Honey pot in the White House press corp?

Minstrel Boy

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Thu Feb-10-05 01:00 PM
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Honey pot in the White House press corp?

Edited on Thu Feb-10-05 01:37 PM by Minstrel Boy

Adapted from my blog here. More, and links, there.

Why, when I read "Jeff Gannon," do I see the name Craig Spence?

Gannon wasn't much of a journalist, not even of the pretend kind. Not much of a White House shill, either. Though the Bush team couldn't fault him for his slavish devotion to the party line, he wrote for the very limited cyber readership of "TalonNews," which appears now to have folded up and blown away, like every good cut-out once its cover is blown. The White House does not want for friends in corporate media with far greater reach. And the CIA's Operation Mockingbird, we recall, served up far bigger fish than the likes of Gannon. So why did the virtual one-man show of TalonNews receive such pride of place?

To answer that, we should probably ask the rhetorical question: what other purpose could a male prostitute possibly serve in the White House press corp? Or, I suppose, whom could he serve?

Which brings us to Craig Spence:

Spence was a conservative lobbyist during the Reagan-Bush years. The New York Times called him "Washington's ultimate power broker." He was also running a gay prostitution ring which employed adolescent boys. As a treat, he gave them after-hours tours of the White House. In The Washington Times of August 9, 1989, Spence "hinted the tours were arranged by top level" persons, including Vice President Bush's National Security Advisor Donald Gregg, whose name also figures prominently in the October Surprise story. The paper added that "Spence, according to friends, was also carrying out homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA."

David McGowan writes that one of the White House tours "occurred just after Spence stopped by the Nightline studio to see his friend, Ted Koppel. Spence reportedly introduced Koppel to a 15-year-old boy, whom Koppel later claimed Spence had introduced as his son. Koppel though had been a close friend for over 20 years and surely knew that Spence did not have a teenage son."

Any wonder why this scandal - a sex scandal, even - died one of the quickest and quietest of deaths? Only briefly, and not everywhere, was it was front page news. As when it broke, on June 29, 1989:

From a follow-up story of June 30, 1989:

Among the clients identified in hundreds of credit-card vouchers obtained by The Washington Times - and identified by male prostitutes and escort operators - are government officials, locally based US military officers, businessmen, lawyers, bankers, congressional aides, media representatives and other professionals.

Mr. Spence's influence appeared unlimited, aptly demonstrated by his ability to arrange midnight tours of the White House, according to three persons who said they took part in those tours.... After arriving in Washington in the late 1970s, Mr. Spence was hosting parties during the early Reagan years attended by, among others, journalists Eric Sevareid, Ted Koppel and William Safire; former CIA Director William Casey; the late John Mitchell, attorney general in the Nixon administration; conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly; Ambassador James Lilley; and Gen. Alfred M. Gray, the commandant of the Marine Corps.

...

Several friends said Mr. Spence bragged that U.S. military personnel, for whom he had built a gymnasium in El Salvador, had smuggled cocaine back to him when they returned to the United States.... U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials said this week they had no evidence of any such operation.

...

A business acquaintance described Mr. Spence as "strange," saying that he often boasted that he was working for the CIA and on one occasion said he was going to disappear for awhile "because he had an important CIA assignment." According to the businessman, Mr. Spence told him that the CIA might "doublecross him," however, and kill him instead "and then to make it look like a suicide."

It should probably be noted here that it wasn't until November of that year that Spence's body was found in a Boston hotel room, his death ruled a suicide.

From David McGowan's "Pedophacracy":

The Spence story never really registered on the national media’s radar screen. Despite being a largely Republican scandal, it was completely ignored by such pillars of the purportedly liberal press as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. The story soon disappeared entirely and Washington and the media proceeded to pretend as though nothing had ever happened. According to a Washington Times reporter, the paper trail was quickly covered up. Some 20,000 documents pertaining to the case were sealed by court order and the U.S. Attorney’s office issued a gag order on the release of information. By the time that Craig Spence turned up dead in a Boston hotel less than five months after the story first broke, he had been all but forgotten. He had earlier told a friend: “I may be disappearing soon. It will be sudden. It may appear to be a suicide, but it won’t be.”

Spence was reportedly found lying on his bed in room 429 of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, wearing a tuxedo and with a telephone cradled to his ear and a Walkman headset around his neck. He had, according to the Independent, “no obvious signs of injury,” and “police refused to comment on the cause of death.” The door to the room was barricaded. Written on the mirror were several messages, one of which read: “Chief, consider this my resignation, effective immediately. As you always said, you can’t ask others to make a sacrifice if you are not ready to do the same. Life is duty. God bless America.” Another was an apology to the hotel: “To the Ritz, please forgive this inconvenience.” A third was an unexplained Japanese phrase: “Nisei Bei.” The hotel registry showed that the room the apparent suicide victim was found in was occupied by “C.S. Kane.”

Spence had been subpoenaed by a grand jury but had not yet been called to appear. As it turned out, very few witnesses ever did appear before that grand jury. Spence had also reportedly agreed to provide Penthouse magazine with “lurid details of Washington’s bisexual wonderland.” His story, needless to say, was never told.

Penthouse didn't get its story, but Spence left a legacy of questions, which have been soundly ignored by virtually everyone in a position to answer them. For instance, this one, raised by The Washington Times after his death:

Mr. Strasser, according to the witness, also asked during the private discussion and before the grand jury about the gift by Mr. Spence of an expensive Rolex watch to a U.S. Army sergeant. The sergeant, who also participated in the July 3 White House tour, allegedly was asked by Mr. Spence for information on Delta Force, a special forces counterterrorism unit based in Fort Bragg, N.C.

"They asked me what I thought Spence wanted to know about the Delta project," the witness said. "I said it could mean he was just interested in the young guys there or something else."

The Gannon scandal may not be that he was undeserving of accreditation, or a shameless cheerleader, or even a prostitute. (It ain't for nothing that members of the press are called "media whores.") The scandal may be that "Jeff Gannon" was a honey pot: a lure, floated in the press pool by the White House to compromise persons of influence. Something Gannon, or rather Jim Guckert, certainly was not.