Come on, Scotty. Spill the beans. It's clear you know who Gannon is. Put an end to the speculation. Why play coy?
Just take a look at what was required from the OMB from anyone attending one of their wild and wooly press conferences in 2002:
ALL MEDIA MUST BE CLEARED IN TO ATTEND: All media with or without White House Hard Passes must fax their name, affiliation, Social Security number, and date of birth for clearance Wednesday, February 27, 2002, by 5:00 p.m. The fax number is 202-395-7298. Please bring a government issued ID to check in with EEOB building security. Press credentials will not be acceptable forms of ID. Building security at EEOB's 17th and G Street entrance must clear you in by 9:45 a.m., at which time you will be escorted to the briefing in Room 248.
Face it, folks. Unless our friend Scotty is willing to argue that being in the same room as the President of the United States (and Scotty himself, incidentally) takes less security clearance than attending a gala snore press conference at the Office of Management and Budget, I think he's got egg on his face.
Or else we need to start investigating those terrorist-infiltrated, high-risk press conferences that focus on the deficit and federal funding allocation and all those mysterious (and in the case of this administration, clearly false) numbers that are announced periodically. I mean, something must be going on there, right?
I think not. I think Scotty's playing games.
Here's what he said in today's Boston Globe article:
McClellan said it is not the White House's role to decide who is and who is not a real journalist ...
I guess it's not their role to check if people are who they say they are, or if they have a criminal history of threats against the president, or if they've been convicted on weapons charges. I bet Gannon could even be packing his beloved Berreta under his jacket, they're such a well-known, free-wheeling, easygoing bunch at that White House, you know. Everything changed after 9/11, they said, but I didn't think it was in the "let's just let any old blogger with a two-day-old web site into the White House press corps" kind of way.
This is so patently ridiculous, it's outrun my snark.
Obviously Scotty knows, and I think he ought to just clear this up right away and ... "out" Gannon. This is a White House that, if nothing else, has proven it knows how to do it.
Marie's Terrific Find
Scotty also has some major explaining to do regarding Gannon’s privileged status via White House fax machine:
Diary: White House Releases August 6, 2001 PDB
White House Press Office | 2/10/2004 | Jeff Gannon, White House Correspondent
Comment:
To: tonyinv
It's not on their website yet. because I am a White House reporter, it was emailed to me as a pdf file. It clearly shows what frauds the Dems on the 9/11 Commission are.
5 posted on 04/10/2004 3:50:33 PM PDT by Jeff Gannon
The Question of Our Community Ethics
I replied to anna's post in the last diary to make a clarification about my view of the guidelines we need to be following here in terms of invasion of privacy, and I apologize for ... well, jumping all over her ass. So come back, anna, come back.
We're kind of winging it here and making it up as we go along, but I think it's time to take a breather and have a discussion about what is right and what is wrong, particularly since we are pulling in a lot of names of individuals, 95 percent of whom will prove to have nothing to do with this. Look, we're the good guys here, and as I said in my reply to anna, I don't want to become them. We are people here who are united by our desire for truth, transparency, social justice and the value and dignity of individual lives. If we are to be true to our core values, surely we are called upon to walk our walk and not create havoc in dozens of people's lives.
That said, these are my proposed guidelines for discussing people we run across through all this data:
1. No personal criminal histories will be posted. I don't want to hear that one of these people who owns a building or sits on a board has been convicted of child molesting or a DUI. Frankly, I don't want to even hear that about Gannon, if we find out who he is. It has nothing to do with what we're looking into. Now if someone runs across an individual convicted of multiple money laundering charges or a Ponzi scheme that seems directly related to what we're researching, I would ask that you run the information by me and then we'll decide what to do. Otherwise, nothing - I repeat nothing -- of a criminal history will be posted.
2. No stalking. Sure, no one here wants to call it that, but following Gannon around if you see him in DC is just a plain old-fashioned stalking. And don't follow these other people either. Everyone, even Gannon, has a right to his own life. He's doing something wrong, but he still shouldn't have a bevy of Kossacks sitting on his doorstep when he opens the door to pick up his Washington Times in the morning.
3. No phone calls. Besides being an enormous annoyance, stop and think for a minute about how fruitless this is. Say a man answers. You ask him if he's Gannon (or whoever you're checking up on). He says no. What have you learned, exactly? You really think he'd tell you the truth? And what if he does? Then what? Are you going to scream down the wire, "Who the hell are you? I'm a pissed-off nobody from a lefty blog and I demand to know who you are!" Pointless, pointless, my friends.
Okay, now that I've given my sermon, what say you? Are there any other areas of ethical concerns anyone's wrestling with?
And oh, yeah, by the way? Corporate lawsuits? Corporate criminal convictions? People being sued in their professional capacities? Feel free to let the dogs out. Go for the throat. Unlike the U.S. government, I don't consider corporations to be individuals and worthy of privacy. I only treat people that way.
Housekeeping Matters
Thanks to anonymous coward 8, all previous Plame/Propagannon diaries can be found here: The Plame/PropaGannon Diaries, 1-10
And all subsidiary project diaries can be found here: Subsidiary Research Diaries
Also, LiberalPalooza has volunteered to coordinate volunteers into ongoing research projects (thank God!). If you want to get involved and pointed in the right direction, email him at liberalpalooza@hotmail.com
And finally, thanks go to Randomfactor for turning up the OMB press conference guidelines. Great find!