The Spectacular Rise of the Miraculous Mr. Gannon
Talon News registers its domain name March 29, 2003. The site goes live April 1, 2003, and on April 3, 2003, the pseudonomic "Jeff Gannon," with no journalism experience and with a $50, two-day seminar at a right-wing propaganda institute under his belt, is seated four rows away from where the most powerful - and most guarded - person on the planet makes his pronouncements.
Heady times indeed. Not to mention the fastest background check in the history of labyrinthine bureaucracy. Perhaps the speed of that background accounts for the fact that our hero doesn't have to use his real name and seems to have sprung up as a glorious, immaculately conceived creation of the right wing less than a year before.
Of course, it was Ari Fleischer answering questions that fateful first day and not President Bush, which surely must have been disappointing to such a rising star. We all must live with such disappointments, even the most gifted - and dare I say ... planted? - among us.
But hey! Who needs boring old Columbia Journalism School and years of experience when all it takes to sit a few feet away from the President of the United States during wartime and toss him worshipful leading questions is a fake news site, a fake name and a willingness to lift your peers' work whole and cut and paste White House "fact" sheets? You don't even need a pen!
Sad to say, Mr. Gannon's reputation did not precede him at the more august legislative body, the United States Senate, where the National Journal reported in November 2004 that "the non-partisan U.S. Senate Daily Press Gallery has rejected Gannon's repeated requests for congressional press credentials because of TalonNews' financial ties to GOPUSA."
But still ... the White House! What a gig! Dozens of enterprising Kossacks are researching how we too can land such a cushy position with absolutely no qualifications. Newcomers to the project are welcome to join in.
Overview
I'm sorry, I'm getting lazy. I am exercising the right to simply link. For newcomers to the project, welcome. If you want to get up to speed quickly, read Diary I to see how it all started (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/28/203014/655 and the overview in Diary IV (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/31/93126/4150 and then join us in any of the tasks listed under Current Assignments or Priorities below. It doesn't take intimate knowledge of all the research we've done thus far in order to help out with one of the projects.
Current List of Assignments (and Help Requests):
1. Tomatoobserver has posted Time of Grace Ministries here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/1/23358/49966
2. Mnemosyne is checking and running phone numbers
3. conntexdem is researching Bruce Eberle
4. baltimoretim is researching precisely what the process is for obtaining a White House press credential
5. fauxreal and ladydawg are researching morning gaggles here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/29/215946/913
6. sean mykael is looking into Free Speech Foundation. Myrkury has graciously stepped in to advise on legalities of non-profit status (thank God). We may need people in a couple different states to physically pull paperwork soon. (Diary here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/30/14024/9923)
7. mlk and Marisa are constructing a sort of visual database "family tree" of relations, groups and individuals. This is a big project and someone might want to volunteer on that diary: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/30/152558/079. Additionally, Marisa is asking for data entry help.
8. spiderleaf is creating a timeline about the CIA memo leak/Novak/who knew what when, references to it in press, and analysis (Diary here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/31/122222/689)
9. NYBri is preparing to start the FOIA request process and could use some volunteers (diary here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/31/153513/309)
10. Louise volunteers to match timeline of Gannon at press briefings with his written "scoops" (Diary here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/1/164949/7409#5
11. Radically Bitter is compiling very, very useful DNS data.
12. KansasNate is making sure important stuff is getting fed into dkospedia
13. Nonemptysubsets (gotta love that handle) is downloading web sites since they're disappearing so fast. Requests taken.
14. Sidinny has set up a diary called "Altered Realities" that will keep track of what's been changed on the visited sites, what's been scrubbed and what it all means. However, he's on kidwatch and can't do much more than set the diary up, so needs help with volunteers who will do the analysis. (Diary here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/1/151721/4334#2)
15. London Yank is looking into any connection with NORTHCOM/Psyops
16. Mnemosyne, in a brilliantly written diary, tells of his travails at trying to get info on getting White Press credentials. If anyone has any information for the poor dude, help him out here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/1/201353/9256
17. Wayward Wind is entering White House Press Corps contacts in the Dkospedia for future use (heh heh heh).
Completed Research
1. baltimoretim finished research on Leadership Institute, concluding there's no real connection with what we're looking into. It's an interesting diary nonetheless, since the famous Rathergate TANG memo debunker dropped in for chat and was nicely behaved and informative about LI even though he comes from the other side of the political aisle (Give Mike a shout out! Hi, Mike!): (diary here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/30/193243/265)
Help Me, I'm Melting, I'm Meelllting!
