The Rove That Dare Not Speak Its Plame

Did the Cheney-Rove effort to discredit Joseph Wilson include dispatching a surrogate posing as a reporter, quondam male escort Jeff Gannon, to interview Wilson? And does the White House relationship with Gannon continue today?

I’ve pointed out before that Gannon's blog sounds very much as if it originates from the keyboard of Karl Rove. Rife with dated turns of phrase, political history arcana, and pats on the back for Rove, it's not always plausible as the voice of a man who never wrote a word or took part in politics until his late 40s.

The blog's preoccupations and elisions are also telling. Although it came into existence over Plamegate, it hasn't taken note of Rove's or Libby's fresh worries. Nor has it mentioned Judy Miller's release from jail, despite having called impatiently last summer for Miller to give testimony that the blog was somehow then sure would "clear" Rove. That was back when it looked as if it all might fall on Libby, if only Miller would talk.

But the blog's remarkably upbeat and confident on the Harriet Miers nomination. A recent post reads like a Rove speech, complete with his windy trademark omniscience and references to Sun-Tzu. Some excerpts:

"Like most conservatives, I have grown weary of how the Democrats continue to assert their relevance in governance when voters have removed them from power and reduced their numbers in three successive elections...When you peel away the top layer of beltway bloviation, the brilliant strategy becomes easier to see...If you view political strategy as war, as I am sure Karl Rove does, the Miers pick makes perfect sense....She will be confirmed, probably as easily as John G. Roberts…When conservatives stop to think about it, they will be comforted by what Bush has achieved. He will have delivered the Court he promised, without the political bloodshed everyone assumed would take place. A principle of Sun-Tzu is to have won the war before the first shot is fired."

At this point, Gannon (or Rove) is just about the only conservative blogger left standing who unreservedly admires Bush-Rove's "brilliance" in naming Harriet Miers to the court.

So, what does this all have to do with Valerie Plame's outing? Readers will recall that Gannon (nee James Guckert) did a long, three-part interview with former ambassador Joseph Wilson in October 2003 for Talon News, a fake news outlet set up by Texas GOP activist Bobby Eberle (a friend of Rove's and Grover Norquist's) to give Gannon press cover.

Gannon subsequently was questioned at least once, in early 2004, by FBI investigators who asked him about his references during the Wilson interview to a classified State Department memo that mentioned Plame in a paragraph marked "S" for secret. According to a New York Times story Friday, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is now examining possible espionage law breaches in connection with the leaking of that memo.

Gannon may or may not have seen the memo; his answers about it have been contradictory, and the date of the interview hasn't been reported. But even assuming that his only knowledge of the memo was from an October 17, 2003 Wall Street Journal article that discussed it, how was it that Gannon first came to pursue the interview with Wilson?

Reporters and bloggers at Daily Kos, E Pluribus Media and BecomingGannon have suggested that Gannon was created as a GOP operative, originally to aid the Iraq propaganda effort. Gannon first appeared in the White House briefing room early in 2003, even before Talon News had been created. (Neither Talon News nor GOPUSA, the group that created it, was paying Gannon at the time, according to Talon's subsequent application for a Congressional press pass for Gannon.)

Gannon was useful in several ways. His puffball questions took up time that would have otherwise gone to serious questions, of course, and they also steered the agenda of discussion in directions the White House wanted.

He was on to the Wilson-Plame story early. On July 24, 2003, ten days after the Robert Novak column outing Plame was published, Gannon launched his own blog with a denunciation of the media for asking questions about the leak, which he said amounted to trying to make Bush into “George W. Nixon.”

By September, Gannon has said, he’d begun speaking with Wilson, though their interview did not take place until at least (internal date references suggest) mid-October. Well before that, at a White House press briefing on October 1, Gannon came to Scott McClellan’s aid with the question that Rove and other White House critics of Wilson had been pushing:

MR. McCLELLAN: You have a hypothetical? (Laughter.) I asked for a hypothetical. No, no. (Laughter.)

Q I'm no Bob Novak, but my feelings are really hurt that nobody leaked anything to me. (Laughter.) Has the White House asked George Tenet or anyone else at the CIA why they would send a partisan, like Ambassador Wilson, on this mission? And because he is so partisan--

MR. McCLELLAN: Has who asked? Has who asked anybody?

Q Has the White House asked George Tenet or anyone at the CIA why they would send a partisan like Ambassador Wilson on this mission? He's proven himself to be partisan, and does that cast doubt on the report that he filed in this matter?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I think we've kind of been through this issue already. I don't know of any such conversations. Certainly, I don't think it's my position to get into speculating about someone's motives. I think that is a role for you in the media to determine how to follow.

Q Isn't the White House the least bit curious--

MR. McCLELLAN: And how to -- and how to present it to the public.

Q -- about how the process was, that Ambassador Wilson was chosen to go on this very important mission?

MR. McCLELLAN: I've seen the news coverage, just like you have. I've seen the issues that have been raised, and, again, I think that that's best left for you in the media to determine, not me from this podium.

