More on the Moon connection: "Gannon" and Doug Wead

Remember Doug Wead's infamous audiotapes of Bush, in which the prez makes some rather uncomfortable admissions? Many have wondered whether this release occurred as a diversionary exercise, intended to keep our noses pointed away from Gannon/Guckert.

I would like to propose an alternative scenario. I will present this alternative in interrogatory format.

Question 1: Who does Doug Wead really work for?

The tapes brought to the fore a couple of matters that could alienate W from his base: Drug use, and the possible ersatz nature of his proclaimed religious beliefs.

Many evangelicals suspected that Bush the elder was "faking it" when he claimed to be born again. (I still recall the video distributed in 1988 of Bush making this confession of faith. He seemed to be biting his lip; you could almost see a thin trickle of blood dribbling down his chin.)The Wead tapes tend to re-awaken those fears.

Wead originally joined the Poppy Bush campaign to teach him the "catch phrases" that would signal to the Jesusmaniacs that he, Bush, was also among those bathed in the blood of the Lamb. It was obvious that his fundamentalism amounted to little more than a collection of catch phrases; the religious right soon made GHWB the target of many of their most beloved conspiracy theories.

A much smaller (but not insignificant) proportion of the evangelical community still harbors those suspicions about the present president.

Here's the fascinating part: Wead's loyalties may never have been with W at all. What if Wead's allegiance really goes toward the Korean gentleman lurking behind the curtain?

Southern Baptist attendees at a pro-Bush inaugural function in 2001 -- a gala largely put together by Doug Wead -- were shocked when none other than the Reverend Moon showed up to give a speech and receive an award. You can read about this odd event in Kevin Phillips' book American Dynasty; there's also a brief description here.

Moon once proclaimed that his goal was the "subjugation of the American government and population." What if he's not kidding?

At any rate, I tend to think that Doug Wead made those tapes (and remember, we got only a brief snippet) available as a way to remind the President who is really in charge. We do not know what is going on behind the scenes; do not discount the possibility that Moon wants a service performed that Bush feels reticent to perform.

(For example, the mad Reverend now has a bug up his ass about replacing the symbol of the cross with that of a crown. What if he has asked Bush to aid this campaign?)

Question 2: How did Moon get where he is?

His funds would seem to be unlimited, of course, but that only takes the question one step further. Moon first became a "player" during Koreagate, which -- as most web sites will not tell you -- largely concerned sexual blackmail operations directed against DC politicians.

In 1989, Moon's Washington Times published an incomplete account of a gay prostitution ring with White House ties. Why did Moon allow the publication of such a story, which could only embarrass the elder Bush? And why did the expose cease?

The idea of blackmail once more suggests itself.

Question 3: Why does GHWB speak on Moon's behalf?

In the mid 1990s, former president Bush -- in an unprecedented move -- made speeches endorsing the would-be Messiah. Unconfirmed reports tell us that Poppy was paid millions to give these speeches. But Does the clink of the bag of lucre explain his bizarre performance? The Bush family can't be that hard up for money; I doubt whether GHWB would have spoken on behalf of (say) David Duke or L. Ron Hubbard just to sock away a few extra million.

So why did he speak up on behalf of Moon? He incurred some risk in doing so: Moon is loathed by most of the fundamentalists the Bush family has attempted to court.

Once again: the concept of extortion explains much.

Question 4: How did Moon manage to be "crowned" as Messiah in our Capitol by a congressman, with many other congressfolk in attendance?

Does money suffice to explain this bizarre circumstance? Or should we also harken back to Koreagate, and Moon's proven history of using sex to dig up dirt on politicians?

Question 5: How did GOPUSA achieve such rarefied heights so quickly?

How did the GOPUSA "reporter" gain access to the White House on a regular basis? How did he learn inside information about the attack on Iraq and other matters, including (perhaps) the Plame affair?

Recently, I have noted the many links between GOPUSA and Moon. Moon has always operated via a series of front organizations. If we presume that GOPUSA is one such organization, then we have an explanation for the big questions. The Bush White House let GOPUSA do whatever it wanted because it could not afford to do otherwise.

Let us review a few facts -- some mentioned previously, plus a couple of new ones -- which tend to favor this presumption:

1. GOPUSA has run scads of UPI material, seemingly free of charge; Moon owns UPI.

2. Bobby Eberle, head of GOPUSA, also writes for Moon publications such as the Washington Times, Insight and Human Events.

3. Gannon/Guckert worked for the Moon-linked Frontiers For Freedom.

4. Paul Teller of GOPUSA previously worked for the Moonie Times.

5. Bob and Bruce Eberle appear to be connected to right-wing funder "Hal" Eberle, who (during Reagan's Central American wars-that-were-not-wars) was a board member of a Moon front organization, the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund.

6. Although rank-and-file fundies hate Moon's theology, the Korean Messiah has been making inroads with certain fundamentalist leaders, including Tim LaHaye and Jerry Falwell. Moon has also been linked to the Fellowship, a group that has in turn been linked to GOPUSA.

I feel as though we've been given about 70 pieces of a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. So far, the pieces tend to form the outline of a Moon...

Audiogators, take note:

Bob Fertik of Democrats.com has noted another possible instance of Bush displaying his inability to get through a speech without a hidden helper. In this case, the occasion was a NATO press conference. You be the judge...

Gannon: Strange days indeed! (The Moon connection, and more...)

Following all the Gannongate trails can lead one to some strange places. If you possess what Sherlock might have called "a taste for the outré," here are some of the more colorful areas of inquiry...

Ann steps in. Here's your chance to guffaw at an astounding collection of factual errors: Check out Ann Coulter's uproarious take on the Gannon affair. She speaks of "a gay escort service that Gannon may have run some years ago." "May have"? "Some years ago"? Yeesh!

Personally, I think she's motivated by her innate empathy for a fellow Top.

Toward the end of her rant, Ann avers that John Kerry was born "John Kohn," a claim previously made only by anti-Semitic conspiracy-mongers. In fact, the senator's grandfather changed his name from Kohn to Kerry in 1901, some fifty years before John was born.

There's much more -- a howler in every paragraph. Along the way, she even dares to call Maureen Dowd a "fantasist"!

Matt and "Jeff"? There is now some speculation that Matt Drudge has used Guckert's services. A cute idea, but I see no evidence.

The Talon and the Eagle. One of Guckert's comrades at GOPUSA was Stuart Richens, a head honcho over at Eagle publishing. Eagle is the parent company of Regnery, publisher of some of the most obnoxious books ever to infect your bookstore shelves.

A reader has suggested that the name "Talon" derives from "Eagle," and I think this idea has merit. Does Guckert's organization link up with Regnery? (Remember, "Gannon" was pretty much the whole show at Talon; after his departure, the site has been mostly inactive.)

Guckert's poor, poor family. Didja notice? When Guckert dropped out of Talon News he claimed that the publicity was causing pain to his family. Now he is seeking all the publicity he can get.

Blame Clinton! That's what the Freepers have decided to do: "What happened to Gannon was a Clintonista hit. It had nothing to do with his alleged past, but everything to do with insulting Her Heinous in a nationally televised press conference."

More Reverend Moon connections... Bobby Eberle has written for the Washington Times and Moon's Insight and Human Events magazines. Indeed, most of his non-GOPUSA writing career seems to veer Moon-ward. (For more, see here and here.)

Before switching to GOPUSA, Gannon wrote for Frontiers of Freedom, which also has Moon links, via Lynn Francis Bouchey. Some speculate that Frontiers of Freedom is the group behind GOPUSA.

More than that. A Raw Story reader found that GOPUSA published a staggering amount of UPI material at the time Gannon began to work for the group. "What's the deal?" asks this reader. "I find it hard to believe GOPUSA coughed up the cash for the UPI wire service."

Here's the secret: Moon owns UPI.

As detailed a few posts below, Moon first came to national prominence in the 1976 "Koreagate" scandal, which involved prostitution and the blackmailing of politicians. May we scry in this history a hint of the current Gannon scandal...?

Moon now funds much of the conservative movement, using many cleverly-designed "cut-outs" -- and GOPUSA may be one such mechanism.

Incidentally, Wayne Madsen has claimed that Moon also has strong links to another cult named The Fellowship (a.k.a. the Family). Which leads directly to our next topic:

Wayne Madsen steps in again! As is so often the case with this writer, I cannot verify his claims, but I find his ideas worthy of consideration.

Madsen believes that Guckert's Talon agency is related to two other groups bearing that name: Talon LLC of Detroit, an investment firm, and Talon LLC of Houston. Both are connected with Republican Party bigwigs -- in the latter case, with Enron, which set up Talon LLC of Houston as a "special purpose entity." (Whatever that means.)

The Detroit group is run by one Michael Timmis, a contributor to the aforementioned Fellowship Foundation, a frightening Christian cult bent on installing a theocracy. This group, which possesses genuine ties to the politically powerful, operates out of Arlington, VA. As mentioned earlier, Madsen has had his eye on this group for some time; for a refresher course, see my (guarded) commentary here.

Madsen has claimed that this Fellowship operates in conjunction with Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries. If Madsen is correct, then this linkage could prove very intriguing. Yesterday, we mentioned Tim Goeglein of GOPUSA, who also functions as the liaison between Karl Rove and the evangelical community. Goeglein works closely with Colson.

