The premise is as absurd as it is disingenuous. It is also critical to the Bush administration's ability to keep a dirty little secret. In the past week, two White House spokesmen have told me they don't know the name of a Republican staff member who refused to let three people attend President Bush's March 21 Social Security "town hall" meeting in Denver. The three were banned because they arrived in a car with a "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker.
The White House doesn't know who did this because the White House doesn't care to find out.
How do we know they know? Because the Secret Service says it has interviewed the staffer but won't release his name. Check out the dissembling:
"We can't give out that information because the person was not an agent," Secret Service spokesman Jonathan Cherry told me Tuesday. "You need to talk to the White House or the local organizers (of the Denver presidential visit)." I tried.
I wasn't there," said assistant presidential press secretary Allen Abney. "It's hard for me to have specifics of what actually took place."
Asked about the Colorado situation at his national news briefing, Bush press secretary Scott McClellan said he didn't know "all the specific circumstances." He promised to look into the "marching orders" for who can get in to the president's Social Security "conversations."
Spencer says the incident with the Denver 3 is reminiscent of the Fargo 42.
The Fargo 42 mysteriously appeared on a list of folks banned from Bush's nonpartisan, taxpayer-financed Social Security "town meeting" in North Dakota. Most were part of a Howard Dean meet-up group. But some had done nothing but write letters to the editor that were critical of the president.
Fargo City Commissioner Linda Coates doesn't know who put her name on the no-admittance list or why. When the list leaked to the Fargo Forum newspaper, Coates got a ticket from Fargo's Republican mayor and went anyway.
"This is thought-police stuff," Coates said. "It's the new normal. It arouses suspicion about people by default. It's really a dark strategy."
Spencer then asked assistant presidential press secretary Allen Abney if volunteers were allowed to present themselves as secret service agents by wearing earpieces and lapel pins. He told Spencer he didn't know.
An important aspect of this story is that Bush's social security stump speeches are official White House events, open to the public and organized by Washington. And Bush is having his people screen attendees, deciding who can listen and who cannot. That's just un-American and unacceptable.