So, with Gannon's assistance, McClellan was able to urge "you in the media" to investigate how Wilson was chosen for the mission to Niger.

Tex MacRae, in the BecomingGannon blog, lays out a possible sequence of events in which the classified memo was handed around town by Grover Norquist (at whose exclusive Wednesday gatherings Gannon was a frequent presence by early 2003, if not before). MacRae speculates that it was Norquist who told Gannon to interview Wilson in the hope of deriving information that could be used to discredit him.

My bet is that it was Rove who set Gannon in motion on the Wilson interview, whether directly or through Norquist. The published interview reads in part as an effort in scandal control: to find out exactly what Wilson knew about who was behind the leak, what he knew about Rove's involvement in particular, and to learn the names of journalists who had spoken to Wilson about the leak. At various points, Gannon asked Wilson:

-Regarding the revelation of your wife as a CIA operative, do you think Karl Rove was behind the leak?
-But the question again: Is Karl Rove the leaker?
-Any names attached to these journalists?
-So you don't blame Rove for the leak, you blame him for pushing the story and dragging your wife into the public square?

Of course by now Gannon and Rove, or whoever his overseer was, have had years to get their stories straight. But if there was a relationship with someone in the White House, and if it continues, there would be evidence in the form of phone records and email.

Gannon may be Plamegate's Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern, but he knows one thing: the identity of his handler (who may also, as I suspect, be his blogging partner). If Patrick Fitzgerald has asked about that, he also knows who initiated Gannon's interview with Joe Wilson, and likely who leaked the classified memo around Washington. But Gannon’s been mum on whether he’s ever appeared before the grand jury.

And back on the wire? See Bush's October 4th news conference starting at about 45:05.

Unbecoming Gannon: The Plame Memo

Jeff Gannon's blog has mostly clammed up on the subject of Karl Rove since my post of a week ago.

I've been rereading earlier Gannon posts, though, and finding their language and range of political and historical references fascinating. How did James Dale Guckert, an auto body shop office manager and male escort in his mid-40s, who seems never to have written anything in all his life -- who was said never even to bring up politics in casual conversation -- arrive in Washington, and within a few months become an eloquent political writer/operative, channeling with exactitude Karl Rove's worldview, rhetoric, and interests (especially his desire to defeat Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle)? I suspect it began with a call from the White House to a 900 number, and a subsequent Pygmalion-like makeover of the unsophisticated fuckbuddy.

In May 2002, during a period when his occupation and address are otherwise a mystery, Guckert-Gannon floated his first nonsexual web site, "The Conservative Guy." It reads not at all like the calling card of an aspiring political writer. Rather, it's patently a direct-mail artist's astroturf creation --a Rove-smarmy appeal to swing voters:

"Welcome, fellow conservative!

"Who, me? A conservative?"

"Yes, YOU! You are a conservative and don't realize it. The label makes you uncomfortable. Conservatives are those mean guys you see on the TV news, right?

"For a long time the national media and Hollywood have portrayed conservatives as mean-spirited and narrow-minded. Conservatism has been so demonized that many people are reluctant to associate themselves with it. I felt that way for a while, wincing when I heard one news story after another about the "extreme conservatives". But I'm not a mean person, and the values I have are the same as those of conservatives. So how was I made to feel guilty about my values?

"Every day, more and more Americans are realizing that they have conservative core values. The September 11 attacks have awakened many of us to realities that have been obscured by those who promote a liberal agenda.

"I'm asking you to take an inventory of your political beliefs.

"CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY!"

Later, "The Conservative Guy" describes himself, again in fluent direct-mail-ese:

"Who is The Conservative Guy anyhow?

"In many circles, I have become known as "the conservative guy". Some people don't remember my name because I am an average type guy. In the course of my life I have been a preppie, a yuppie, blue-collar, green-collar and white-collar. I've served in the military, graduated from college, taught in the public school system, was a truck driver, a management consultant, a union member, a fitness instructor and an entrepreneur. In short, I've been around. Kind of a "been there, done that" thing. I'm a two-holiday Christian and I usually vote Republican because they most often support conservative positions....

"...and what is he trying to do?

"I believe there are many men and women in America who are conservative. Many more than one would imagine. Many more than would think of themselves as conservatives. When I meet people, and the conversation turns to politics, as it always seems to with me, some of them sheepishly confess that they are Republicans or that they agree with the opinions I have just spoken..."

It's Gannon's role in the CIA agent outing investigation, however, where his useful-toolness to the White House reached its apotheosis. A poster to dailykos.com has a timeline of Gannon's embedding in "l'affaire Plame," making the case that the memo was given to Gannon in October 2003, after other reporters had proven unwilling to advance the White House spin, "to push the dual stories that a) Plame's name was already common knowledge and therefore `outing' her was not a crime and b) to continue to help discredit the CIA and Wilson."

