http://www.historycommons.org The Center for Grassroots Oversight aims to provide the public with a means to collaborate on investigations at the grassroots level. en-us http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a021805gannonrove#a021805gannonrove http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a021805gannonrove#a021805gannonrove Investigative reporters for CBS and other mainstream outlets find ties between faux journalist "Jeff Gannon" and White House political guru Karl Rove. Gannon, a conservative Internet "reporter" and gay male escort whose real name is James Guckert, says he only met Rove once, at a White House Christmas party. But the ties between Gannon/Guckert and Rove run much deeper. Circumstantial evidence includes the ease with which Gannon/Guckert obtained White House press corps day passes, and the fact that Rove has talked with the extremist Internet political organization GOPUSA, which owns Talon News. Gannon/Guckert formerly wrote for Talon. Both GOPUSA and Talon are owned by Bobby Eberle, a Texas Republican and business associate of conservative direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie. Bobby Eberle has boasted of Talon's "conservative slant" and GOPUSA's "instant built-in bias." Gannon/Guckert also played a key role in the defeat of former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) in his 2004 bid to keep his Senate seat . CBS political editor Dotty Lynch calls Gannon/Guckert and Talon News "mini-Drudge Reports: a 'news' source which partisans use to put out negative information, get the attention of the bloggers, talk radio, and then the [mainstream media] in a way that mere press releases are unable to achieve." Eberle has posted what author and media critic Frank Rich later calls "effusive thanks on the Web to both [talk show host G. Gordon] Liddy and Karl Rove 'for their assistance, guidance, and friendship.'" blackmax 2009-11-04T14:43:42-08:00 http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a020905gannonquits#a020905gannonquits http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a020905gannonquits#a020905gannonquits Conservative faux journalist and gay prostitute Jeff Gannon, whose real name is James Guckert, quits as a White House reporter following his exposure by media watchdog organization Media Matters and Internet bloggers. For years, Gannon/Guckert has functioned as a "safe" White House reporter for conservative Internet news site Talon News, providing "softball" questions to President Bush and his press secretaries and representatives that allow the White House to reiterate and emphasize its talking points . He also resigns as a Talon correspondent. Gannon does not apologize for his flatly partisan questioning, and says his questions merely counterbalance those of other reporters, whom he says are largely liberal and hostile towards the Bush administration: "Perhaps the most disturbing thing has been the notion that there isn't room for one conservative voice in the White House press corps." Gannon/Guckert refuses to acknowledge his second vocation as a gay prostitute, which he pursues under his given name, and merely says his use of a pseudonym for his journalistic pursuits is a "very innocent ... commercial consideration." Besides, he says, many journalists change their names for broadcast purposes. He does not name any journalists who operate under such pseudonyms. Gannon/Guckert's boss at Talon, Bobby Eberle , says that the White House issued press passes to the "reporter" under his real name, which indicates the White House knew he was writing under a pseudonym. And Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), noting that Gannon/Guckert was denied Congressional press passes because he could not demonstrate that he worked for a legitimate news service, wants to know why Gannon/Guckert was able to pass muster at the White House. "This issue is important from an ethical as well as from a national security standpoint," Lautenberg says. "It is hard to understand why a man with little real journalism experience was given a White House press corps credential." White House press secretary Scott McClellan denies knowing about Gannon/Guckert's pseudonym until just recently, and says, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors." Days later, in a CNN interview conducted by Wolf Blitzer, Gannon/Guckert admits that he is a "former" gay prostitute, admits his real name, says no one at the White House knew about his sexual past, and says: "I've made mistakes in my past. Does my past mean I can't have a future? Does it disqualify me from being a journalist?" He says he used a pseudonym because his real name is difficult to pronounce. Liberal gay activist John Aravosis, whose AmericaBlog first published pictures of Gannon/Guckert advertising his sexual favors on gay escort Web sites, says the issue is not Gannon/Guckert's right to be a journalist but his "White House access. ... The White House wouldn't let him in the door right now, knowing of his background." Aravosis says Gannon/Guckert is guilty of "what I call family values hypocrisy. Basically, he's asking the gay community to protect him when he attacks us." Gannon/Guckert wrote numerous articles blasting 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry's support of gay rights and wrote that Kerry would, if elected, be the country's "first gay president." On his blog, Aravosis adds: "This is the conservative Republican Bush White House we're talking about. It's looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a ''hooker'' to ask the president of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a 'daily basis.'" New York Times columnist Frank Rich accuses Blitzer of asking "questions almost as soft as those 'Jeff' himself had asked in the White House." Blitzer accepted without question Gannon/Guckert's assertion that he used the name