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.