Bloggers Expose Dirty Trick

Here at American Dash we select stories other people report and do commentary, analysis and synthesis. But some bloggers do reporting, and investigative reporting at that.

Probably the most important story bloggers have broken so far this year concerns a bizarre tale that may yet be revealed as a nefarious political conspiracy inside the Bush White House. Jeff Gannon---though as it turns out, that is probably not his real name---got press credentials at the White House with amazing ease. Among his known activities, he trashed Tom Daschle during his campaign and got himself in the middle of the Joseph Wilson (who blew the whistle on Bush's assertion that Saddam's Iraq got nuclear bomb material from Niger) and Valerie Plame (Wilson's wife who was outed as a CIA undercover by Robert Novak who was told by persons yet unknown in the Bush government) controversy, trying to show that it was Wilson's wife who suggested he be sent to investigate the Niger story, that her CIA identity was well known, and that they both were anti-Bush partisans, all of which parrots various company lies from within the Bushhouse.

Gannon wrote for a previously unknown outfit called Talon News, which Daily Kos bloggers traced back to GOPUSA and Eberle Communications, a partisan PR firm whose clients include Operation Rescue, Ollie North and Paula Jones, and had allegedly illegal dealings with John Ashcroft as a Missouri Senate candidate.

Gannon was given access to White House and presidential press conferences, and even though Helen Thomas, the senior working correspondent who had covered numerous presidents, no longer got to ask questions, he was regularly called on, and typically asked very friendly softball questions. But he rose to new heights with this one:

“ Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was 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. How are you going to work -- you've said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

This got people curious, and they uncovered the story outlined so far. Then Daily Kos "kossacks" as they call themselves discovered the most sensational element---the one that caught media attention: this guy owned a couple of porn sites that seemed to be dealing in gay prostitution.

Here's the summary so far from the place that broke the story:
Daily Kos :: The bottom line

And here's a fast summary of the salient and sordid facts so far in the New York Daily News.

But the story may be just beginning. Daily Kos bloggers are pursuing timelines and other evidence that suggest Gannon was a plant, used to detour the Wilson story when it threatened the White House and Ashcroft.

So at best, the Bushhouse gave press credentials and preferential treatment to someone using an alias who ran gay prostitution porn sites. In addition to paying several Rabid Right "journalists" they installed one in the White House with the most dubious excuse for a news organization on record. But if the indictments ever come out, and the investigation ever gets going, the Plame story may return with a vengeance.

In the meantime, Tricky Dick must be grinning in his grave. The Sons of Nixon are back, with only a wussy overfed media and an exhausted, advertising-doped dumbed down panic-stricken public to not stop them. Unless of course you count the blogs.

Hats off to the Daily Kos bloggers and bloggers like them everywhere. You may be not only the salvation of the Democrats, but of this poor excuse for democracy.