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Gannon/Guckert played for local softball team

By Marco C. Baker
PGN Editorial Assistant
© 2005 Philadelphia Gay News

An Washington, D.C. writer who sparked recent controversy involving the White House and the journalists who cover it, once played for a local gay softball team.

Like others in the White House press corps, Jeff Gannon had daily access to media briefings. But his questioning of President Bush and press secretary Scott McClellan was criticized as soft by veteran reporters, who also complained that Gannon's queries were really meant to squelch Bush's critics.

But in the mid-1980s, Gannon was known as James Dale Guckert, a Wilmington, Del., resident and member of the gay City of Brotherly Love Softball League. He played for Woody's Bar and Restaurant's team.

Gannon, a correspondent for Web sites GOPUSA and Talon News, sparked controversy by the questions he asked, which were seen as biased. Internet "bloggers" began investigating him. With popular blogs such as DailyKos.com joined by conventional news media, Gannon's past was exposed, revealing that he once worked as an gay escort.

Woody's owner Bill Wood confirmed Gannon once played for his bar's softball team.

"Yeah that's J.D.," Wood said immediately after being shown a photo of Gannon.

Hanging in his popular South 13th Street establishment is a large portrait of the old team. Gannon is one of 15 players wearing white uniforms trimmed in green and yellow.

Wood turned to the portrait to easily point out Gannon, last row, third from right.

He wasn't a very good player, he remembered, adding Gannon was one of those "thick upper-body types."

Wood didn't recognize the discredited reporter from TV news, he said, adding that he mostly knew about the story from liberal talk-radio network Air America.

He also recalled that "J.D." drank beer and ate sandwiches at his bar "all the time."

Furthermore, Wood remembered Gannon lived Delaware, that he was not one of his team's three non-gay players, and vaguely recollected him dating other men. He could not recall whether Gannon had a steady romantic partner or a particular interest in politics.

"I thought he was in construction," Wood said.

Former Bike Stop CBLSL player John Edgar also remembers the man he knew as J.D. Guckert.

He's "definitely the same guy calling himself Jeff Gannon," said Edgar, a popular bartender and CBLSL player for The Westbury.

Gannon played for Woody's in 1986 and 1987, according to Edgar, who said he had gotten to know him during a tournament in Toronto.

He also said he also knew Gannon as a gay man. Gannon has not addressed questions regarding his sexual orientation.

[SNIP]

More:
http://www.epgn.com/news/gannon.htm

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GannonGuckertGoschGate

The other day LibertyThink was contacted by a reporter from the Des Moines Register asking about interest in the theory that Jeff Gannon/James Guckert is in reality Johnny Gosch, the newspaper boy who was kidnapped in Des Moines in the 80s. LibertyThink published its response. Another news blog, TRUNews, has also been contacted, and has published its response as well.

http://mackwhite.com/

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Response to the Des Moines Register, re: Gannon/Gosch

Friday, March 25

The Tyranny Response Unit received a query from a reporter at the Des Moines Register asking three basic questions about the Gannon-Guckert-Gosch theory.

1. When did we become aware of the story?

2. Why did we blog it?

3. Are we convinced that Gannon is Gosch?


Libertythink.com has chosen to publish their response, and so have we.


Our official response is as follows.

To the Des Moines Register:

We first came across the Gannon/Guckert theory last month through Jeff Wells, who, in turn, was later tipped off to the Gannon/Gosch idea vis-a-vis THIS thread at Democratic Underground.


It interests us because:


* The 1989 Child-sex-ring cover-up that was covered by the Washington Times indicates that the idea of a homosexual underground within the Republican camp is not new.

*We find it interesting that the name of the then-publisher of the Des Moines Register was a James Gannon, and this is possibly who Guckert/Gannon stole his pen-name from.

We chose to blog it because:

* It was in response to the market demand in the blogosphere. People were digging hard, and we offer a perspective not found in the mainstream media.

* The coincidence between the name of your former editor and the fake name of "Gannon" is certainly strange. Johnny Gosch may have been abducted and pulled into the MK-ULTRA program, where he may have adopted the Gannon "alter".

* There may be mind-control elements with Gannon, because if he really was pimping out gay hookers in the White House, anonymity is essential. It's possible, but not probable, as we have not found any evidence that Gannon was offering other services when he was in the White House. If he did, how would he ensure anonymity?

* The strange association of Hunter S. Thompson and Jeff Gannon is noteworthy. Gannon made a subtle reference to HST in his come-back column, which only served to fuel the speculation.

* Lenny Bloom and Sherman Skolnick have postulated that Hunter S. Thompson may have had insider knowledge of the Gannon affair and was possibly going to write on it. HST would have been all over this story if he were still alive.

*The name Hunter Thompson is cited in Paul Bonnacci's testimony in the Franklin-pedophile case. We don't think HST was a pedophile at all, but he may had knowledge of what was going on. TRUNews takes the stance that HST's death is suspicious.

*The photographer who was likely using Hunter's name (in Bonnacci's testimony) as a cover was arrested shortly after HST was "suicided".


* Noreen Gosch has neither confirmed or denied Gannon's identity, and this is telling. If Gannon really is Gosch, then he can bring down the Bush Administration. We are concerned for his safety and feel that most of the coverage has centered on the sexual hipocrisy of the whole affair, when it should focus on Gannon's possible clientel. We expect to see in the future a media blitzkrieg on Noreen Gosch that will discredit her.

Are we convinced?

We'd need some convincing proof that Gannon is Gosch, such as the word of Noreen Gosch. However, we fear that if she does so, Gannon will turn up "suicided". Gannon likely has inside info on the gay Republican underground, and is on the "good guy's" side. He is not the enemy that the blogosphere has made him out to be.

Good luck on the story and we hope that you uncover the details that could take Gannon-gate to the next level of intrigue.



- The Tyranny Response Unit

http://trunews.blogspot.com/2005/03/response-to-des-moines-register-re_25.html

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Why the ''Mainstream Media'' Ain't Touching ''Jeff Gannon'' (Pt. 1)

by Todd Brendan Fahey
March 28, 2005

Big corporate media cowers to the "Jeff Gannon" story like nothing America has witnessed...since the Franklin Cover-up (homosexual/pedophile ring operative at the highest levels in Washington D.C.) story that exploded across the pages of the then-conservative Washington Times by then-brave investigative reporter Paul Rodriguez, who went on to become editor-in-chief of Insight magazine.

