Democrats Ask for Gannon Investigation

Cox News Service

By Eunice Moscoso

Two prominent House Democrats urged the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday to investigate whether the Bush administration broke a law against using federal money for propaganda by giving “pre-packaged stories” to former reporter James Guckert, who used the pseudonym Jeff Gannon at White House briefings for two years.

The lawmakers also said that a federal prosecutor investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name should subpoena Guckert’s journal.

Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York and Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, asked the investigative arm of Congress to add the Guckert case to an existing probe into alleged White House efforts to shape news. The inquiry was prompted by revelations last month that conservative commentator Armstrong Williams received about $240,000 from the Bush administration to promote the No Child Left Behind Act.

Guckert, who initially reported for conservative Web site GOPUSA.com and later for its offshoot Talon News, resigned earlier this month after revelations surfaced that questioned his journalism credentials and showed that he was using an alias and had links to an online gay escort service.

Slaughter and Conyers, ranking members of the House Judiciary and Rules committees respectively, referred to “recent press reports” that suggest that the White House gave Guckert pre-packaged stories that he reprinted wholesale without disclosing that the administration authored them.

Such actions would violate a ban on using appropriated money to broadcast or publish propaganda without taking credit for it, the lawmakers said, in a letter to David Walker, Comptroller General of the Government Accountability Office.

Guckert said that the charge is “absolutely false.”

“Not a single bit of evidence exists to support that because it didn’t happen. I did use White House press releases to write my articles and I quoted from them very liberally,” he said, in an interview. “It was never represented as anything other than the White House position on various issues of the day. That’s reporting. That’s not propaganda.”

Guckert, however, in some instances, reproduced large portions of White House press releases in stories without changing anything or attributing the White House. And the stories were posted on Talon News as well as GOPUSA.com, a Web site that is operated by a Texas-based Republican Party activist, Robert Eberle.

Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and House minority whip, is also circulating a letter to colleagues that asks the Bush administration how Guckert was able to gain access to White House press briefings with a false name and no journalism background, Editor & Publisher reported Wednesday.

Before his resignation from Talon News, Guckert typically asked partisan-edged questions about presidential critics and friendly questions about White House policies during press briefings.

Guckert said that he had never been paid by the Republican Party or the White House to promote policies.

He also is one of the reporters questioned by special prosecutors about the leak of a secret CIA memo disclosing the identity of Plame, the wife of Bush war critic and former ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Slaughter and Conyers on Wednesday also wrote to the U.S. attorney investigating the leak, suggesting that Guckert could have information “potentially vital” to the probe in a journal that he kept while covering the White House.

Guckert mentioned the journal in an interview with Editor & Publisher magazine on Tuesday, prompting the lawmakers to write the letter.

Guckert said Wednesday that Slaughter and Conyers are blowing things “out of proportion” and that the journal is just a series of reporter’s notebooks that include “little observations about my experiences in the press corps because I found it so fascinating.”

In addition, he said that he was thoroughly investigated by the FBI as part of the Plane investigation—including agents coming to his home and looking at some of his notes—and that he was completely cooperative.

“I am guessing that the reason I haven’t been subpoenaed is because I provided no reason for further investigation of me,” he said.

Guckert also said he didn’t know if he would turn in the notebooks to investigators now.

Talon News published a Guckert interview (under the name Jeff Gannon) with Wilson in October 2003 in which Guckert referred to an internal U.S. intelligence memo detailing a meeting in early 2002 in which Plame purportedly suggested that Wilson be sent to Niger to investigate the possibility of Iraq purchasing uranium to develop nuclear weapons.

Critics say that classified information must have been leaked to Guckert.

Guckert has been unclear about how he knew about the memo but said recently that he read about it in the Wall Street Journal.

In addition, Guckert said that he believes he has a future in journalism and has received inquiries about possibly writing a book about his experience.

“I haven’t gotten to tell my side of the story….The story from my point of view is something that people would be interested in,” he said. “I’m just a humble reporter who instantly had all this interest expressed.”