The comprehensive BecomingGannon blog theorizes that Gannon may have received the classified intelligence report, or a description of it, from Grover Norquist, at whose Wednesday klatches Gannon was a regular. As BecomingGannon notes, Gannon himself has blogged that he began talking with Joseph Wilson in September 2003, though their actual interview took place in October.

Among his contradictory statements on the memo, Gannon has claimed on at least one occasion that he received the memo from a source outside the administration. It's worth quoting at length from his post from earlier this year (bolding is mine):

"A memo written by an INR (Intelligence and Research) analyst who made notes of the meeting at which Wilson was asked to go to Niger sensed that something fishy was going on. That report made it to the outside world courtesy of some patriotic whistleblower that realized that a bag job was underway. Novak's column 15 months later only confirmed what some already knew: Valerie Plame, a CIA employee had actively promoted him for the task.

"I believe Plame was exposed at this point far sooner than the timeline Wilson suggests. The classified document that slipped out sometime after the meeting put her name before the public, albeit a small group of inside-the-beltway types, but effectively ended the notion that she was still covert.

"Despite his deception, I was pleased with the interview until I read a front page article in the Washington Post on December 26, 2003 that said the CIA was angry that an INR report was circulating, mentioning Talon News as having written about it. The source said that the document was false and that whoever wrote it could not have possibly been at any such meeting.The Senate Intelligence Committee also blew that nugget of disinformation out of the water. The INR report was right on target. What is difficult to understand is the reason that the CIA would want to discredit this report.

"The first clue came when the agents from the FBI came to my home in March 2003 [sic; he means 2004] to question me in connection to the leak probe. I was flattered to think that I was important enough to be included among the luminaries like Andrea Mitchell, Tim Russert and Chris Matthews who were also named in a Justice Department subpoena of records from the White House. But most of the questions were about the INR report. They wanted to know where I got it and what I knew about it. Of course, as a journalist there wasn't much I could say without revealing my sources. I'm sure they were not satisfied, but it made me wonder why they were so interested in a document the CIA said was false."

Rove's Other Dummy

Fake journalist Jeff Gannon's blog in the last few months reads as if it were ghosted by Karl Rove himself. And as Fitzgerald's federal grand jury looms larger, the retooled Gannon blog has become increasingly preoccupied with one thing: defending Rove—particularly in connection with the Plame affair.

Here are some excerpts from Gannon's upgraded column. They ring as the voice of a furiously competitive political operative, one who's been spinning for a long time, and who's very fond of Karl Rove:

"...it will be Democrats trying to free themselves from the web of wild accusations made against Rove, now that we know he did nothing wrong."

"...is clearly a political ploy to take down the key architect of successive Democratic electoral defeats."

"...a nonsensical editorial today urging Karl Rove to hold a press conference and tell everything he knows. But he already has - to the Grand Jury investigating the alleged leak."

"What is exceedingly clear is that Karl Rove was not trying to punish Joe Wilson by exposing his wife. What is also clear is that you cannot tell most White House reporters ANYTHING in confidence. After this is over, I predict journalists will have far less access to the officials of this White House."

"...the feeding frenzy to take down Karl Rove."

"...it's more than likely this could be the outcome of this episode. Rove survives and the Democrats and their Old Media handpuppets fall flat on their as**s."

"...if Miller were to talk it would take the focus off Rove..."

"It's time for the New York Times and Judy Miller to stop obstructing justice and tell what they know..."

"White House press corps convicts Rove..."

"Newsday reported that Rep. Peter King said, 'Karl Rove deserves a medal.'"

"...Rove is right."

"Bias exposed by Rove v. Durbin..."

"I'm inclined to believe that Fitzpatrick will simply close up shop, with or without the information from Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, because there is no case."

"Rove 'friend' sees him as threat to First Amendment."

"Some friend."

"Some friend" indeed. Even cast out of the White House press briefing room, in short, Gannon to all appearances is Rove's dummy, saying to the world what Rove can't say directly. That's always been Rove's M.O., to have things suddenly "being said" that no one can pin on Rove himself. It seems likely that's why "Jeff Gannon" was created in the first place—to speak for Rove at White House press briefings. And that's why Gannon's blog now hilariously complains of the loss of "privacy" the Internet has wrought—as if he hadn't posted naked pictures of himself on his own prostitution web site. What it means is that he and his White House handler don't like losing the shadows in which they're accustomed to conducting their dirty ops.

Gannon has denied that he was working in behalf of anyone at the White House. I don't believe him. His questions at White House press briefings went beyond the softball. They weren't even questions so much as mini-speeches. Take, for example, this statement from Gannon at a February 10, 2004 press briefing, during which McClellan had been asked many questions about gaps in Bush's Texas National Guard service records. Gannon switched the subject, and gave a short indictment of John Kerry.

"Q: 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 [actress and anti-Vietnam War activist] 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? What was he doing after he was honorably discharged?"

