The Pink Triangle: Homosexuality Rampant in top Republican Circles: White House Staff’s Involvement

The White House Poster Boy at Ease.

James Dale Guckert, 47

Secret Service Defends Giving Gannon/Guckert Access to White House

By E&P Staff
Published: March 08, 2005 4:00 PM ET

NEW YORK Responding to a request from House Democrats to investigate the approval of James Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, to attend White House briefings and presidential press conferences for two years, the U.S. Secret Service has declared that there was “no deviation” from “proper procedures."

Secret Service Deputy Assistant Director Conrad A. Everett defended the vetting in a letter to Rep. John Conyers and Rep. Louise Slaughter, obtained by the Web site, The Raw Story. Guckert is the former reporter for GOPUSA/Talon News who has also been linked to male escort services.

“Mr. Guckert provided the Secret Service with his legal name, rather than his 'pen name,' and was assessed using the same criteria applied to all individuals seeking access to White House briefings,” Everett wrote.

“We would note,” Everett added, “that members of the press who are afforded access to the White House may utilize professional names that differ from their legal names. The Secret Service, however, requires that legal names be provided to enable the screening processes to work effectively.”

But Rep. Slaughter told The Raw Story, “While I appreciate the Secret Service's response to some of our questions, the bigger picture remains. The relationship between this Administration and Jeff Gannon was anything but typical and the American people deserve the full, unvarnished truth.”

Rep. Conyers said questions remained about who at the White House paved the way for Guckert to receive a “day pass,” meant for occasional use by out-of-town journalists, nearly every weekday for two years.

John Aravosis of Americablog, who has been prominent in the current uproar, asked: “If Gannon's day pass was effectively equivalent to a 'hard pass' given to long-term White House reporters, why didn't Gannon get a more thorough background check?” In his view, Gannon/Guckert “posed the same potential risk to national security as any hard pass reporter,” yet he was “never forced to get a hard pass, and thus never required to get the hard pass three-month FBI background check.”

Burying the Jeff Gannon Affair

March 1, 2005
Commentary by John Tully
The Washington Dispatch

A weekend journalism-school reporter, using a fake name, was given access to the President of the United States at White House press briefings before he even worked for a true news organization. He claims that he has seen a confidential, so-called C.I.A. document which reveals the name of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife and shows her recommending him for the trip to Niger to investigate yellowcake uranium sales to the Iraqis.

It turns out that Secret Service has been waving James Guckert by the guardhouse for two and a half years and once inside, he became Jeff Gannon. He wrote for a website, Talon News, run by Republican strategist Bobby Eberle who also ran the organization GOPUSA.

To understand how something like this could not be a story, that this could happen to begin with, is to understand how the District of Columbia really runs. However, one can only watch and wait as the laws of physics begin to rear their ugly head. Try as they might and for whatever reason, the mainstream media (as good of a description as any) just can't keep this monster down.

Howard Kurtz, the longtime and wise sage media critic with the Washington Post, trusted by little old Quaker ladies in Cleveland Park D.C. and lobbyists alike, just could not figure out what the big fuss was all about and immediately chalked it up to over-eager Internet types and their preoccupation with the salacious part of the story. The Great Diversion and the reason why non-political junkies in America are apparently not talking about this story is that this fella' publicly advertised his services as a male prostitute on numerous sites on the Internet and registered and was associated with numerous gay male pornographic websites.

Really.

CNN's Aaron Brown, so brilliant in his earlier years on the old ABC overnight news program, pooh-poohed the scandal as a bit of "so what". On Wolf Blitzer's "Hard News" program, Mr. Guckert/Gannon was treated almost softly, as if not to upset. The New York Times finally ran the story, deep in the back pages on Friday, Feb 11th, more than a week after website journalists began to fully reveal this fake journalist's deceptions. The shock jock mentality came out instantly in the groupthink mainstream media with a curious mix of apathy and frat-boy jokes.

There was no outrage to be outraged over.  Meanwhile, writers on web sites like The Daily Kos, David Brock's Media Matters and John Aravosis's America Blog, among others, had been doing their own journalism and found out that Mr. Guckert was not who or what he appeared to be. They started their dig after witnessing a press briefing by the President back in late January. A strange reporter asked a clearly partisan question / pronouncement that, among other things, stated that the Democrats were "divorced from reality".

