Is the White House Whitewashing History?

Margie Burns, reporting for the Brad Blog, says the White House may be up to some old, unsavory tactics, deleting unfavorable material from its website in potential violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. At issue are briefing references to Jeff Gannon, the faux journalist whose non-questions helped deflect criticism during press briefings.

The Brad Blog:

Just prior to the 2004 elections, The BRAD BLOG revealed a number of embarrassing White House moments that had been scrubbed — in violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978 — from their website. Eventually, in the weeks just prior to the election, and after WaPo, AFP and other wire services picked up the story which broke here, they were forced to restore all of that information to the website. (Highlights from that series of reports here.)

Now it looks like they may be at it again.

Two years ago, I posted a piece at another web site on “Go ahead, Jeff,” i.e. Jeff Gannon, actually named James Guckert, at White House press briefings. The White House web site has a search function of sorts, usable given the exact name or phrase as a keyword. My search term in February 2005 was Scott McClellan’s phrase “go ahead, Jeff,” meaning – as Jeff’s sympathetic questions made amply clear – that McClellan was calling on mysterious White-House-press-pass person Guckert/Gannon, whose exact activities in the White House have yet to be clarified. I have tried to phone Mr. Guckert but probably have not gotten through.

The precise dates of those press briefings at which Mr. Gannon/Guckert had been explicitly called on, found at that time, were November 17, 2004; December 10, 13, 17 and 21, 2004; and January 10 and 25, 2005.

Now, belatedly running the same search this morning, I found further briefings with equally revealing questions posed by Mr. Gannon. However, the previous references to Gannon/Guckert appear to have been scrubbed…

Checking previously cited briefings – from December 10 or December 13, 2004, intermittently through January 2005 – I cannot turn up the key “go ahead, Jeff” line at all, in any of the transcripts where I found it before.

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