I Cogitate

"It's the evolution of a baby," Bush said, "first you crawl, then you walk, then you sprint. Sometimes people want to go straight to sprinting."

Lawmakers want in on the Secret
By Jim Spencer
Denver Post Columnist

Finally, people with clout have used the right description for the Bush administration's reaction to the so-called Denver Three.

Coverup.

In a letter sent Thursday to the head of the U.S. Secret Service, Colorado Reps. Mark Udall and Diana DeGette and Sen. Ken Salazar asked to meet with agency officials "in the next week" to find the name of the man who forced Karen Bauer, Leslie Weise and Alex Young from President Bush's March 21 Social Security forum in Denver before the president arrived at the taxpayer-financed event.

"It has been nearly three months since three individuals were removed from President Bush's Social Security town hall in Denver," Udall, DeGette and Salazar wrote to Secret Service Director M. Ralph Basham. "Each of us has called on the Secret Service to conduct an investigation to determine if the individual who removed these three persons unlawfully posed as an agent or a law enforcement official. Even though the Secret Service has conducted an investigation, the American people still do not have answers.

"It has been reported in the Denver media that the Secret Service knows the identity of the person responsible for removing these three people from the event. The lack of information from the Secret Service and the White House and their unresponsiveness toward this matter gives the appearance of either disinterest or a coverup."

On Thursday, in what has become a typical runaround, an assistant White House press secretary said the Secret Service would be the "point of contact" to talk about the letter. The Secret Service then refused to comment on the letter in any way. A spokesman would not even say whether the agency would meet with Udall, DeGette and Salazar.

The Bush administration's unwillingness to address this issue with the media has become standard operating procedure. Dissing three members of Congress is something else.

The Secret Service's job is to protect the president from harm, not embarrassment. Determining that the person who ran off Bauer, Weise and Young was not an agent - as the Secret Service says it has - is not enough.

The guy who did this wore an earpiece and lapel pin like an agent. Bauer, Weise and Young say the man refused to identify himself but acted like an agent.

He told them to leave before Bush arrived,

not because they acted up but because Republicans feared they might disrupt the president. They had, after all, arrived in a car with a "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker. They also wore "No More Lies" T-shirts hidden under their clothes, which they had thought about exposing.

They didn't. They didn't do anything. And therein lies the scandal.

Newly disclosed memos prove that only those who agree with the president on privatizing retirement accounts get to speak at Bush's Social Security roadshow, even though it is paid for by taxpayers of all political persuasions.

At a recent forum in New York, Bush actually used the word "propaganda" to describe what he is doing.

All presidents take that approach to policy. But preemptively removing political opponents who have committed no crime nor disrupted an official White House event blurs the line between security and intimidation.

It is unconstitutional.

If it is not illegal, it's past time for the Secret Service to say why.

That means names and circumstances. It means explaining who gets to wear earpieces and lapel pins at White House events and what they get to do.

Someone can impersonate a law-enforcement officer without identifying himself as one. If it waddles and it quacks and all that.

That's why it is in everyone's best interest to come clean as soon as possible. The continuing silence makes it look like the White House has manipulated the Secret Service into something the agency must never become:

A political arm of the president.

Jim Spencer's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.

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