But Paul Rodriguez just recently resigned from Insight; hasn't written a word of the "Jeff Gannon" scandal, nor has he returned to his pitbull approach to the Franklin Cover-up (or any other "hard news," pun intended); nor has the Washington Times gone after "Jeff Gannon."

The public--We The People--aren't supposed to be hearing of the story of how a male homosexual prostitute with Marines training penetrated the White House Press Corps, under banner of a meaningless Web site "news agency" with deep ties to the Republican Party. GOPUSA owner Bobby Eberle, owner of TalonNews.com, has stopped talking, has scrubbed the site clean (Google's WayBackMachine archival mechanism makes Mr. Eberle look pretty silly...), and has, in fact, closed down TalonNews.com.

Bloggers are actively calling out White House Spokesman Scott McClellan, Bush advisor Karl Rove and Republican National Chairman (RNC) Ken Mehlman as known homosexuals, each of whom have been spotted at "discrete" homosexual lounges and more indiscrete parties. Powerful Republican Congressman David Dreier is known to be homosexual, and pays his "chief of staff" more than White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card makes--Card being, also, called out of the closet by many investigative bloggers.

Recently, Kay Griggs, a prominent military colonel's wife, set out to right a long history of patent wrongs, which include: homosexual initation rites in the U.S. military--particularly within the Marines; well-documented instances of both homosexual and hetero pedophilia, often as brazen rape, amongst U.S. military figures and notable senior statesmen, Henry Kissinger being named loudly by Mrs. Griggs.

Griggs, in her videotaped interviews recently, discovered her husband's diary and was suitably horrified at what she read. She then began asking questions of her friends in the military wives club, and many of them confessed to the same dirty little secrets. Her candor on video is both disturbing and compelling: the woman has come to grips with the fact that this "culture," as she calls it, is rife within senior U.S. military, and that the stain of being called out as a queer is what keeps the men quiet to the arms- and drugs-running that are a vital function of Our Military.

"Jeff Gannon"--formerly known as James D. Guckert, and who might be Johnny D. Gosch, the paper-boy kidnapped from his route in Des Moines, Iowa in 1982, and who many believe was forced into the same pedophilic child-slave trade that became known as the Franklin Cover-up--is the fulcrum at the heart of this vast puddle of s!@#. His biography is hair thin and sketchy, but we are to believe that he was simply allowed to lob softballs at George W. Bush to make the dyslexic and gaffe-prone President "look good."

OK. Such is possible. But not in-toto.

"Jeff Gannon" has to have come from somewhere; yet no one knows (or seems to want to say) from where. We know that he runs, under a variety of Web sites and phone banks, a male/homosexual out-call service that caters to military men ($200/hour; $1200/weekend), called Bedrock Corp., registered in Wilmington, Delaware, and that the state of Delaware busted James Guckert ("Jeff Gannon") in tax deliquency ($20,000) a few years back, of which he has apparently not made amends. His sites show photos of "Gannon's" muscled self--sans clothes, and often erect or urinating (his pubic region is shaved, btw.). He writes that he is "Top only!" (meaning, he shoves his show into his clients, and won't do it any other way). He has been caught lying to Editor & Publisher magazine and various other magazines who interviewed him after the scandal began to explode, as saying that he was merely a Webmaster and was not involved in his clients' sites; turns out, though, that "Gannon" was not only the primary Webmaster for his own sites, but was also the primary client offered For Sale in those gay military escort Web pages.

As baseball brother Jeremy Giambi said: "Unless you've been in a coma" for the last two months, you've read most of the aforementioned summation of recent news. What you have not heard comes next.

Part II: A Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On (in D.C. Right Now)

Source:
http://www.libertythink.com/2005/03/why-mainstream-media-aint-touching.html

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Re: Vreeland's child prostitution charges.

No mystery here.

Vreeland's brother had gone on the record saying that Delmart Vreeland is a pedophile. He is always in the company of young teenage boys, as evidenced in a few articles about Vreeland, including one by Sander Hicks. Vreeland refers to many of them as his "sons," despite the fact that he has no children. And despite the fact that they seem to always be different people.

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Is he Johnny Gosch?

By ERIN CRAWFORD
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
April 5, 2005

Johnny Gosch may finally have been found, thanks to Rush Limbaugh.

The Iowa paperboy was kidnapped in 1982, with unsubstantiated stories emerging later from his mother that he was abducted into a child pedophilia ring. No trace of him has ever been found, and no suspects have been arrested.

Nearly 23 years later, White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, who wrote for a conservative Web site, was exposed in February as James D. Guckert, a man with no journalism experience and links to several gay escort addresses online.

If you have the time to read a few hundred Web postings, you will see how Johnny Gosch and Jeff Gannon, two completely unrelated individuals, became the same person on the Web. The way the theory developed says much about the anything-goes nature of the blogosphere and self-proclaimed reporters on the Internet, who seem to find accuracy and proof a nuisance in uncovering fantastical conspiracies.

It took the random efforts of scores of Web loggers (bloggers), credulous readers and longtime followers of the case to assign the two men a bizarre, shared backstory involving satanic CIA agents, pedophiles and presidents. And, of course, Limbaugh.

Gosch's mother, Noreen Gosch, called the theory "quite bizarre," but not impossible.

"We don't have anything conclusive," she said.

With so many people contributing twists, this dark fiction is as wild as anything on daytime television. It is really only the most recent speculation about what happened to Johnny Gosch, who has been "sighted" numerous times in the last 20 years in Africa, across the country and even in a Montreal subway. Police have been unable to confirm the sightings.

But here's how the Internet can feed a rumor until a bunch of people actually believe it.

The Gannon-Gosch conspiracy theory first appeared on the message board of a liberal political site called The Democratic Underground on Feb. 26. A site regular, using the name TwoSparkles, speculated that Jeff Gannon was victimized by a government-organized child pornography ring.

Then he foreshadowed the future with this note: "I found this picture of Johnny Gosch. I looked at it and almost thought it looked like Gannon! It must be getting late." The image was a school picture of Gosch taken in the 1980s and later enhanced.

The same poster noted that Gannon/Guckert and Gosch had the same initials. Before long, other site members were trying to figure out whether the ages matched. (In fact, there would be more than 10 years' age difference between Gannon and Gosch.)

Full-blown details came from several popular Web conspiracy theorists. Self-styled political activist Sherman Skolnick, who analyzes political corruption with an evangelical tone, adopted Rense.com as his forum about the Gosch-Gannon/Guckert link.