At another briefing, on April 1, 2004, Jeff Gannon again switched the subject, not even framing his speech as a question:

"Q: I'd like to comment on the angry mob that surrounded Karl Rove's house on Sunday. They chanted and pounded on the windows until the D.C. police and Secret Service were called in. The protest was organized by the National People's Action Coalition, whose members receive taxpayer funds, as well as financial support from groups including Theresa Heinz Kerry's Tides Foundation."

Was Gannon explicitly part of the administration's "fake news" front? How was he paid, and by whom? When "Talon News" applied in the spring of 2003 for Congressional press credentials for Gannon, it admitted that Gannon was currently a "volunteer" reporter who was not paid. Talon promised to begin providing more than half of Gannon's income in order to meet the credentialing requirements, but the application was turned down.

As Dottie Lynch of CBSNews.com wrote in February, when Gannon was passing as a White House reporter, he lent his phony news persona to Rove's political business: helping the right unseat Tom Daschle, the leading Democrat in Congress. This South Dakota campaign was probably Rove's electoral priority #2, right after re-electing Shrub.

"Padraig Pearse," a poster to dailykos.com, links to the Nashua Advocate to note that GOPUSA, the organization that ginned up Talon "News" expressly to get Gannon into the White House, has the earmarks of a Rove front. He writes:

"That GOPUSA and TALON news were not just some simple little advocacy group seems highlighted by their role in the South Dakota campaign.... my hypothesis is that under the able scrutiny of Karl Rove, members of Texas's closety gay underground were brought in to similarly create a dirty tricks arm of the campaign. Most members of GOPUSA probably had no no idea that any of this was happening. That was desirable. The secret leveraged world of gays and espionage neatly overlap. Indeed, gays and networks of gays have long been a staple in the clandestine world for those very reasons."

As poster Pearse suggests, there's a type of gay rightwinger who, far from resenting the closet, relishes the secrecy and power over others that his double life bestows. Such Walter Mitty-esque gays are attracted to fascism and, of course, to swaggering military men. They feel superior to the unsophisticated rubes who couldn't begin to imagine their secret world. They maintain wives and families, and would never risk public affectional love relationships with the men they have sex with.

Before the former Karmak office manager, beer distributor employee, and man of the night "hot military stud" Jeff Gannon was admitted to the White House press corps, he graduated from a two-day broadcast journalism "school" operated by the Morton C. Blackwell Institute wing of nuttery of which Rove is also a patron.

Recall that nothing important happens in the White House that Rove hasn't approved or, more likely, ordered.

At the White House, where Gannon arrived in late 2002 or early 2003, he seemed to have insider connections. According to rawstory.com, Gannon told a news producer for a major network's local affiliate that the U.S. was about to attack Iraq four hours before Bush's speech announced it. Gannon reportedly also had early word that the president would be making the speech to the nation. Rawstory.com reported that the producer said that Gannon also had surprisingly early and accurate scoops for other big stories, such as the CBS faked National Guard documents imbroglio.

A most curious note in the saga of Gannon, who was active in his college alumni association under his real name, James Dale ("JD") Guckert, is a line in the group's August 2003 newsletter explaining Guckert's absence from the chapter's July 17th meeting: "Jody Yozviak was absent but sent a report and JD Guckert was busy entertaining the Prime Minister of Great Britain (not a joke). "

Not a joke?! It certainly sounds like a very odd joke. Gannon/Guckert filed a short item on the Bush-Blair meeting for "Talon" that day, and a longer one the following day.

In the Plame affair, Gannon has boasted on his blog that he was the first to report on how former ambassador Joseph Wilson, the husband of then-covert CIA agent Valerie (nee Plame) Wilson was chosen for the fact-finding trip to Niger. He was also among the journalists reportedly subpoenaed by the federal grand jury in 2004; whether or not he was actually called by the jury is in doubt, although he has said he was interviewed by two FBI agents at his home.

The federal investigators' interest in Gannon seems to have been sparked by his reference to a classified memo, whose accuracy the CIA has disputed, in his October 2003 interview with Joseph Wilson. Gannon asked Wilson: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details 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. Do you dispute that?'"

Tom Maguire of JustOneMinute points out that an October 17 Wall Street Journal story described the memo in words almost identical to those used by Gannon, suggesting that Gannon may have based his question on the newspaper story alone. But as any journalist knows, you may have a primary source in one hand but still find it easier to frame a question from a well-written summary.

Joseph Wilson has put the time of the interview as not more than a week before Gannon published it on October 28, 2003. Another key to the date is Wilson's reference during the interview to a Rotary Club speech he gave "last week." An Epluribus Media report on Daily Kos links to the club newsletter dating the speech on October 8. [Correction: A better key to the date derives from Gannon's mention during the interview of a Nicholas Kristof New York Timescolumn mentioning Aldrich Ames, which was published October 11, 2003.)