It's worth repeating that Madsen blieves that Moon and the Fellowship are intricately linked together. I have seen no evidence backing that assertion, but Moon's money makes anything possible. We also have ample reason to suspect that GOPUSA is a Moon front.

I'm curious to learn as much as possible about Guckert's religious affiliations, since they did not seem to interfere with his activities as a prostitute:

Gannon has been linked to Fellowship members who are active in two northern Virginia churches heavily influenced by the Fellowship: Little Falls Presbyterian Church in Arlington and McLean Bible Church in nearby McLean. Gannon is also linked to Rev. Rob Schenk, the founder of Washington's National Community Church, a Pentecostal congregation that counts John and Janet Ashcroft as members. It currently meets in a movie theater at Union Station in Washington, DC.

At this point, the story gets (you should pardon the expression) juicier:

The Fellowship is financially backed by companies with lucrative defense contracts with the Pentagon, many of which are based in northern Virginia. Some of these companies are involved with prisoner detention contracts in Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan.

Bottom line: Madsen speculates that the abuses in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo really were designed as gay and BDSM pornography!

Johnny Gosch? This page offers what I consider a rather fanciful scenario that Jim Guckert/Jeff Gannon is actually Johnny Gosch, the child kidnap victim whose story aroused national concern in the early 1980s. The coincidence of the initials is indeed suggestive, but I think the chronology works against the idea. Johnny would be 34 now, if my math is correct, and Guckert is, I believe, 40-ish.

That said, there are odd lacunae in Guckert's life history.

Links to the Franklin case? The page cited above may be read as an example of what to avoid in doing this sort of research. The piece gets many facts wrong -- for example, the BBC did not produce the documentary "Conspiracy of Silence." Worse, the author's uncritical acceptance of questionable or discredited conspiracy stories can only do harm. None of the information about MKULTRA is valid: Yes, such a CIA program did exist from 1953 to 1963, but no documentary evidence suggests that it ever concerned child abuse or the creation of programmed "alters."

Alas, paranoids of a certain stripe accept these allegations as a matter of faith. (Believe it or not, there is a "mind control research" subculture out there -- they even used to have conventions! -- and most of the people in it are very unpleasant.) A surprisingly high number of attention-seeking individuals have derived emotional satisfaction from proclaiming their victimhood. I've learned the hard way not to involve myself with such people, and I advise everyone tempted to research such claimants to proceed with extreme caution. Do not believe all or even most of what you hear, least you be led into the bogs of Illuminati-spotting and worse.

Any skeptically-minded researcher who dips his toes into the subculture of child abuse/SRA "researchers" quickly learns that the field is hopelessly polluted by misinformation and unproven allegations. For this reason, Paul Bonnacci is (I regret to say) of little use as a witness. As a youth, he was in the care of a right-wing religious extremist who exposed him to some bizarre writings then in circulation. The material concerned mind control, Satanism and so forth. Bonnacci's "recollections," as set down in the early 1990s (I possess copies of some of this material in his handwriting), make no distinction between the obviously false material that he merely read about and the things that he allegedly experienced. You cannot fairly convict anyone on such testimony.

I do not say any of this lightly or happily. I should also note that an acquaintance of mine, who had worked on the aforementioned documentary, once interviewed Bonnacci and considered him credible.

The whole Franklin imbroglio strikes me as a diversion, since we now cannot separate the provable from the merely alleged. On the other hand, some of the information in de Camp's "The Franklin Cover-Up" may prove useful, particularly the sections dealing with the CIA's involvement with blackmail in DC. And I cannot help smiling at the thought that such a book might force a wedge between W and his fundamentalist base.

Even so, it is better, I think, to focus attention on what we can prove about the DC "call boy" ring which serviced high-level politicians during the first Bush regime. That ring -- which involved Reagan/Bush staffer (and neo-Nazi "fellow traveler") Todd Blodgett -- did exist. And I think it is fair to ask whether Guckert's male prostitution service constitutes a new variant -- or perhaps a continuation -- of the 1988-89 scandal.

Who unleashed Guckert/Gannon? (Updated)

Is it true, as many believe, that Karl Rove engineered Jeff Gannon's White House access? The GOPUSA "Christmas Card" page offers thanks to these individuals:

I'd also like to send a special thank you to all those who personally provided me with their assistance, guidance, and friendship, including Kathleen Eberle, Bruce Eberle, Mike Hiban, Don Stewart, Paul Teller, Tim Goeglein, Stuart Richens, Matt Smith, Jen Ohman, Bob Johnson, Liz Sheld, Julie Cram, Phillip Stutts, Chuck Muth, Grover Norquist, Karl Rove, and G. Gordon Liddy.

Well, there's Karl.

The other names are of some interest as well. I presume you already know about Norquist and Liddy.

Jen Ohman, formerly Liddy's publicist, now works with Ollie North and Hannity. Perhaps this link explains why Hannity was pushing Gannon as a legit reporter.

Nice to see that Bobby Eberle's GOPUSA has rendered formal thanks to Bruce Eberle's notorious name-collecting enterprise. This, despite the fact that some say there is no relationship between the two men. Something odd is up with these Eberles. (Perhaps I can repeat my suggestion that there may be a family connection to Paul Eberle, accused by some of publishing material sympathetic to pedophilia.)

Bob Johnson is a founding member of the Free Republic. You will recall that the Freepers had links to Aziz al-Taee/Joe Aziz, the drug thug cited by rightists (including Guckert/Gannon) as a "responsible" spokesman for the Iraqi anti-Saddam movement. Aziz also played a mysterious role in the Nick Berg affair. I suspect that Johnson linked "Gannon" with this contact. Not being a real journalist, Jim/Jeff was unlikely to go digging up sources on his own.

Phil Stutts worked for Daschle opponent John Thune and for Dan Quayle. He was also the campaign manager for the Bobby Jindal's 2003 run for Governor of Louisiana. Jindal's refusal to meet with any representatives of the gay community (which has a strong presence in New Orleans) infuriated local activists but played well to the Bible belters.

Julie Cram was the RNC's "Director of Surrogate Media Operations." The phrase "surrogate media operations" pretty much sums up Guckert's act.

Chuck Muth can be described as a Rove-in-training. His specialties are direct mail and internet activities.

Paul Teller was the legislative director for the Media Referral Service of a group called the Republican Study Committee. This service, run out of the House, was devoted to thrusting right-wing legislators in front of TV cameras on every occasion. Nota bene: Previously, Teller worked for the Reverend Moon's Washington Times. Scroll down a couple of posts, and you will see my commentary regarding the hows and whys of Moon's previous interactions with a Bush White House sex scandal.

Mike Hiban owns something called the Omega List Company, which sells the names data-mined by Bruce Eberle. He's an expert on "the conservative donor universe." (Frankly, it's difficult for me to tell where Eberle's operation ends and Hiban's begins.)

Stuart Richens is a leading figure within Eagle Publishing, the parent organization of Regnery. As you know, these guys churn out propaganda. (Net research has yet to uncover Richens actual job title.) Richens' name comes up in an interesting discussion of a piece of right-wing agit-prop called The Homosexual Agenda.

UPDATE: A reader has suggested that the name "Talon News" was derived from Eagle Publishing. I'm sure that this is correct.

The Gannon controversy may have placed Tim Goeglein in a particularly sticky situation. Goeglein is the liaison man connecting Rove with the evangelical community.

Note: A good deal, though not all, of the above summarizes research conducted by the nice folks at Democratic Underground.

And they call DAN RATHER irresponsible?

Note these three recent GOP attacks:

1. As part of the $200 million campaign to scuttle Social Security, a GOP front group derived from the unbeloved "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" is running an ad accusing the AARP -- the AARP! -- of being anti-troop and pro-gay marriage. (The ad was pulled.)

2. David Horowitz is trying to smear Barack Obama and Al Sharpton as allies of the Ayatollah Khomeini and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Horowitz believes the link to be literal, not figurative.

3. Bobby Eberle's GOPUSA site (the infamous employer of "Jeff Gannon") published an anti-Semitic screed damning George Soros as a "Shylock" in whom "Satan lives."

The conservatives have gone nuts. I speak literally. They are mentally ill.

American political debate has never sunk to such barbaric, pre-human levels. Are the "Christians" in red-stateland so incapable of independent thought that they can be swayed by such puerile attacks? Comparisons to the Nazi era are unfair to the Nazis; even Goebbels maintained a greater respect for the intelligence of his audience.

The Bush gay prostitution scandalS

Todd Blodgett. You probably don't know the name. The question is: Why don't you know it?

After all, if a man with Blodgett's bizarre history had gotten anywhere near a Democratic president, the right-wing media would have used a pneumatic nail-driver to punch that name into the consciousness of every living American.

A 1989 Washington Times article connected Blodgett to a gay prostitution ring whose clientele involved high-level Republicans. Blodgett later involved himself with such noted modern American racists as Willis Carto and William Pierce. For a while, Blodgett owned Resistance Records, the notorious neo-Nazi music label.

But this fellow was no mere fringe-dweller. Blodgett, whose father was a prominent GOP politician in Iowa, had worked in the White House. He briefed Ronald Reagan. Next time you see an episode of The West Wing, imagine someone like Herr Blodgett working next to Josh and Leo -- and if that image seems absurd, remind yourself: Such a thing actually occurred.

