Barfly SusanG has an interesting find and blogs about it in her diary at DailyKos.
Jeff Gannon, a Washington journalist for an obscure news agency named Talon and known for softball questions on White House news conferences may be the one who came up with the memo that uncovered CIA agent Plame in the Wilson / Nigeran Uran / Iraqi mushroom cloud case.
Atrios hinted that Jeff Gannon is not the real name of the man.
MediaMatters has some recent articles about Gannon and Talon New which looks like a GOP outfit and about Gannon reporting directly from Bush press material.
The fact that Jeff Gannon is a quite partisan and dubious journalist and should not be in the White House press corp was pointed out by Dan Froomkin in his Washington Post White House Briefing as early as February 2004. He also reported the Plame memo connection on March 10, 2004.
… the federal grand jury investigating the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity as a covert CIA operative has subpoenaed White House records on contacts with 25 journalists.
…
Anyway, the reason Gannon is on the list is most likely an attempt to find out who gave him a secret memo that he mentioned in an interview he had with Plame’s husband, former ambassador and administration critic 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?"
According to a December Washington Post story by Mike Allen and Dana Milbank, "Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband’s trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it."
On top of being secret, CIA officials said it was wrong.
Michael Darling in the December 11 edition of the student paper ThePittNews points out:
Under President George W. Bush, the press office has credentialed reporters like Jeff Gannon, an ultra-right-wing member of the Talon News Service — a consortium consisting of nine volunteer reporters, among them a high school student and a personal trainer. Bush routinely accepts questions from men like Gannon, but inexplicably turns down interviews with Pulitzer-winner Thomas Friedman.
Many commentators in the above mentioned blogs have researched and posted some TinFoilHat stuff and some interesting relations. So far we know:
Jeff Gannon has two personal web sites jeffgannon.com and TheConservativeGuy.com. He is connected to the Pro-Bush Ari Fleisher Fan Club. He was trained at the Republican run Leadership Institute Broadcast School of Journalism. He is working for the Talon News Agency and has a seat in the White House briefing room where he throws strange questions at Bush speaker Scott McCellan and Bush himself. Via WaPo:
"Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy: Harry Reid, who’s talking about soup lines, and Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath, they say that Social Security is rock solid and there’s no crisis there. You’ve 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?"
Talon News has the same boss, Bobby Eberle, as GOPUSA with its mission to to spread the conservative message throughout America. and the www.Talonnews.com website resides on the listsrv.gopusa.com server. Here is a portrait of Bob.
As MediaMatters has reported Gannon and Bob Eberle are activists on the Free Republic website.
Bob Eberle is cooperating with his brother Bruce Eberle who owns the site MillionsOfAmericans.com, a Bush support site collecting email-addresses and signatures for pro Bush petitions since the Florida election 2000. Bruce Eberle is know for dubious fund raising schemes. His direct mail company Eberle & Associates names Grover Norquist and his Americans for Tax Reform as a customer.
Bob’s wife Kathleen Eberle, the treasurer of GOPUSA, is active in Texan GOP politics.
So there are many possible connections to follow and it is amusing and frightening to surf through these right wing networks. The questions open are:
– Why has Talon News, a unknown News Agency a seat in the White House briefings?
– Why does its reporter Jeff Gannon is more serving to Scott McCallan in "Bad cop/good cop" against the press than acting as a real press person?
– Who or what finances Talon News via GOPUSA?
– Where did Jeff Gannon get that secret memo?
SusanG asks in her post:
Does anyone want to join me in useless speculation as to what this complicated crapola means?