They got dirt all right.

Columnists Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd finally had to write cute pieces about the mess nearing the end of last week. Katie, Matt, and The Today Show eventually did a quick three- minute story in the first hour last Wednesday. Radio man Don Imus couldn't get anyone to bite and wondered aloud about the titillating aspect of the thing. This was now more than ten days since the story had broken, or hadn't broken. No one was even discussing, outside of the Web, the nasty business of the C.I.A. memo that Mr.Guckert had claimed to have seen or knew about right there on Mr. Blitzer's show. Links to web sites where Mr. Guckert solicited clients for sex were widely available at the very same time Mr. Blitzer was tripping all over himself to give Mr. Guckert an easy pass. Ultimate Washington insider Mary Matalin, Vice President Cheney's sometimes consultant, told Imus that she just wished Ms. Dowd would just come in from the cold and get with the program.

Why did President Bush and Scott McClellan, the President's spokesman, call on Mr. Guckert/Gannon so often in those two and a half years and how could other reporters not write about Talon News and GOPUSA 's illegitimacy? Veterans of the White House beat sometimes don't see a question for years. Was he a plant?

But just like the high school sophomores that they are, the Washington press corps have hemmed and hawed and giggled their way for weeks now through a real-live genuine scandal unfurling at the White House. Waving their collective finger, they dismissed the whole affair in full. It was simply The bloggers and their liberal retribution for the Rather/CBS assassination and a lurid fascination with the X-rated angle thrown in for good measure.

Now the simply idiotic Bush-Tapes story, along with a long weekend and a brilliant fake-outrage campaign over a congressman's comments about Karl Rove, is threatening to bury forever a story that the entire profession of journalism would like to pretend was never born to begin with. Everyone seems to be looking around at each other and tsk-tsking the lack of outrage on each other's part, as if to say "This is terrible. Someone do some real reporting.

"Someone did - as Mr. Bush would say, on the "Internets". Stay Tuned.

John Tully is a writer and actor who lives in New York City and doesn't own a black NorthFace down jacket . He and his brand new wife are expecting their first child.  For more work of John Tully, visit www.LASun.net.

And another point of view….

Leave Jeff Gannon Alone!

He Gives Ne'erdowells Hope

February 21, 2005
by Steve Young
-- HOLLYWOOD (apj.us) –

I am so sick and tired of the battering of Jeff Gannon, or whatever his name is.

The people on the left who just can't get over losing the last... well, the last everything, have jumped on this poor guy like a starving liberal lioness who spots an inexperienced, so-called journalist with a sordid background who gets White House access where he gets called on by President Bush in secured press conferences antelope that's been separated from the herd.

They say "AKA Gannon" has no journalistic credentials and worked for nothing more than a front for a political activism Web site run by Republican Party activists who also lack any journalistic experience.

Gee-elite-media-whillikers. You might as well say that infotainers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who have no real news experience or academic background to dissect complicated issues accurately, can't tell millions of fans the import of news and issues and how they should think about them! Tens of millions of believers will tell you that to silence those who tell them what to think would not only be immeasurably thoughtless, but it would leave them... thoughtless.

What is being drowned out in this screaming for Gannon's head -- and pen -- and escort Web sites -- is something special he has given all of us incompetent ne'erdowells, something we may have never known if not for Jeff's nerve in breaking up the old-skilled, news-professional boys' club. He has given rise to a realm of possibilities where only hopelessness lived. No longer will inexperience or egregious bias keep us from becoming an important cog in the dissemination of government issued information.

And we're not talking taking the easy way: just because you don't work your way to the top doesn't mean, Web site or not, you don't have to kiss a lot of ass. Or do they have to kiss yours? I guess it depends on how much per hour.

Instead of demeaning Gannon, we should be applauding his true patriotic spirit.

Is he any different from Abraham Lincoln, freeing up the Armstrong Williamses of the world to once again tell the story that needs to be told as they were being paid to tell it?

Is Gannon so unlike those who fought for gay rights that hot July evening at the Stonewall Riots, bringing gay military escorts out of the closet and into the White House?