Then the story was dropped into dozens of Web sites. Gosch case activist and Denver resident Ted White estimated he posted messages about the connection on 65 or 70 sites.

"I'm a member of over 80 Yahoo groups," he said. He fanned the rumor on the sites, spreading information he heard from private investigators on the Gosch case.

Bloggers picked up on the theory and soon the yarn was developing on hundreds of sites, many linked to one another. Entire blogs, or Web journals, are now devoted to the subject of whether Gosch grew up to become the disgraced reporter.

The complete concoction goes like this: Gosch was kidnapped into a pedophilia and child pornography ring that serviced the upper echelons of Washington, D.C., society. He was brainwashed by the CIA, trained to be part of a top-secret escort program. Then, he became Jeff Gannon and was given a plum job as a White House correspondent with the online conservative news service to keep him quiet.

Finally, he was "uncovered" by the bloggers.

Photos combining the two men's faces are now posted on dozens of sites. Gosch's glossy, parted hair morphs into Gannon's bald head. Gosch's little-boy smile turns into Gannon's broad, tough-set jaw.

The nose is similar. The facial shape similar. A mark on one cheek is similar.

A coincidence, you might say, but a lot of people are buying it.

"Though the photos' perspectives differ, and it's proof of nothing, the alignment of features is striking," wrote blogger Jeff Wells on Rigorous Intuition (rigorousintution. blogspot.com).

But a lack of proof wasn't enough to stop a vast network of gossip from enveloping the story.

"The synchronicities . . . are stunning"
The most fervent bloggers on the Web aren't as interested in linking Gannon to Gosch as they are in presenting their version of a massive conspiracy. The story that excites them is a sordid tale about the CIA operating a pedophilia ring on behalf of dignitaries and politicians and training male prostitutes to serve as spies.

They try to link both Bush presidents to this conspiracy, prove that Hunter S. Thompson's death was not a suicide and investigate a so-called government-sponsored pedophilia operation they claim continues to abduct children.

Coincidentally, Gannon was exposed as Guckert by persistent bloggers. After drawing attention to himself with softball questions and inaccurate quotes, Gannon became a topic on Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show. The bloggers then dug up erotic photos of him and a connection to the escort sites.

Now bloggers, reveling in the notion of political hypocrisy, say they won't let the story die until Gannon's DNA has been compared to genetic material from the Gosch family.

Skolnick's stories on Rense.com were a frequent source for many of the bloggers who posted about Gannon-Gosch. Most blogs ran condensed versions of his long-winded reports.

Skolnick wrote six articles on the subject, the first titled "The Gannon Cannon - Part 1: Bush Treason in Spy Whorehouse," which accused Gannon of a personal connection to the president of the United States and other dastardly deeds involving the "Chinese Secret Police."

Skolnick's biases are readily apparent. He bemoans, for example, that a doctored photo showing Gannon and Bush naked together is "too good to be true."

Among other things in Skolnick's stories - which have little in the way of verifiable sources - are rumors that Gannon was trained by a secret D.C. escort service operation.

Gannon has minimal journalism education, but Skolnick proposed that he was trained in Central America, learning the latest in torture tactics, and that he has consulted with the management at the U.S. military's Guantanamo facility.

Total Information (www.total411.info), a site devoted to political paranoia about 9/11 and topics like Freemasonry, is another place for a surfer to run across the story. Blogger James G. Truth, a pseudonym for the site's operator, posted information about Gosch/Gannon/Guckert, but added little in the way of additional rumor - or reporting.

"I watched the Gannon-is-Gosch story percolate for about a week on the 'net," Truth wrote in an e-mail to The Des Moines Register. "The synchronicities in the case were and are stunning."

What convinced Truth was a chain of similar names. James Gannon is the name of the former Des Moines Register editor who ran the paper at the time Gosch was abducted. Too close, in Truth's page, to be a coincidence.

"Things can be changed"
Despite the story's more ludicrous subplots, a few coincidences seem eerie - the matching cheek marks, the coincidental names, the sexual overtones of the scandals. Add in the rumor that Johnny Gosch's mother, Noreen, declared Gannon was her son, and it's no wonder that some bloggers stuck by the story.

In reality, she says she's not convinced either way.

Several facts, however, do not add up. Gosch and Gannon/Guckert would be 12 years apart in age. Gannon is 48, and Gosch would be 35.
Noreen Gosch said some Web sites have reported Gannon as being 31 or 35. "Most people think he looks younger," she said to the Register.

Conneaut Lake High School in Pennsylvania confirms, however, that a James D. Guckert graduated in June 1975. His college, West Chester University of Pennsylvania, reports that he graduated in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in education and a concentration in social studies.

Gannon himself told the New York Times that his mother is 72. Noreen Gosch wouldn't say her age, but said she is not 72. According to previous reports of her age, she would be approximately 61.

But if you want to believe something, and you've got the catchall reasoning that the CIA can alter anything, it's not hard to brush aside such discrepancies.

Ted Gunderson, a retired FBI agent and longtime Gosch investigator, insists that the CIA can change ages, adjust work and school records and construct entire lives for people. It doesn't make a lot of sense either that someone living underground would choose to work in the pressure-cooker of the Washington media, but there are multiple rationales for that inconsistency.

Several bloggers suggest Gosch was brainwashed or has multiple personalities. "He may not have any idea," observed a visitor using the tag "ohmygosch" on http://mparent777.blog -city.com.

Jim Rothstein, a retired New York City police officer and longtime investigator on the Gosch case, said becoming a White House reporter is completely in character for a former victim of the pedophilia ring.

In fact, Gannon/Guckert may have orchestrated the scenario for a greater purpose.

"Is it possible he drew attention to himself during that Jan. 26 press conference to pique the curiosity of citizen investigators?" posited one blogger.

At Tyranny Response Unit news (trunews.blogspot.com), the sex scandal is cast as an act of revenge.

"It appears that Gannon is the good guy - he might be getting back at his abusers," observed the Tyranny Response Unit blogger.

Gosch gets a blog?
Another category of bloggers takes more interest in the apparent foolishness of the matter than any possible evil. There are bloggers mocking other bloggers.

Take the writer(s) behind the Johnny Gosch Blog, who satirically use the persona of Gannon, keeping a log of new rumors that are enthusiastically mocked. "One of Gannon's escort pages lists his age as 31 in 2001. Golly. I can't imagine why a gay male prostitute would lie about his age," said Joseph Cannon, who blogs on Cannonfire (cannonfire .blogspot.com).

