Four domain names that are associated with the latest White House propaganda scandal have been placed on the market.
The adult domains are registered to Bedrock Corp, the corporation tied to James Guckert, who is the reporter accused of being a propaganda tool for the White House. They have been parked at Afternic, an online domain broker.
Guckert’s two escort domains, militaryescorts.com and militaryescortsm4m.com, can be bought flat out for $7,500 each. The asking price for hotmilitarystud.com, his most popular domain in terms of traffic according to Afternic, doubles to $15,000.
The seller, presumably Guckert, or an agent acting on his behalf, will consider lower offers, but is seeking a minimum of $500 for the three best-known domains, while the rarely mentioned wrestlingm4m.com has a minimum of just $100.
The seller described the majority of the domains in plain, yet effective, words: “This is the site you have been hearing about.” The wrestling-fetish orientated domain was the sole exception, described simply as “for sale.”
Journalists, led by their new media counterparts, the bloggers, began to question Guckert’s professionalism after Guckert asked President George Bush a loaded question based on inaccurate statements during a televised press briefing on January 26.
Guckert was forced to step down from his position as a White House correspondent for a conservative Web site after online investigators discovered that Guckert, who wrote under the pseudonym Jeff Gannon, had no journalism experience, and worked for an organization with ties to the Republican Party.
The ensuing investigation also uncovered Guckert’s ownership of three gay adult domain names. The fourth, the wrestling name, has been mentioned occasionally, but as it lacks the military theme that surrounds Guckert’s online activities.
The three military-themed sites are all more than suitable for gay adult businesses, according to Morgan Sommer, co-founder and co-publisher of the consumer-oriented, gay adult Internet magazine, Cybersocket.
“Hotmilitarystud.com is a perfect domain for a gay military fetish site. He chose a name that clearly informs consumers of what they should expect,” Sommer told AVN.com in an interview prior to the domains being offered for sale. “Military fetish sites are one of the most popular niche sites in the gay market. awolmarines.com and marinemeat.com are both great examples of a military niche site, but if you checked out the directory on our site you would find loads of them.”
As for militaryescorts.com and militaryescortsm4m.com, Sommer agreed those domains were good URLs for a gay escort service. “M4M only means one thing: men-for-men,” he said. “And I don’t think ‘military escorts’ can possibly be any clearer than it is.”
None of the gay adult domains currently registered to Guckert show any sign of ever having been used, normally a negative in the secondary domain market, but Afternic’s records show that the sites are all getting heavy traffic – hotmilitarystud.com has had over 120,000 unique visitors since it was parked on Afternic on Feb. 17, and both militaryescorts and militaryescortsm4m.com each have had nearly 50,000 unique visitors during the same time period.
Most recently, the majority of press around the scandal has centered on evidence that Guckert had worked as a gay escort. The evidence, provided to AMERICAblog last week by last by Paul Leddy, a Web designer and gay adult photographer, also showed that Guckert owned the three gay adult domain names. That drew charges of hypocrisy in light of Guckert’s support of an administration that was elected in part on an anti-gay rights platform.
Guckert had advertised his services as an escort on USMCPT.com, though he apparently let his registration expire and a Bangkok-based company recently purchased it.
Leddy was able to provide the files for USMCPT.com, including several nude photographs of Guckert.
Despite ample press opportunities, Guckert has yet to issue a denial of the charges that he worked as a gay escort using the aliases Jeff and Bulldog. At first he claimed the domains in question were registered on behalf of clients.
Guckert originally claimed that the domains in questions were registered on behalf of clients who had hired Bedrock Corp presumably to build a gay adult site.
The political domain names owned by Guckert have not been moved.
Guckert’s scandal comes on the heels of other propaganda scandals involving the White House, including payments made to conservative columnists Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, and Mike McManus to support various administration programs.
Over the weekend, the Government Accountability Office issued a warning to all government agencies that fake news broadcasts packaged as press releases violated propaganda rules. The Bush administration has been caught utilizing that practice twice in as many years.
Media Matters, a liberal organization, documented that Guckert often printed White House press releases verbatim, and frequently asked questions that were deemed by his peers to have been inappropriately slanted in the Bush administration’s favor.