Gannon's responses as to whether or not he received the memo have been contradictory, as the Epluribus Media report by Philip Curtis lays out. In an undated post on his blog, Gannon said of his FBI interrogation, "most of the questions were about the INR report. They wanted to know where I got it and what I knew about it. Of course, as a journalist there wasn't much I could say without revealing my sources."

In a "Talon News" item quoted by mediamatters.org, Gannon said the memo did not come from "inside the administration." "I don't know why I'm on the list of journalists being called before the Grand Jury," Gannon said in "Talon" on March 9, 2004. "I have been an outspoken critic of the leak probe and an aggressive questioner of the motives behind it. That seems to have drawn the attention of someone with the authority to issue subpoenas." But in February this year, as Maquire's blog notes, he told Editor and Publisher that he'd neither been subpoenaed or testified before the jury. He refused to tell E&P if had ever seen the memo.

So, to recap: the Rove-run White House for two years gave unusual access, including possible overnight visits (Secret Service logs show days when he never signed out) to a not-very-former male prostitute operating under a fake name who had no journalism experience, and who at least through mid-April 2003, was still on offer by the hour as a "discrete" [SIC] top with an eight-inch "weapon."

Here's what I think: The upper ranks of the Bush administration include several extremely powerful, deeply closeted gays. Did Bush know about Rove's ringer in the White House press corps? He did seem uneasy when he called on Gannon in February. To his credit, as Kitty Kelley's book on the Bush family details, Bush has had close, longstanding friendships and work associations with gay men. They include former Rove aide Israel Hernandez, Bush's "body" man when he was governer (and who briefly lived with the Bushes then), whom Bush recently named an assistant secretary of Commerce. Republican Party chairman Ken Mehlman, another of Rove's former aides, refuses to answer questions about being gay.

Now gay Republicans are, of course, entitled to their privacy and to their political opinions, including the opposition of some to same-sex marriage. But haven't politically powerful gays who take advantage of the closet to force others back into it given up any right to expect others to cover for them? Surely those who are working to extinguish the rights of other gays to lead open lives of love and commitment have no claim on the sanctuary of the closet.

I think Gannon is Rove's tool, and that Gannon did his bidding in the Plame affair, too. Justin Raimundo, who has done some of the best reporting on Gannon, wrote last winter: "If we follow the slime trail left by Gannon and his sponsors all the way to the end, we'll stand face-to-face with the real authors of the Iraq war, and the full record of their crimes in the reckless pursuit of power and imperial glory. Gannon may be a minor player in all this, but then so was the Watergate burglary a minor escapade..."


Postscript:
Here are two of Rove's dreamy accounts of his first sight of his future master in 1973, when Bush Sr. asked him to pick up the wastrel son at Washington's Union Station the day before Thanskgiving.

"He showed up and was wearing his flight jacket from the National Guard and Levis and cowboy boots, and exhibited more charisma than any one individual should have."

"Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma—you know, wow."

Another Postscript:
I haven't seen this quotation from Scott McClellan reproduced anywhere recently. In the fall of 2003, he said that some people inquiring about Rove's connection to the Plame affair were "sensationalizing the issue." McClellan said:

"The leaking of classified information is a very serious allegation, and the president has made it very clear that he wants to get to the bottom of this. Unfortunately, there are some who are looking through the lens of political opportunism. There are some who are seeking partisan political advantage."

CORRECTION: The original version of this post argued for a conclusion based on my early ignorance that Gannon had posted veiled suggestions on his blog that he met or knew a member of Congess years ago. I first read such a post as evidence that Rove must have literally ghosted the remark.

The Disassemblers

Here's a link, from crooksandliars.com, to a moment in Bush's 4/28/05 news conference. His eyes cast down, the president pauses in the middle of a sentence, mutters, "in a minute," then resumes his answer. It's stunning. Watch it on the higher resolution version if you can, the wmv. file.

Nobody in the press mentioned it. (See 6/13 postscript below***) As the Gannon episode showed, the White House reporters-who-do-not-report are skilled at averting their eyes and turning off their brains. It may seem like a strange skill set for journalists, but it enables them to avoid stories that might trip up their careers.

Okay, I understand that half the MSM has left the journalism business and set up as a wing of government public affairs. But what about real journalists, people like David Corn? Why did they give Bush a pass on the wire, too?

I met a reporter recently, a fan of this site, who told me of pressing Seymour Hersh about the box. Hersh said that an audio prompter would never be proven. He'd asked, and his sources knew nothing about it. As the reporter quoted Hersh, "If there's something there, I'd find it out. If there's something that isn't there--I'd find that out, too."

Gotta love Sy Hersh. But I think he gave up too soon. Sometimes only three or four people know about a wrongdoing, and they'll never tell. Smoking guns and documents don't exist for every story. But that doesn't mean those stories can't be pursued from another angle, even if one amasses only circumstantial evidence. As Thoreau said, "some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." I think the president talking to his shoes qualifies.

