A White House correspondent and writer for news Website TalonNews.com resigned after a round of Internet bloggers exposed him as working under an alias and possibly owning a few military-themed gay Adult Websites.
James D. Guckert, who wrote under the name Jeff Gannon, is believed to have past connections and possible ownership of a small number of gay Websites, including HotMilitaryStud.com, MilitaryEscorts.com, and MilitaryEscortsm4m.com. A National Public Radio report February 9 said the sites were registered to a Delaware address "the same as one held by a James Guckert. And that's the name Gannon used to apply for press credentials on Capitol Hill."
NPR said Guckert claimed he created the sites for clients of a software company where he had once worked, but "his Christian faith has enabled him to receive forgiveness for the sins of his past."
AVNOnline.com attempted to reach those three gay Websites, but attempts to enter them were greeted with a page blank except for this advisory from a Divide Zero Control Panel Version 1.0 application: "Please wait while you are redirected to our secure server. If you are not automatically redirected within three seconds, please click here." Clicking that link takes the viewer only to a secure login page.
News reports since Gannon/Guckert revealed his resignation on his own Website February 8, both in print and online, have buzzed over his leaving Talon News and the exposure of his using a nom de plume. The buzz amplified when White House spokesman Scott McClellan admitted at a February 10 news briefing that he knew Guckert's real name was not Jeff Gannon.
"Talon News Washington, D.C. reporter and White House correspondent Jeff Gannon submitted his resignation from our organization effective February 8, 2005," said a statement at the news site from editor-in-chief Robert R. Eberle.
"I understand and support Jeff's decision, and have accepted the resignation," continued the statement. "We are currently evaluating candidates to fill this critical assignment, and anticipate minimal interruption of Talon's coverage of our nation's capitol and the White House in the meantime."
The Gannon/Guckert uproar extended to Capitol Hill. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) asked McClellan in a letter to release all documents about how much the White House knew about Gannon/Guckert's activities.
"As you may know, Mr. Guckert/Gannon was denied a Congressional press pass because he could not show that he wrote for a valid news organization," wrote Lautenberg, who also said he led Senate efforts to probe other instances of Bush Administration "propaganda efforts," including payouts to columnists Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, and Michael McManus.
"Given the fact that he was denied Congressional credentials," Lautenberg continued, "I seek your explanation of how Mr. Guckert/Gannon passed muster for White House press credentials…. Given the backdrop of [Williams, Gallagher, and McManus], coupled with Mr. Guckert/Gannon's role in recent White House press briefings and press conferences, it is understandable that the circumstances of Mr. Guckert/Gannon's credentialing have raised suspicion."
Gannon/Guckert was exposed earlier this week by a round of blogs and news sites with liberal political views, including DailyKos, Eschaton, and Media Matters. The third of those is a watchdog site begun by former conservative David Brock, known best as the writer whose magazine articles on former President Bill Clinton's extramarital sex life as Arkansas governor helped trigger the probes that led to his impeachment in 1998. Talon News, for its part, is believed to be owned by an operative in the Texas Republican Party organization.
What first outraged the liberal bloggers was a January 26 White House press conference, where – called on by President Bush – Gannon/Guckert asked how the president "would work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality," after introducing his question with an observation that Senate Democrats painted dire economic pictures.
The outrage ramped up, according to Editor & Publisher, when Gannon/Guckert refused, when first suspected, to deny he used a nom de plume for his Talon News writings and at the White House press briefings.
Guckert on his own Website announced his resignation from Talon News the night of February 8. "Because of the attention being paid to me I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News," he said in that announcement. "In consideration of the welfare of me and my family I have decided to return to private life. Thank you to all those who supported me."
But Guckert also told his hometown newspaper, the Wilmington News-Journal, that he feared for other reporters if this could have happened to him for nothing more than asking a question at a White House press briefing. "If this is what happens to me," he said to the paper, "what reporter is safe?"
Former Reagan White House official James Pinkerton, now a newspaper columnist and media critic for Fox News Network, told Salon.com that the Gannon/Guckert case "begs further investigation," especially if Gannon/Guckert had a White House press pass with something other than his own name on it, adding that in six years of his own work at the White House who got in was decided very strictly.
"It's inconceivable to me," Pinkerton told Salon.com, "that the White House, especially after 9/11, gives credentials to people without doing a background check.... If [Guckert] was walking around the White House with a pass that had a different name on it than his real name, that's pretty remarkable."
But another critic, former Washington Post White House reporter Dana Milbank, told MSNBC that the real scandal in the Gannon/Guckert episode is that it was Weblogs and not the White House or the conventional news media which exposed the matter.
Another Washington Post writer, Dan Froomkin, reportedly said in an online chat February 9 that McClellan had some splainin' to do, specifically why Bush called on Gannon/Guckert at that January 26 briefing and whether anything along that line had been pre-arranged between the White House press office and Talon News.
Conservative oriented online blogs and news forums are weighing in just as vituperatively about the affair. One such comment came on the popular Republican-oriented forum FreeRepublic.com, on a thread discussing Democratic forum DemocraticUnderground.com's call for a federal investigation into the Gannon/Guckert case.
"They've gone completely bonkers and have lost ALL sense of proportion," said the FreeRepublic.com poster, "especially considering this same bunch was, just a few years ago, downplaying Clinton lying under oath."
