Robert Eberle, the operator of an activist GOP Web site Talon "News", on the James/Jeff/Gucker/Gannon as gay escort story.
Boss denies writer favored
Eberle also said he had no inkling that Guckert had created pornographic Web sites or offered himself as a gay escort. If he had known, Eberle said, "I don't think I would have brought him on."
Robert Eberle on James/Jeff/Gucker/Gannon softball question to President Bush.
Guckert resigned soon after a news conference when he asked Bush: "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" referring to Senate Democrats.
Eberle said it was not his idea of a proper question. "I would have phrased it differently," he said. Still, he said, the backlash surprised him. "I had no reason to think he was not adhering to professional news standards."
Robert Eberle on James/Jeff/Gucker/Gannon two different names and special access to President Bush White House.
But the operator, Robert Eberle, denied in an interview that the correspondent was an administration plant or was given preferential treatment as a Republican partisan to ask soft questions at briefings.
Breaking his silence on the events, which have been portrayed by Democrats as a Republican effort to manipulate news, Eberle said "it took me by surprise" in early 2003 when the freelancer he had taken on as Jeff Gannon said he was gaining White House accreditation under his given name, James D. Guckert. "He said Gannon was his professional name; he didn't like the sound of his other name," Eberle recounted.
[...]
Eberle said that in the two years that Guckert wrote for the Gopusa.com Web site and the Talon News agency, he had not kept track of his volunteer reporter. "Jeff did his thing, I did my thing," he said.
What exactly was James/Jeff/Gucker/Gannon thing to do at Gopusa.com Web site and the Talon News, Robert Eberle?
Other than to promote your conservative movement.