[Media-watch] A hireling, a fraud and a prostitute - Guardian - 18/02/2005

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1416370,00.html

A hireling, a fraud and a prostitute

Bush's agent in the press corps has given spin a new level of meaning

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday February 17, 2005
The Guardian

The White House press room has often been a cockpit of intrigue, duplicity 
and truckling. But nothing challenges the most recent scandal there.

The latest incident began with a sequence of questions for President Bush at 
his January 26 press conference. First, he was asked whether he approved of
his administration's payments to conservative commentators. Government 
contracts had been granted to three pundits, who had tried to keep the
funding secret. "There needs to be a nice, independent relationship between 
the White House and the press," said the president as he called swiftly on
his next questioner.

Jeff Gannon, Washington bureau chief of Talon News, rose from his chair to 
attack Democrats in the Congress. "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?"

For almost two years, in the daily White House press briefings Gannon had 
been called upon by press secretary Scott McClellan to break up difficult
questioning from the rest of the press. On Fox News, one host hailed him as 
"a terrific Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent". Gannon
was frequently quoted and highlighted as an expert guest on rightwing radio 
shows. But who was Gannon? His strange non-question to the president
inspired inquiry. Talon News is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a group of 
Texas Republicans. Gannon's most notable article had asserted that John
Kerry "might some day be known as 'the first gay President'".

Gannon also got himself entangled in the investigation into the criminal 
disclosure of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame is
the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent by the Bush 
administration to discover whether Saddam Hussein was procuring uranium in
Niger for nuclear weapons. He learned that the suspicion was bogus; appalled 
that the administration lied about nuclear WMD to justify the Iraq war, he
wrote an article in the New York Times about his role after the war.

In retaliation, Plame's CIA cover was blown by administration officials. 
Gannon had called up Wilson to ask him about a secret CIA memo supposedly
proving that his wife had sent him on the original mission to Niger, 
prompting the special prosecutor in the case to question Gannon about his
"sources".

His real name, it turned out, is James Dale Guckert. He has no journalistic 
background whatsoever. His application for a press credential to cover the
Congress was rejected. But at the White House the press office arranged for 
him to be given a new pass every single day, a deliberate evasion of the
regular credentialing that requires an FBI security check. It was soon 
revealed. "Gannon" owned and advertised his services as a gay escort on more
than half a dozen websites with names like Militarystud.com, MaleCorps.com, 
WorkingBoys.net and MeetLocalMen.com, which featured dozens of photographs
of "Gannon" in dramatic naked poses. One of the sites was still active this 
week.

Thus a phony journalist, planted by a Republican organisation, used by the 
White House press secretary to interrupt questions from the press corps,
protected from FBI vetting by the press office, disseminating smears about 
its critics and opponents, some of them gay-baiting, was unmasked not only
as a hireling and fraud but as a gay prostitute, with enormous potential for 
blackmail.

The Bush White House is the most opaque - allowing the least access for 
reporters - in living memory. Every news organisation has been intimidated,
and reporters who have done stories the administration finds discomfiting 
have received threats about their careers. The administration has its own
quasi-official state TV network in Fox News; hundreds of rightwing radio 
shows, conservative newspapers and journals and internet sites coordinate
with the Republican apparatus.

Inserting an agent directly into the White House press corps was a daring 
operation. Until his exposure, he proved useful for the White House. But the
longer-term implication is the Republican effort to sideline an independent 
press and undermine its legitimacy. "Spin" seems quaint. "In this day and
age," said press secretary McClellan, waxing philosophical about the Gannon 
affair, "when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide or
try to pick and choose who is a journalist." It is not that the White House 
press secretary cannot distinguish who is or is not a journalist; it is that
there are no journalists, just the gaming of the system for the 
concentration of power.