More than that: In 1988, at the very time when his DC-area apartment housed gay prostitution activity, Blodgett served on the Bush/Quayle election committee as a domestic policy advisor.

Again: Imagine how the pundits would have howled if a man with that background had served as a Clinton election advisor. Would they have ever allowed us to forget?

Again: Why don't more people know the name of Todd Blodgett?

The information related above comes from sources most people would consider respectable. You can find much of it in this piece published by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Yet even those researchers outraged by Prescott Bush's long-ago financial dealings with the Third Reich never mention the Nazi sympathizer who worked on the Poppy Bush campaign.

The Guckert/Gannon controversy has induced the more adventurous researchers to take another look at the previous big scandal involving gay prostitution and the White House. Some believe that the current imbroglio may have roots in the older one.

That earlier matter generated surprisingly few reports in the mainstream media. A key figure in the gay prostitution ring was a lobbyist named Craig Spence, who, while shopping his tale around for possible publication, divulged that the CIA used the ring for blackmail purposes. He also prophesied that he might turn up as the victim of a fake "suicide." His body was later found in a hotel room; the coroner declared his death to be a suicide.

Question: Why would the most substantive report on the 1988-89 scandal appear in the Washington Times?

That paper, after all, is owned by the Reverend Moon, the bizarre would-be Messiah and accused money-launderer. Moon has infamously close ties to the far right and to the Bush family. (Here's a nice photo of Poppy and Barbara with Mrs. Moon and Bo Hi Pak, the Reverend's right-hand man.) So why did Moon's underlings briefly tarnish a GOP-held White House in 1988-89?

This puzzler has been gnawing at me in recent days. Then my thoughts turned to that other big scandal of the 1970s -- the one never discussed in school textbooks.

Many Americans of a certain age first heard of Moon in relation to the 1976-78 Koreagate controversy. Today, most "quickie" accounts of that scandal describe it as an attempt by the South Korean government to bribe American congressmen. But the affair ran deeper than many suppose.

Jim Hougan (author of Secret Agenda, the best book on Watergate) argued that the secret heart of this scandal, as in Watergate, may have concerned sex and extortion. Ton Sun Park (sometimes spelled Tongsun or Tong Sun Park) was a South Korean agent of influence who ran the George Town Club. This club provided a base of operation for the sexual blackmail of leading legislators and other politicians. Various published accounts hold that the notorious "renegade" CIA agent Ed Wilson secretly filmed embarrassing activities by politicos of the day. (Hougan's source for much of this information was Wilson's partner, the fugitive Frank Terpil.)

And who was the director of the CIA in 1976? George H.W. Bush.

In 1977, Congressman Donald Fraser investigated Moon's links to this very same operation. His report indicated that Moon and Park both functioned on behalf of the KCIA, itself created by, and intertwined with, the American CIA. As Bob Fritakis has summarized:

Moon earned notoriety in the Koreagate scandal after female followers of the Unification Church were accused of entertaining and keeping confidential files on several US congressmen whom they "lobbied" at a Washington Hilton I-Intel suite rented by the Moonies.

Moon has always had a strange obsession with sex.

Early Korean news accounts of the cult accused Moon of requiring sex from a number of his female followers. At least one illegitimate pregnancy resulted. (For an eye-opening account of his sexual rites and attitudes -- which strike even this jaundiced observer as odd -- see here.) Despite this history, Moon now emphasizes chastity. A much-repeated Moon quote holds that "the head of the love organ is shaped exactly like a poisonous rattlesnake. And just like a rattlesnake, it's always looking for a hole."

Perhaps that rattlesnake hunt explains Moon's close relationship with both Bush the elder and W.

The best investigation of the Moon-Bush linkage is this chapter of Robert Parry's excellent series "The Dark Side of Reverend Moon." Parry notes a number of instances in which the elder Bush has trumpeted the cause of the Korean "Messiah," a figure despised by most people. I cannot think of a historical parallel for such a relationship: A former president has endorsed a perverted, Yakuza-linked Korean cultist who denounces the Unites States as "satanic."

Parry's article notes that Moon had ties to the Reagan-Bush administration from the very beginning. Still, Bush seems not to have made any public gestures on behalf of Moon until the 1990s.

I therefore theorize that the afore-cited 1989 Washington Times article -- the one exposing Craig Spence, Todd Blodgett and the DC gay prostitution ring -- constituted a warning shot. The piece revealed much, but hinted at far worse revelations to follow. Who knows what manner of sexual dirt might have seen ink if Bush refused to ally himself to the good Reverend?

I note that, although Moon went to jail for tax evasion during the first Reagan administration, he did not make a return trip to the pokey while Bush was in office. In fact, all investigations of Moon's nefarious activities were shut down.

For many years, rumor has claimed that Bush himself patronized the Spence ring. I have never seen those rumors backed by any evidence I would consider persuasive.

We can be certain, though, that sexual blackmail underlies much of the covert politics of the past decades. The CIA's blackmail adventures played a still-hazy role in both the Watergate affair and in our Middle East relationships. (The Nixon administration cemented ties with Saudi rulers by providing them with appropriate "company" during stateside trips). Koreagate provided a continuation of the same theme, as did the 1989 scandal. In all of these cases, the Agency's fingerprints became briefly visible.

Does the pattern continue to the present day? I note that Jim Guckert once took pains to deny involvement with American intelligence -- even though no-one had accused him of such involvement. Odd behavior.

Rathergate redux

Occasionally, right-wing blogs prove useful. One site, for example, has published the transcript of a speech given by Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), during which he accused Karl Rove of orchestrating the Rathergate affair.

Quite a few progressives feel the same way, but this is the first time (so far as I know) a member of congress has expressed this view. Of course, the conservatives have accused Hinchey for spreading "irresponsible" accusations.

But who is really being irresponsible? As the scandal unfolded, radio rightists, cable pundits and right-wing bloggers often accused CBS itself of deliberately faking the memos. Anyone who suggested that CBS did no such thing was damned as naive or worse. To this day, right-wing propagandists aver that CBS "intentionally perpetrated an election hoax."

Ridiculous. Dan Rather's producers trusted a single source who later changed his story. Poor journalism? Indeed -- but a far cry from the intentional spreading of a hoax.

Moreover, no-one has ever proven the documents fraudulent. A number of indicators point in that direction, but no expert on questioned documents has offered a conclusive analysis. Indeed, the right-wing bloggers who claimed that the documents were created using Microsoft Word are the only proven liars in this sorry matter. To demonstrate the point, simply fire up Microsoft Word and type in any number followed by the "th" superscript. Then compare your result to what you see on the memos. Look closely at the positioning.

However those documents were created, they were not created in the way the reactionaries contend. Why do we let disingenuous (and obviously well-recompensed) right-wing bloggers write our history?

Another Throat note

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The wildest DC "gay prostitution story yet

I admit it. Any mainstream media journalist would decry the post I am about to write.

Why, then, would publish such a thing? Because a blog is not the New York Times; on the internet, we may discuss areas that cry out for further research, as opposed to recording research already completed. Speculation can prove useful, as long as it comes clearly labeled as such -- and as long as the user does not overdose.

The semi-mysterious TBRNews website has had a go at Gannongate which includes this noteworthy offering from a putative White House source-with-no-name:

Seems a former White House aide, (Reagan White House) was caught running a male prostitution service and got fired from the Monkey Palace, and later from the RNC for supplying muscular boy toys to some top Beltway gays. Well, after being fired, our bozo got together with a Muslim druggie and set up operations at the Kennedy-Warren, a landmark DC apartment/business complex. They ran a male escort service supplying young studs to older Beltway citizens. Among these citizens were: Federal judges, top political figures, mostly Republican, very senior military people and certainly members of Congress. The head of this service, that utilized credit cards for payment, supplied young men, mostly young servicemen, between 18 to 25 for sex. They kept very complete records, including names and address of the johns as well as credit card receipts. And later there was blackmail and now, I have learned from the inside, this joker has sold the lists to: Iranians( through his partner’s Arab connections) and a gay group in DC. Sold the lists twice and got twice the money. I have seen a partial list and it reads like the DC social register, believe me!

The TRBNews site implies, but does not state, that all of this somehow links up with the Gannon story.

I don't know who wrote these allegations, and I certainly cannot vouch for their veracity -- but I do know the name of the "former White House aide": Todd Blodgett.

Blodgett's name came up in the June 29, 1989 Washington Times story on the Reagan era gay prostitution ring servicing the powerful in DC:

One of the people involved was a White House press aide who briefed President Reagan daily on press matters.

When his name was found on credit card vouchers for what turned out to be service fees for male prostitutes, Todd Blodgett, 28, admitted his name had been used and that parties with naked male prostitutes had taken place in his apartment but, like Harry Dexter White, flatly denied that he had any guilty knowledge and had "no idea at all" how his name and signature had gotten onto the vouchers.

Readers should understand that I have no hard evidence disproving this denial.

A side-note: The Washington Post of July 24, 1990, identified the leader of the ring as one Henry W. Vinson, a mortician (!!) in West Virginia. When the DC call-boy operation became public, Vinson apparently attempted to fake his own death; his attorney was none other than Greta Van Susteren -- later of Fox News. The ring also involved Washington lobbyist Craig Spence, who was found "suicided" in a Boston hotel room after he announced plans to tell the media that the intelligence community used his "boys" for purposes of blackmail.

