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Friday, Feb 18, 2005

International

International

How planted journalist served White House

By Sidney Blumenthal

WASHINGTON, FEB. 17. The White House press room has often been a cockpit of intrigue, duplicity and truckling. But nothing rivals the most recent scandal there.

The latest incident began with a sequence of questions for the President, George W. Bush, at his January 26 press conference. First, he was asked whether he approved of his administration's payments to conservative commentators. Government contracts had been granted to three pundits, who had tried to keep the funding secret. ``There needs to be a nice, independent relationship between the White House and the press,'' said the President as he called swiftly on his next questioner. Jeff Gannon, Washington bureau chief of Talon News, rose from his chair to attack Democrats in the Congress. ``How are you going to work — you said you're going to reach out to these people — how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?''

For almost two years, in the daily White House press briefings Mr. Gannon had been called upon by the Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, to break up difficult questioning from the rest of the press.

Role in Iraq affair

Mr. Gannon also got himself entangled in the investigation into the criminal disclosure of the identity of covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame. Ms Plame is the wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who was sent by the Bush administration to discover whether Saddam Hussein was procuring uranium in Niger for nuclear weapons.

He learned that the suspicion was bogus; appalled that the administration lied about nuclear WMD to justify the Iraq war, he wrote an article in the New York Times about his role after the war.

In retaliation, Ms Plame's CIA cover was blown by administration officials. Mr. Gannon had called up Mr. Wilson to ask him about a secret CIA memo supposedly proving that his wife had sent him on the original mission to Niger, prompting the special prosecutor in the case to question Mr. Gannon about his ``sources''.

His real name, it turned out, is James Dale Guckert. He has no journalistic background whatsoever.

It was soon revealed. ``Gannon'' owned and advertised his services as a gay escort on more than half a dozen websites which featured dozens of photographs of ``Gannon'' in dramatic naked poses.

Official protection

Thus, a phoney journalist, planted by a Republican organisation disseminating smears about its critics and opponents, was unmasked not only as a hireling and fraud but as a gay prostitute, with enormous potential for blackmail. —

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