02-04-2005, 08:52 PM
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#20 (permalink)
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This vexes me. I am terribly vexed.
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http://www.gopusa.com/news/2003/octo...nterview.shtml
Link 1 is where Jeff Gannon does his thing, helping to out a CIA agent.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...¬Found=true
Quote:
Which of These Is Not Like the Other?
As Tom Brune reported last week in Newsday, the federal grand jury investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a covert CIA operative has subpoenaed White House records on contacts with 25 journalists.
The list (low on the page) is full of familiar names: Columnist Robert Novak, of course, and MSNBC's Chris Matthews, Time's James Carney, The Post's Mike Allen, Newsweek's Evan Thomas.
And then there's Jeff Gannon of Talon News.
Who? Of what?
I first wrote about Gannon in my Feb. 19 column. Gannon works for a tiny, supremely conservative organization called Talon News which publishes a Web site by the same name as well as one called GOPUSA.com. With the sole exception of Gannon, who says he is compensated, all the "reporters" are volunteers.
Gannon's presence in the White House briefing room is something of an irritant to most of the press corps, which considers his questions at briefings to be preposterous softballs. [Note: This paragraph has been corrected. Gannon does not have an assigned seat in the briefing room as was previously reported here.]
And in return, Gannon sometimes writes on his own Web site about his views of the corps and how there is "perhaps no depth to which it will not sink in order to undermine a presidency."
Anyway, the reason Gannon is on the list is most likely an attempt to find out who gave him a secret memo that he mentioned in an interview he had with Plame's husband, former ambassador and administration critic Joseph Wilson.
Gannon asked Wilson: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"
According to a December Washington Post story by Mike Allen and Dana Milbank, "Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband's trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it."
On top of being secret, CIA officials said it was wrong.
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Take notice.
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