Interestingly, Todd Blodgett has -- like Bruce and (perhaps) Bobby Eberle -- devoted some effort to the business of "taking names" -- that is, compiling mailing lists. He now runs something called the TAB agency, a PR firm in DC. At the same time, he has functioned as a connecting point between the Republican right and the far, far, far right.

As in: Fascist.

This page, for example, details Blodgett's interactions with Willis Carto and the Liberty Lobby. Carto, longtime publisher of the anti-Semitic Spotlight, has been the leading promoter of Francis Parker Yockey's Imperium, the "bible" of post-war fascist theory; William Turner's classic Power on the Right describes a Carto lecture delivered in a hall bedecked with swastikas.

(The page I have cited may seem a tad confusing at first, since it stems from an acrimonious dispute between Carto and some of his former associates. Internecine fights often allow outsiders a peek behind the curtain.)

Blodgett is described as an "advertising wizard" who was a "trusted part of the Liberty Lobby team;" as a result of the split within that organization, he acquired the Liberty Lobby's mailing list. This emphasis on mailing lists is, as noted, redolent of the Eberles.

One would not think the connections could veer further right-ward. One would be wrong. In 1993, aparently at Carto's behest, Blodgett took control of Resistance Records, a flagrantly neo-Nazi music label. (A typical couplet from a song penned by the company's founder: "Kill all the niggers and gas all the Jews/Kill a gypsy and a coloured too.") The company was slated to collapse due to its failure to pay state sales tax -- and then Todd Blodgett came to the rescue.

By March, 1999, Blodgett had sold Resistance to William Pierce, leader of the openly Nazi National Alliance, for US$250,000.

Blodgett met with Pierce and two Nazi Skinheads at the very exclusive University Club, in Washington, to finalise the arrangements.

Pierce was jubilant. "As Resistance Records regains strength, that acquisition should add an increasing number of younger members in the 18 to 25 age range to our ranks", he wrote.

Blodgett was to continue as the operations manager of Resistance Records, which was now relocated to Washington. But in October 1999, Pierce, aggravated by delays in Blodgett's management, moved Resistance to National Alliance headquarters in West Virginia.

The fact that Blodgett was to manage the company strongly indicates that his ties to the neo-Nazi movement are ideological, not merely financial.

How did such an individual become a briefer to Ronald Reagan, a GOP strategist and a mover within "Poppy" Bush's election campaign? Perhaps we can find a hint of an answer in the published report of gay prostitution in Todd Blodgett's DC apartment and his known penchant for collecting names and addresses.

All of the above should be taken as prelude to the following allegations, published on this site and elsewhere. Once again, the unverified claims come from a self-proclaimed White House insider, who may well be the same fellow quoted above. I do not know if this fellow is a "Deep Throat" or a Janet Cooke; read his words and judge for yourself:

In my second-to-last communication I talked about a male ”escort service” [read gay brothel] operating in DC for the edification of the very senior Beltway people. I have, locked up in my office safe, copies of the credit card receipts with names, card numbers and signatures of: two Supreme Court and one Appellate Court judges {Have you heard about the two judges who tried each other?} eight Senators, five Congressmen, two former and one current White House aides, [the latter a very senior policy-maker] a number of very prominent DC lawyers, several senior members of the RNC, four general officers and one Admiral, three of whom are still on active duty [one in the Pentagon], five local newspapermen, eight ministers, high level employees of: State Department, Commerce Department, Justice Department, HEW Department, DC police department, NSA, DIA, and most especially, a number of pundits from Georgetown University and a nice collection of CIA people. The proprietor of this stud farm was one Todd Blodgett and there was a front-page story on one of his male whore establishments in the Washington Times. Blodgett was a Reagan White House aide, was fired from both the WH and later, the RNC, for aggressive homosexual behavior and then tossed out of the University Club in DC.

Information that has been kept very quiet at the highest levels would indicate that George W. Bush was heavily involved with gay groups while at Yale, had a significant affair with another man while at HBS, was a “very close friend” of a black drag queen and, according to three different inside sources, is no more a Pentecostal Christian than Saddam Hussein.

The sex material about our pure, God-intoxicated President, comes from one arrest report and several “counseling” reports now sequestered (by order of Karl Rove) at Yale (Bush’s records there have been sealed) There is the temptation to run with this but there at least has to be something factual here. The Republicans are trying to plant obvious lies on everyone in the hopes that others like the nutty Rather will take them up and make Bush look like a wonderful but persecuted man.

Of course, the material presented here may well itself have the covert purpose of fulfilling that very agenda. Even I tend to balk at the following:

According to one report, made long before Bush was Governor of Texas, he could not have any kind of sex with women unless at least half drunk and was a practicing advocate of physical abuse. He likes to beat people, according to this. But not be beaten in return. Some of this is not only difficult to believe but downright repulsive.

Although Bush doesn't strike me as a Top, some Dominants do seem surprisingly meek in the course of their "normal" lives.

On the other hand, the following data certainly carries a believable ring:

You can see small traces of these accusations if you talk with Bush for any length of time. He has succumbed entirely to the outrageous flattery his staff smears him with and he now really believes that he is always right and that anyone who dares to contradict him is guilty of treason! Or sedition! I have actually heard him say that and, of course, his nodding and sucking staff goes right along with him.

Have all these men been players in a hidden game that has continued for 17+ years?

Todd Blodgett was "an advisor to George Bush's election committee" (the reference here is to the elder Bush). At the same time (according to Kevin Phillips) Bush the younger coordinated the campaign's outreach to the Fundamentalist community, an effor in which Bruce Eberle also (reportedly) participated. (Bruce, keeper of the right-wing mailing lists, has also been linked to something called Grace ministries.) Bruce Eberle has denied a newspaper's report that Bobby is his brother, but has elsewhere refered to Bobby as a member of his "clan."

A fair amount of smoke, and we may yet find the fire. But I must remind readers that, so far, no hard evidence links Guckert with the astonishing stories surrounding Todd Blodgett.

Incidentally, I want to repeat one observation from our supposed "insider":

The Republicans are trying to plant obvious lies on everyone in the hopes that others like the nutty Rather will take them up and make Bush look like a wonderful but persecuted man.

In recent days, untraceable commentators to Kos and similar sites have circulated stories about Scott McClellan and Karl Rove. (I referenced, but did not necessarily endorse, the McClellan accusation in an earlier post.) For example, a Kos reader named "Thom" claimed that he had sex with Rove in 1970.

There were clever disinformation campaigns nipping at the edges of the "bulge" story and the vote fraud scandal. Don't be surprised if "Brad Menfil" (remember him?) offers his take on Gannon and related matters...

Eberle and Gannon

We are learning more about Bobby Eberle, the puppetmaster behind GOPUSA and Gannon/Guckert. (See below for my main discussion of the Gannon, blackmail, Karl Rove, and more.) An old Eberle post to Free Republic reads:

GOPUSA features new Talon News stories week day, and we send out an e-mail news update each morning so you know what's up. Please sign up. As you can see, my DC reporter is right on top of things. You can trust that Jeff will do the digging where no one else will.

Eberle's phrasing seems pretty amusing nowadays.

Talon News seems to have existed to provide Guckert with journalistic cover, and as a means to cull email addresses. Collecting addresses has long been Bruce Eberle's stock in trade, as this 2002 expose demonstrates:

Eberle's fund-raising activities have also drawn repeated charges of ethical misconduct, the most notorious of which was a campaign in the 1980s that used phony prisoner-of-war sightings to solicit money from veterans for former Air Force Col. Jack Bailey's "Operation Rescue," which claimed to be on the verge of saving American POWs still being held in Vietnam. One solicitation took the form of a "handwritten letter" signed by Bailey, who claimed to be writing from aboard his rescue ship, the Akuna III. "Please excuse the handwriting. But I'm writing at a makeshift desk on the deck of the Akuna III," the letter read. "The China sea is tossing and rolling." In reality, the letter had been written by Eberle, not by Bailey, and the Akuna III (which was not even seaworthy) had been docked for more than two years.

Eberle's direct mail appeals enabled Bailey's group to raise $2.2 million between 1985 and 1995, of which 88% was actually spent on "fund-raising expenses" instead of rescue missions (and of course, no rescue mission ever actually succeeded in rescuing anyone). When these facts surfaced during a Senate committee hearing, the revelations prompted outrage from Vietnam veterans on the committee including John Kerry, who termed the operation "fraudulent, disingenous and grotesque."

Republican Senator John McCain offered similar sentiments. "In my opinion they are criminals and some of the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam," McCain said. "They have preyed on the anguish of families, and helped to turn an issue which should unite all Americans into an issue that often divides us."

Eberle simply shrugged off these charges, claiming to have "one of the highest reputations for integrity in the business."

That last line could make even Jeff Guckert gag.

We still have nothing firm (so to speak) on the link between Bobby Eberle and Bruce Eberle. They claim no relation, but a number of publications have asserted otherwise. They are linked by the business of collecting and selling addresses.