I wish Hersh and his editors at The New Yorker would hire linguists and experts in the coordination of speech and eye movements to analyze the president's speech in the debates and at news conferences. Or put Malcolm Gladwell on to it. Or hire Dave Lindorff, an undersung hero of journalism for his reporting on this story and many others.

David Corn, for his part, dismissed the audio prompter story out of hand, and strenuously discouraged a writer acquaintance of mine from pursuing it in early October, after this blog first published. There was no story there, Bush did not use an earpiece, it was blogger hysteria, and that was that. Corn never did write about it except in passing reference to a "conspiracy theory," when he blogged in December about a notion then making the rounds that the bulge was a wearable defibrillator:

"...seeing is (almost) believing. And there sure looks like a bulge in several photographs of Bush. The LifeVest explanation seems more reasonable than that offered by the Bush White House: a lousy tailor. I'm not sold on this theory. But I would not discourage further exploration."

Right. I've admired David Corn's work, but those shifty lines give me serious pause. Would he really rather protect his amour-propre than report on this honestly?

To itemize Corn's inaccuracies: 1) He implies the Bush White House offered a single, perhaps "reasonable" "explanation" for the bulge, rather than a series of obvious falsehoods that had to be successively discarded, beginning with its suggestion that the images were faked, and ending with an uncomfortable Bush delivering a rehearsed joking denial in answer to a serious question from Good Morning America's Charlie Gibson. 2) Corn implies the video (not photographic) images are ambiguous and do not unmistakably show a bulge with the outlines of a box and wire. 3) His headline tags the subject as being in the realm of "conspiracy" thinking. Tell me again why that would be? 4) Corn says he won't "discourage" the (risible) defibrillator notion, but doesn't mention that he discouraged investigation into another, stronger theory--which he omits here even to cite, as if it's been conclusively dismissed (unlike his respectful mention of the White House's "explanation.")

KELLER KARL

New York Times executive editor Bill Keller reportedly commented publicly for the first time a few months ago about the pre-election spiking of the Times story on the box. Dave Lindorff's blog, thiscantbehappening.net, reports that Keller told a group of Columbia students that the major story, by the Times's William Broad, Andrew Revkin and John Schwarz, who had interviewed a NASA imaging analyst among others (see our previous posts on this), "didn't hold up."

A story by Nicholas Lemann inThe New Yorker tells of Keller and Rove meeting for drinks on October 22, and Rove seizing the occasion to complain bitterly about the Times's supposed anti-Bush bias. As Keller recalled it in an email message to Lemann, Rove "fired off complaints like a Gatling gun, some specific, some generic, some about specific writers, some about specific elements of specific stories.” A few days later, according to Lindorff's comprehensive report on fair.org, the Times decided to hold the Bush bulge story. They killed it on October 27th, the day before it was set to run.

Lemann's story, "Why is everyone mad at the mainstream media?" somehow missed this striking incident. A story that Keller reportedly said he thought could affect the outcome of the presidential election was spiked five days after the Happy Hour gone wrong. It would seem that some mainstream-media "haters" have more sway than others.

I don't believe that Rove would have been so clumsy as to urge Keller to quash the story. It seems more likely that he would hint that the box was a security device that he could say no more about, but that the Times would be making an error of faked-National-Guard-document proportions if it published even expert speculation that Bush had used a prompter.

Or maybe nothing at all was said between the two men about the jokes and questions and Doonesbury strips that had made the bulge the most widely-referred-to nonstory of the year. Of course, at that point, the Times's story on the bulge was still a go. And Rove and other Bush officials had been frantically trying to discredit it with references to "grassy knolls" and "little green men." So, maybe Rove did have something to say on the subject.

Either way, I think that Keller and the Times still owe readers an explanation of why its one real report on such a serious subject wasn't worth printing. Keller wrote something recently about the Times needing to take on its critics directly, and to be more transparent. Here's an invitation to do just that, Mr. Keller. Did Karl Rove talk to you about the Bush box story on October 22, or tell you something to persuade you that the story didn't hold up? And if so, won't you please share that information with your readers?

***
POSTSCRIPT:

The official transcripts of the 4/28/05 news conference by CQ Transcripts and the White House record the muttered words as “kind of." I've watched and listened to the clip many times, and he's not saying, "kind of."

I don't know if CQ makes its transcriptions entirely independently or against an early White House transcript (or vice versa). This is not the first time, however, that these official transcripts have airbrushed one of Bush's verbal missteps. I was watching with only half an eye the Dec.15, 2003 news conference, when Bush responded strangely to a Gannonesque question about whether Democratic criticism amounted to "hate speech." At first Bush seemed to draw a blank. "There's time for politics," he said uncertainly. "There's time for politics, and I--" "It's an absurd asinuation," he suddenly popped out, with an air of surprise at his own words. That was the moment it hit me that Bush was using a prompter.

Both the White House and CQ transcripts of that news conference rendered Bush's neologism as "insinuation." So, I'm curious just how CQ's transcription process works. I'll ask the company to explain it for the edification of stupefied (that means made stupid) Bush-watchers everywhere.

