It’s been a whole month since we last checked in with our friends in the Denver Three — who, you’ll recall, were forced from a presidential event because of an anti-war bumper sticker — but the controversy continues unabated. (If you’re new to the story and want to catch up on the details, type “Denver” into my search engine to see my 12 previous posts on the subject.)
Fortunately, the Denver Three have some important people in their corner who have not forgotten about the controversy either. Some Dem members of Congress have taken up the Denver Three’s cause and aren’t satisfied with the lack of information they’ve received.
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.”
When it became apparent that someone at the March event impersonated a Secret Service agent while removing ticket-holding, law-abiding citizens from a presidential forum, an investigation began. As the Rocky Mountain News noted in May, both the White House and the Secret Service know the identity of the person responsible for removing the Denver Three from the event, but they refuse to reveal it. It led Udall, DeGette, and Salazar to note that the “unresponsiveness toward this matter gives the appearance of either disinterest or a coverup.”
Eventually, the information is going to have to come out. Members of Congress want to know who was responsible, reporters in Denver want to know, and the Denver Three want to know because they’re probably going to file a lawsuit.
The Secret Service has made it quite clear that it wasn’t one of their agents who removed the group from the event. This announcement was no doubt intended to clear the agency from the controversy, but it was a half-way measure. It knows the person directly responsible, but won’t say who. As the Denver Post’s Jim Spencer put it:
The Secret Service’s job is to protect the president from harm, not embarrassment…. If [the tactics used at Bush events are] 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.
With help from members of Congress, the Denver Three’s questions are going to keep getting asked. They deserve answers. Stay tuned.