posted
The bloggers are amateurs commenting off the cuff. Someone getting close access to the President under a pseudonym in order to ask incredibly partisan questions (have you read what sorts of tripe he asked?) which favored Bush's policies reflects nothing less than organized corruption or the most boundlessly fortunate incompetence I have seen in a long while.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
That is, the irrational among the bloggers should be smacked down, sure, but people at the White House should be fired over this, and that they aren't says a lot both about how high this went and the character of this administration.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
What is sad is that this is merely one of at least 3 or 4 that have come out. I don't have the linky handy but we have the gent paid to prop up No Child Left Behind and a woman who is a syndicated columnist in over 50 papers. Now Jeff Gannon. Makes me wonder how many more are doing this? Is this really a surprise from an Administration that made people sign "loyalty oaths" before entering any rally Bush attends?
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It's pretty sad when the movie business seems to have quicker ethical responses than an administration supporting the leader of the free world.
Posts: 516 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
Please demonstrate that the administration planned this, or that he used the day pass system in a way that has been denied to other people not favorable to the administration, before lobbing out accusations of "nothing less than organized corruption."
I'm confused by part of your response. It appears that this guy had tried to get press passes to both the House and Senate under his real name, and been denied because the place he was reporting for is known as a GOP consulting group.
Then...he goes to the White House and: 1) Uses an assumed name 2) But his reports show up in the "news outlet" wholely owned and operated by GOPUSA
Maybe I'm missing something, but this sounds fairly irregular to me. I assume that reporters are usually thoroughly vetted before they get inside a press conference at which the President will be speaking. I'm assuming, really, that they figured out the guy's real name and knew exactly who he reported to.
The only baffling thing to me is how the people at the White House who were involved in this thought it'd be a good idea that couldn't possibly come back to haunt them.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
There are two types of passes. "Hard" passes and daily passes. Hard passes allow the reporter to swipe in with little security check. They require significant background checks and Capitol Hill credentials.
There is no significant check done for daily passes, and this shouldn't surprise you. They have to be searched or scanned (I'm assuming). I've been within 20 feet of 3 different presidents. I passed through metal detectors each time, but only had to show ID once.
posted
I think the "kicker" for me was the President's interaction with this guy during conferences. It could a be coincidence that he got to the front row, but I've heard the press room's extremelyh territorial. I think it's highly unlikely there wasn't some type of administrative collusion at work. At a minimum, I suspect some one with operative capabilities was aware of his presence.
posted
Dag, you were within 20 feet of a prez. Cool. Was it in the White House press room? Under an assumed name? Did you ask the president any questions at a news conference?
quote:This guy is no journalist..., so how did he get into the white house press room???
Read up on the difference between day passes and hard passes. For day passes, they don't do a background check.
I'm also very uncomfortable with the government deciding who's a legitimate journalist. For scarce resources (read, hard passe), it's probably necessary. Unless people were being denied day passes, which I haven't heard of yet, then it seems an unnecessary distinction to make.
quote:I'm also very uncomfortable with the government deciding who's a legitimate journalist.
Yeah, I guess I am too. The line used to be if you had a daily newspaper published. Then TV came, now the internet/new media. The line is getting blurry between legimate journalism and activism.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
Dag, interesting stuff about day passes. I had no idea! Actually, given the paininthebutt that air travel has become, the security at the White House related to day passes seems like an insane risk.
If nothing else, we should thank this guy for showing just how easy it is to get within a few feet of the President on a weekly basis.
quote:Although Press Secretary Scott McClellan and others at the White House knew that Gannon was not his real name, they always referred to him by that name, he said in the interview. "My professional name is Jeff Gannon, and that is what people called me,” he explained, adding, in an odd reference, “It is like Kirk Douglas, they do not refer to him when they meet him by his real name." . . . "I requested clearance each day via an e-mail to the White House Press office the night before. I gave them my professional name, my legal name, my social security number, my address and phone number, and the news service where I worked," he said. "I assumed that there was some kind of cursory check that they do, but did not know what. They never asked me for more information." He said he usually went to press briefings there “at least once a week," or more.
On those days, he said, "I would go to the guard gate and show my driver's license with my legal name, and they looked me up on the computer and let me in." He said he would receive a day pass, which has no name -- Gannon or Guckert -- on it. He said he sought the permanent "hard pass" when he first wanted to cover the White House, but after finding out he needed a congressional press pass -- which he’d been denied -- to get that far, he utilized only the day passes. “I made several attempts to get a congressional pass, and each time they said 'no.' They were concerned with the Talon News business model,” he said. “They didn't feel that we fit the criteria."
