Check your media lap dogs, Mr. President
This is one of the best of the editorials about the Gannon affair. Page explains why this is NOT just a tempest in a teapot, and discusses the seldom mentioned topic of Gannon's involvement in getting secret documents outing Valerie Plame...
Check your media lap dogs, Mr. President
by Clarence Page
February 20, 2005
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON -- If America's mainstream media really were as liberal as conservatives claim we are, we would be ballyhooing the fiasco of James D.Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, with Page 1 banner headlines and hourly bulletins. ...
Liberal bloggers also uncovered links between Guckert and gay-oriented Web sites with such interesting names as Hotmilitarystud.com, Militaryescorts.com and Militaryescortsm4m.com, where he apparently advertised his escort services by describing himself as "military, muscular, masculine and discrete [sic]," according to Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post's media reporter.
But all that's a titillating sideshow compared to the charges that House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has called to the attention of the special prosecutor investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak. In 2003 Guckert wrote in Talon News that he had asked Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, about "an internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel" that revealed his wife's CIA role.
Revealing a CIA agent's identity is a federal crime. A Time magazine reporter and a New York Times reporter face possible jail sentences for refusing to say who revealed Plame's CIA role to them in an apparent effort to discredit Wilson's criticism of the Bush administration's Iraq war policy. Is the prosecutor putting Guckert's feet to the fire too? If not, why not? ... Read all of this at: http://tinyurl.com/4txt5
© Virginia Metze
Check your media lap dogs, Mr. President
by Clarence Page
February 20, 2005
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON -- If America's mainstream media really were as liberal as conservatives claim we are, we would be ballyhooing the fiasco of James D.Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, with Page 1 banner headlines and hourly bulletins. ...
Liberal bloggers also uncovered links between Guckert and gay-oriented Web sites with such interesting names as Hotmilitarystud.com, Militaryescorts.com and Militaryescortsm4m.com, where he apparently advertised his escort services by describing himself as "military, muscular, masculine and discrete [sic]," according to Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post's media reporter.
But all that's a titillating sideshow compared to the charges that House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has called to the attention of the special prosecutor investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative to columnist Robert Novak. In 2003 Guckert wrote in Talon News that he had asked Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, about "an internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel" that revealed his wife's CIA role.
Revealing a CIA agent's identity is a federal crime. A Time magazine reporter and a New York Times reporter face possible jail sentences for refusing to say who revealed Plame's CIA role to them in an apparent effort to discredit Wilson's criticism of the Bush administration's Iraq war policy. Is the prosecutor putting Guckert's feet to the fire too? If not, why not? ... Read all of this at: http://tinyurl.com/4txt5
© Virginia Metze
Starmail - 22. Feb, 17:07
