Secret entrance? News footage proves that Jeff Gannon was in the White House on at least five occasions without letting the Secret Service know of his comings and goings. How (we may rightly ask) can such a thing be in the post-9/11 era, when even Abraham Lincoln's ghost needs a day pass?
In a previous post, I offered the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that Gannon/Guckert made use of the fabled secret White House tunnel (as seen in the film Dave). I now repeat the suggestion, this time more seriously. On a right-wing site, devoted to a review of an infamous anti-Clinton screed by former FBI agent Gary Aldrich, we are told that
A spokesman for the Secret Service insists that the president could not possibly leave the White House without the knowledge of his bodyguards. U.S. News reports, however, that a secret tunnel, constructed during the Reagan administration, connects the Oval Office to the president's living quarters in the East Wing. The tunnel was to provide an escape route in case of a terrorist attack. (There is also said to be an older tunnel connecting the White House to the State Department building by way of an underground garage). Reagan is said to have used the tunnel to sneak Richard Nixon into the White House for consultation on foreign policy. The article suggests that the president could use the tunnel to leave the White House with minimal chance of detection.Take all that with a grain of salt, and always consider the source. But that's not the only source. For example, here is an entire web page devoted to reports and rumors of secret presidential tunnels. Read, follow the links, and come to your own conclusions.
(Amusingly enough, the same secret tunnel shows up in some of the wilder theories about Vince Foster. The paranoid pronouncements of right-wingers can now be used against them. Cute, eh?)
So far, the tunnel remains conjectural. But common sense tells us not to dismiss the idea. Consider: Many 9/11 news stories confirmed the existence of a secret bunker beneath the White House. Suppose a bomb had flattened the building while Cheney remained holed up in that bunker. He would need some means of escape, right?
Bottom line: Someone felt the need to sneak in Jeff Gannon, male escort. Being a romantic at heart, I'm reminded of those early West Wing episodes in which reporter Danny Concannon would slip in to kiss CJ...
Gannon and the National Guard papers: Many have wondered whether Karl Rove engineered the (allegedly) faked National Guard document fiasco which helped bring down Dan Rather. One sidelight of the Gannon story offers a further clue.
On September 10, 2004 -- two days after Rather aired his report -- Gannon was scurrying around the White House, even though the press gaggle was held aboard Air Force One on that day. Gannon stayed from 11:19 to 12:55. Two hours later, he sent an email to Sean Hannity, offering a "scoop" about the origin of the Texas Air National Guard documents. This scoop alleged that the documents had been provided by CBS News producer Mary Mapes, who was also a key figure in uncovering the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Since his journalism amounted to little more than plagiarism and propaganda, Gannon obviously did not go "digging" for this information; someone handed it to him. One need not be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that he received the Mapes story from someone in the White House.
All of which leads to a couple of obvious questions: Who in the WH used Gannon as a cut-out to Hannity? And how did this Bush administration source know about Mapes?
The scenario lends weight to the suggestion that the whole "phony documents" scandal was engineered by the Team Bush.
5 comments:
How will we ever defeat these people?
I have followed your commentary on the Gannon affair with interest. At one point, you wrote about the Todd Blodgett. Later, you wrote that he sent you an angry email. Do you still think he was involved? Can you not say because of threats of legal action? I'm very curious because I followed this closely here and on DU and it all sort of just peetered out.
Actually, Blodgett's letter was pretty kind. He said that I could ask him anything I wanted. I was very busy that day -- actually, that week -- so I begged off for a bit.
A friend of mine told me not to send Blodgett any questions until he could speak to me. This friend wanted to know more about Nazi leader William Pierce, with whom Blodgett was involved. Alas, he -- that is, my firend -- seems to have dropped off the face of the earth.
THEN I started having problems with my email account. This morning, I sat down to winnow through a mass of mailings, I discovered that Blodgett wrote me back several times. Haven't had the courage to read those just yet, though I plan to as the day progresses. He must be angry. He surely has a right to be, since I did not respond at all promptly.
He and other correspondents may also be angry because someone is using my email address to send viruses. That nasty business appears to have contributed to my email account problems. This is a matter I should discuss on the blog itself, I suppose...
Thank you so much for your response. I wrote a long post about the Gannon/Blodgett/Aziz connection on DU, based on your blog, some lexis and google searches and (unfortunately) TBRNews.
At some point, though, after reviewing my sources, I came to the conclusion that as awful a character as Blodgett may be, with the well documented and by his own account admitted connection to neo-Nazis, his connection to Gannon was very tenuous. In fact, I think it was a masterful use of innuendo by the unreliable TBRNews that set a lot of the speculation about Blodgett in motion. In fact, I came to believe that TBRNews's suggestion that Blodgett was involved had to do with an intra-neo-Nazi dispute. I actually tried to call Blodgett, but no one answered his phone at TAB Agency. I get the impression that Blodgett is a very minor character -- a DC bottom feeder, whom TBRNews has a vendetta against for convoluted business reasons. I mean, how powerful can a guy be who gets punched out by skinheads while trying to do business in West Virginia?
On the other hand, Aziz is a fascinating, scary character and there is a direct, documented connection to Gannon. There are perfectly reliable connections between Aziz and (1) the Russian mob crack vial case, (2) fake astro-turf Iraqi organizations, (3) false Iraqi intelligence placed into mainstream media by aforesaid astro-turf organization, (4) Gannon as a conduit of Iraqi astro-turf organizations, (5) Nick Berg's death (!) inasmuch as Aziz was either his business partner or landlord, and claimed to be the last person to speak to Berg, (6) the Council on Foreign Relations (apparently duped (God, I hope duped!) into treating Aziz as an expert) and (7) blackmail in Iraq (he is connected to Ahmed Chalabi, whose INC ran a big blackmail operation in Baghdad).
Please keep your faithful readers informed about what you learn about Blodgett, though. I may follow up with a phone call to Blodgett, as soon as I can figure out how to protect my identity when calling, especially since he invited you to ask him anything.
**eLearning**
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