Far more important than who "Jeff Gannon" really is - although we're having fun trying to find out - is the question of who's behind his funding and is responsible for getting this official "face" embedded (Gannon's word, not mine) in the White House Press Corps. We want, in short, to start to get a peek behind the curtain. And we are.
What apparently lies behind "Jeff Gannon" - or at least of jeffgannon.com - are domains with registered corporations/foundations interwoven in an elaborate, incestuous web of shallow "cover sheet" sites, numerous linkings with redirects, scattered pleas for Paypal donations, heated conservative rhetoric, and registrant addresses that consistently lead back to drop boxes at UPS/Mailbox Etc. in different states. Phone numbers listed are out of service, area codes don't match up to locale. Email contacts return with the dreaded "Mail Delivery Subsystem" error message.
In short, the fake reporter from the fake news agency seems to also have his domains registered with corporations and foundations that have as little physical presence - that we can find as yet, at least - as his virtual newsroom.
Untangling the relationships is frustrating and time-intensive, requiring more than the average amount of sophistication and knowledge regarding technicalities of web registration and the legalities involved in various obscure types of non-profit organizations.
And you know, it almost makes you think it was set up to frustrate, stonewall and lead to a dead end. It's hard to imagine such vast complexity coming about by chance; in this instance, because we are talking of human endeavor, we're willing to take the conservative Christian view and consider the possibility of intelligent design.
What it was designed for, we can only guess.
The Boring, Complicated Lowdown
We began with an examination of his two web sites, jeffgannon.com and the conservativeguy.com. Both are registered to a J. Daniels and the Bedrock Corporation. Unsurprisingly, also listed to J. Daniels and Bedrock are variations (conservative-guy.com, the-conservative-guy.com), that when plugged in lead to Gannon's conservativeguy.com site. Makes sense. There were also a couple of domains registered that pull up 404 errors (conservativelegal.com, conservativecampus.com). Again, this makes sense if the registrant is considering future possibilities. At several addresses, bright "Coming Soon!" declarations are posted (one of these domain names, exposejessejackson.com, makes you wonder if they have a future time machine and know something we don't know).
Three of the domain names that came back admittedly were a surprise - hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescorts.com, militaryescortsm4m.com - but we're high-minded folk and after a chortle or two, we moved on. (Also, they require registration and many of us were at work.)
Mixed in with the above J.Daniels/Bedrock were six domain names that did not at first seem all that remarkable: freespeechfoundation.org, faithfullyspeaking.org, conservativecampus.org, conservativecampus.com, conservativecampus.org, journalismdiversityproject.org and newmediaproject.org. Basically, the Free Speech Foundation site is a one-page shot (with a Paypal donation page); the others listed are click-throughs from that main site with one of those "Coming Soon!" banners or a one-sentence placeholder description. That first night in the first diary I posted (on January 28, 2005), when we were researching this, we didn't look into Free Speech Foundation and its subsidiary sites too closely.
But we sure did after all the contact names and addresses changed for the Free Speech Foundation groupings on January 30. No longer is FSF or its subsidiary domains registered to J. Daniels and the Bedrock Foundation; now they're registered to I. Christian at Free Speech Foundation, with new contact email addresses. Yes, there's a possibility someone's leg is being pulled with that new name.
I.C. Christian also owns dcbiblemarathon.org, the thepeopleschurchdc.org, proudandgratefulnation.org and militaryvote.org.
Don't worry, I'm including a full list of each domain name and their dates of registration (and in the I.C. Christian/J. Daniels case, re-registration) below.
Free Speech Foundation
The website's "cover sheet" front page is the usual reverse-psycho mishmash of championing free speech while complaining how liberal academics are picking on conservatives, how liberals are suing conservatives for hate speech, and one odd article that I assume is there to cheer on the fact that police have more rights to arrest protestors than ever before. Very uninteresting stuff.
What is interesting is this, at the bottom of the donation page:
This site is maintained by Free Speech Foundation. It is a nonprofit organization under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. It relies on the private financial support of individuals, the general public, foundations, and corporations for its income. Because The Free Speech Foundation is an educational organization, contributions made to it are tax deductible.
What makes the donation page information so interesting is this:
Entity Details
File Number: 3702698
Incorporation Date/Formation Date: 09/11/2003
(mm/dd/yyyy)
Entity Name: FREE SPEECH FOUNDATION
Entity Kind: CORPORATION
Entity Type: RELIGIOUS NONPROFIT
Residency: DOMESTIC
State: DE
REGISTERED AGENT INFORMATION
Name: THE INCORPORATORS LTD.