This fascinating Houston Chronicle piece on Bobby Eberle reveals that he (supposedly) had no interest in politics until 1994. Before that, Eberle worked for Lockheed, arguably the most "spooked up" company in America.

Eberle, a Catholic, is also quoted as saying that religious people are "almost persecuted" in the United States. That's like saying Bill Gates is "almost homeless."

Eberle's good friend and GOPUSA partner is Bill Fairbrother (here's a picture of the two together), whose bio page mentions no wife or girlfriend -- but does note his beanie baby collection.

Gannon explodes

America's most hypocritical he-harlot has escaped the confines of blog-land and has become a mainstream media sensation. How much scrutiny can this scandal withstand before someone uncovers the story behind the story?

I'm becoming a tad irritated by the standard pundit remark: "Why didn't the Secret Service vet this guy?" Obviously, he achieved his position precisely because he was known. Behind Guckert stood someone else -- someone big. (Sorry, but the nature of this scandal makes a few double entendres inevitable.)

And that "someone" obviously had high hopes for our "Bulldog." He was being set up to become a new Hannity, a new O'Reilly.

Are "Gannon"'s politics sincere? I doubt it; this guy was always too scripted. He has lied and lied. He lied about the nature of his websites. He has lied about his name. He lied about religion, bleating in public about his conversion to fundamentalism even as he maintained his call-boy service.

The Guardian claims that "the reporter who wasn't is part of a wider press scandal." Damn straight. (Another unintended pun -- sorry!)

The programmed quality of the rightist media, its Goebbels-esque faithfulness to the party's daily line, has become downright unnerving. How did the con-intern manage to instill such discipline? Right-wing pundits used to act with greater independence. For example, George Will spent much of the Reagan era loudly proclaiming that Americans were undertaxed -- a statement calculated to establish himself as a maverick. His message was: "I may be a conservative, but I am no puppet."

Now, all right-wing pundits seem to take pride in their puppethood. How did this happen?

To come at the question from a different direction: If Gannon was blackmailed into becoming a robot for the RNC (as I suspect he was) then just how widespread is the practice of extortion?

For further evidence that we are dealing with a scandal that goes well beyond a mere security breach, note these emergent sub-stories:

1. A Texas network? A gay writer for Daily Kos traces Guckert's links to a network of closeted Texas Republicans.

What is interesting in tracing the origins of GOPUSA is that Bobby Eberle appears to equivocate about when his organization actually began. Although he most often cites 9-11 as a key to the inspiration to go big time, other reports suggest that GOPUSA was, in fact, founded, in Texas, in 1999. The lead here suggests a strong possibility that Rove needed a "front" group to act as a propaganda arm of the campaign and that the far better connected (though even more dubious financially) Bruce Eberle agreed to help create GOPUSA for his (brother? Cousin? Nephew? - has anyone solved this yet?) Bobby to oversee, or front for.

Is the confusion because GOPUSA was actually created before Bob Eberle had anything much to do with it? That he, too, had been brought on board?

That GOPUSA and TALON news were not just some simple little advocacy group seems highlighted by their role in the South Dakota campaign, of which we already know quite a lot and has been well-documented by SusanG and others.

In summary for today, my hypothesis is that under the able scrutiny of Karl Rove, members of Texas's closety gay underground were brought in to similarly create a dirty tricks arm of the campaign. Most members of GOPUSA probably had no know idea that any of this was happening. That was desirable. The secret leveraged world of gays and espionage neatly overlap. Indeed, gays and networks of gays have long been a staple in the clandestine world for those very reasons.

(For more on the Eberles, see below.) This Kos writer addresses a subject wider than the Gannon scandal; he speaks to the whole history of interaction between spooks and the sexual underground.

My estimation is that a network of Texas Gays have been instrumental in Bush's rise to power and that a few of them just got very sloppy in a way that risks outing all of them. That's the reason why there's been this whole attempt to frame the issue as being about Gannon's personal life -- they know perfectly well it's their OWN personal lives that that they're trying to protect.

Could this posited network have any link to the rumors surrounding Bush's own private life?

(At this point, perhaps I should mention that a reader from Tennessee has hinted that he may be able to confirm reports that former Knoxville mayor Victor Ashe had a hidden life. Ashe, you will recall, was W's roommate and fellow male cheerleader at Yale. Stay tuned!)

2. A connection to Nick Berg? I've written at some length about the theory that Nick Berg, the technician beheaded in Iraq, had a covert history as a spy. Oddly enough, the Berg and Guckert tales overlap.

Guckert interviewed Berg's one-time business partner, Aziz al-Taee, a.k.a. Aziz Kadoory Aziz, a.k.a. Joe Aziz, an anti-Saddam Iraqi who popped up in several right-wing stories in the run-up to the war. I havepreviously noted that this strange individual was also a crook linked to drugs and the Russian mob. His anti-Saddam organization had a West Virginia address and unusual connections to the State department.

Former CIA officials Vince Cannistraro and Graham Fuller were trumpeting Aziz during this period. So was Guckert. Aziz also was tied to GOPAC in this period.

What do "Joe Aziz" and "Jeff Gannon" have in common, aside from a penchant for fake names? They both were very, very open to extortion:

Al-Taee pleaded guilty in the 1990s to selling empty plastic envelopes commonly used to package crack. He also pleaded guilty to buying stolen computers. He was sentenced to three years of probation, fined $3,000, and forced to forfeit $17,673 in profits.

He was arrested again in May 2001, on charges that the chain of electronics stores he owns in Philadelphia was selling counterfeit compact discs. A judge dismissed that case for lack of evidence on March 4. Al-Taee blamed the compact disc counterfeiting case on unscrupulous employees, who he said had acted without his approval.

Further indication, perhaps, that the propaganda business and the blackmail business are interlinked.

(Incidentally, and for what little it may be worth, Jim Guckert and Nick Berg both attended West Chester university.)

3. White House ties? It's increasingly obvious that "Gannon" was not just a pretend-reporter, not just an conservative yes-man -- he was an insider, a trusted individual, part of the team:

San Antonio radio producer Susan Farris could always count on James Guckert, a.k.a. former White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, to pitch an appearance on the shows she produces at conservative talk station KTSA.

He was not only anxious about pushing his story of the day, but seemed to always have some kind of inside knowledge about the White House, as well.

And:

Guckert, she said, frequently passed on what he clearly thought was insider information, during his 12 appearances on KTSA during 2003 and 2004. She first heard from him the expression "shock and awe" to refer to the massive U.S. bombing attack at the start of the Iraq war, and he fingered Mary Mapes as the producer of the so-called "Rathergate" segment on "60 Minutes" before she had seen that mentioned elsewhere.

Gannon devoted much of his "reportage" to smearing Tom Daschle; the campaign manager for John Thune, Daschle's opponent, was Dick Wadham, who is very close to Karl Rove. There are further ties between Gannon and Rove:

More interesting is that he and Karl Rove seem to share a mentor -- a largely under-the-radar wingnut named Morton Blackwell. It seems that "Jeff" also is a graduate of the the Leadership Institute Broadcast School of Journalism -- a conservative propagandist training school that was founded and is run by Blackwell and that operates on an $8 million annual budget which comes from God knows where.

A CBS investigator finds even more Gannon/Rove linkage:

But Rove's dominance of White House and Republican politics, Gannon's aggressively partisan work and the ease with which he got day passes for the White House press room the past two years make it hard to believe that he wasn't at least implicitly sanctioned by the "boy genius." Rove, who rarely gave on-the-record interviews to the MSM (mainstream media), had time to talk to GOPUSA, which owns Talon.

GOPUSA and Talon are both owned by Bobby Eberle, a Texas Republican and business associate of conservative direct-mail guru Bruce Eberle who says that Bobby is from the "Texas branch of the Eberle clan."

Which leads us directly to our next point of interest...

4. Eberle. Who is Bobby Eberle, and how was he able to muscle a guy like Guckert into the White House? For the full background, read this fine RAW story piece. Many pieces of the puzzle still need to be filled in -- for example, we have oddly conflicting accounts as to whether Bobby and Bruce Eberle are related.

Odder still: Bush claims he never met Bobby Eberle. Texas Republican officials also take a "Bobby who?" stance. Yet there is evidence that the man was known to both.

Despite both Bush and Eberle having been members of the Board of Directors of the Texas Lyceum Association, and despite Eberle having been one of Bush's home-state delegates during the 2000 presidential election, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan tried to assure the White House press corps (unconvincingly) there was no connection between the two men.

Why are they treating Eberle as though he were -- well, Jim Guckert? I don't know, but I will hazard a speculative note -- very speculative.

Back in the 1970s, a Californian named Paul Eberle became known as a publisher of sexually-oriented material. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But some writers -- not necessarily the most level-headed ones -- have claimed that an Eberle tabloid called "Finger" advocated sex with children. I have not seen the evidence myself, and thus cannot judge; the cited article defends Paul Eberle, and gives what appears to be a fair summary of the controversy.

Does Paul Eberle has any relationship with the extended Eberle "clan" mentioned above, or to the Eberle Communications Group headquartered in Virginia? I've found no evidence for this suggestion (which I mention in public only to spur further research). Neither can I explain why so many Texas Republicans seem to turn crimson at the sound of the name "Eberle."