In the blogging world, circulating such rumors is considered a democratic pursuit, according to Jane Singer, an assistant professor in the University of Iowa School of Journalism. More than 20 percent of Internet users read or contribute to blogs, Singer said.

"The bloggers have a view of truth that is collective," she said. "Everyone contributes their ideas and truth emerges. . . . Their role is to find things they think are interesting and important or need to be brought to attention."

Of the Gosch-Gannon connection, she said, "It doesn't surprise me that bloggers ran with that. Some things pan out and some things don't."

Some bloggers, however, feel unappreciated and overworked.

One outraged Web surfer, using the tag "former Iowan," responded to a post on the Cannonfire site, wondering, "Where is the major media interest in following up this story - especially The Des Moines Register which should have a curiosity in any Johnny Gosch sightings."

But the Internet always has answers. White, for instance, explains why newspapers aren't interested in this story.

"Have you ever heard of Operation Mockingbird?" he asked.

It's another theory. It argues that the press is being controlled by the CIA.

http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050405/LIFE04/504050376/1039/LIFE

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Des Moines (IA) Register Snowjobs Gannon/Guckert Story

Exclusive to SiaNews.com

by "Reggie"
April 6, 2005

Regarding the Gannon/Gosch piece by Erin Crawford in the Des Moines Register earlier this week. As a coworker, I am VERY familiar with Ms. Crawford's work, and can tell you that the article that appeared recently under her name was not her usual fare. It seems the editors at the Register heavily edited her copy, accounting for at least half of the finished article. The style is simply not Crawford's, but fits with the copy seen elsewhere in the paper daily. Crawford is a very egotistical young writer with a serious chip on her shoulder who is not above telling her sources they are mistaken. At the same time, she thinks so highly of herself that she would never recognize that she was being used as a tool by her higher ups to push an agenda that they've been pushing for many years now.

She was neither qualified to tackle this story nor capable. Her usual topics are writing about Survivor (the television show), makeup, fashion and other fluff. Her most recent article prior to the Gannon piece was a riveting story about $150 shoes. Who better to take on such a serious topic as this...

On another note, the alternative weekly paper in Des Moines, Pointblank, just printed a cover story on the subject that was much better. It's at www.pointblank-dm.com.

http://www.friendsofliberty.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2348

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Cover Story: Death of a Conspiracy

Johnny Gosch, Jeff Gannon, Hunter Thompson and the unraveling of a troubling tale.

By Tim Schmitt


Noreen Gosch sits in a booth at the West Des Moines Village Inn, nursing a cup of coffee and managing, despite her larger-than-life personality, to blend into the surroundings and keep a low profile in the almost empty restaurant. She is open with her thoughts and willing to share what information she can, yet she remains guarded - cautious and thoughtful in a manner often mistaken as cold and standoffish. She thinks carefully as she speaks about her son, Johnny, and the players in a bizarre conspiracy surrounding his disappearance in 1982 that continues to evolve, and may finally be on the verge of breaking down.

"Just because you don't want to believe something is true," says Noreen slowly, "that doesn't mean it's not true."

It's a statement that bears repeating:

"Just because you don't want to believe something is true, that doesn't mean it's not true."

Anyone who has heard the theories surrounding Johnny Gosch's disappearance on Sept. 5, 1982 (and who in Iowa has not?), knows they are difficult to accept. If there are Satanic pedophiles working in the top levels of government and law enforcement selling kids on the black market and forcing them into prostitution, pornography, extortion and things far worse, it's easier as a human being to simply believe that such things could not be true.

But they could be.

And Noreen knows this all too well. She didn't want to believe her child was kidnapped, sexually abused, tortured, brainwashed and sold into slavery, but she accepts this now as an indisputable truth. And she is not alone.

Many others accept the existence of a vast network of high-profile people - powerful politicians, business leaders, law enforcement and government agents - who exist in a subculture of degenerates who participate in child pornography, snuff films, drugs, devil worship, brainwashing and kidnapping. And Noreen believes that Johnny (and hundreds of other children like him) was forced into this life of depravity by those who kidnapped him.

But Johnny's story has been told thousands of times. It's been analyzed, disputed and ridiculed just as frequently, and we have neither the time and space, nor the inclination to repeat it here in full. As, tragic as it may be, it's old news. Nothing major has happened in the case for some time, and the alleged players in the story have been silent, absent or simply missing for years.

Until recently.

In the past few months there's been a flurry of activity among the people once related to his case and the conspiracy that surrounds it. And in the midst of this commotion, some believe Johnny Gosch has been found very much alive.

Recent events began with Jeff Gannon, the right-wing journalist who was found to have gained access to the White House press pool with few credentials and a fake name. The death of Hunter S. Thompson followed shortly after. The arrest of two men, seemingly unrelated, in Nebraska and Virginia within days of the Gannon story and Thompson's death also play a role in the story.

And all these events, some suggest, are related to the 12-year-old paperboy kidnapped from West Des Moines 23 years ago.

And if they are right, there is much more to come...


Johnny lives


In late January a conservative journalist in Washington D.C. was found to have gained access to the White House press pool despite using a fake name, and despite the fact that he once worked as a high-priced homosexual escort.

Jeff Gannon was a White House correspondent for Talon News who regularly attended White House press briefings and at least four press conferences with President George W. Bush. On Jan. 26, 2005, Gannon asked a question of the president that was so friendly and factually inaccurate that some of his colleagues began looking into his background.

Talon News, it was learned, is a barely disguised tool of the Republican Party, and Gannon's credentials as a journalist consist solely of a training course at the Leadership Broadcast School of Journalism. After two days of training that cost $50, Gannon was officially a graduate of a journalism school and on his way to the White House press pool.

It was soon discovered that Gannon's real name is Jeff Guckert and that he has also gone by the nickname "Bulldog" when listing himself on the Internet as a homosexual escort and personal trainer charging $200 per hour for his "discreet" services.

Gannon was removed from the White House and resigned from Talon News on Feb. 8 "Gannongate" quickly became the presidential scandal of the hour, though the story faded from public view as politicians and the media eagerly turned their attention to such pressing matters as steroids in baseball and the Terri Schiavo situation.

