Atrios misses a very interesting angle on the Jeff Gannon case:
Jeff Gannon is a right wing reporter who appears to be a frontman for some seriously right-wing media. He also has a few interesting domains registered to his name, such as Hotmilitarystud.com, Militaryescorts.com, and Militaryescortsm4m.com.
Some folks have used this to point and say “Look, another closeted Republican!” I think it’s worse than that.
Militaryescortsm4m.com sounds like a site that would be frequented by gay men in the military. And, need I remind you, that’s still a no-no in this enlightened age. But the person who ran such a site would have access to all sorts of private data about the users of such a site, a lot of it even given voluntarily.
If that isn’t a scenario for blackmail, I don’t know what is.
Wouldn’t that be a great thing– a journalist who has information that could destroy men’s careers, all he has to do is say the word? If you were looking to compromise officers, could you think of a better way to do so?
Well, Gannon resigned today.
I rather hope, for the sake of the people that exposed him, that you’re correct in your suspicions. Otherwise they simply ruined a guy’s life for the “crime” of being gay…which would make them more or less 21st century McCarthys.
Actually, it seems that there may be a crime involved… he was cited by the Washington Post as having the only access to an internal CIA memo that named Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA agent.
Liberals tend not to care if a person is gay, except when they’ve written a lot of anti-gay screeds (which, surprise surprise, “Gannon” had) which makes them a hypocrite. Glenn is right, blowing Plame’s CIA cover is a treasonable action. I’m also curious as to what other secrets “Gannon” harbors with his “purty mouth”…
A few days later and there is an interesting dissection of the Gannon/Plame “connection”– http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/02/know_why_did_th.html
Short version– There doesn’t seem to be any Washington Post story that accuses Gannon of having the only access to any memo. Daily Kos got it wrong.
If Gannon committed treason I hope he fries…but I hope my liberal friends will be careful about throwing around such terms. Just because a guy is possibly gay doesn’t make him a traitor. Lots of gay people have fought and died for this country.
And that’s one to think on…