Gannon because Guckert was too hard to pronounce, and never questioned Gannon/Guckert's claim that Talon News "is a separate, independent news division" of GOPUSA. Blitzer, Rich notes, waited until a brief follow-up interview to ask why Gannon/Guckert was questioned by FBI investigators about his knowledge of the Valerie Plame Wilson affair . Blitzer did not ask if his knowledge came from the same officials who took care of his White House press credentials, nor did he ask if Gannon/Guckert has any connection with conservative journalist and CNN commentator Robert Novak, who outed Plame Wilson. "The anchor didn't go there," Rich writes. Gannon/Guckert will later say that his resignation from Talon News and from the White House press corps is an example of "the politics of personal destruction." blackmax 2009-11-04T14:43:12-08:00 http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a012695gannonguckert#a012695gannonguckert http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a012695gannonguckert#a012695gannonguckert A reporter calling himself Jeff Gannon asks a question of President Bush during a White House press conference: "Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the US economy," Gannon says. "[Minority Leader] Harry Reid was talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet, in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work--you said you're going to reach out to these people--how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" (Reid never mentioned soup lines; that reference comes from a satire of Reid by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh.) In earlier conferences, Gannon attempted to link Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to actress Jane Fonda, a favorite target of the right, and questioned why anyone would dispute Bush's National Guard service record. The Internet media watchdog site Media Matters, intrigued by Gannon's highly partisan questions, soon learns that he works for an obscure news Web site called Talon News, itself a front for the extremist Internet organization GOPUSA . New York Times media critic Frank Rich will call Talon News a fake news site staffed by Republican activists and filled with regurgitated press releases from the White House and the Republican National Committee. Rich will go on to note that Talon News is owned by a Texas delegate to the 2000 Republican presidential convention, and took part in an effort to falsely smear Kerry with allegations of infidelity. The Boston Globe soon reports of Gannon, "The Bush administration has provided White House media credentials to a man who has virtually no journalistic background, asks softball questions to the president and his spokesman in the midst of contentious news conferences, and routinely reprints long passages verbatim from official press releases as original news articles on his Web site." (Gannon will call his practice of passing off quotes from the White House as objective news reports "the ultimate in journalistic honesty.") Examination of press conference transcripts shows that White House press secretary Scott McClellan often calls on Gannon when other reporters begin asking difficult questions; Gannon is a reliable source of "softball" questions that allow McClellan to get back on track and resume issuing White House talking points. After Gannon becomes a figure of interest to media observers and Internet bloggers, they soon learn that he is really James Guckert, a male prostitute who posts nude pictures of himself on gay escort sites such as "hotmilitarystud.com" and numerous others, and charges $200 an hour (or $1,200 a weekend) for his services. Though McClellan will deny that the White House press staff knew anything of Gannon/Guckert's false identity until just before the story broke in early February 2005, former Reagan official Bruce Bartlett will say that "if Gannon was using an alias, the White House staff had to be involved in maintaining his cover." Further investigation will show that Gannon/Guckert has been posing as a reporter for two years. According to White House logs, Gannon/Guckert has regularly visited the White House on days when no press conferences are being held, and on at least 12 occasions was checked in but not checked out. Gannon/Guckert's visits raise speculation that he might have visited the White House for licentious purposes, though he will deny ever spending the night there for any reason. The Gannon/Guckert story highlights the existence of the so-called "Lavender Bund," the cadre of closeted Republican gays who help the religious right and the GOP advance their openly anti-gay agendas. Gannon/Guckert will also be accused of plagiarizing other journalists' work, further calling into question his journalistic credentials. blackmax 2009-11-04T14:41:40-08:00 http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a051209tillmanparentscaution#a051209tillmanparentscaution http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a051209tillmanparentscaution#a051209tillmanparentscaution Mary Tillman, mother of Ranger Pat Tillman , a former NFL star killed under disputed circumstances in Afghanistan in 2002 , sends a one-sentence email to the Associated Press: "It is imperative that General [Stanley] McChrystal be scrutinized carefully during the Senate hearings." McChrystal, once a 'black ops' Special Forces chief, is to head up the war in Afghanistan, replacing fired General David McKiernan. On April 29, 2004, McChrystal, then a lieutenant general, urged top generals to warn "our nation's leaders," particularly the president, not to refer to "the devastating enemy fire" story cited in paperwork he had already approved to award Tillman the Silver Star posthumously. He wrote that it was "highly possible" Tillman's death was due to friendly fire. When these facts regarding McCrystal's role in the Pentagon's suppression