NEW  YORK, FEB. 25, 2005: Republican "reporter" James D. Guckert's account of how he obtained daily White House press briefing passes while operating under an assumed name has often changed between mainstream-media interviews. Appearing on NBC's Feb. 24 Today Show, he responded to reporter Campbell Brown's questions:

Brown: So, who was the White House clearing into those briefings every day? Was it James Guckert? Or was it …

Guckert: Yes.

Brown: Jeff Gannon?

Guckert: I go to the gate. I show my driver's license, which I showed you. It has my given name. And that's how I gained entry.

In his fullest explanation, Guckert told Editor & Publisher's Joe Strupp that from March 2003 onward, he obtained a daily pass for each day's briefing with a simple overnight procedure:

• In the evening before a briefing, he e-mailed the White House press office, requesting clearance for the following day's press briefing and listing his professional and legal names, his Social Security number, his address and phone number, and the name of his news service.


• On the day of the briefing, he showed his driver's license with his legal name to the White House gate guard, who "looked me up on the computer and let me in." He said the daily pass issued to him by the gate guard listed neither his professional nor his legal name.

Guckert also told Editor & Publisher he had failed in trying to obtain a permanent, "hard" pass because previous attempts to get a Congressional press pass — a prerequisite for a permanent White House pass — had been unsuccessful, since "they were concerned with the Talon News business model" and "didn't feel we fit the criteria," Guckert said.

Although Guckert wrote in his posts to the conservative website Free Republic that "there are many obstacles for admittance" to White House press briefings and presidential news conferences, his recent interviews with several major news outlets have stressed White House officials' seeming disinterest in checking his background thoroughly. In an interview with Howard Kurtz for The Washington Post, Guckert stated that "White House officials knew nothing about … salacious activities" in his personal life. On the Today Show , Guckert acknowledged that "apparently there isn't a very high threshold, as far as somebody's personal life, to gain access."

Other news sources cited timing discrepancies in Guckert's day-pass story. In a Salon story Eric Boehlert reported that Guckert appeared with a question in a White House press briefing tape as early as Feb. 28, 2003, a time at which Talon News Service — the news agency for which he was "Washington Bureau Chief" — did not yet exist. Yet White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan stated in the Feb. 10, 2005, "press gaggle" that Guckert "showed that he was representing a news organization that published regularly, and so he was cleared two years ago to receive daily passes, just like many others are." In another Salon story, Boehlert reported that, "according to one current member of the White House press corps, [Guckert] was the only reporter to skirt the rules that way, obtaining daily passes month after month for nearly two years."

Contact:
Denise Ford
ePluribus Media
DEFord@epluribusmedia.org