5. Is there a larger sex ring? Wayne Madsen, bless his heart, takes this story into the wildest terrain yet.

Madsen finds Gannongate oddly redolent of the alleged White House-linked gay prostitution ring whose existence was revealed in a Reagan-era Washington Times article. This controversy has given rise to some rather bizarre allegations, best chronicled by the 1994 video "Conspiracy of Silence." (See here for my previous comments on the subject and a link to the film.) As I've made clear, I am not persuaded by the wildest of these claims.

Neither am I persuaded by the most striking paragraph in Madsen's piece -- even though it is quite intriguing, especially when viewed in light of the afore-cited CBS investigation:

Last year, a senior source on the Washington Times editorial staff (the same paper that broke the GOP pedophile scandal in 1989) linked White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to gay activities involving top Republican political strategists in Washington, DC.

Why would a periodical owned by Reverend Moon, paymaster to so many prominent Republicans, make these disclosures (or, if you prefer, outlandish accusations)? I'm not sure. Moon's notorious hatred of homosexuality may figure into the equation.

Negroponte

God, I wish I had more time to write today! A Daily Kos diarist nicknamed "nephalim" (I wish these guys would use nicks that at least sounded citable) has writtena powerhouse history of John Negroponte, the new intel czar. Of all the must-read pieces published this week, this is the must-read you MUST read.

Clinton Curtis update

I know I haven't been reporting much on vote fraud lately, even though a great deal has happened on that front over the past few weeks. I feel as though I screamed as loudly as I could for two whole months, and after a point, one becomes tired of raising one's voice.

I WILL return to the subject, and soon.

In the meantime, check out Bradblog's latest on the Clinton Curtis imbroglio. You recall Curtis, the guys who says he was asked by a company called YEI to come up with some vote-grabbing software for Florida politico Tom Feeney? You recall how, when the story broke, YEI made dark references to an (unseen) threatening and/or libel-filled letter sent by Curtis? You recall how MSNBC's Keith Olbermann reported this "fact" without seeing the actual letter? Brad has the REAL scoop.

Prancing Preachers: More Roehmosexuality

The Gannon/Guckert scandal has prompted one commentator on Democrats.com to offer these musings:

I know during the Clinton-gate thing, the FBI tracked down one of his accusers blowing boys on a park trail in Georgia. I also now that John Lowndes was outed and divorced from the Christian Coalition.

How many other Xian leaders, who supported this president, are covering their own homosexuality?

I've corrected a couple of spelling errors in this quote. While I don't much care for the increasingly popular contraction "Xian," the basic point here deserves pondering.

According to the Christian fundamentalists, all homosexuals are either suicidal or predatory -- or both. Right-thinking, Bush-voting preachers warn us that the Bible denounces men who act in an effeminate manner. The "gay movement," we are told, uses devious methods to subvert our impressionable youngfolk. That's why Jerry Falwell outed one of the Teletubbies. That's why James Dobson decried the flamboyance of Spongebob Squarepants.

(Or did he? This article, originally published on the Free Republic site, claims that Dobson merely "warned that SpongeBob, Barney, Winnie the Pooh, and dozens of other popular children's characters may soon be used (presumably against their will) to promote the normalization of homosexuality ..." Of course, neither the cited writer nor Dobson has presented any evidence of such a plot; the law prohibits use of those characters for any purpose not approved by the copyright holder. Also, I wasn't aware that Spongebob and Winnie possessed independent wills.)

Gannon-gate has forced us to confront the phenomenon of "Rhoemosexuals" -- gay men who support a political movement devoted to the elimination of homosexuals. Now let's expand our field of study. Let's take a look at the Christian rightists who provide the modern Republican party with its foundation.

Try this experiment. Tune in Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." Then flip back and forth between that program and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, or one of the other Jesus channels. Ask yourself: On which show do the men act in a more effeminate manner?

Your results may vary. The outcome of my test was pretty surprising. The Jesus aficionados were a LOT swishier than the Queer Eye crew.

I was astonished by the way televangelists dress: Jewelry. Ties louder than an air raid siren. Baby blue suits. Pastels. What kind of man wears a pastel suit?

The overly fastidious grooming, the toupees, the overall impression of exhibitionism, theatricality and vanity -- all of this is stereotypically sissified. Some of these guys look like they use enough hair dye to drown a hippo. How many heterosexual males use hair dye? Only gays and aging rock stars go to such lengths to recapture lost youth. Straight guys accept the dictates of fate; they learn to live with grey and thinning hair.

Compared to most of the gays in Hollywood, TBN preachers look like FREAKS.

And they way they act is far worse.

I come from a largely Italian family. People of my heritage have a reputation for allowing our emotions to show. As Michael Corleone once observed: "In Sicily, everything's opera."

But Southern Baptists -- especially the ones flouncing around in front of the cameras -- have a tendency toward hyper-emotinalism that even I find embarrassing.

These prancing pastors burst into tears at the drop (or perhaps the passing) of a hat. They are forever dancing, crying, screaming, whispering, shaking with rage, melting with love. Ever wonder what a man would look like if he had PMS? Glance at a TV preacher.

I have always found the hyperbolic histrionics of these cathode-ray-tube Christians to be undignified and faintly disgusting. The mad ministers who lead televised revival meetings tend to fidget and frolic with utter abandon. They cannot stay still for five consecutive seconds; their bodies often jerk and spasm as though electrified. Such behavior would seem over-the-top in a gay disco.

If I had to use one word to describe the look and behavior of these queenly Christians, that word would be 'flamboyant."

These public crybabies, these superego-free Ids, these emotional exhibitionists, these nancyboys of the New Testament have zero business lecturing the rest of the nation on proper masculine behavior.

Come to think of it: Why do their ultra-weepy wives look like drag queens? Do these "women" really possess vaginas, or are we being scammed?

Granted, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson manage to dress and behave in a convincingly heterosexual fashion. But they are exceptional within their trade. (And Robertson, you will recall, frequently used the services of a gay ghostwriter.) Instead of castigating the Teletubbies, Falwell should send a message to his fellow televangelists: "For God's sake, stop dressing and acting like freaks. Start acting like MEN!"

And if they want a refresher course on what non-freakish behavior looks like...well, they might want to catch an episode of "Queer Eye."

It couldn't happen to a more deserving newswhore

Jim Guckert may be the most flamboyant presstitute in the spotlight today, but he is hardly the worst. That "honor" belongs to Judith Miller of the New York Times, who wrote all those phonus-balonus "weapons of mass destruction" stories in the run-up to the Iraq war.

She and Time's Matthew Cooper have now been held in comtempt for refusing to name their sources in testimony before a grand jury looking into the Plame affair. Neither Miller nor Cooper outed Plame as a CIA agent; Robert Novak did that chore. Yet he has escaped legal troubles -- so far.

Right now, Judy must be wondering who she has to blow to get one of Novak's "get out of jail free" cards.

Fake news is the news

A friend of mine happened to be visiting Easter Island in 1988, when Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet bowed to international pressure and allowed his country to hold an election. (Chile has sovereignty over the island.) During the campaign, Pinochet flew in and staged a televised event. The "cheering natives" who greeted him were actually Chilean soldiers in costume; the actual natives couldn't stand him. My friend witnessed the whole charade.

Americans used to laugh at Third World dictators who resorted to such tactics. But now we find ourselves living in something parlously close to a Third World nation. Google the term "fake news" and you'll find a surprising number of recent stories, only some of which refer to Jon Stewart's show.

The "Jeff Gannon" affair refuses to, er, shrivel. The latest is a stunner: Gannon/Guckert gained access to the White House briefing room before his ostensible employer, Talon News, came into existence. Talon was born on March 29, 2003. CNN's cameras caught him amongst the press corps in February, and he apparently begain reporting from the White House in January.

At that time he did, apparently, write propaganda squibs for GOPUSA, which is not a news organization. But GOPUSA is (obviously) run by individuals close to the administration -- for example, board member Richard Powell is married to Dina Powell, the White House Chief of Personnel, who answers directly to Andrew Card and Karl Rove.

Obviously, someone -- Karl himself? -- decided to position this guy to become another right-wing media star. But why him? I feel that the choice must relate to Guckert's secret life as a prostitute. It is worth noting that, according to this story, Rove granted a rare interview to Guckert/Gannon.

Oddly enough, Guckert also seems to have owned a court-reporting service. How does a man with a tax problem, a man so down-at-heels that he literally has to sell himself, own a business of that sort? Is there a conspiracy to cobble together fake court transcripts?

I can't help quoting Maureen Dowd's observation:

I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one called me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd renew the pass - after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months.

Fakes everywhere. "Jeff" is hardly the only example of newsfaking. A few other examples:

1. Karen Ryan and Alberto Garcia (if those really are their names) starred in fake news reports orchestrated by the White House and broadcast on CNN. You will recall that CNN was also an outlet for...

2. ...the all-purpose nuclear facility photo, variously ascribed to Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Government sites gave us a number of these fake news stories. The original publisher, Radio Liberty, is now trying to pin the blame on -- get this! -- a Czech news service.

3. Armstrong Williams, a black conservative commentator, got a bag of loot containing a cool quarter mil (or thereabouts) in exchange for his kind words on a Bush initiative.

4. Syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher took a lesser sum to write "pro-marriage" stuff for the Department of Health and Human Services. (I fail to see how marriage is the province of that department.) The problem here is that she never disclosed that she received the money when writing on the same topic in her columns.