of the truth about the circumstances of Tillman's death became known in 2007, the Pentagon wanted him to be sanctioned. However, in 2008, the Senate overwhelmingly voted for his promotion from a two-star to a three-star general. In an interview with the Associated Press, Tillman's father, Pat Sr., says that McChrystal had joined a "falsified" investigation into criminal conduct in an earlier Army probe. McChrystal's confirmation process is slated to be finalized in late June. VPresley 2009-11-03T13:59:46-08:00 http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a060903freefromtyranny#a060903freefromtyranny http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a060903freefromtyranny#a060903freefromtyranny Journalist Russell Mokhiber asks White House press secretary Ari Fleischer: "You said in April that the war was about weapons of mass destruction . The war resulted in thousands of innocent civilian deaths. ... Do you personally feel any remorse given the public case that is being made that this war was based on that false pretext?" Fleischer responds with an assertion about Iraq being safer because of the removal of a brutal tyrant: "Number one, you have no basis to say that it is a false pretext. Number two, when you take a look at the mass graves that have been discovered all around Iraq, I think that world breathes a sign of relief that the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, with no regard to human rights, was removed from power so that the Iraqi people can at long last have a life to build a future that is based on freedom and opportunity and not on tyranny." Mokhiber redirects Fleischer back onto the topic of WMD, noting, "But you said the war was based on weapons of mass destruction." Fleischer says, "That still stands, per earlier in the conversation." blackmax 2009-11-03T13:58:43-08:00 http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a060503bushdohawmd#a060503bushdohawmd http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a060503bushdohawmd#a060503bushdohawmd President Bush visits US CENTCOM headquarters in Doha, Qatar. One of the pressing issues on his mind is the continued failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As Time magazine later recounts the visit, Bush, meeting with the various generals in charge of the US forces, "skip[s] quickly past the niceties" and begins asking about WMD. No one answers. "Are you in charge of finding WMD?" he asks L. Paul Bremer, the newly installed head of the US civilian-led government . Bremer says no, and a clearly exasperated Bush asks the same question of General Tommy Franks, head of CENTCOM. Franks also denies responsibility. Finally, someone names the Washington official in charge of finding WMD: Defense Department aide Stephen Cambone. "Who?" Bush asks. blackmax 2009-11-03T13:57:45-08:00 http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a06010903misquote#a06010903misquote http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a06010903misquote#a06010903misquote Conservative defenders of the Bush administration contend that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was misquoted by Vanity Fair reporter Sam Tanenhaus. In an upcoming profile of Wolfowitz, Tanenhaus quotes him as saying, "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on" . According to a Defense Department transcript of the original May 9, 2003 interview, Wolfowitz's actual words were: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but ... there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one, which is the connection between the first two." Some of the controversy centers on which portions of the interview were on the record and which were not. Neoconservative pundit and columnist William Kristol is at the forefront of the counterattacks on Wolfowitz's behalf. After appearing on Fox News where he accuses Tanenhaus of "misquot[ing]" Wolfowitz's words and "taking [them] out of context," he writes a column railing against "[l]azy reporters" who don't bother to accurately report Wolfowitz's words, and noting, "Tanenhaus has mischaracterized Wolfowitz's remarks, ... Vanity Fair's publicists have mischaracterized Tanenhaus's mischaracterization, and ... Bush administration critics are now indulging in an orgy of righteous indignation that is dishonest in triplicate." Kristol concludes: "In short, Wolfowitz made the perfectly sensible observation that more than just WMD was of concern, but that among several serious reasons for war, WMD was the issue about which there was widest domestic (and international) agreement. ... Tanenhaus has taken a straightforward and conventional observation about strategic arrangements in a post-Saddam Middle East and juiced it up into a vaguely sinister 'admission' about America's motives for going to war in the first place." Kristol is joined by the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which calls the Tanenhaus piece "spin." blackmax 2009-11-03T13:55:49-08:00 http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a051805fergusondefund#a051805fergusondefund http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a051805fergusondefund#a051805fergusondefund The House of Representatives, as part of its trimming of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)'s proposed $31.8 billion appropriations for 2006, cuts the $136,000 allocated for a liaison to Hollywood. The DHS had planned to pay former actress Bobbie Faye Ferguson, a veteran of such television shows as ''The Dukes of Hazzard'' and ''Designing Women'', to work with Hollywood producers and scriptwriters to generate films and television shows that would portray the department in a positive light . DHS spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said of Ferguson's position, "This is a similar function that numerous other federal agencies possess, and is necessary in helping those in multimedia