Scandal in the White House Press Corps; Gannongate Gains Steam

Posted on February 14, 2005

The White House Press Corps is an experienced group of journalists from major news outlets that have undergone rigorous FBI background checks in order to be allowed within 10 feet or less of the President of the United States. It's an honor to be given credentials from the Congressional Press Office, and it's not easy to get those day passes that let you into the White House Briefing Room to grill Scott McClellan about who we're invading next. So, given that background and that we are still targets of al-Qaeda (remember them?) and are fighting a war in Iraq, you'd think that security would be pretty tight in the press room at the White House, right? Well, you'd be dead wrong. A guy with no journalism background, with a fake name and a fake press badge, who runs a gay escort service for gay military men, and who trolls for gay encounters on the Internet was vetted by the White House and inserted into the press corps to ask softball questions of President Bush and/or Scott McClellan whenever the questioning got too hard. He also regularly posted White House memos verbatim on Talon News site and reported them as news, and received a copy of the infamous Valerie Plame memo, which outed her as a CIA operative (that meant a direct call from someone in the West Wing). He also wrote numerous anti-gay articles which were posted on Talon News, which have since been removed from the site.

The story of Mr. Guckert's rise to fame is as follows: Fake news reporter Jeff Gannon (whose real name is James Dale Guckert) once took a "journalism" course about how to put the right wing spin on any news story. This was after he was in the military for awhile, attended some college somewhere in Pennsylvania, he drove a truck, bought a gun, and registered the gay escort domain name MilitaryStuds.com to prostitute himself to other men. (AmericaBlog revealed that Guckert is available for $1200/weekend, for fun and frolic -- if you're into that kind of thing).

Along the way, he managed to snag a job working for an online ultra conservative propaganda site, called Talon News. Talon News is owned by GOPUSA, which is owned by Texas Republican activist Bobby Eberle. Guckert was issued a White House photo ID under the name "Jeff Gannon" by some mysterious White House official and told to put forth the administration's talking points, while posing as a journalist.

So, how did a gay hooker get access to the White House on a daily basis using a fake name? Why was he one of six people who got access to the infamous memo outing Ambassador Wilson's wife Valerie Plame as a CIA operative? Inquiring minds want to know.