Posted on 02/21/2005 8:57:57 AM PST by Pikamax
Web Site Owner Says He Knew of Reporter's 2 Identities By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
OUSTON, Feb. 19 - The operator of an activist Republican Web site and news service said Friday night that he had known for two years that his White House correspondent went by two identities.
But the operator, Robert R. Eberle, denied in an interview that the correspondent, Jeff Gannon, whose real name is James D. Guckert, was an administration plant or was given preferential treatment as a Republican partisan to ask soft questions at briefings.
Mr. Guckert, who wrote for the Gopusa.com Web site and its offshoot Talon News, agreed. In an interview on Saturday, he said had never even made phone calls to administration officials, not even to ask routine questions or clarify basic facts.
"My relationship with the White House and with Talon News was on the basis of a reporter and a reporter only. And all that, all of this other stuff out there that I was given favorable treatment, access to things - is absolutely, categorically untrue," Mr. Guckert said.
Mr. Eberle, breaking his silence about details of the events, which have been portrayed by Democrats as a Republican effort to manipulate news, said it took him by surprise in early 2003 when the freelancer he had taken on as Jeff Gannon said he was gaining White House accreditation under the name James D. Guckert. "He said Gannon was his professional name; he didn't like the sound of his other name," Mr. Eberle recounted.
Mr. Eberle, 36, an aerospace engineer with a penchant for conservative politics, said the disclosure raised no red flags about Mr. Guckert's journalistic credentials or professionalism.
Mr. Eberle said that in the two years that Mr. Guckert worked for him, he had not kept track of his volunteer reporter.
"Jeff did his thing, I did my thing," Mr. Eberle said. He also said that while he saw some of Mr. Guckert's writing samples before engaging him, "I don't know if I actually asked about his background and training."
Mr. Guckert said Saturday that he had no journalism experience before arriving at Gopusa, apart from working for his high school and college newspapers. Asked why he did not, in his function as a White House reporter, even try to interview White House officials, he said, "I thought there was a lot of meat that came out of the press briefings."
"You may say that lacks some kind of journalistic ambition," he added.
Mr. Guckert denied seeing a Central Intelligence Agency memorandum disclosing the identity of Valerie Plame, a C.I.A. operative, even though he had strongly insinuated as much in an interview with her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, the transcript of which he posted on the Internet.
Mr. Guckert's phrasing in that interview so strongly suggested he had seen the classified memorandum that it brought F.B.I. officials to his house as part of the Plame leak investigation, he said. But he said referring to the memorandum as though he had seen it was merely an interview technique. "What I said was no more than what was reported in The Wall Street Journal a week before," he said.
Mr. Guckert resigned soon after a news conference when he asked Mr. Bush: "How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" referring to Senate Democrats.
Mr. Eberle said it was not his idea of a proper question. "I would have phrased it differently," he said. Still, he said, the backlash surprised him. "I had no reason to think he was not adhering to professional news standards." The White House generally reserves slots for professional reporters, not political activists.
Mr. Guckert said he had never worked on political campaigns, or for the Republican Party, but admitted asking "pointed" questions at regular White House briefings from the point of a conservative. "Did my writing have a slant? Absolutely," he said. He said he has hired lawyers to examine whether he can take legal action over some of the information posted about him on the Internet, including the public posting of his Social Security number.
Mr. Eberle also said he had no inkling that Mr. Guckert had created pornographic Web sites or offered himself as a gay escort. Those revelations came in recent accounts in The Washington Post. If he had known, Mr. Eberle said, "I don't think I would have brought him on."
Mr. Guckert would not address the salacious details of his personal life - including sexually explicit photographs of him online but said "all of these personal things" have nothing to do with the administration or Talon News.
Mr. Eberle said that he and some friends founded Gopusa out of his Houston home about five years ago and later created Talon News. They expanded by buying another conservative site called MillionsofAmericans.com.
Mr. Eberle, who once worked for Lockheed Martin and says he prefers to keep his current employer unidentified, said that he was not bankrolled by any backers and that he and his wife had made few Republican contributions. Texas Republicans said he was not well known in the party.
Before engaging Mr. Guckert on "a volunteer basis," Mr. Eberle said he himself got temporary press credentials to attend a White House briefing. "I think I asked a question about a U.N. resolution on Iraq," Mr. Eberle said.
Mr. Guckert, having disclosed his real name, which he needed to use for even the cursory White House checks for a nonpermanent accreditation, then began attending briefings, Mr. Eberle said. "He would go as often as he could; he would try to go every day," he said. Mr. Guckert did not travel with the president.
The question, Mr. Eberle said, was, "Can this person take information and put a news product together?" Mr. Eberle said the answer was yes. Mr. Guckert's stories have since been removed from the Web site.
As for Mr. Guckert's reporting, Mr. Eberle said, "I've gone on record against softball questions on any side," but said that he did not monitor correspondents' performance. "I thought he was doing a good job. He did a good job, until that question."
Anne E. Kornblut contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
To the NY Times this is news.
They have lost any bearings they might have ever had.
At first I thought they were referring to Jim.
NEWSFLASH TO THE NY TIMES!!! WOLF BLITZER AND LARRY KING ARE NOT THEIR REAL NAMES!!!
Good one,MR
For pity's sake, anyone who was trying to be taken seriously as a reporter, with the name Guckert would be anxious to change it.
"He said, 'Kill it before it grows...' "
OK, I may be mistaken about Wolf, but Larry King is Larry Zeigler
News guys reporting news about news guys. Just crazy, man.
Like some 'reporters' don't sometimes change their given names when they go into so-called 'professional journalism' hoping to become stars (/s).
Can those liberals reporters assigned to the White House explain why they acted the same (soft questions) when Clinton was President?
If I remember correctly I did not hear anybody in 1998 ask President Clinton why we were giving a Nuclear Reator to North Korea.
So what's the deal hear - during a Republican regime ask the questions harshly and during a Democratic administration ask simple questions?
Another example - I haven't heard any liberal newspaper or reporter ask John Kerry why he refused to sign his Standard Form 180 when President Bush had signed his. Whatever the answer - this would be news.
I haven't heard any reporter ask John Kerry why his honorable discharge occurred during the regime of President Carter - a liberal democrat! Nor why his medals were signed by Leyman who was Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan?
Could it be that they work for a liberal Newspaper and if they ask these types of questions that they would be fired?
Probably these will be buried just like "Deep Throat" during the Nixon Years.
Any reporter out there wish to challenge my statements?
But Clinton selling National Security secrets for campaign contributions ISN'T.
And the Legacy Media wonders why their market share plummets.
I think Wolf Blitzer is Wolf's real name ..That info has been removed from the site that was quoted about his name.
Nom de plumes are common, though and hardly the reason that he should not have been there..
He committed the cardinal sin of being a conservative and his past left him open to being exposed by none other than gay activists.
This is a tempest in a teaspoon.(I stole that)
The operative word in this is generally!!
Generally ... not exclusively, not absolutely, not as required by law. The White House generally reserves slots for professional reporters, not political activists.
This whole issue is simply another example of the MSM attempting to make political hay with a NON-STORY!
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2005_02.php#009616
Have They No Shame? No, Actually, They Don't
Edward R. Murrow was not his REAL NAME!!! He was Egbert Roscoe Murrow.
Dee Dee Myers was not her REAL NAME! She was Margaret J. Myers.
Samuel Clemens
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