Anyway, I guess the irregularity of his having a false identity (um, excuse me, "business name" -- just like Kirk Douglas, ) is explained by the fact that he'd actually revealed his real identity to the folks who make decisions on the passes.
I'm with you, though, this doesn't really sound like collusion so much as, at worst, someone in the press office not really thinking through the implications, especially in the context of the ongoing scandal about paying the press to deliver Administration messages under cover of independent news items.
It's just one more thing to display the fact that, for many of us, trust has been eroded.
quote: He gained that access not by going through the normal full background check most journalists face when obtaining a "hard pass," the ultimate White House credential, but rather by getting day passes, which require only an abbreviated background check. According to one current member of the White House press corps, Gannon was the only reporter to skirt the rules that way, obtaining daily passes month after month for nearly two years.
So, they (and at least one member of the legitimate White House Press Corps) are saying this was irregular.
Not that day passes aren't given out, but that if someone is going to show up repeatedly, they would've been expected to get a full pass (and go through the full check.
Could be professional jealousy, I suppose -- guarding one's turf.
But it does make it sound less like this guy was treated just like everyone else.
posted
More from the Salon article Bob lined to above:
quote:Hard passes to the White House are designed to give journalists who regularly cover the White House easy access: They simply swipe their credentials at the entrance while the Secret Service checks their bags. Day passes, which are picked up every day at the press office, are intended to provide flexibility for out-of-town journalists who might need to cover the White House for a day or two, or to allow White House reporters to bring in visitors who want to see the press briefings. But the current day-pass system was not set up to give permanent access to reporters who, like Guckert, fail to qualify for a hard pass.
I don't find this to be compelling evidence of a "conservative media" conspiracy, but it is troubling.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I'm sensing a plot for a political thriller. The terrorist assumes an identity as a conservative press reporter, gets day passes for 2+ years, and then finally punctures the President's ascending aorta on National TV with the toothpick from a cocktail weiner.
Political tension has been running high, that's for sure. We could use a little Manchuria. Or maybe not.
Rumor mill per local NPR is that "Gannon" had some sort of involvement with the Dan Rather memo upset and something odd going on in his interview with the husband of the Novak-exposed CIA agent. I cannot find confirmation yet. It is a very, very complicated story.
[Edit: Bob, that would have to be a verrry long toothpick, as the ascending aorta is pretty well protected by the thoracic ribcage. He might have more luck with one of the carotid arteries in the neck. *shifty look ]
posted
Dag: he had access time after time under an assumed name using credentials that did not show the name he had access under. I can believe once, twice, or even sporadically, but someone had to have looked at this guy (assuming they didn't bring him in in the first place, which would seem to be well within standard operating procedure of the current white house) and said "why is someone getting access under an assumed name?" -- notice that "Gannon" has not provided an explanation as to this.
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posted
I did make my statement, though, with an incomplete understanding of the Day Pass system, so I am downgrading from "nothing less" to "extremely likely".
The Bush administration has spent a huge amount of effort on presenting the right face to the press. That they didn't either sponsor Gannon or check up on him and decide the deception was a wonderful thing (and note he was regularly called upon) seems an extremely remote possibility. Either way there was corruption, and given what's been uncovered regarding other "journalists", I think it far too likely that there was collusion from the beginning.
and then paste the resulting small link back in place of what you have.
CT! Thanks...
Note to Secret Service review team -- CT is not providing actual advice to would-be terrorists. All scenarios discussed or implied are entirely fictitious. Resemblance to actual ascending aorti, carotid arteries, or Presidents is purely accidental.
The toothpicks in cocktail weiners are, regretably, all too real.
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posted
fugu, I think Gannon was actually called upon one time, and had a question answered only twice (the other time, he asked a question when Bush was actually pointing to someone else, and Bush went ahead and answered anyway).
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posted
Bob, I know I've heard audiotape of Gannon getting called on more than twice, but I don't think it was by GWB. I seem to recall maybe the Press Secretary (or whoever is comparable to CJ)?
Edit: Yep, looks like Press Secretary McClellan, at least if the Boston Globe has the facts straight:
quote:Nonetheless, transcripts of White House briefings indicate that McClellan often calls on Gannon and that the press secretary -- and the president -- have found relief in a question from Gannon after critical lines of questioning from mainstream news organizations. ... Last year, during the presidential campaign, Gannon's comments could be even more pointed. In a Feb. 10, 2004, briefing with McClellan, for example, Gannon rose to deliver the following:
"Since there have been so many questions about what the president was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war America was still fighting?"