But before long, Internet bloggers had picked up the story and began to think back to the administration of President Bush's father, which was rocked by a scandal that allegedly involved a high-level official giving private, late-night tours of the White House to teenage, male prostitutes. The New York Times and the Washington Post both wrote about the story and the eventual death of Washington lobbyist Craig Spence, who reportedly arranged the visits. Spence, it has been suggested, was preparing to admit publicly that he was using the teenage boys to blackmail high-powered politicians in the beltway. He committed suicide before he had the opportunity to do so.

With a gay escort gaining access to the White House during a Bush administration while many of the same officials from the '80s are back in power, the question became, "Is there a connection?"

Private investigator Sherman H. Skolnick posted a story about the Gannon debacle on www.rense.com, a site know for its conspiracy theories, and publicly stated on Feb. 19 that Gannon is Johnny Gosch.

Andy Stephenson, a blogger from Seattle familiar with the details of the Johnny Gosch case and the child sex rings in Nebraska detailed in the Book, "The Franklin Cover-Up," began, with a group of other writers and investigators, to ponder the claim. They looked at markings on Gannon's body and compared them to those reported on Johnny Gosch. They considered the lack of personal information about Gannon's early years. They considered that Johnny was alleged to have been used as a gay prostitute for blackmail purposes. They considered that the high-powered people alleged to have kidnapped and brainwashed children as part of the government's Monarch Project and MK-Ultra program, including Johnny, did so to use them in a variety of ways to advance their own agendas. And they contacted Noreen Gosch and discussed the idea with her - the first she'd heard of the theory - and they, too, came to the conclusion that Jeff Gannon is none other than Johnny Gosch.

The Internet has been abuzz with the theory ever since. And, in a way, it makes perfect sense. You've got a kid abducted and brainwashed into doing the bidding of government officials as part of top-secret mind-control programs, so now that he's older why not put him into the White House to soften press briefings to make the president look better? The suggestion from many is that Gannon is a Monarch Program child-turned-adult operative.

Gannon, according to investigators like Skolnick, is involved in high-level espionage and is also an expert on torture. He is said to be an expert penetration agent, using sex to compile negative data on U.S. and foreign governmental officials, and is also believed responsible for the Valerie Plame White House leak that allegedly caused 70 CIA undercover agents to be murdered.

Yet others suggest that Gosch took on the persona of James Gannon/Jeff Guckert and gained White House access with the eventual goal of exposing the people who kidnapped him and put him, and his family, through hell. Gannon is alleged to have a publishing deal with a Russian imprint, which some believe will result in a tell-all book that exposes those who've paid for his "services," as well as the pedophile ring that he, as Gosch, was victimized by after his kidnapping.

"I'm convinced 99 percent that he is Johnny Gosch" says Ted Gunderson, a retired FBI agent who has been working on the Gosch case for more than a decade. "The only way I'd be 100 percent sure is if there was a DNA test or if he admitted it."

He bases his opinion on a confidential source from whom he claims to have videotape testimony that has him identifying Gannon as Gosch.

"My source has told me in the past that he has maintained contact with Johnny Gosch," says Gunderson. "Let's just say he's in a position to know. The kids are all in touch with each other. It's a bond they all share."

The kids he refers to are those forced into the sex slavery rings and the government-sponsored mind-and behavior-control programs. One of those "kids" is a man named Paul Bonacci, who claims to have participated in the kidnapping of Johnny Gosch and says he was forced to be the first person to molest Johnny. Bonacci has long claimed to be part of the vast network of children trained to work for the government and participate in deviant sexual acts to make the blackmail of politicians possible.

In 1999, Bonacci won a $1 million lawsuit against Larry King, the former head of the Franklin Credit Union in Nebraska, whom he claimed forced him into the pedophile ring. The federal judge ruled Bonacci was truthful in his testimony, which included his claim that he was one of several young male prostitutes known to have toured the White House in the 1980s.

Gunderson claims that Bonacci is not his source for the Gannon-is-Gosch claim, but adds that Bonacci informed him a while back that Gosch had changed his appearance. John DeCamp, author of "The Franklin Cover-Up" says Bonacci told him the same thing.

"I do know that Johnny Gosch altered his appearance and the changes I've heard about conform to how Gannon looks now," he says. "Paul told me you could be standing right next to him and not know it's Johnny."

And he says that Gannon has been asked the question, but refuses to answer one way or the other.

"A fellow in New York City went to his door and asked him about his mother in Iowa and he slammed the door on him," he says. "He wouldn't talk about it at all."


A mother's instinct


Noreen Gosch has seen the videotape that Gunderson made with his confidential informant and believes the man is credible.

"Ted sent me a videotape of his interview with his source and he said Gannon is Gosch, and he said it without hesitation and without blinking an eye," recalls Noreen. "And he said he's known it for months."

When the theory was first proposed, Noreen's phone was ringing every 15 minutes with calls from bloggers, investigators, and radio and TV stations, all asking if she would identify Gannon as her son. She has not done so. She's sat with the numerous photos from the Internet and compared them to those of Johnny, herself and John Gosch Sr. looking for similar features.

"I could see some of the similarities that the bloggers were talking about," she says. "I could see in (Gannon) the features that Johnny had. And the last time I saw Paul Bonacci, he told me that Johnny had changed his entire appearance again. That he shaved his head and is going with that look for now."

She says the birthmark on Johnny's chest is very similar to a mark seen on Gannon's chest in at least one photo. And she points out that Gannon has a spot on his right cheek in the same place as Johnny. Sometimes, she's almost convinced. But it's not quite enough and she just can't - or won't - say for sure that Gannon is her son.

"People have asked me why I can't recognize him if I saw I him in 1997, and I tell them a picture from the Internet is a lot different than someone sitting in your kitchen," she says.

Noreen claims that Johnny visited her at her West Des Moines apartment in 1997, but told her he could not come out of hiding because his life and hers would be put in grave danger.

But what about her gut feeling? Her maternal instinct?

"Honestly, it changes," she says. "Sometimes I think, 'oh, yeah, that looks like him,' and other times the jump is too much to think about. When you factor in the facts, it's hard to believe. I've spent a lot of sleepless nights over this. I really wish I could say for sure."

But Noreen is no fool. She knows the risk of saying, one way or the other, if she thinks this is her son. If it is, and he's chosen not to say anything, she understands that he has reasons for his secrecy that are likely life-threatening and her outing him could very well put him at risk. If she were to claim Gannon is Johnny and is proven wrong later, then any amount of credibility she has left would go out the window.

