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.
5 comments:
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.)
Both links point to the same place. I gather than was an error.
The story Paul Bonacci (sp?) told, and whatever evidence he was able to bring to the trial, was credible enough in civil court to get him a several million dollar jury award from Larry King, for what amounted to white slavery, kidnapping, sexual abuse, and pimping, which is to say, the core of his accusations against King, however details may or may not have been wrong.
sofla
On Moons funding:
Few if any bring this up, but where does it come from? He has only about 5,000 follows in the USA so not them. The money come from two sources, both of who vie with each other for the title of a level sheer despicable evilness rarely seen in humanity:
1) Door to door salesmen in Japan and South Korea, selling religious trinkets and cures and potions, they focus primarily on the isolated, single, elderly, etc. They ingrain themselves with the buyer and then after a few weeks begin to get pushy, demanding money, their property, etc or else curses will but put on their ancestors [I know it sounds stupid to us, but in Asia it’s the real deal]
2) The Japanese billionaire industrialists responsible for Japans Militant-Imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s and all that it created and led to, I shit you not. Many of these men, most of whom were charged with war-crimes at the end of WW2 and spent time in jail, paid reparations, etc are still alive and kicking, although not necessarily still involved in the industrial sector [for example one of them focuses these days on gambling related to speed-boat racing], I guess they figured it was no more fun when they couldn’t use Chinese slave-labour.
You decide which is worse. I sure can’t. There have also been allegations of involvement in the American-funded genocide and drug trade in South-America in the 1980s, but I’d prefer to wait for concrete proof before connecting to Iran-Contra.
LamontCranston
Joe, I have it on good authority that Ann Coulter is in fact a neo-nazi; you just have to know the code. Replace "liberal" in each of her books with "Jew" and it all begins to make sense.
While Guckert "may have" been a rent boy, Coulter "is" a reprehensible C*NT.
Great post. "Hopelessly polluted," yeah, that about sums it up.
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