I haven't been a participant in the Gannon research, such research isn't my strong point. I have been following the story sufficiently so that if my strengths in the areas of developing and implementing action campaign strategies and tactics become useful I will be prepared to help out.
I'm also aware that there is a growing element of "Gannon-fatigue", and that's what I'd like to address in this diary.
First, if I see one more diary engaging in tabloid voyeurism over JG's extracurricular activities, and allowing us to get diverted from the bigger picture, I'll scream.
However, Gannon is an incredibly important, indeed crucial piece of evidence, in a larger fight, actually a couple of them.
- Plame. Gannon is one of the key links, and just maybe the weak one, in the chain of events that led to the outing of an active covert CIA operative. As a former intelligence operative myself, though at a much more pedestrian level, I have a keen awareness of how disastrous such acts are, especially when coming from our nation's top leadership. It undermines national security, it compromises the essential trust that must exist between the intelligence community and its consumers, and it exposes both Plame, and her associates and contacts around the world to retribution. Those who participated in the Plame outing MUST be held accountable. If Gannon can be used to expose the web of skullduggery that led to the Plame outing, this serves a vital national purpose.
- The Mighty Wurlitzer and the corruption of the media and public information in America. We on the left have understood for some time a few of the mechanisms that allow right-wing dominance of the media: corporate ownership interests, and GOP superior message discipline and propagation. What are just coming to light are their deeper mechanisms, their "black ops" as it were:
a. Payola-press, Williams, Gallagher, Mcmanus etc. (I expect more will be outed.)
b. Now we find, via Gannon, that the right has been seeding the press corps with entirely phony "journalists" as a means of controlling the message and the national debate. Gannon is the Rosetta stone for this phenomenon. I expect we will find more of these as well, and the Gannon research provides us with a template for how to go about exposing these machinations of the Mighty Wurlitzer.
My warning is this: Gannon is not the ultimate target, he is a means to our ends. His handlers may very well set him up as a patsy to take the fall for their much greater misdeeds. To make this an effective strategy for them, they will need to divert us into a single minded focus on Gannon qua Gannon. In our tabloidicized culture, all the juicy trashy details of Gannon's secret life are the nukular distraction weapon. Let's not fall into that trap! Instead heed the guidance of Watergate's Deep Throat (get your advice from William Rehnquist, yes!): Follow the money!
So I argue in favor of continuing the Gannon investigation as far as it can take us in terms of the Plame case and exposing the mechanics of the Mighty Wurlitzer. These efforts may take quite some while to fully bear fruit, what I suggest to those with "Gannon-fatigue" is that you move along, but please don't speak negatively in a way that will demoralize those engaged in the hard work of bringing the larger scandals to light.