As the
Guckert story makes the mainstream through the news pages of centrist, non-sensationalist newspapers like the Christian Science Monitor and the op-ed pages of the NYT, a suspicion I've had for a few days gets even stronger: could this be our
Profumo Affair?
I was ambivalent on the issue of his sexual orientation as the story first came out. Being straight but also having been deeply involved in politics and campaigns on gay issues, I'm no closer to having a consistent position on outing gay hypocrites than I was five years ago. I'm not a knee-jerk supporter of the notion that hypocrisy always prevails; if somebody who's taken material actions to support anti-gay measures--somebody like, oh, I don't know, maybe David Drier, if he were to ever be shown to be gay--I wouldn't have a big moral problem with outing him. But, to take a less than simply hypothetical example, I think the 19 year old daughter of a homophobic lunatic is probably out-of-bounds. So the gay angle as it surfaced in the Guckert case left me a little unsure, but leaning toward the belief that it was OK to make it part of the story.
But it's now gone beyond his sexual orientation, as his sexual activity has become, to me, a potentially integral part of this story, and potentially the heart of the problem, one that goes far beyond moral and political hypocrisy to encompass concerns about our national security.
More beyond the jump...
I haven't followed all the ins-and-outs of this story. (Sorry, initially that was an unintended joke...) But what's becoming clear is that Guckert had something on somebody, and maybe several somebodies. How else does a guy who's a mediocrity and a potential liability with more skeletons in his closet than John Negroponte get get such easy access to the WH press room, and a Pulitizer Prize-winning columnist from our most important national newspaper (Maureen Dowd) get denied press credentials? If it were simply a matter of placing a shill in the room, there are plenty of shills more suited to the assignment than Guckert.
And none of them were [literally] prostitutes.
So, as the picture Guckert-as-prostitute emerges into the mainstream, I'm thinking even more about the possibility that he has something very incriminating in his palm...pilot. Like the name of a prominent Republican. Or the names of more than one prominent Republican. And maybe one of his clients "just wanted someone to talk with," and their pillow talk included some very damaging information.
We've had some sex scandals that combined sex and security, but not like the Europeans. Sure, Dick Morris let his toe-sucking friend read some polling reports, but Dick Morris never had access to classified national security information. JFK may have had sexual dalliances with somebody linked to Nazi espionage, but that was long before he was in elective office. But out national sex scandals were primarily sex scandals that attracted national attention, instead of national scandals that involved sex.
To see better examples of national scandals that involve sex, one has to look to Europe and Britain. And the scandal that may provide the best comparison is the Profumo Affair, in which the Conservative British Secretary of War John Profumo was discovered to have been carrying on with a 20 year old prostitute who, in addition to sleeping with Profumo, had also slept with the naval attache' at the Soviet Embassy. When his dalliances became public, Profumo resigned for having potentially compromised British security.
Is Guckert being used by a spy ring, as the Christine Keeler claims happened as she was sleeping with both Profumo and Eugene Ivanov? Who knows, but probably not. But is Guckert's palm pilot full of enough information to expose prominent Republicans as closeted homosexuals who pay men for sex? That seems more than plausible.
Which leads to the national security angle. If Guckert was the source for the Plame information, why did the leaker use a gay prostitute with a standing gig in the WH briefing room? Obviously it could be sheer incompetence. After all, this White House nominated Bernard Kerik to head up the Department of Homeland Security without performing a cursory background check. But could it also be that he blackmailed somebody into giving him the information? Did he steal the information from one of his clients? If so, was he acting on his own, or was he acting under the instructions of his "spy master?"
Finally, did he get access based upon being a prostitute, or was he given the access because being a gay prostitute made him a valuable tool? In short, did he get into the WH because he had compromised somebody, or was he brought into the WH so that he could use that access to compromise others, possibly under the instructions of somebody at the WH somebody in the political orbit of Karl Rove and/or the Bush family?
One of the oldest games in spycraft is to compromise people through sex or money, and then make them beholden to you to keep their secret from becoming public. What's going to be interesting to me as this story continues to unfold is whether Guckert was an entrepreneur who blackmailed his own way into the WH, whether he was recruited by somebody in the WH or the GOP to compromise others, or whether he was guided by some other party and compromised the Bush Administration.
And if he compromised somebody with matters pertaining to national security, what will the compromised people do? Will they do like John Profumo, and step down out of concern for national security. Or will they fight to the end to keep from being rooted out of their jobs and positions of power?