Maureen Dowd nailed the Bush White House over the Gannon/Guckert fiasco in Thursday’s NYT :

It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom that plays like a dark comedy. How does it credential a man with a double life and a secret past?

"Jeff Gannon" was waved into the press room nearly every day for two years as the conservative correspondent for two political Web sites operated by a wealthy Texas Republican. Scott McClellan often called on the pseudoreporter for softball questions.

I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values.

In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.

Does the Bush team love everything military so much that even a military-stud Web site is a recommendation?

May 13, 2005—Given how stories and journalists are disappeared these days, here are some follow up questions on Hunter Thompson's death. Let's hope they help keep the spirit of inquiry alive . . .

First, isn't it strange that Thompson wrote on page 3 of "The New Dumb," the first article in his last book, Hey Rube, 2004, "The autumn months are never a calm time in America. . . . There is always a rash of kidnapping and abductions of schoolchildren in the football months. Preteens of both sexes are traditionally seized and grabbed off the streets by gangs of organized perverts who traditionally give them as Christmas gifts to each other to be personal sex slaves and playthings."

This bears an uncanny resemblance to the Johnny Gosch story. The 12-year old Gosch was delivering Sunday morning papers in Des Moines Iowa on September 5, 1982, when two men approached and abducted him for the purposes of enslavement in a military-based pedophilia ring, according to testimony reported by another abused pre-teen, Paul Bonacci, in John DeCamp's 1992 book, The Franklin Cover-Up—Child Abuse, Satananism and Murder in Nebraska, pages 230–34.

Ironically, Gosch's identity has been linked to James Guckert which has been linked to Jeff Gannon, male prostitute and procurer of full-service military escorts. In fact, the former editor of the Des Moines Register for whom Gosch worked tried to discredit the identity link. Ironically, his name was James Gannon, conceivably a clue from the disappeared Gosch linking the three identities. Gosch's mother, Noreen, asked then editor James Gannon of the Des Moines Register to get community leaders to pressure the police to cooperate with her private detectives in order to solve her missing son's case. Instead, Mrs. Gosch's private letter was printed on the front page of the paper, and the police were encouraged to publicly reject and ridicule her claims. Perhaps James Gannon was involved himself.

Even if we look at just the Guckert/Gannon link, James/Jeff turned up in the White House Press Corp two years ago. Maureen Dowd notes in her 2/17/05 New York Times column, Bush's Barberini Faun, "I'm still mystified by this story (Gannon/Guckert). I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem, and Internet pictures where he posed like the 'Barberini Faun' is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

"At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one called me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer he said he'd renew the pass—after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months. In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend?"

In addition, Carol Towarnicky, in her 5/2/05 article "The press takes a pass on 'Jeff Gannon,'" in the Philadelphia Daily News, said, "Just last week, a Freedom of Information Act search requested by two members of Congress revealed that Gannon/Guckert visited the White House 196 times—39 of them days when there were no press briefings."