"Even if he (Gannon) admitted to it, I would still want a DNA test done," she says. "This is so surreal. It's like I'm on the outside looking in. Almost 23 years have passed and we know he's still alive, but to potentially have your loved one found is just unreal. If this would turn out to be Johnny it would be a blessing for everyone to know what happened and to have it all wrapped up."

Subliminal hints


That is unlikely to happen anytime soon. Despite millions of words devoted to the subject on the Web and investigations being conducted by hundreds of Internet detectives, Gannon has not acknowledged the speculation.

Despite this, some say that Gannon has been providing clues to his real identity on his Web page (www.jeffgannon.com), which is still active.

Shortly after the theory was presented, Gannon posted an article titled "Hiding in Plain Sight," and has posted a column entitled "Fear and Loathing in the Press Room," which some suggest is a reference to the recently deceased Hunter S. Thompson, who also was accused of involvement in pedophile, child slavery rings in the 1980s (see below).

Others suggest that his name itself is a clue to his real identity. Both Jeff Gannon and James Guckert share the same initials as Johnny Gosch. Furthermore, shortly after Johnny's disappearance, Noreen made a personal plea to the editor of The Des Moines Register, Johnny's employer. The editor printed her letter in the paper and mocked it by allowing the police department to dissect it. The editor's name was James Gannon.

"I would say that those are subliminal messages," says Gunderson, an attempt on Gannon's part to let slip his identity.

Jim Rothstein, a retired New York Police Detective who spent more than 35 years in the force, much of it investigating child slavery, pedophile rings, agrees that the evidence is strong that Gannon is actually Johnny Gosch.

"To me Gannon looks like Johnny," says Rothstein. "Everything just fits - the profile, the M.O., everything."

Rothstein has been involved as a private investigator on the Gosch case for the past several years, and says he is working to get the final proof needed to determine Gannon's true identity.

"We're working on getting a tail on him and getting a DNA sample to test," he says. "I still can't figure out why no-one knows where he (Gannon) was for 10 years."

There have been some Internet postings that give a timeline of Gannon's life, but according to Rothstein they are based on flimsy information that is not to be trusted.

"Records are easy to create," he says. "Maybe this Guckert kid died and someone took over his identity. If it is not Johnny Gosch, then it's one of the other kids like Johnny Gosch."

Says Noreen: "If all this is true, I don't think he was ready to be exposed just yet."

Hunter and snuff films

The Gannon/Gosch connection was first made public early in the morning on Feb. 20. Later that same day, Hunter S. Thompson was found dead in his home, the victim of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot.

Few people would ever have thought to connect Thompson and Gosch, but those familiar with the tales of child abuse and pedophilia documented in "The Franklin Cover-Up," a book first released in 1994 by former Neb. State Sen. John DeCamp, understand the association.

In his book, DeCamp relates many interviews and discussions with Paul Bonacci, the young man who claims to have been involved with the kidnapping of Johnny Gosch. Bonacci told horrific tales of being forced into sex with adults and other children. In one case he recalls being flown into Nevada with another young boy whom he did not know. They took on another passenger there and headed to a secluded location where Bonacci says he was forced to have sex with the younger boy. The young boy, Bonacci claims in this book, was also forced to have sex with adult males, who then killed the boy with a gunshot to the head. Bonacci says he was then forced to have sex with the corpse.

The passenger they took on in Nevada filmed the entire thing, and Bonacci recalled that his name was Hunter Thompson.

"I think it's kind of strange that Hunter Thompson would commit suicide at this time," says Gunderson. "Several kids told us that he directed snuff films. I think it's a strong possibility that he was murdered and I strongly suspect that it's all connected."

And the speculation on the Internet has been that Thompson was either killed to prevent his coming forward, or that he killed himself because he feared his role as a director of child snuff films would be proven true.

DeCamp also expressed some surprise at the timing of Thompson's death and says he still believes Bonacci's claim is true. Stephenson, the blogger from Seattle who has investigated the Gosch case, is also suspicious.

"I wonder, did he know? In light of Paul's (Bonnaci) testimony regarding the snuff film, I submit he knew quite a bit," he says. "The timing of his death was interesting."

The snuff film that Thompson allegedly made with Paul Bonacci is believed, based on Bonacci's description of the surroundings, to have been filmed at Bohemian Grove, a summer camp of sorts for the rich and powerful. Bohemian Grove is a secluded area outside Sacramento, Calif., where world leaders and dignitaries meet annually for a retreat that involves neo-pagan activities, including mock human sacrifices made before a large Owl statue referred to as "Moloch." While conducting this ritual, which they call "The Cremation of Care," participants are dressed in druid robes and chant and sing before Moloch.

Information on these gatherings has been well known for some time, though video footage has only recently been leaked out of the site. The site is very secure and access is available only to a handful of people worldwide. As a child, Bonacci could never have had access to the site, but he described it accurately, including the large owl statue.

Noreen Gosch says that on one recent evening her Web site, www.johnnygosch.com, had more than 50 hits that came from within a 10-mile radius of Bohemian Grove.

The CIA pedophile

In her book, "Why Johnny Can't Come Home," Noreen Gosch writes about a man who contacted her just six months after Johnny's disappearance claiming he worked with a government agency that was investigating pedophile organizations.

George Paul Bishop (often known just as Paul Bishop) claimed he was a "CIA asset" and arrived in Des Moines in July of 1984 to offer his assistance to the Goschs. Before he left, he provided, through his investigation, a detailed map of the kidnapping scene. Bishop, according to Noreen's book, often called the Gosch home from the Washington D.C. office of Sen. Charles Grassley, with whom Noreen had worked on Johnny's case.

"Many times Paul Bishop would call me from Sen. Grassley's office and, when finished speaking with me, he would hand the phone to one of Grassley's aides who I was familiar with," Noreen recalled in her book, published in 2000. "That convinced me Paul was an accepted visitor on the Hill in Washington."

Based on this, Noreen believed that Bishop was responsible for securing her invitation to testify before Sen. Arlan Specter's Hearing on Organized Crime and its Relationship to Kidnapping at the U.S. Capitol. Bishop, in fact, picked Noreen up from her D.C. hotel and accompanied her to the hearings.

Bishop became close to Noreen, even referring to her as "Mom," but suddenly, in 1985, he disappeared from the scene. The phone number he'd left was no longer valid and no one knew how to contact him. No one had seen or heard from him in almost 20 years, until he was suddenly arrested on Feb. 4 of this year in Virginia, after police allegedly found an explicit video of a 16-year-old boy in his home.

