There are interesting connections between the White House
credentialed Talon News Service, owned by Houston-based GOP activist Bobby
Eberle, Jr., and two other “Talon” entities. One is investment and management
company Talon LLC of Detroit, co-founded by Michael T. Timmis, a major
contributor to conservative Republican causes. Talon Equity Partners LLC is an
adjunct of Talon LLC. The other
GOP-connected “Talon” firm is Talon LLC of Houston, a “special purpose entity”
established by the now defunct GOP bankroller, Enron.
In April 2000, Enron and LJM2, a co-investment entity
headed by Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow, set up Talon LLC. Fastow
was later indicted and found guilty of multiple counts of fraud. His boss at
Enron, CEO Ken Lay, a close friend of and contributor to George W. Bush, was
also indicted and is awaiting trial. The Talon entity experienced a 370%
annualized return on an original investment of preferred Enron stock and made $
41 million for LJM2. Investigators in Houston are still trying to determine
what happened to Enron’s original profits before its stock tanked. There are
suspicions that much of the money ended up in well protected and hidden Bush
family and GOP coffers.
Timmis is a major contributor to The Fellowship
Foundation, a powerful “Christian” fundamentalist operation headquartered in
Arlington, Virginia. The Fellowship has interlocking relationships with the
Leadership Institute, also of Arlington, Virginia, where Talon White House
correspondent “Jeff Gannon,” a.k.a. James Dale Guckert, took a two-day course
at the institute’s Broadcast School of Journalism. The Leadership Institute,
headed by Virginia Republican official Morton Blackwell, counts such right-wing
members of Congress as Tom DeLay, Frank Wolf, Sam Brownback, John Ensign, Todd
Tiahrt, Charles Grassley, James Inhofe, Zach Wamp, and Joseph Pitts as members
of its “bi-partisan” congressional Board of Advisors. The above Republican
members of Congress are also core members of The Fellowship. Gannon has been
linked to Fellowship members who are active in two northern Virginia churches
heavily influenced by the Fellowship: Little Falls Presbyterian Church in
Arlington and McLean Bible Church in nearby McLean. Gannon is also linked to
Rev. Rob Schenk, the founder of Washington’s National Community Church, a
Pentecostal congregation that counts John and Janet Ashcroft as members. It
currently meets in a movie theater at Union Station in Washington, DC.
Companies with lucrative defense contracts with the
Pentagon, many of which are based in northern Virginia, financially back the
Fellowship. Some of these companies are involved with prisoner detention
contracts in Iraq, Cuba, and Afghanistan. The discovery of Gannon’s involvement
with military-oriented gay pornographic sites having sado-masochistic
overtones, including urination, has a number of observers looking for a
connection with the documented cases of prisoner sexual abuse by U.S. military
members and contractors. That abuse included male-on-male rape, male-on-female
rape, the sodomizing by U.S. and allied military personnel of young male and
teen prisoners with such implements as glow sticks and broom handles, forcing
naked male prisoners to form human pyramids, guards urinating on prisoners,
forcing prisoners to smear themselves in defecation, and subjecting prisoners
to forced masturbation. The presence of cameras in prison facilities had many
Washington insiders wondering if the gay S&M prostitute ring centered in
the White House had access to pornographic videos from torture centers such as
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
A classified Defense Department’s report on the prisoner
abuse contained several references to sexual and S&M-oriented behavior by
U.S. guards:
a.
(S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees; jumping on their naked feet;
b.
(S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;
c. (S) Forcibly arranging
detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;
d. (S) Forcing detainees to
remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;
e. (S) Forcing naked male
detainees to wear women's underwear;
f. (S) Forcing groups of male
detainees to masturbate
themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
g. (S) Arranging naked male
detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;
h. (S) Positioning a naked detainee
on a MRE Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers,
toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
i. (S) Writing "I am a
Rapist" (sic) on the leg of a detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a
15-year old fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
j. (S) Placing a dog chain or
strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female Soldier pose for a
picture;
k. (S) A male MP guard having
sex with a female detainee;
l. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles) to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
m. (S) Taking photographs of
dead Iraqi detainees.
a. (U) Breaking chemical lights
and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
b. (U) Threatening detainees
with a charged 9mm pistol;
c. (U) Pouring cold water on
naked detainees;
d. (U) Beating detainees with a
broom handle and a chair;
e. (U) Threatening male
detainees with rape;
f. (U) Allowing a military
police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being
slammed against the wall in his cell;
g. (U) Sodomizing a detainee
with a chemical light and
perhaps a broom stick.
h. (U) Using military working
dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one
instance actually biting a detainee.
Did the gay S&M ring in the White House order special copies of Abu Ghraib videos?