There is a temptation to reduce the presence of a faux reporter in the White House Press Corps into one of the following frames:
1) GOPUSA president Bobby Eberle gets lucky!! His D.C. correspondent is accepted by Ari Fleischer as a legitimate member of the press corps. As Dana Milbank put it in his interview with SusanG : "...And there are all kinds of odd characters, most famously Les Kinsolving, who asks zany, Gannon-esque questions most every day. So Gannon was only one more bizarre character."
2). The Jeff Gannon story is all about the sex because sex sells and to paraphrase Alanis Morissette -Its all just a little too too ironic.
3). Jeff Gannon is part of an organized disinformation program by the Bush White House and Pentagon to sell the Bush policies to the American people and foreign audiences.
So boys and girls step into Ricardo's Wayback machine and take a look at Jeff Gannon and the birth of Talon in the context of its time. Please add any important events to the time line. Let me know if the dim light of the early war fog changes your perspective of Jeff Gannon intrepid faux reporter.
9/9/2001 - Bobby Eberle and Kerri Houston attend a policy conference in Washington DC. Bobby describes the trip:
"back on September 11, 2001, I was here in DC. I was attending a policy conference for candidates hosted by Kerri and the American Conservative Union. Although I was not a candidate, I attended the conference partly to get some education on policy but also to spend some time promoting GOPUSA at the Capitol". Kerri in addition to being on the board of GOPUSA is Vice Pres. of Policy for the Frontiers of Freedom and Natl field Director of the American Conservative Union.
Link
9/11/2001 - CHANGED EVERYTHING
2/19/2002 - The Pentagon creates the Office of Strategic Influence with plans to plant news stories in the foreign press. The White House and Rumsfeld quickly claim that it was just in the planning stages and dissolve it. Link
Tim Goeglein Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Public Liaison works with in his words "all of the layers that comprise the Executive Office of the President.. We also work with the agencies all the time, not only on a daily basis but sometimes hourly." including the National Security Council, White House Communications, the White House Counsel's Office and the Department of Defense also "Each week, I give a White House update at the Grover Norquist breakfast [of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform], which meets on Wednesday mornings, and on Wednesday afternoons at the Paul Weyrich luncheon [of the conservative Free Congress Foundation]....
I'm also the White House participant in two or three standing teleconferences every week with conservatives beyond the Washington Beltway". Link
07/2002 - The Office of Global Communications is created although not officially recognized until Jan 2003. According to the Defense Science Task Board Report of 2004 - the OCG is "devoted principally to tactical public affairs coordination." "Public affairs is used by the Departments of State and Defense to depict communication activities intended primarily to inform and influence U.S. media and the American people" Its members were Tucker Eskew, Dan Bartlett, Jeff Jones and Peter Reid. See Gardiner's report for a nifty chart.
10/6/2002 The Bush White House establishes a "high-level, interagency task force" charged with the task of "coordinating all Iraq war planning efforts and postwar initiatives." members include: Rice, Rove, Jim Wilkinson, Stephen Hadley, Scooter Libby, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, and Nicholas Callo.
11/18/2002 in a media briefing, Rumsfield reveals that the Office of Strategic Influence died in name only. Link
11/20/2002 Gannon first article as a Freedom Writer at Frontiers of Freedom's Op Ed web page.: Link
12/20/2002 Gannon's 2nd article as a Freedom Writer. Kerri Houston is a Vice President at Frontiers of Freedom.
01/15/2003 Gannon begins writing for GOPUSA.
01/23/2003 The White House issues report saying that Iraq failed to explain its attempts to obtain uranium for its weapons program Condoleezza Rice writes an Op. Ed piece for the NY Times - "Why We Know Iraq is Lying"
01/28/2003 Pres Bush State of the Union Address.
02/05/2003 After delays, the US turns over the Niger documents to the IAEA.
courtesy of silence's excellant diary
Gannon in Press Briefings
Feb. 28, 2003 Gannon asks for a comment on anti-war teachers.
March 4, 2003 Gannon question
Q This is about Iraq. On Saturday, I interviewed Aziz al-Taee, Chairman of the Iraqi-American Council. He detailed a compelling body of evidence about the holocaust being waged against the Iraqi people. Why hasn't the administration focused on this aspect of Saddam's regime to justify intervention without U.N. approval? After all, it was the Clinton administration that used ethnic cleansing as a pretext to bomb and send troops into Kosovo.
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, the administration has frequently pointed that out. And Secretary Powell, in his presentation up in New York, described at some length the crimes committed by Saddam Hussein against his own people. And this is something the President remarks about from time to time. What about the cries on the basis of human rights for the people of Iraq who are suffering under the hand of Saddam Hussein? That is an important issue for the world to face, as well, as the consequences of allowing Saddam to have weapons of mass destruction.
and on the next day
Q This is about Iraq. On Monday, the UK Telegraph reported the murder of General Muhammad Sa'id al-Darraj, a senior missile engineer in charge of Iraq's mobile Scud missile program, shortly after meeting with Saddam's officials. Would you comment on that? MR. FLEISCHER: That's the first I've heard about it. But one thing is for certain with Saddam Hussein, he is brutal. When you talk about human rights and killing Iraqis, you can look first to Saddam Hussein as the world's worst human rights violator, one of the world's worst human rights violators, who has killed his own people.
03/06/2003 Pres. Bush Press conference including his plan to go to the UN.
03/07/20003 IAEA says the Niger document is fake
03/17/2003 Bush speaks to the nation before the invasion "no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." The next day he sends a letter to Congress justifying the use of force.