I seem to be Little Miss Thread-Killer today. But I'm going to have another try at putting up these links to threads from last fall about Bruce Eberle, the Leadership Institute, and Mike Krempasky.
There was a great deal about Bruce Eberle on the "Social Security Scam Letter" thread from last fall, including some things DailyKos hasn't come up with yet:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1108892Gannon's degree appears to be from the Leadership Institute. Daily Kos refers to the "Leadership Institute for Broadcasting Journalism," which doesn't exist, so I assume what is meant instead is the Leadership Institute's Broadcast Journalism School. (
http://www.leadershipinstitute.org/02TRAINING/001BJS/001BJS.cfm)
The Leadership Institute was founded in 1979 by Morton Blackwell. (He's the guy who was handing out purple heart bandaids at the Republican convention -- not to be confused with Ohio's Ken Blackwell.) Blackwell was head of the College Republican National Committee from 1965 to 1970, when it became a school for Nixonian dirty tricks, and the Leadership Institute was created to serve the same function. Karl Rove and Grover Norquist are both alumni. See:
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=17581http://www.bates.edu/x48219.xmlAnother interesting connection is with Mike Krempasky, who set up the rathergate.com site so quickly after the CBS memos flap broke that it raised suspicions he had advance warning. Krempasky worked for the Leadership Institute from 1999 to 2002 and also has ties to Roger Stone, another alumni of the College Republicans, who has a 35 year history of dirty tricks.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2400623http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2407402I have no idea whether there's any dirrect connection between Krempasky and "Gannon" -- but it sure looks like they come out of the same context.
There's also one other possible connection. Bruce Eberle was a supporter of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, with which "Buckhead," who came up with the initial claims that the CBS memos were produced in MSWord, is associated. For more on Buckhead, see:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=835262http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=837236(And, on a possibly irrelevant note, isn't "Gannon" the name of the bad guy in the Legend of Zelda and sequels? If it's a pseudonym, this fellow sure has a weird self-image.)