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.