Who Was That Masked Man?

Those of you who get your news primarily from the mainstream (i.e. "liberal") media probably haven't heard too much about the saga of Jim Guckert/Jeff Gannon. Guckert/Gannon was the fake "correspondent" for a fake news service called "Talon News" who got credentials to attend and ask questions at White House press conferences. An excellent summary of the story appears in Joe Conason's recent column in the New York Observer, which can be read online at www.observer.com.

In a nutshell, the story is that Guckert/Gannon (real name Guckert, fake name Gannon) posed as a reporter who was regularly called upon by press secretary Scott McClellan to lob softball questions that were invariably nothing more than screeds against the Democrats. Guckert/Gannon's fake "news service" was in fact a front for a Texas-based Republican website called GOPUSA.com. I have previously written about the viciously anti-Semitic attacks this website published about George Soros. (See, "Jewish Voters: Looking Before Leaping Into Bed With The GOP", Sept. 8, 2004).

Guckert/Gannon came to national attention when Bush himself called on the fake reporter for a question at Bush's January 26 press conference. Apparently, it's not enough that Bush only has press conferences about as often as Bill O'Reilly puts down his loofah, and that Bush's handlers pre-screen the questions so that Bush doesn't have to tax his alleged brain too much, but in addition, Bush has to have planted Republican hacks posing as reporters being the ones serving up the questions. Guckert/Gannon asked Bush a question about how he could possibly work with Democrats in Congress who were obviously "out of touch with reality." As one would expect, Bush really wrestled with this mind bender.

Guckert/Gannon's performance at this last press conference was so over the top that some people started to ask questions about who this partisan jackass really was. Since then, as Conason reports, some interesting tidbits about Guckert/Gannon have come to light, including the following:

(1) Guckert/Gannon may have been involved with gay escort services and websites promoting gay pornography;

(2) Guckert/Gannon planted a false story on the internet during the election campaign, claiming that Kerry's "intern girlfriend" had taped an interview with a major television network supposedly substantiating her affair with the Senator;

(3) Guckert/Gannon told former Ambassador Joseph Wilson that he had access to classified CIA files relating to Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame;

(4) Guckert/Gannon worked closely with GOP operative Morton Blackwell, the great humanitarian who came up with the charming idea of distributing Purple Heart Band-aids at the Republican Convention mocking John Kerry's Vietnam War service.

If you are a follower of the so-called "liberal media," you probably haven't heard anything about most of this. The New York Times has carried almost nothing about the Guckert/Gannon story, and the television news has largely ignored it.

Which brings us to Conason's very appropriate comment about the whole affair:

"Imagine the media explosion if a male escort had been discovered operating as a correspondent in the Clinton White House. Imagine that he was paid by an outfit owned by Arkansas Democrats and had been trained in journalism by James Carville. Imagine that this gentleman had been cultivated and called upon by Mike McCurry or Joe Lockhart -- or by President Clinton himself. Imagine that this 'journalist' had smeared a Republican Presidential candidate and had previously claimed access to classified documents in a national-security scandal."

You can certainly imagine that in such a scenario you would not be hearing what you are hearing from the mainstream media now: the sounds of silence.

Footnote: The morning after I first posted this blog, Maureen Dowd ran a column in the New York Times about the Guckert/Gannon affair. Maybe something's going to filter out after all.