I need two separate volunteers as follows:
1. I want someone who is willing to keep in good contact with me via email who will step up and take on the now awesome task of searching these threads (both meta diaries and subsidiary diaries) for me if I have a question. At the beginning of this venture, I actually saved the diaries as text files so I could search with Word for the subject I recalled in passing, but this is proving too time-consuming for me.(Also, the text files were cumbersome and awkward to use because they saved all the sig lines, ratings, etc.) I can usually remember some portion of a searchable phrase I'm looking for, but I can't remember which diary it was in.
It seems to me there must be a way to save these more cleanly and make a search easier, but I'm overwhelmed and can't think of one right now. They obviously would need updating fairly often as well in order to remain current.
2. I need a volunteer who will take over managing keeping track of the Current Assignments and links aspect of the meta diaries. What I'm thinking of is having someone post a diary called Current PropaGannon Assignments shortly before I post the current meta diary, and then I'll link TO that from the meta diary and eliminate that portion of the meta-diary space. The Current Assignment Diary should NOT be recommended, but only hotlisted by everyone working on the project. This would free up more space for meta-narration of what's going on, and it would also free me from constant scribbling down as to who is doing what exactly and going to the subsidiary diaries to get the links. Interested volunteers could click on the link provided in the meta diary to go to the companion subsidiary diary to volunteer. Does that make sense?
I'm really getting overwhelmed here with some of the clerical details, and I think these two volunteer positions would greatly free me up. Plus, frankly, I need a few hours away from the computer. Laundry, dishes and housecleaning are calling, as well as a break for sanity.
The Nature of This Beast, This Communal Project
Because this is a community project, if you feel there's a need for a separate subject diary, just go ahead and do it and link it back in the comments section of the current diary. Perhaps it won't be used by researchers and readers, perhaps it will. But I don't "OWN" this project; it's a collaborative effort and nobody needs my "permission" to start a related line of inquiry or discussion. If we all take ownership collectively of this project and we all provide our own initiative, then we are all empowered as individuals. It also means if I'm picked up in the next day or two by the Black Ops people (me and London Yank, I guess), this effort won't die. No one person should be absolutely indispensable in a project like this. I'm only a glorified traffic director at this point, and a not very good one at that because I need some decompression time right now.
This means if you have a really good idea (like indexing all the places on the internet where these diaries are being covered, or providing a comprehensive list of links to subject matter like the Boston Globe story, Media Matters press releases, etc.,) just go ahead and do it and provide a link in here to that subsidiary diary. If I get the Current Assignments position filled, that person will keep track of what's being posted and load it into there, and then we'll link that back to here. The only problem I can see with that is that it's pushing diaries off the list that are discussing other subjects (yes, there are other subjects). But we don't recommend these kind of housekeeping diaries and we all simply hotlist them or put them on our Diary Watch, I think the greater Dkos community will be more tolerant of how much space on this site we're taking up if we're mindful of those who are simply not interested in this.
And a word about email and media contacts: Several people have asked if certain major media outlets should be contacted and have basicially said it's my call. Well, here's my call: From my point of view, we can and should email away to every major media contact we can. I don't care a whit - a whit, I tell you! - if it's all picked up and run all over the place without crediting me as an individual. I'd kind of like to see the Dkos community as a whole get some recognition, but frankly I don't even care about that much either. My goals are to: (a) get as much exposure and investigation going on this as we can; and (b) to try out this really exciting new engine we're building right now, whether it's called "community journalism" or whatever.
And honestly, I'm more intrigued by the collaborative aspect of all this than the actual sleuthing at this point. Some major media outlet "lifting" our work and not crediting us doesn't concern me at all (although shades of "Jeff Gannon" should haunt that person just for the parallel ethical violation).
But that's just me. How do you guys feel about it?
Previous Plame Diaries:
Diary I: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/28/203014/655
Diary II: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/29/152730/137
Diary III: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/29/233122/523
Diary IV: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/31/93126/4150
Diary V: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/30/195059/065
Diary VI:http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/31/93126/4150
Diary VII: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/1/31/214854/199
Diary VIII: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/1/10038/65769
Diary IX: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/1/233534/4806
Diary I has the initial Media Matters, Atrios and Talon News information that started this off. Diary IV has the best summarized update if you want to get up to speed on what's going on and join the party.