After reviewing an exhausting (so far, lol) collection of information on Daily Kos and Media Matters, it seems there is much, much more to the Jeff Gannon case (cutely referred to as Gannongate by the Media Matters staff) than I thought.

I won't go into all of the detail here, since these things can be read over at Kos, but there are a few important nuggets to extract here so far:

• During the Valerie Plame outing, Gannon wrote several articles for TalonNews and made many posts to Free Republic claiming that Plame's status was common knowledge, but contradicts himself several times, therefore casting a shadow of doubt on his legitimacy--is he simply prone to contradicting himself innocently, or was the CIA memo leaked to him directly? He may have been planted by the administration to disseminate official White House talking points to help the NO WMD/incompetence of the CIA/discreditation of Joe Wilson take hold.
• The site Gannon writes for (TalonNews) was registered on March 29, 2003. A few days later, April 3, 2003, Gannon first gains access to the White House press room. A little too convenient for my liking...
• Gannon's "Journalism" expertise is a product of a 2-day, $50.00 seminar at the Leadership Institute's Broadcast Journalism School. The $50.00 feel covers "two days of instruction, meals on Saturday and Sunday, and all course materials." (Compliments of the Leadership Institute's website.)
• The Leadership Institute's site displays the header The Leadership Institute: Conservative Training for Tomorrow's Leaders and then says, "The LI's mission is to identify, recruit, train, and place conservatives in politics, government, and media." However, at the bottom of the page, they say, "The LI is a non-profit, non-partisan, educational organization."
• Gannon's name doesn't seem to exist before about 3 years ago. A source has told Atrios that Jeff Gannon is a pseudonym for one James D. "J.D." Guckert. This is not yet confirmed.
• The original "About" section of TalonNews has been changed (as of January 31, 2005), and originally stated, "We concentrate on news that conservatives care about without putting a liberal spin on it." (This page is cached--Google--the link will be posted later, or you can go to Media Matters and see Gannongate.)
• The original staff bios for TalonNews have also been erased. As I said in an earlier piece, Bobby Eberle, owner and CEO of GOPUSA and Republican activist, was listed as the Editor in Chief of TalonNews until the page was erased. Gannon was also listed in the "Bios" section, as were several other "journalists" who would more accurately be described as conservative activists, like Eberle. (Also cached via Google.)
• There is evidence that "Gannon" received the August 6, 2001 PDB via email hours before it was released officially by the White House.
• There are a number of interesting connections between "Gannon" and a number of websites--his sites conservativeguy.com and jeffgannon.com are registered to a J. Daniels & The Bedrock Corporation, as are the following: conservative-guy.com, conservativelegal.com, exposejessejackson.com, theconservativeguy.com, the-conservative-guy.com, hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescorts.com, and militaryescortsm4m.com. There are quite a few intersecting websites, which used to be registered to J. Daniels and Bedrock Corp. but are now registered to an I. Christian: freespeechfoundation.org (changed to I. Christian January 30, 2005), faithfullyspeaking.org (changed 1-30-05), conservativecampus.org (same), conservativecampus.com (same), journalismdiverstiyproject.org (same), and newmediaproject.org (you guessed it, changed from J. Daniels to I. Christian on January 30, 2005). There is more detail, but I won't bog you down with it right now.

There is more, but my eyes are starting to hurt--let me know if you know anything else, or of any way to find out if "Gannon" is James D. Guckert.

When I have processed more information, I will post it.

KB