5. The Mike McManus story mirrors that of Maggie Gallagher.

6. Right-wing bloggers are used -- and, it is said, paid -- to get Bush-approved stories into the newstream. (Ain't nobody paying us lefties, folks! We're on our own...)

6. Bush's handlers routinely stage scripted "town meetings" designed to look like spontaneous events, which is no doubt what unsuspecting viewers of CNN and CSPAN take them to be.

Which brings us back to the Pinochet story with which we began.

F for Fake

Have you seen the latest about the one-size-fits-all nuke plant photo?

CNN has used a photo of the same damn facility to illustrate stories about North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons development. Then the same aerial shot turned up on government-run sites. Now we discover that the photo -- labeled "Iraq_nuclear.jpg." -- has been used to illustrate Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty stories on Iraqi nuclear weapons in the run-up to the current war.

The same plant apparently exists in three different countries. Let's see Charles Fort explain THAT one!

The best coverage of this outrageous example of news management comes to us by way of good old Brad Friedman.

You know what's really outrageous? Almost nobody is covering this matter. It has rated not one mention (to my knowledge) on cable news. Do a little Googling, and you'll find that the only non-blog recognition of this affair can be found on an anti-occupation Iraqi site -- and THEY lifted it from Brad!

If this story hurt the credibility of a Democratic administration, you know full well that the pundits would make enough hay out of it to feed a thousand horses.

Does anyone have any idea just where this facility actually is? I'm guessing either the U.S. or Russia. Maybe it's a shot of Barbra Streisand's house.

What we have here is another clear example of a conspiracy to manufacture news. The same can be said of the "reportage" offered by Scottie McClellan's "Top" man, Jeff Gannon. How does our modern press differ from Pravda in the bad old days? Ya got me!

This is a good opportunity to repeat a story that I may have told earlier on this blog. On the day the famed statue fell in Baghdad, the local ABC affiliate ran some striking footage showing the anti-American forces at work "up close and personal." According to the anchor -- Christine Lund, if memory serves -- the footage showed "Iraqi Republican Guards" opening fire on Ameircan troops "elsewhere in Baghdad" on that very day.

I recognised the footage. It had run two days earlier on a French-language newscast that my local cable company broadcast on one of those high-end channels that nobody watches. The soldiers were irregulars from Syria, not Iraqi Republican Guardsmen. (The Guard appears to have stayed home during that battle.) They were in another city entirely. They never got a chance to open fire on U.S. troops. The encounter had not happened on the same day the statue fell.

Every single detail of the report was incorrect.

Of course, as we now know, the falling statue incident was itself staged. The early footage should have given the game away -- the revellers in the street were obvious plants. They waved pictures of Achmed Chalabi, who was then unknown in Iraq.

Those shots of rent-a-revellers holding up hagiographic Chalabi images were snipped out of later broadcasts of the falling-statue footage. That kind of careful editing does not happen by accident.

By the way: Fox News still hasn't apologized for their fake report that the Third Infantry Division wiped out two whole divisions of the Iraqi Republican Guard in a massive battle a couple of days before the entry into Baghdad.

And yet the right-wingers dare to criticize Dan Rather for presenting phony news!

What's next? Maybe the Conintern will take to airbruhing Chalabi and other disgraced figures out of old photographs, just as Stalin's henchmen used to erase images of Trotsky...

More Roehmosexuality

Yesterday's post gave raise to an entertaining discussion on a Democratic Underground board of W's possible homosexuality. (I thought these rumors would have received far more attention in the wake of Kitty Kelly's book, but better late than never.) The photoshopped responses are a must-see. The idea of Bush marrying Cheney caused my girlfriend to quip: "Well, we know who's the catcher in that relationship."

A couple of gay DU readers opined that they did not want Dubya to be counted among their numbers. One reader pointed out that, statistically speaking, we should have had at least two or three gay presidents by now. I'm reminded of one of my favorite lines from "The West Wing": "One out of forty American males enjoys wearing women's clothing, and we've had more than forty presidents."

One DU reader reports that Victor Ashe -- the former mayor of Tennessee, Bush's former roommate at Yale, and a fellow male cheerleader -- goes by the nickname "Bulldog." That was also Jeff Guckert's nick in the gay prostitution underground. Conjures up all sorts of scenarios, eh wot?

Guckert has made weird references to the CIA, along the lines of I'm not a spook, honest I'm not, really, honest. Now I'm starting to think: What if he is? What if the whole Guckert affair is a from-the-grave strike by the pro-Tenet forces to bring down W?

Democrats.com is now asking the question: "Did George W. Bush Have sex with That Man, James Guckert?" Al Franken has also made humorous (at least, I think he was being humorous) reference to this possibility.

Is giving voice to such an idea irresponsible? Maybe. But after an election in which the Democratic standard-bearer bore much irresponsible innuendo and outright lying, a little return fire is justified.

Keep in mind: The Reagan White House did suffer a "call boys" scandal, which was outed by none other than the Moonie Times. I think it is perfectly fair to ask if Guckert was part of a similar ring. One reader has suggested that Guckert may not have been the target of blackmail; rather, he may have been the "cheese" used to bait the mousetrap.

By the way, in case you missed it: Bush and his college roomie were male cheerleaders! I think I'm going to repeat that little factoid a couple of dozen more times in this column. Why? Because I know full well what the Freepers would have done if they found out that Kerry had a similar background.

Speaking of the Freepers: Both a reader named Ben P. and AmericaBlog confirm that Gannon/Guckert, in a 2004 comment posted to the FreeRepublic site, discussed the Plame scandal and the CIA memo. Guckert claimed that he concocted the story that he saw the memo. I'll take my reader's word for all this; right now, I haven't the stomach to pore through old Freeper commentary.

The revelation that Guckert was (is?) a gay hooker has apparently made the Democrats less inclined to pursue the matter. Why? If a female hooker got access to the White House press room, and if Sean Hannity publicized her work on his cable news show, the resultant brouhaha would last months.

Let's return to the issue of Bush's possible homosexuality: I should have noted that one of the links in my original post detailed "quasi-fictional" stories that could offer return fire for the Swift Boat smears. (Confession: A reader sent me a partial quote, and I only glanced at the page that provided the source.) Even so, the "facts" (quotation marks are quite advisable) are of some interest:

One of Bush's alleged former boyfriends, Anthony Berusca (class of '70), told The Dallas Morning News that Bush was "deeply conflicted about being gay, even somewhat self-hating." Berusca is convinced that this conflict led to Bush's drinking problems, but describes the President as a "gentle, caring lover." In 1976, the Bush family arranged for George to join "Worthy Creations," a church group in El Paso that focusses on converting homosexuals through faith. A year later, Bush was straight, born again, and engaged to Laura Welch (Bush).

Oddly enough, such a church really does exist, and it does specialize in "healing" homosexuality. However, according to its web site, it is located in Florida (not El Paso, Texas) and it has operated since 1986.

No proof indicates that the cited Dallas Morning News story exists, and I have yet to find evidence that anyone named Berusca lives in the United States. In sum: The story is not true. Even so, that "Worthy Creations" motif has me wondering if it has a kernel of truth to it.

And the Victor Ashe angle still offers much room for investigation. I'd like to know the truth about the allegations that Bush made secret trips to Knoxville. And did I mention that Ashe and Bush were both male cheerleaders and college roommates?

We can state that Republican operative Arthur Finkelstein (who is heading up a "Get Hillary" effort) is gay. From Working For Change:

And, you can add one more element to Finkelstein's reality; he is gay, yet he's worked for a gaggle of gay-bashing Republican Senators including Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.), Jesse Helms (R-N.C), Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and Sen. (Bob) Smith (R-New Hampshire), all of whom voted against legislation banning discrimination against gays while Finkelstein was working for them.

Finkelstein is also Jewish, but that didn't stop him from using anti-Semitism during a 1978 South Carolina congressional race between Republican Carroll Campbell and Democrat Max Heller.

Which leads us, finally, to a more general issue: How should progessives approach this issue?

Democrats should not be afraid that pursuing the issue of closeted gay Republicans will open us up to charges of homophobia. To the contrary. Exposing the sexual underground of the conservative movement will do much to stem the disturbing resurgence of puritanism, and will re-teach this nation a lesson it seems to have forgotten: As long as all parties are consenting adults, the "abnormal" is normal.

I'm a straight male, but I've met individuals who favor every conceivable sexual flavor. Straight. Gay. Top. bottom. I know of guys turned on by women's underwear. I know of guys who get turned on by the sight of women fishing. (Yes: fishing.) I know of guys who become erect at the sight of a woman in high heel shoes pushing the gas pedal while trying to start the car. I know of women who like to be bitten vampire-style during sex. I've met women who like to be strangled. I've met women who like to be ridden like a horse. I've met women who like to do the riding. I've met men and women who wield whips. I've met men and women who love to be on the receiving end of a whip.

And although some will tell you that such creatures exist only in pornography, I used to know a woman who despised cunnilingus yet orgasmed during fellatio. No, I won't give you her phone number.

The point is: Human beings are sexually programmed in a wide variety of ways. That programming takes place either in the womb or soon thereafter. And if the Christian Reconstructionist faction of our national leadership were proven to be just as human as the rest of us in this regard, our national psyche could only benefit.