Is Gannon's gutsy firing of softball questions at the President, filled with fallacious information and blatant partisanship, any less a feat than Brett Favre allowing Michael Strahan to tackle him to break the NFL record for sacks?

And as long as we're asking, isn't asking the White House for answers to how and why Gannon was able to get through their arduous security scrutiny little more than another attempt to reveal classified information? Revealing it in the same insidious fashion that the anti-American liberal media attempts in attaining answers to hang Robert Novak just for outing a former undercover federal agent which endangered untold lives around the world?

Just like today's National Basketball Association multimillionaire teenagers will never forget the contributions of Mikan, Yardley and Jumping Johnny Green, Gannon's sacrifice will remain immeasurable for those credibility-bereft who will come long after.

While Gannon has been summarily dismissed from the White House corps, there are still so many questions left unasked. Who in the liberal-anti-gay military escort media will step up to fill the void and be bold enough to grill President Bush with the questions everyone else is afraid to ask? And when will we realize instead of shaming Gannon for his efforts we should be thanking him for unlocking the closet door of the unqualified?

So people, let's not be so quick to criticize. Let us not ask "How the hell did an inexperienced, so-called journalist with a sordid background get White House access and called-on by President Bush in secured press conferences?"

Instead let's ask, "Why can't we?"

QUESTIONS JEFF GANNON NEVER GOT TO ASK:

"In the early 1940's, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and turncoat Jim Jeffries murdered six million Jews and untold numbers of homosexuals. How do work with these obviously insane assassins to pass laws that will only help the American people? And could you also address why misguided Jews, Negroes and Gays blindly support the Democratic party."

"Senator Ted Kennedy said the 3,000 innocents who died on September 11 were little Eichmanns, and probably were all having secret affairs that would make their spouses crap their pants if they knew about them. With this Hate America First crowd, how can you ever successfully deliver democracy and freedom to those being tortured by tyrants around the world who are supported by liberal college professors in an academic community that teaches the blessings of Marxism and Christ-killing?"

"People say you said the reason you went in to Iraq was because of the WMD, Iraq's dangerous ties to Al Qaeda, and impending nuclear attacks from Iraq, obviously applaud the rape rooms of Saddam, when we all know you went in to bring freedom to the forsaken Iraqi people. Comment?"

"There are rumblings that Hillary Clinton may run for President in 2008. Will your administration bring out the fact that she slept with the entire membership of every Harvard fraternity AND sorority? And is there room in the budget to resurrect the Whitewater scandal to find out why she killed Vince Foster? I mean, if she did. Could you also comment on the size of her calves?"

"Your administration is the greatest thing that's ever been placed on God's green earth. Could you expand on that?"

"Liberals believe that murdering innocent unborn children is cool. Does that have anything to do with the good your Social Security reform will do?"

"If I just saw Wolf Blitzer take an extra croissant from the press breakfast buffet, but don't want to say so on camera, who do I report that to?"

"Why does Helen Thomas even bother to show up?"

"Democrats hate religion and urinate on God. Do you have any idea why?"

"Jon Stewart continues to trash Robert Novak for just adhering to his God-given, constitutional right to keep his sources private. Can you or Attorney General Gonzales figure out some way to shut down Comedy Central under the Patriot Act?"

"Where can I get one of those Mission Accomplished Bomber Jackets?"

"Democrats hate that minorities like Colin Powell, Alberto Gonzales and Condi Rice have gained influential posts under your administration. That's not a question but if you can make one out of it I think it would make for a freakin' dynamite opportunity to slam Jesse Jackson good."

"Could you tell us again how much you won the last election by? And which 'war hero' who gave hope to the North Vietnamese to carry on the war way longer and endangers the lives of POWs lost?"

"What the hell is it with Hollywood not nominating 'The Passion of the Christ' for a Best Picture Oscar? Are Michael Moore and Tim Robbins so out of touch with mainstream America that they believe that a film like 'Million Dollar Baby' that glorifies euthanasia are what our children need to see? And speaking of the good of our children, why do Democrats want to teach our children that premarital sex is best tried prior to entering middle school?"

"Gosh, you look really ripped today. What time do you get off? And I have a follow up."

"How do you know if you don't try it?"