Detectives searched Bishop's home and found the tape after receiving a complaint that he was allowing teenage boys to drink and use drugs on the premises.

Noreen wonders now if Bishop was on the wrong side of Johnny's case all along. Was he involved in the kidnapping and merely running a smokescreen at the time to prevent discovery? Was his recent arrest an effort to keep him quiet about the larger story? A threat?

Or was he honest from the beginning and his recent arrest merely an effort to discredit him before he reappeared and started making noise and threatening to expose the powerful people involved?

Either way, Bishop seemed to know a lot about Johnny's disappearance in 1982, and his sudden reappearance on the scene coinciding with the outing of Jeff Gannon, the death of Thompson and the arrest of another man involved with the case (below) is too much of a coincidence for some to accept.

"It's very common to set someone up and arrest him to discredit him," says Rothstein.


The photographer


Rusty Nelson claimed that he once turned down an offer of $50,000 from Hunter S. Thompson to help in the production of a snuff film. The offer was allegedly made because Nelson worked closely with Larry King, the central figure in the "Franklin Cover-Up" accused of running a pedophile and child slavery ring. Nelson would often accompany King to elaborate parties where he worked as a photographer, taking photos of high-profile individuals in compromising positions with young boys and girls.

Nelson testified in court that he participated as a photographer, but claims that, though he took compromising photos, he never took any hardcore pornographic pictures; that he absolutely refused any involvement with child pornography. But he claims that King employed a Nelson look-alike for this purpose in order to compromise both the powerful people in the photos and Nelson himself. Nelson has admitted taking tens of thousands of photos, many of which have been confiscated and either destroyed or permanently sealed to protect those depicted. But many, according to some reports, remain hidden.

Despite his denials, Nelson has served time for his photography work, having been arrested in Oregon years ago with a van full of photos, at least one of which was said to involve a minor engaged in less-than-legal activity. He's been living in Nebraska for some time, providing what information he can to private investigators and trying to put his life back together. Most recently he was working with a friend to open a studio that specializes in wedding photography.

But two days after Thompson's death, Nelson was rounded up by police and arrested, reportedly for failing to register as a sex offender in a county of which he was no longer a resident.

John DeCamp bailed Nelson out of jail and says he thinks the arrest was intended as a warning to him and others that they best keep their mouths shut. Others agree.

"The timing is interesting," says Stephenson. "Especially given Thompson's death and Paul Bishop's recent arrest. I would place a suicide watch on both men.

"I think there's fixin' to be a heap of manure hitting the air circulating device soon," he adds. "I wonder about the timing. I have been wondering why all these people have all of a sudden come out of the woodwork. I wonder if there is a 'purge' going on. I don't think injustice ever leaves the public consciousness. I think there is far more going on here than we know."


So why now? After all this time, why the activity and renewed interest in the Johnny Gosch case and the tales of child abduction, slavery and prostitution in general. Did the theory that Gannon is actually Johnny Gosch hit too close to home and threaten to expose those with secrets to keep?

One suggestion is that increased media attention has the players in the decades-old scandal getting jumpy and looking to protect themselves.

Nick Bryant, the man who confronted Gannon at his home and asked him about Johnny Gosch, has apparently been working on this story for several years and has been shopping the finished product around for a publisher.

Rothstein says he's been working with Bryant for at least three years, and that Bryant was originally commissioned to do the story for Rolling Stone, which has since turned the finished piece down. The New York Times and several other outlets have reportedly shown interest in the story recently, as well.

Bryant declined to comment either on the Gannon situation or his involvement in writing a story. But, Rothstein says since Bryant began showing the piece around, the players involved have once again become active.

"Something is cooking here now," he says. "They'll have to throw someone to the wolves, but there's no telling how high it will go."

Everyone involved in the story acknowledges that it sounds like a wacky conspiracy theory, but the evidence of the conspiracy is too vast, they say, to simply dismiss it.

"I'm a conspiracy realist, because there is a conspiracy out there," says Gunderson, who says just two weeks ago he was chased through his neighborhood by an unknown man with a gun.

Adds Rothstein: "If two people were involved in kidnapping that kid, then it's a conspiracy. Well, these people don't work alone so it's a conspiracy. They try to discredit you by calling you a conspiracy theorist. Damn right I'm a conspiracy theorist, because that's what it is."

Still, in the end, this is a story about a young boy stolen from his home and his family. This simple tragedy is often lost in the complicated theories and conjecture, but it remains the single, undeniable truth in the entire story.

"I hold out hope that we'll be able to have regular communications with him," Noreen says of her son. "We know he's alive, and up until a couple years ago, we knew what he was doing and where. Maybe he could keep in touch with his mom, but moving back to Des Moines to live a life here? Those windows of opportunity have closed. I hear the horrible things people say about me. I can only imagine what they would say about him given the things he's been through.

"Johnny knows I tried, and who's to say it's all over. We don't know yet. If this is it, we're in the final days and this is all going to blow wide open." PB

http://www.pointblank-dm.com/cover.shtml

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Reader Responds To Des Moines Register Gosch/Gannon Hit Piece

Prison Planet | April 7 2005

A reader responds to the arrogant Des Moines Register scoff piece which debunks the notion that bush-loving man-whore journalist Jeff Gannon is kidnapped Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch.

Read the original Des Moines Register article here.

E mail the supposed journalist at ecrawfor@dmreg.com

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Is he Johnny Gosch? How about are you a real journalist?

Ms. Crawford,

Nice piece of corporate socialist spin. I understand completely your desire to present your utterly compromised and unethical profession in some form of positive light by contrasting it with independent editorialists on the blog circuit. However you may wish to check your own facts before presenting them as some form of definitive statement on the matter. Here are a few notable examples of your piece:

1) Operation Mockingbird is only a theory. If that is true, then William Colby's admission that "the CIA owns everyone of any consequence in the major media" was obviously a fictional account.

http://www.freedomofthepress.net/journalismandtheciathemightywurlitzer.htm

2) "But a lack of proof wasn't enough to stop a vast network of gossip from enveloping the story." I suppose this only applies to a non-government inspired opinions. Unsubstantiated stories about Iraqi WMD that your organization and many others trumpeted without any evidence or even quotable sources whatsoever apparently don't count in this regard. What a nice communist, Pravda-like approach to seeing the world.