make their projects as accurate as possible." One example Roehrkasse gave was the propensity for some movies to inaccurately refer to the Immigration and Nationalization Service (INS), which is now part of DHS. But Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) is unconvinced by Roerhkasse's arguments, noting that the DHS should not be spending its money on Hollywood projects. "We should direct this money to actually help the people who respond and save lives," she says. "The people of this country have high expectations about their security after being violated on 9/11." Musgrave successfully proposes that the salary for Ferguson be redirected to funding state and local disaster teams. blackmax 2009-11-03T13:53:29-08:00 http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a031505hughesoutreach#a031505hughesoutreach http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a031505hughesoutreach#a031505hughesoutreach The Bush administration appoints veteran Bush adviser Karen Hughes as the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. Her main job will be to craft an administration marketing and public relations policy that will reach out to the Islamic and Arab worlds, and to convince Muslims and Arabs that the US is indeed their friend . But Hughes is immediately granted six months of personal leave before facing Senate confirmation in the fall. And Hughes's staff will include no Muslims. As a result, a high-level US official warns that "the gap between rhetoric and reality" will undermine the US's credibility in its outreach program. Hughes's deputy, Dina Powell, is not expected to take her position until at least May. The new initiative is at least partially sparked due to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report criticizing the administration for failing to develop a policy to improve the US image in the rest of the world. "[R]ecent polling data show that anti-Americanism is spreading and deepening around the world," the report finds. "Such anti-American sentiments can increase foreign public support for terrorism directed at Americans, impact the cost and effectiveness of military operations, weaken the United States' ability to align with other nations in pursuit of common policy objectives, and dampen foreign publics' enthusiasm for US business services and products." Another US official says the dearth of Muslims in the administration is worrisome. (Powell is Egyptian-American, but is a Christian, not a Muslim. The few officials of Arab descent in the Bush administration are, by and large, Christians.) "It's very important for American Muslims to be involved, as they're an important conduit to the wider Islamic world and they should be speaking out," that official says. "But American Muslims generally feel they're not included like other communities. We should be talking to them, as they have a lot of knowledge of the region." Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says, "You can do Muslim outreach without Muslims and it doesn't mean Dina Powell can't be effective, but the administration has not made much effort to integrate Muslim Americans in this effort." Carothers says many in the administration confuse public diplomacy with marketing. "There's deep confusion within the administration about what public diplomacy means," he says. "For some, it's simply selling America's image in the world. For others, it's something deeper that has to do with creating a partnership between America and Muslim countries to replace the current antagonism. ... The administration is convinced that if only the Muslim world understood us better they'd like us more, whereas many Muslims feel it's precisely because they understand us that they're unhappy." blackmax 2009-11-03T13:52:52-08:00 http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a030805dhsliaison#a030805dhsliaison http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a030805dhsliaison#a030805dhsliaison The media learns that the Department of Homeland Security has hired former actress Bobbie Faye Ferguson to serve as its liaison to Hollywood's movie and television industries. Ferguson, who has performed similar duties for NASA for seven years, is reviewing some 14 movie, television, and documentary projects. If she approves a script or idea, DHS will offer advice and technical help to the directors, producers, and actors in portraying what USA Today calls "the nation's homeland defenders." Ferguson, interviewed while touring the California-Mexico border, says: "I've had dozens and dozens of inquiries. It's always been a topic they've been interested in, but more so now." Last year DHS provided guidance for the production of ''The Terminal'', a thriller starring Tom Hanks as an immigrant stranded at a New York airport; it has also provided assistance to the television shows ''CSI: Miami'' and ''NCIS''. At least six other governmental agencies, most notably the Defense Department, have long employed liaisons between themselves and the film and television industries. But some have long held that agencies such as the Pentagon have used Hollywood as a vehicle for showing the federal government in positive fashions. Each branch of the military has offices in Hollywood; the military has provided assistance in film and television projects since the creation of the Defense Department in 1947. Homeland Security spokesman Brian Roehrkasse says Ferguson will help "give the public a better understanding of how the department ... protects the country." Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense says the money is not a wise use of taxpayer dollars: "Agencies pay for public relations and spin to make the public like them more, but it doesn't mean it's a good expenditure." Two months later, the House of Representatives will cut Ferguson's $136,000 salary from DHS's 2006 budget . blackmax 2009-11-03T13:52:20-08:00