Meanwhile, here’s the relevant 4/28/05 passage from the White House and CQ transcripts with the correct "in a minute" reinserted in the place of "kind of."

Q Mr. President, it was four years ago when you first met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. You said you looked into his eyes and you saw his soul. You'll also be meeting with the Russian leader in about a week or so. What do you think of Putin now that he has expressed a willingness to supply weapons to outlaw regimes, specifically his recent comments that he said he would provide short-range missiles to Syria and nuclear components to Iran?

THE PRESIDENT: We have -- first, just in a broader – in a minute -- in a broader sense, I had a long talk with Vladimir there in Slovakia about democracy and about the importance of democracy. And as you remember, at the press conference -- or if you weren't there, somebody will remember -- he stood up and said he strongly supports democracy. I take him for his word.

I -- and we'll continue to work. Condi just -- Condi Rice, our Secretary of State, just came back and she briefed me that she had a very good discussion with Vladimir about the merits of democracy, about the need to listen to the people and have a government that's responsive.

Black Box Presidency

The Hill quotes an unnamed Secret Service source as saying that the box-shaped bulge under Bush's jacket at the debates was a strap for a bulletproof vest, a secret the Secret Service didn't want to reveal during the campaign, when the president was exposed to potential assassins out on the campaign trail.

Oddly, though, the president never seemed to have his bulgy protective strap on when he spoke at huge campaign rallies in his shirtsleeves -- though he's donned it for assassin-free zones, such as the East Room of the White House. Perhaps the Secret Service was speaking figuratively. It seems unlikely, though, that the Secret Service would ask that Bush lie about the device on television, as he did when he told ABC's Charles Gibson that he was "embarrassed" to say that it was just a wrinkle in his shirt.

The New York Times reports in tomorrow's paper (Nov 8) that the Secret Service won't comment on the question. The Times story doesn't point out that The Hill's attempt at Bush-buffing doesn't even make sense: Presidential body armor is hardly a secret, and how exactly would keeping it quiet help deflect attempts on the president's life? Wouldn't it have the reverse effect? Not to mention that people who know what bulletproof vests look like, i.e. actual soldiers, say there's no body armor in the world with that Rube Goldberg configuration.

I apologize for repeating myself, but what's a blogger to do when respectable journalists at the Times are more intent on writing entertainingly than on providing readers with all the relevant facts?

So, here we are, a month and two days after we first broached the question of Bush's wire (Oct 5). Nothing has changed except that a few more people know about the fraud. But most major news media seem to prefer that the people be protected from this knowledge. They wish they didn't know it themselves. Soviet-style, newspapers around the country ran Doonesbury's strips on the Bush prompter without investigating their premise. How did they expect their readers to know what the strips were about, and whether or not they amounted to fair criticism or dishonest slurs?

More details on the failure to report the story by two major papers: According to Dave Lindorff, the Washington Post's Bob Woodward advised the NASA scientist who analyzed the video images of Bush's box to take the story to Salon, since he wouldn't be able to get it past his own editors before Nov. 2. And the New York Times killed a story scheduled for October 28 by reporters William Broad and John Schwarz because, Lindorff says, the Times feared that printing the news might influence the election. Of course, failing to inform the public also influenced the election, as the voters pathetically quoted in the Times as having chosen Bush because they felt he was "honest," demonstrate.

Certainly the hosts at NBC's "Democracy Plaza" (sadly, no more) whose hosts cited approvingly the ordeal of Ohioans waiting in line for hours to vote, weren't about to bring up questions about the president's honesty. That wouldn't fit with the cheery Disney script of democracy, any more than would a mention of leaky Diebold electronic voting machines, which reportedly use a code a ten-year-old could hack. Not to mention the voting irregularities, including incidents in several battleground states where Kerry voters found touchscreen machines repeatedly registering their votes for Bush.

Vote fraud is the sinister explanation, of course, for why raw exit polls wrongly omened a Kerry win nationally and in many states. The men who conducted the NEP polls for the networks and AP have explained the variance as likely due to greater eagerness by Kerry voters to talk to pollsters. Which makes sense -- except that it can't explain why Bush's large vote gains over the exit poll numbers occurred mainly in battleground states. Wouldn't Kerry voters be just as responsive -- and Bush voters just as reticent -- in Arizona or Connecticut? [Update Nov. 12: A U Penn professor's analysis places the odds at 250 million to one that the anomalous exit polls in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania were due to chance alone.]

In Venezuela's and other foreign elections, exit polls are seen as a check on possible fraud. Here that possibility was discarded a priori, perhaps because of Karl Rove's reputation for honest dealing. Steve Coll of the Washington Post suggested in an online chat that it seemed likelier that all the exit polls were wrong than that a large conspiracy hacked the election. But who said it would take a large conspiracy? Experts have warned for years that anyone with a home computer and inexpensive software could break into electronic voting tabulators. It may already have happened in one state. Read this shocking, carefully-reported piece in the UK Guardian. Using machines that are modem-equipped and that create no paper trail is like leaving a open bag of cash on a subway bench. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to say that someone will make off with it sooner or later.

