America Conor O'CleryDuring the Clinton administration I possessed what is known as a permanent "hard pass" to get into the White House. To get it I had to provide letters of accreditation from my editor and the Irish Embassy to prove I was a bona fide correspondent, then apply for a Congressional press gallery pass - only given to those whose main income is from their news organisation - and finally be cleared by the Secret Service, a process that took months.
Under the Bush administration things have tightened up even further, and reporters who do not attend daily have to apply for one-day passes to get in.
So questions are being asked this week about how James Guckert of the TalonNews.com got a White House press pass. At a news conference two weeks ago Guckert, who uses the pseudonym Jeff Gannon, was called on by President George Bush, while front-row veteran Helen Thomas was ignored.
Guckert asked how the President could work with "people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality" like Democratic Senator Harry Reid who had warned about "soup lines" if the economy got worse (Reid never said such a thing).
The softball question delighted White House aides, but it was to be Guckert's undoing. Liberal bloggers discovered his real name and affiliations. It emerged that he had been turned down by the Congressional press gallery because his main source of income did not come from Talon, and officials could not confirm the authenticity of his organisation.
TalonNews was identified as a website run by a Texas Republican called Robert Eberle, whose motto is "Bringing the conservative message to America".
The bloggers also recalled that last year Guckert boasted of being one of the few people with access to classified documents that outed a CIA operative whose husband had angered the White House.
Democrat Congress member Louise Slaughter wrote to Mr Bush saying it appeared that Guckert was merely "a tool of propaganda" for the administration and asking how he was cleared to join the legitimate White House press corps.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed her charge as "a wild conspiracy theory", and said Guckert was admitted on daily temporary passes only, though several White House correspondents recall him wearing what looked like a permanent "hard pass" with his picture and his pseudonym. They also remember McClellan calling Guckert for soft questions when under pressure.
Guckert said he used the pseudonym for professional purposes and because "nuts" on the left had threatened him. Under his real name he has a long and colourful history of conservative activism. Some years ago his company registered (though did not launch) domain names Hotmilitarystud.com and Militaryescorts.com.
Guckert quit this week, saying he could no longer be an effective reporter for TalonNews. He accused regular White House reporters of being partisan but not admitting it. So too did McClellan, who denied that President Bush knew who Guckert was and protested that a number of people in the briefing room that represent traditional media regularly "cross the line" in their questions, though he didn't say what the line was.
A previous administration disliked reporters who "crossed the line" so much that it included their names on an enemy's list.
But the real story of what was going on in the Nixon White House came only with the help of someone within, the famous anonymous source called Deep Throat. He used to meet Bob Woodward in a darkened garage where he whispered snippets of hot information to help the Washington Post reporter and his colleague Carl Bernstein expose the Watergate scandal, which eventually brought Richard Nixon down.
The identity of Deep Throat is known only to the two journalistic sleuths and their editor at the time, Ben Bradlee. But we may soon find out who he was. The reporters are expected to reveal their source's identity upon his death, and Woodward has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Deep Throat is ill. (Ben Bradlee has publicly acknowledged that he has written Deep Throat's obituary).
The information about the informant's illness comes from John Dean, former Nixon White House counsel, who says he has little doubt that one of his former colleagues was history's best-known anonymous source, but "I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly which one."
Dean, who got his tip from an anonymous source, also says that Deep Throat gave his contacts some wrong information, such as a meeting Dean supposedly had with Senator Howard Baker which he said never happened.
The end of the three-decade long guessing game name may come quite soon for another reason. The University of Texas has for the first time allowed visitors to examine 75 boxes of notes and files from Woodward and Bernstein.
Journalism students at the University of Illinois claim they already know from their research that the mystery figure is former White House deputy counsel Fred Fielding, a member of the recent 9/11 Commission. Fielding denies it.
Other suspects include Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger, or a composite of several informants. Anonymous sources who dish the dirt are just as unpopular with officialdom today. Prosecutors have taken action against a number of reporters for refusing to name their sources: a number are facing imprisonment and one is under house arrest.
One of the most famous "Deep Throats" in recent years is Jeffrey Wigand, who as a former Brown & Williamson executive exposed the way big tobacco companies hooked new smoking addicts. He was played by Russell Crowe in the Oscar-nominated film, The Insider. Because of the movie Wigand has become an anti-tobacco crusader and an advocate of smoking bans in public places. He surfaced in the media last week again when he testified in a federal racketeering case against tobacco companies.
Wigand is now earning $30,000 a year compared to his salary at Brown & Williamson of $300,000 a year. He didn't need the trappings of wealth, he said. "My enjoyment comes when some kid comes up to me and says, 'I'm never gonna smoke.' I can take that to the bank."
Despite his evidence, the US Court of Appeal threw out the government's claim that tobacco companies should pay back $380 billion of past profits as smokers were misled about the 'safety' of cigarettes going back to 1954.
Last week this column reported that President Bush was reading Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. The White House has since said that the President's bedtime reading also includes books about Presidents George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, and the Bible.
In an interview with C-Span in January, Mr Bush said he also liked dipping into a devotional book by Oswald Chambers, a 19th century minister in Scotland. What he did not mention was that he has just read the latest Tom Wolfe book, I Am Charlotte Simmons.
The racy novel is unlikely reading for the family-values president. It relates how a young woman from North Carolina is shocked by the hedonistic sex and beer culture she finds at university, but eventually succumbs to it herself and is seduced - it takes a chapter to describe the scene in detail - by a drunken fraternity rat. The book has been 12 weeks on the American best-seller list but has got mixed reviews and is now being discounted by 50 per cent.