Jeff Gannon represented Eberle's GOPUSA at the March 6 2003 Bush East Room Press Conference

Original content news item written by Michael Dietz, research by Tex MacRae

JD Guckert attended March 6 "Scripted" Bush Press Conference

by Michael Dietz and Tex MacRae

Research in the forum archives of GOPUSA.com indicates that Bobby Eberle, GOPUSA's President and CEO, concluded an agreement to have James Guckert (under the name "Jeff Gannon") represent the organization as a White House correspondent only hours before the start of a rare, prime-time presidential press conference in 2003 focused on the impending invasion of Iraq.  The information raises further questions about the sequence of events that led to Guckert gaining press privileges at the White House.

Posting somewhat cryptically to the GOPUSA forum on the morning of Mar. 6, 2003, Eberle told his member audience that there was significant news in the offing:  "Bush is going to have a press conference tonight at 7 PM CST from the White House," he wrote.  "I wonder what's coming???"  By afternoon, he was ready to post an answer that question.  "As you know," he repeats in a tone of excitement, "Bush is having a press conference tonight from the East Room of the White House.  What you may not know is that GOPUSA will be there too.  Our DC reporter will be there covering the briefing!  GOPUSA has come so far in two years, and I'm so proud of the work of the entire team."

Recently disclosed Secret Service access logs indicate that James Guckert was present in the White House, in spite of there being no briefing to attend, for roughly an hour at midday on Mar. 6.  In the first of several anomalies in the logs, he is shown leaving the White House again later that evening, following Bush's press conference, without a corresponding entry having been recorded.

Guckert had begun attending White House press briefings nearly two weeks earlier, on Feb. 25, and from that point he was present in the White House every weekday leading up to the Mar. 6 press conference.  Eberle's forum announcement suggests that Guckert was not yet formally affiliated with GOPUSA during this period, raising further questions as to what affiliation, if any, gained him his White House day passes.  Guckert is known to have been actively seeking a press platform in the weeks just prior to his appearing at the White House:  according to Liz Sheld, chairman of the Free Republic Network, Guckert proposed himself to her as host of a talk radio show on the Web-based network at the Conservative Political Action Conference in late January 2003.  He was eventually given the show, but not before he had been granted White House access, and no other record of a press affiliation during the period of Guckert's first attendance at White House press briefings has surfaced.

GOPUSA was founded in late 1999 by Bobby Eberle and Bill Fairbrother, Texas Republican Party activists, in order to provide Web development services to Republican candidates and officeholders. In 2000, the organization switched its focus to producing conservative news and commentary. GOPUSA’s Talon News service, to which Guckert was originally thought to have been accredited for White House access, was not launched until the beginning of April 2003.

According to his own account, Bobby Eberle made a visit to Washington on or just after Feb. 6, two weeks before Guckert's first briefing.  His agenda for that visit is not known, though typically he informed GOPUSA members of his trips to Washington only when they involved policy conferences or efforts to improve the organization’s profile.  The earliest documented face-to-face contact between Eberle and James Guckert is reported in an Eberle GOPUSA forum post a week after the Mar. 6 press conference.  Mar. 13 was Eberle's birthday, and in a message thanking his users for their greetings that day, he mentioned that he was "sitting here at the home of our DC reporter Jeff Gannon."  He added, "I've been doing my part to promote GOPUSA up here in DC for the last few days."