Jeff Gannon! Aka James Guckert! Aka Johnny Goesch! Bush-era uncredentialed White House reporter. Frequent White House visitor. Male prostitute whose web presence solicited ‘ratings’ from customers. Loudly defended by Sean Hannity*. There are a million theories about how the fellow gained the kind of access he did – in ’05 the Secret Service became very interested in answering the ‘how’.
Guckert [Gannon] made more than 200 appearances at the White House during his two-year tenure with the fledging conservative websites GOPUSA and Talon News, attending 155 of 196 White House press briefings. He had little to no previous journalism experience, previously worked as a male escort, and was refused a congressional press pass.
White House records showed frequent visits by Gannon to the White House when there were no press conference, sometimes checking out but not checking in and sometimes checking in but not out.
Perhaps more notable than the frequency of his attendance [at press conferences] however, is several distinct anomalies about his visits. Guckert made more than two dozen excursions to the White House when there were no scheduled briefings.
Such good times.
*HANNITY: Now, Jeff Gannon, who is a terrific Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent for Talon News, actually shot me an e-mail today, and he’s about to break a story in an exclusive about these CBS documents. [The Sean Hannity Show, 9/10/04]
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
Whatever Works 