3) "Johnny Gosch may finally have been found, thanks to Rush Limbaugh."
You spend an entire hit piece trashing slipshod fact checking on the blogs only to promote one of the last people to actually deal with the story in your first line. What's worse is that you choose to promote an editorialist who always supports a pro-government line (so long as his party runs the government, that is). How can you expect to dismiss bloggers as innuendo and spin factories when you are doing the same thing yourself?

These examples were just off the top of my head. If you really want to know why your general readership and subscription rates have been declining, you may wish to start acting like you work for an independent news organization and not some latter day incarnation of Isvestia. Nobody likes to hear only the government's spin on events all the time; it reminds them of the communism we supposedly fought a 50 year cold war to get rid of.

Sincerely,

Ali Sugerman

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2005/070405readerresponds.htm

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Weekly Paper That Published Gannon Expose Shut Down

Liberty Think | April 8 2005

The alternative weekly paper that published the Gannon/Gosch piece closed its doors the day the story came out and will not print another issue.

The paper will apparently be printing under the name of another alt-type weekly paper in town (cityview) but the writer of the Pointblank piece - the managing editor - was fired.

Apparently, the company that owns the new paper is owned by Michael Gartner, a high-powered individual in Des Moines who owns the Minor league baseball team in that town, oversees a state board that disburses funds to big business, and was a former writer for the Des Moines Register and Tribune who once won a Pulitzer.

He was also once president of NBC news, but was forced to leave after the debacle when they blew up trucks with rockets to make them look like they exploded on impact.

http://www.libertythink.com/2005/04/print-crackdown-on-goschgannon-inquiry.html

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Des Moines Register runs another hit piece on Gosch
Thursday, April 07, 2005

he Des Moines Register has finally run the story they contacted this website for about a couple of weeks ago. Another website contacted, TRUNews was a bit too generous in assessing the story, calling it "great."

Er, I don't think so. The DMR states its position early on in the piece, proclaiming Gosch and Gannon are "two completely unrelated individuals." Reading through the whole story, it becomes apparent that the DMR did absolutely nothing to substantiate the claims of known liar "Jeff Gannon," that he was born and raised as "James Guckert."

The DMR piece also misrepresents my comments on the Gosch/Gannon matter; something which I anticpated and thusly published when made here. I never told Crawford I was "convinced" by anything, much less the synchronicity between Gannon's chosen pseudonym and the DMR's thug of an Editor-in-Chief back in the 80s, James Gannon.

To her credit, though, Crawford did contact ex-FBI Ted Gunderson, ex-NYPD Jim Rothstein, and Noreen Gosch herself for the piece. Mrs. Gosch was quoted out of context and her position distorted, however. A more thorough examiniation of Mrs. Gosch's thoughts and feelings on the matter were published this past week in Des Moines' alt-weekly paper, Pointblank , here.

DMR apparently did not contact, however, former Nebraska State Sen. John DeCamp, whose investigations of allegations concerning a high-level pedophile ring in Neraska turned up the information on Johnny Gosch's kidnapping and the first Bush White House in DC. DeCamp could have told her about the successful civil court case that involved testimony of all this information (as well as a Bohemian Grove connection). But DMR ignored all this and continued to treat the CIA pedophile rings as something non-existent and too be ridiculed.

A communication received by my Libertythink.com cohort, Mr. Fahey, asserts OF the author, "Crawford is a very egotistical young writer with a serious chip on her shoulder who is not above telling her sources they are mistaken. At the same time, she thinks so highly of herself that she would never recognize that she was being used as a tool by her higher ups to push an agenda that they've been pushing for many years now." These comments do indeed jibe with Total411.info's experience. The communication also asserts that DMR editors wrote at least half the copy in the article. That would be of a piece with the DMR's history of front-page attacks on Noreen Gosch after she learned the tragic fate of her son and began speaking out.

http://www.libertythink.com/2005/04/des-moines-register-runs-another-hit.html

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Friday, April 08, 2005

Noreen Gosch: "If this is it, we're in the final days"

"A fellow in New York City went to his door and asked him about his mother in Iowa and he slammed the door on him," he says. "He wouldn't talk about it at all."

Those of you who entered the looking glass on the Gannon/Gosch story may have seen the bizarre, facile, uninformed and predictable piece in the Des Moines Register a few days ago: "Is he Johnny Gosch?" Bizarre because it strikes a debunking tone of bloggers say the kwayziest things, without actually debunking anything; facile because it's not only cribbed from websites, but omits the substance of their arguments; uninformed because it describes Operation MOCKINGBIRD as merely the "theory" of Net paranoiacs; and predictable because the Register has a lot of its own ass to cover regarding its treatment of the story over the years.

So thank you, Tim Schmitt and Pointblank Des Moines, for sparing us the attitude, and doing some actual journalism with , this cover story "Death of a Conspiracy: Johnny Gosch, Jeff Gannon, Hunter Thompson and the unraveling of a troubling tale." (Note: I suggest you grab this while you can, it doesn't appear to be a permanent link. It's attributed to the "cover," and the cover story will likely change with the next issue.)

This is a terrific job of laying out a complicated and credulity-bending case in context. (Paul Bishop, Rusty Nelson, and even Craig Spence get name-checked.) I don't know how tempted Schmitt was to poke the ribs of his readers, and prejudice their judgement with grandstanding eye rolls. It certainly was too much to resist for the Register's Erin Crawford. But Schmitt clearly sees the difficult wisdom in Noreen Gosch's advice, and indeed repeats it twice: "Just because you don't want to believe something is true, that doesn't mean it's not true."

From the start, it's evident Schmitt is heading for deeper waters:

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Anyone who has heard the theories surrounding Johnny Gosch's disappearance on Sept. 5, 1982 (and who in Iowa has not?), knows they are difficult to accept. If there are Satanic pedophiles working in the top levels of government and law enforcement selling kids on the black market and forcing them into prostitution, pornography, extortion and things far worse, it's easier as a human being to simply believe that such things could not be true.

But they could be.

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The alternative weekly paper that published the Gannon/Gosch piece closed its doors the day the story came out and will not print another issue. The paper will apparently be printing under the name of another alt-type weekly paper in town (cityview) but the writer of the Pointblank piece - the managing editor - was fired. Apparently, the company that owns the new paper is owned by Michael Gartner, a high-powered individual in Des Moines who owns the Minor league baseball team in that town, oversees a state board that disburses funds to big business, and was a former writer for the Des Moines Register and Tribune who once won a Pulitzer. He was also once president of NBC news, but was forced to leave after the debacle when they blew up trucks with rockets to make them look like they exploded on impact.

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