And another piece to the puzzle of how this is unwinding (same Globe article):
quote:David Brock, the former investigative journalist who made his name revealing aspects of former President Bill Clinton's extramarital affairs, said he was watching last week's press conference on television and the "soup lines" question sparked his interest because it "struck me as so extremely biased." Brock asked his media watchdog group, Media Matters for America, to look into Talon News.
posted
The press secretary has called on him at least once, maybe more. President Bush has only called on him once, ASFAIK. edit: I see from CT's quote that "[press secretary] McClellan often calls on Gannon"...
posted
Looks like a lot more than "once," Morbo. (See above post of mine.) Huh. That's more like what I remembered. I recall wondering who he was, but I just didn't give it much thought.
quote:What is sad is that this is merely one of at least 3 or 4 that have come out. I don't have the linky handy but we have the gent paid to prop up No Child Left Behind and a woman who is a syndicated columnist in over 50 papers. Now Jeff Gannon. Makes me wonder how many more are doing this? Is this really a surprise from an Administration that made people sign "loyalty oaths" before entering any rally Bush attends?
fil, FWIW, the third pressperson who was discovered to have been paid by the GWB administration was Michael McManus (Salon article at link). That was only a $10,000 payment to report favorably on a GWB-backed marriage initiative in his syndicated column titled "Ethics & Religion," and given that that payment was a couple of orders of magnitude less than William's, it got much less play.
quote:Not that day passes aren't given out, but that if someone is going to show up repeatedly, they would've been expected to get a full pass (and go through the full check.
The portion you quoted didn't say that they would've been expected to get a full pass - it said he was the only regular not to do so. The regulars wouldn't want to, because the hard pass is better, and it's very possible no one else thought of doing this.
posted
I didn't think of the times the Press Secretary called on him.
He did mention that in the articles I read, that Ari Fleischer never called on him because of the way he worked his way through the crowd, but that McClellan does his calls more spread out. I guess that implies that he gets called on with about the same frequency as everyone else -- at least in his own mind.
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posted
From a site which I cannot vouch for [alert-->more rumor mill!], FreeRepublic, there is a compilation of comments from other White House journalists.
Interestingly:
quote:Several reporters pointed to Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter, who has been attending press events through a daily press pass for several years. Some say he is as partisan as Gannon in his questions, but often with a left-leaning approach. One reporter called him "the ideological flip-side of Gannon.
posted
It's definitely a biased site, but there's enough details there that can be confirmed that hopefully we'll get more info on this aspect of it soon.
The security concerns based on his name don't seem valid to me - they knew his real name, and it doesn't seem to hurt security to let him use a professional name.
posted
I know there are several newspersons who use a professional name that differs from the one on their birth certificate, e.g., Larry King. I think this was brought up at FreeRepublic, too.
I don't know if any were using multiple names concurrently, though. It's certainly possible.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
White house website that has Press Secretary McClellan answering questions about Gannon, released 2/10: Press Gaggle with Scott McClellan --gaggle is a WH term, not mine.
quote: Q Last Friday, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that shows that Ambassador Joe Wilson lied when he said his wife didn't put him up for the mission to Niger. The British inquiry into their own prewar intelligence yesterday concluded that the President's 16 words were "well-founded." Doesn't Joe Wilson owe the President and America an apology for his deception and his own intelligence failure?
posted
I'm not defending Gannon's journalistic ethics, but this is not the kind of thing we want the government using to decide who gets press credentials.
(I'm not saying you're advocating that, BTW.)
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quote: Gannon is also embroiled in the Valerie Plame story.
In 2003 he interviewed Plame's husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, after unnamed administration officials leaked her role as a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak.
According to his Talon News story, Gannon asked Wilson about "an internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel [detailing] a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports."
House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) this week questioned how Gannon got access to the documents and asked the special prosecutor investigating the Plame leak to include Gannon in his probe.
posted
Has anybody been following the absolutely bizzare developments in this story that have surfaced since the eighth? It's... Well, I'll just say wow. Gannon/Guckert has been frantically trying to erase his web presence by closinmg his website and deleting all of his posts at conservative-guy.com but the bloggers are too fast for him. The bombshell is that he apparently had access to a classified memo regarding Valerie Plame, the CIA agent "outed" by Robert Novak.
Oh, and speaking of "outed"... It turns out that he runs a few military-themed gay porn sites in which he is featured. Posts: 894 | Registered: Apr 2000
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posted
Yeah, I heard about this through the Times and I've gotta say, it's the weirdest thing I've ever come upon. If they're going to have a ringer reporter, why in the world would they choose THIS guy!? O_o
Posts: 4816 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote: Talon News Web Site Closes Amid Heavy Criticism Fri Feb 25, 8:42 PM ET HOUSTON (Reuters) - A Texas-based Web site whose conservative connections touched off a White House media controversy has shut down "to reevaluate operations," according to a message posted on the site.
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