoman Slaughter's. Needless to say, the legwork that Daily Kos, Atrios, 365 Gay, Media Matters for America, AMERICAblog and others did in breaking the story will constitute a major portion of that article."
And, here's some more relevant info about the Niagara Falls Reporter: this Guckert story took up one full page of their 16 page publication which is distributed once per week free of charge. Mike also informs me that the the 3 daily publications in Rep. Slaughter's district have not even run one story about the Gannon/Guckert affair.
Here are the papers: the Niagara Gazette (wow, is that paper boring!), Buffalo News (no, it's not about the animals), and The Rochester Democrat (I think I broke the search engine when I typed in "Gannon"). You know what to do! Write LTEs and demand that they report about Rep. Slaughter's call for an investigation.
So, once again, thanks to Mike Hudson and his crew at the Niagara Falls Reporter for pushing this story and for supporting Rep. Slaughter.
(Have I mentioned your name enough times now, Mike?)
[editor's note, by catnip] As I mentioned in my previous diary about the Gannon/Guckert affair, and as I've mentioned several times to Mike Hudson, I cannot emphasize enough that the real heroes in this story are the kossacks here, led by SusanG, who worked tirelessly on unraveling the facts (and who are still doing so). My part in this story was just a happy accident. Fun, nonetheless, but still just fate, karma or call it what you will.
Update [2005-2-16 22:2:13 by catnip]: Must see links: New Propagannon web site (run by kossacks) and dkosopedia article with background information about the Gannon/Guckert affair.
Update [2005-2-17 0:28:32 by catnip]: Great news! Eric Burns, from Rep. Slaughter's office, has posted thanks on behalf of Rep. Slaughter and her team right here - in my little diary! Wow!