You say tomato...

...and I say you're lying!

From Ari Fleischer's February 17th (2005) interview with Editor and Publisher:

"I found out that he worked for a GOP site, and I didn't think it was my place to call on him because he worked for something that was related to the party," Fleischer said in a phone interview. "He had the editor call me and made the case that they were not related to the Republican Party. He said they used the GOP name for marketing purposes only."

He said he resumed calling on Guckert, who used the alias Jeff Gannon, after Bobby Eberle, owner of both GOPUSA and Talon News, "assured me that they were not part of the Republican Party." Eberle is a Texas Republican activist and served as a delegate to the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Fleischer has not previously commented on the Gannon/Guckert affair. (emphasis mine)

He continues:

But he said he did not know at the time that Guckert had been using a false name and did not know if Scott McClellan, now press secretary but then Fleischer's aide, had known then either. "It came as a surprise to me, because I always knew him as Jeff Gannon," he said. Fleischer said he did not know of any other White House reporters using aliases.

From Bobby Eberle's February 20th (2005) interview with the New York Times:

Mr. Eberle, breaking his silence about details of the events, which have been portrayed by Democrats as a Republican effort to manipulate news, said it took him by surprise in early 2003 when the freelancer he had taken on as Jeff Gannon said he was gaining White House accreditation under the name James D. Guckert. "He said Gannon was his professional name; he didn't like the sound of his other name," Mr. Eberle recounted.

Mr. Eberle, 36, an aerospace engineer with a penchant for conservative politics, said the disclosure raised no red flags about Mr. Guckert's journalistic credentials or professionalism.

Mr. Eberle said that in the two years that Mr. Guckert worked for him, he had not kept track of his volunteer reporter.

And then there's this little gem:

Mr. Eberle, who once worked for Lockheed Martin and says he prefers to keep his current employer unidentified, said that he was not bankrolled by any backers and that he and his wife had made few Republican contributions. Texas Republicans said he was not well known in the party.

So which one is it? Was he being admitted to the White House as James Guckert? In which case, he would have been identified as such and his giant security badge would clearly read James Guckert. Or was he admitted as Jeff Gannon? Because Ari says he only knew him as Gannon, but Eberle says the White House admitted him as Guckert. You'd think, in their little phone conversation, the subject would've come up. You know. Since Eberle was vouching for the male gigolo and all. You'd think the fact that James/Jeff had an alias would be discussed.

Which then brings up another question. If, as the NYT reports, he was "not well known in the party," how the hell did he get Ari friggin' Fleischer - then White House Press Secretary - on the PHONE?! Don't tell me that as an editor, he'd have been given easy access to Fleischer himself. GOPUSA was barely a blip on the radar. Supposedly. It's not like the editor of Newsweek was calling. According to Eberle, and for all intents and purposes, it was just some guy from Texas who ran a conservative website calling up the White House.

But let's test out a theory. Go start a website. Post a few press releases. Then try to get the White House Press Secretary on the phone so that you can assign a reporter to cover White House press briefings. See how far you get. Post your results. Get cracking on it now, and let me know how it turns out.

And how does someone who is "unknown in the party" get elected as a delegate to the 2000 Convention? Please don't tell me that lots of people are national delegates. I know how it works. My father's been elected as a delegate to Democratic National Conventions - on and off - since 1980. I've been elected as a delegate to the MA Democratic State Conventions on a few occasions myself. I'm very familiar with the process. I imagine that the Republican process is pretty much the same (maybe a few more secret rituals and crooked business deals, but pretty much the same). If you're elected as a delegate, you're known - at some level - in the party. At the very least, Eberle had to have been known enough on the State level to be elected as a delegate. And what state is he from? Oh, yes. Texas. So - Eberle's trying to say that when the Texas-Governor was the GOP nominee for President, he just happened to luck out and become a national delegate from the Republican Presidential candidate's home State?! In a crucial election year? Absurd. Anyone who was a national delegate from Texas that year had to have been some high-level Texas partisan.

This is insulting to our intelligence now. The lies, the inconsistencies, the absurdity - it's clear. They think we're so stupid that we'll buy this junk. And they have such contempt for the mainstream media, that they planted a gay hooker posing as a journalist in the White House press briefings - a literal media whore. And it took the media TWO YEARS to figure it out. The bloggers have done all the heavy lifting and difficult legwork. Now it's time for the Mainstream Media to do their jobs and nail these guys.

The stories are full of holes and unanswered questions, all of which NEED to be answered.

Gannuckert is no longer the meat of the story - so to speak. The story is now about how Republican operatives - from the President's home state of Texas - managed to gain unfettered access to the White House, authorized at the highest levels of government. The trail keeps leading us right back to TEXAS. How many roads must a man walk down before we figure out they all take us to Texas?* It's time we finally just admit that Texas Republicans have been wagging the dog for years.

*The geeky answer - for all you Douglas Adams fans - would, of course, be 42.