The Bulge is a-comin' back!

Remember the bulge on Bush's back? It's back. At least, the controversy has returned to some degree, due to David Lindorff's piece.

David Okrent, an editor at the New York Times, has corresponded on the topic with Chris Shaw of BushWired. (The same correspondence can be found at Okrent's site.

Okrent denies the unverified report that the NYT killed the story because Karl Rove placed a call to the paper:

If this is true, it's because "Bushwired" has much better sources than I do. I have never heard this, nor do I believe it.

Shaw's response to this deserves a fairly lengthy quotation:

In late October 2004, after the Times' report was "spiked", I received several reports of the incident at Bush Wired. The reports ranged from simple information on the "spiked" story, to a laundry list of complaints against the Times' editors. One report mentioned a "near mutiny" in the Times newsroom and that people at the Times were "aghast" over the Bulge story's untimely death. All reports correctly identified both the authors of the story and the date the story was killed, several weeks before this information was otherwise made public. As these reports turned out to be correct, I feel these sources are somewhat credible. Because of the timing and accuracy of these sources, I can only ASSUME that they are within the Times itself. I promised NOT to reprint or post the original e-mails from these sources, and I will keep my word. Additionally, I have not heard anything more from these sources since early November.

Three of these reports mentioned that Karl Rove called the Times, and subsequently the story was killed. I have no way to independently verify this information, but I decided to simply post what I was told, based on the previous accuracy of the sources.

As for David Lindorff's suggestion that the bulge story, if properly publicized, could have changed the course of the election: Shaw tosses this idea into the "What if?" category, but I tend to think that greater publicity could have helped Kerry's chances. Indeed, that was pretty much the main reason why I spent so much time on the topic in the run-up to the election.

Are there any new bulge reports? No, not as such. But I have heard a fairly consistent rumor, which my readers may help identify.

Not many days after the disaster of September 11, 2001, Bush delivered a fine speech to the nation during a service at the National Cathedral. A number of people tell me that they heard a "pre-echo" of another voice cuing Bush's lines before he spoke them.

Yeah, I know: There are possible "innocent" technical explantions for such a phenomenon, if it existed. We can't judge if we don't have a videotape record to study.

And thus I ask the readers: Do you have a tape of the that event? Do you know anyone who does?

Gannonfire

The Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert business continues to unravel.

Are you among those who wanted to believe Guckert's lame story that he merely provided web design services for gay prostitutes? Well, think twice before you take Guckert's word for anything.

According to Raw Story, Guckert hired someone else to do his designing. Americablog identifies the designer as one Paul Leddy. And those web sites came into existence because Guckert wanted to whore himself out to military types.

All of which leads credibility to the theory that extortion forced Guckert to become a robot for Republicanism. I mean -- just how does one get away with so public an attempt to make a living as a gay prostitute for Marines?

In his web pages, Jim (a.k.a. Jeff, a.k.a. "Bulldog") advertises himself as a Top. I wonder how he feels, now that the neocons have used him as their bitch?

I can't help quoting the remarkable Americablog:

Someone had to make a decision to let all this happen. Who? Someone committed a crime in exposing Valerie Plame and now it appears a gay hooker may be right in the middle of all of it? Who?

Ultimately, it is the hypocrisy that is such a challenge to grasp in this story. This is the same White House that ran for office on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. While they are surrounded by gay hookers? While they use a gay hooker to write articles for their gay hating political base? While they use a gay hooker to destroy a political enemy?

About that CIA memo:

The right-wing JustOneMinute blog argues that Gannon probably did not have access to the document itself, which had been described by the Wall Street Journal. But if Guckert got his info from the papers, why didn't he simply say so? And why was he subpoenaed?

Or did he receive a subpoena? Actually, this key point has yet to be determined. Newsday says he did. "Gannon" has told Editor and Publisher that he did not; he says he merely answered the questions posed to him by two FBI agents. You may chose whether to believe the word of a man caught "with his pants down" (literally!) when he told his lies about the military prostitution sites.

Around the time of Abu Ghraib, I reminded readers that homosexuality has long been the ultimate military secret -- in every army of every nation in every era. Which brings us to a question that both right and left would prefer to avoid:

Could the Nationalist Right be any gayer?

Most gays in this country understand that moderate left-wingers are more likely to support their freedoms. And yet -- as long as modern right-wing nationalist movements have existed, those movements have always relied on the efforts of a certain type of gay man who felt weirdly compelled to help his natural enemies.

One wag has suggested a new term to describe this personality type: "Roehmosexual."

The Nazis murdered many homosexuals. Yet their movement was aided by such figures as Ernst Roehm (of course), George Sylvester Viereck, and Rudolf Hess -- who was given the nickname "Faulein Anna," even though he was married. There is at least one story of Adolf himself "sleeping with soldiers" during WWI.

The anti-Communist witch-hunts in America brought to the fore such figures as Whittaker Chambers, General Edwin Walker, Roy Cohn, and Cohn's aide David Schine. Perhaps the list should include Tailgunner Joe McCarthy himself. (Sorry, Ann! But this page makes a good case.) I've also wondered about Harvey Matusow, notorious for providing false witness to HUAC.

And how can we neglect to mention the epic romance of J. Edgar and his beloved Clyde?

Speaking of Walker: Researchers into the JFK assassination have long been genuinely puzzled by the number of right-wing gays who kept figuring into their research. Dave Ferrie, of course. Clay Shaw. Perry Russo. Jack Ruby, almost certainly. Ray Broshears, I am told, once bragged about sleeping with a man calling himself Lee Harvey Oswald. Buffs can list quite a few more names. Warren Commission defenders sometimes accuse assassination researchers of concocting tales about a "gay conspiracy," even though no writer on the assassination known to me has ever posited such a thing. The buffs have felt bewildered by the entire phenomenon, and almost never discuss it in print.

As Christian Reconstructionists have ascended within the Republican party, the number of David Brockish Rhoemosexuals has also risen. The manager of Bush's reelection campaign was Ken Mehlman, widely rumored to be gay. (He's 37 years old, unmarried, and unlinked to any girlfriend.) David Dreier, head of Californians for Bush, does not deny being homosexual. Jay Banning and Dan Gurley of the Republican National Committee are openly gay.

And now Raw Story reports the following about White House Press secretary Scott McClellan:

RAW STORY has been told that the White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan visited a gay bar in Austin, Texas, on March 19, 1995. The date was placed exactly as a local memorial service was held on the same day.

The source, who would only comment on condition of anonymity, reserved comment on whether McClellan was actually gay, but said he was frequently seen at gay clubs. Another source also confirmed this account.

"He was often seen in gay clubs in Austin, Texas and was comfortable being there," the Texan said. "He's been seen in places that normal people who are looking for heterosexual relationships are not seen alone."

According to a White House transcript, McClellan is married, and Gannon sent the press secretary a wedding card. The White House, however, declined to comment.

As a Cannonfire correspondent reminds us, there are persistent allegations surrounding George W. Bush himself:

Why is Bush so hostile to the idea of gay marriage? Perhaps because until 1977, George W. Bush was gay. According to a group of 29 Yale classmates who comprise "Gay Ivy Leaguers for Truth," Bush was "known to be at least sexually experimental throughout his time in college." One of Bush's alleged former boyfriends, Anthony Berusca (class of '70), told The Dallas Morning News that Bush was "deeply conflicted about being gay, even somewhat self-hating." Berusca is convinced that this conflict led to Bush's drinking problems, but describes the President as a "gentle, caring lover." In 1976, the Bush family arranged for George to join "Worthy Creations," a church group in El Paso that focuses on converting homosexuals through faith. A year later, Bush was straight, born again, and engaged to Laura Welch (Bush).

Bush's name has also been linked to one Victor Ashe, a "special" friend ever since he and W were roommates and male cheerleaders (!) at Yale. Ashe, the former mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee, is now the U.S. Ambassador to Poland.

While mayor, Ashe made several unscheduled visits to the White House and, according to US Secret Service sources, Bush made at least 8 unscheduled and unannounced trips to Knoxville while he has been President.

Ashe is suspected of two arrests. One was in Washington DC and the other was in Atlanta, while he was a Tennessee state legislator. They allegedly involved arrests while he was picking up male transvestite prostitutes in public restrooms.

I haven't been able to confirm either of these two allegations.

Neither can I confirm the allegations arising out of what has been called the "Franklin Case," in which a Nebraska Republican allegedly provided boys to prominent figures within the GOP -- including the elder Bush.

But I can accurately quote W himself:

"We're a country based on fabulous values... And we'll prevail, because we're a fabulous nation, and we're a fabulous nation because we're a nation full of fabulous people."

Why is all this important?

Because gay Republicanism functions as a wedge issue, one that will help to divide the Jesusmaniacs from the Bush forces. Moreover, I consider it perfectly fair to ask a gay rightist "How can you support a party that won't support you?" -- especially in light of the fundamentalist determination to convert or kill all homosexuals.

Forcing a public debate over this issue will force the Republican party either to accept or reject the presence of gays within their leadership. If they accept, then the Christian base will stay home on election day. If they reject, then they will lose much of their best talent, and three percent of the male population will have even greater qualms about voting Republican.

Either way, our side wins.