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13:50 - 08 March, 2005
The US Secret Service lied to members of Congress today in a letter responding to concerns about GannonGuckert's access to the White House. In the letter, as reported by Raw Story, "there was no deviation from Secret Service standards and procedures" in order to give GannonGuckert access to the White House. But this a flat out lie. 1. GannonGuckert (GG) had a "day pass" to the White House, not a "hard pass." A day pass gives you one day access, a hard pass gives you repeated, unlimited, ongoing, and regular access to the White House. - Either there's a legitimate security reason why hard pass access requires a 3-month background check, and if so, the White House seriously breached security by giving GG hard pass access without requiring the extensive background check. - Or, there is no legitimate reason why hard pass reporters are required to get the 3-month background check, since GG had the same ongoing, regular and intimate access to senior members of the White House as any hard pass reporter, yet the Secret Service now says such a 3-month FBI background check was not necessary in order for GG to have the access he did. Then what kind of White House access would GG have to have in order to make him a security risk who would need the kind of background check that hard pass journalists are required to get? If the Secret Service says no such clearance was necessary for GG, then they need to explain how GG's ongoing, regular and seemingly unfettered access to the White House and senior officials as high as the president differed from the access any hard pass journalist has, a journalist who somehow poses a risk that GG does not. The bottom line is that GG was given a de facto hard pass to the White House, even though he only applied for a day pass. And if the Secret Service is now going to tell us that this is following procedures, then Congress and the media should demand an immediately investigation of just what those procedures really are. Because GannonGuckert was permitted to metaphorically "walk around the metal detectors" of the White House, and someone should be asking why.
First, it is ridiculed. Arthur Schopenhauer
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