Address: 2979 BARLEY MILL ROAD
City: YORKLYN
County: NEW CASTLE
State: DE
Postal Code: 19736
Phone: (302)235-5800
Did you catch that entity type? Religious Nonprofit?
While it's certainly philosophically repugnant to donate on a site that claims to be an "educational organization" and find out you're funding a "religious nonprofit," that's not the biggest problem. The larger concern is that the two nonprofit categories being mixed above have different reporting requirements and follow different guidelines for the IRS; they are, in fact, two different kettles of fish.
Or so I'm told by the learned among us. I have about as much experience with this complicated stuff as Jeff Gannon does with reporting.
Suffice to say we have a couple experts here looking into this. Any interested volunteers who are familiar with structured nonprofits, DC and Delaware corporate law, or UCC filings are encouraged to contact via email liberalpalooza@hotmail.com to volunteer their expertise. Additionally, we may need a couple of Delaware and DC area residents to leave their computer monitors for a bit and go down to retrieve corporate filings. We also need a DC resident to make some phone inquiries (and yes, you have to be a DC resident. You can't fake it.)
This is Boring! I Want Gannon!
Well, you've got him.
In the words of my now beloved techie, Radically Bitter, "There are zero degrees of separation between Jeff Gannon and Free Speech Foundation. All domains are hosted on a single webserver. One salient feature is that he has modified every WhoIs record that featured bedrockcorp@aol.com to say bedrockcorp@bedrock.com. This is obvious misdirection because he does not own bedrock.com and the email is fake. The AOL one is real, however, and that is likely why it has been removed. The domain creation dates [listed below] show that he essentially didn't exist even as "the conservative guy" until early in 2002. (This is from the web archive, as there are domains that are now his that are from 2000)." [All emphasis is Radically Bitter's, living up his name.]
Radically Bitter also wanted me to point out that the Paypal on militaryvote.org, a site that purports to guarantee - and fundraise - in order to make sure our soldiers' votes were counted in the recent election, links directly to FSF. And I would like to point out that the date listed for domain creation for militaryvote.org - November 2004 - seems a wee bit late out of the starting gate, given its stated mission.
I would also like to take this opportunity to note that Gannon boasts on conservativeguy.com: "I research it, I write it, I design it, I update it, I promote it, I pay for it."
Glad to hear it, "Jeff." You also now own this mess of confusion.
The Data, Easier-to-Understand Version
Domains registered to I. Christian and the Free Speech Foundation:
Faithfullyspeaking.org
Freespeechfoundation.org
Thepeopleschurchdc.org
Proudandgratefulnation.com
conservativecampus.org
Dcbiblemarathon.org
Militaryvote.org
Conservativecampus.org
Conservativecampus.com
Journalismdiversityproject.org
Newmediaproject.org
Domains registered to J. Daniels and the Bedrock Corporation:
Conservativeguy.com
Conservative-guy.com
Conservativelegal.com
Exposejessejackson.com
Jeffgannon.com
Theconservativeguy.com
Theconservativelegal.com
The-conservative-guy.com
conservative-guy.com
Hotmilitarystud.com
Militaryescorts.com
Militaryescortsm4m.com
Domains formerly registered to J. Daniels changed to I. Christian (dates of change in parenthesis)
Freespeechfoundation.org (Changed 2005-01-30)
Faithfullyspeaking.org (Changed 2005-01-30)
Conservativecampus.org (Changed 2005-01-30)
Conservativecampus.com (Changed 2005-01-30)
Journalismdiversityproject.org (Changed 2005-01-30)
Newmediaproject.org (Changed 2005-01-30)
Creation dates for domains, by month/year:
May 2000
militaryescorts.com
October 2000
conservativeguy.com
Apil 2001
hotmilitarystud.com
January 2002
theconservativeguy.com
March 2002
conservative-guy.com
the-conservative-guy.com
conservativelegal.com
theconservativelegal.com
June 2002
jeffgannon.com
May 2003
conservativecampus.org
freespeechfoundation.org
March 2004
dcbiblemarathon.org
Nov 2004
militaryvote.org
thepeopleschurchdc.org
Dec 2004
Newmediaproject.org
Exposejessejackson.com
Faithfullyspeaking.org
Journalismdiversityproject.org
Proudandgratefulnation.com
Props and Kudos
Special thanks to (of course) Radically Bitter: Sean mykael for first spotting the anomaly with Free Speech Foundation, setting up a thread and then sticking with it even when it got into technical depths beyond most people's knowledge; and to myrkury for vast expertise on nonprofits.
Housekeeping
I'll be gone this weekend, but Baltimoretim will post a diary when necessary. I will probably check in here tomorrow evening and then be back in again late Sunday afternoon. Have a great weekend, all.