White House weighs in on ouster

Bush aide: Belief someone plans to disrupt is enough

Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News

Published April 28, 2005 at midnight

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The White House said Wednesday that simply a belief that someone intends to disrupt a presidential event is enough to get the person removed.

Addressing the ouster of three people from a presidential speech last month in Denver, Press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday, "If we think people are coming to the event to disrupt it, obviously, they're going to be asked to leave."

The White House press office did not return calls seeking elaboration on McClellan's remarks, which were made during the daily press briefing.

Since the incident March 21, White House spokesmen have repeatedly refused to say whether the man who forcibly removed the three in Denver, because of a bumper sticker, was following White House policy.

McClellan would respond only by saying that a volunteer thought they "were coming to the event to disrupt it."

Unlike campaign events, which are deemed private and therefore could legally limit protesters, Bush's Social Security speech at the Wings over the Rockies Museum was an official White House event funded by the taxpayers.

It was open to any member of the public who obtained a ticket from Congressman Bob Beauprez.

Because it was a public event, considerable debate has erupted over whether it was legal to bar people over their political speech.

The controversy started when Alex Young, Karen Bauer and Leslie Weise, members of the political activist group Denver Progressives, were bounced from the event by a man who looked and acted like a Secret Service agent.

The three say they were told by the Secret Service in Denver that the man admitted to ousting them solely because they arrived in a car bearing a "No more blood for oil" bumper sticker.

The Secret Service is investigating the man on possible criminal charges of impersonating a Secret Service agent.

He was wearing a dark suit, earpiece and lapel pin.

The White House and the Secret Service know the man's name but have declined to reveal it.

The White House has described him only as a volunteer.

Dan Recht, an attorney for the three, calls their removal a violation of their First Amendment rights, because they were punished even though they had done nothing inappropriate.

McClellan's repeated statements that the three have "acknowledged that they were coming to the event to disrupt it," as he put it on Wednesday, also have raised questions from reporters about what constitutes disruption in the White House view.

The three said they considered, and rejected, showing T-shirts with the slogan "Stop the Lies."

They have denied any intent to make noise or disrupt the event.

Meanwhile, Lon Garner, the Secret Service agent in charge in Denver, said he never told the three that the man was "a Republican Party staffer."

Instead, he said the man was "a member of the Republican staff host committee."

Asked who was on that host committee, Garner declined to say. Rachael Sunbarger, spokeswoman for the Colorado Republican Party, said, "The White House is the host committee."

Sunbarger has said that the tiny staff of the Colorado Republican Party had nothing to do with the March 21 event, or the ouster.

On Tuesday, Jay Bob Klinkerman, chairman of the Colorado Young Republicans, was identified by Bauer as one of three people involved in stopping her and Weise at the gate.

The two women say that Klinkerman told them they were waiting for the Secret Service, and then the apparent agent appeared.

Klinkerman said he did not identify the man as Secret Service.

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