I await the explanations of experts like mysterypollster.com, who can parse these contradictory exit polls further -- and I'll correct what I've written here accordingly. But for more on how to have an election whose results we can unreservedly trust the next time around, check out openvotingconsortium.org, demos-usa.org, verifiedvoting.org, and blackboxvoting.org.

That's if for IsBushWired. Barring developments, our story is done. We'll leave the page up for latecomers interested in knowing the full story. And feel free to write: isbushwired@gmail.com

The Dark Side of the Moon

A NASA senior research physicist, who's an international authority on planetary topographical image analysis, has been spending his nights analyzing the topography of Bush's back in the first debate. He tells Salon the obvious, that a wrinkle couldn't possibly have produced the bulge. What he can't explain, I suppose, is why the rest of the press, with the honorable exception of CNN's Paula Zahn, is abdicating its ethical responsibility to report this story, leaving it to Salon and to bloggers. It makes me feel sick for my profession. Anyway, look at the pictures the analyst sharpened for the clearest view yet of all the president's wires.

Update 10/31: I feel even sicker after reading Dave Lindorff's comprehensive update at MotherJones.com reporting, among other things, how the NASA scientist, Robert M. Nelson, was rebuffed when he offered his analysis to major newspapers (The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post). Nelson has now analyzed Bush's ever-evolving back bulge from all three debates, and tells MotherJones.com, "In the first debate the bulges create the impression of a letter T with a small feature which appears similar to a wire under the jacket running upward from the right. In the second and third debates the jacket has a generally padded shape across a large part of the entire back which tapers inward toward the spine in a downward direction. This is consistent with the hypothesis that a pad was inserted to conceal the T-shaped device seen in the first debate."

Bush Speaks: The Empire Has No Clothes

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." -- senior Bush advisor quoted by Ron Suskind in The New York Times Magazine.

Finally, someone asked the president about the object on his back during Debate 1. And Bush lied straight-faced. This is from Dan Froomkin's account at washingtonpost.com of Charles Gibson's Good Morning America interview with Bush aired today:

"Brandishing a copy of the photo, he asked: "Final question. What the hell was that on your back, in the first debate?"

Bush chuckled.

Bush: "Well, you know, Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett have rigged up a sound system -- "

Gibson: "You're getting in trouble -- "

Bush: "I don't know what that is. I mean, it is, uh, it is, it's a -- I'm embarrassed to say it's a poorly tailored shirt."

Gibson: "It was the shirt?"

Bush: "Yeah, absolutely."

Gibson: "There was no sound system, there was no electrical signal? There was --"

Bush: "How does an electrical -- please explain to me how it works so maybe if I were ever to debate again I could figure it out. I guess the assumption was that if I was straying off course they would, kind of like a hunting dog, they would punch a buzzer and I would jerk back into place. I -- it's just absurd.""

Charles Gibson and ABC deserve credit for asking the president, but failed abjectly at following up on his brazen lies. The object under the president's jacket is obviously solid. There isn't any bad tailoring, at any price in the "reality-based" world, that could create a shirt with a convex rectangular bulge, much less one that would jut through a jacket.

Not to mention that he would have had to have worn the same shirt to all three debates. (Presidential tailor Georges de Paris must have threatened to file suit now, rather than to make any more, so the White House has fallen back on blaming the shirt.)

IsBushWired also hears that ABC News has interviewed several White House staff members who've confirmed that Bush uses a low-frequency transceiver during meetings with foreign dignitaries. Hope that ABC plans to run its story in time for voters to consider this information.

Postscript: We've since watched the interview and are struck by how quickly the president responded with a rehearsed joke. Clearly Rove et al talked to him about how to reply. The truth evidently wasn't an option. But as the Good Morning America interview ended, the camera drew back, and Laura Bush had disappeared from her spot on the couch next to the president. Someone in the White House is still capable of shame.

CBS Bloodied, Bowed

Meanwhile, CBSNews.com has groveled to the White House by printing a nonbylined story composed by AP's surely all-time-dumbest, or most slavish, reporter. The story's accompanied by a post-debate shot of the president that seems to show no bulge. We need not remind readers that photos, unlike the single video feed which everyone shared, can be touched up. But in any case, Bush's cheatpiece was most clearly outlined when he hunched over the podium, stretching the back of his jacket over the device and the cord snaking up his right shoulder.

Refresh your memory of the protuberance by looking again at the jpegs reproduced below in our archived post, "What's the Frequency, Karl?" These are stills that we took unaltered from the Fox pool video feed. Or check out cryptome.org's 28 time-stamped screen captures from the video.

Oh, and BushBulge.com has found
another photograph of a bulge-bearing Bush on the White House web site, lighting a menorah last December. Enjoy it before it's scrubbed.