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Tenacious Three
Fifteen months after Bush event, bouncers admit they were following White House orders

March 2nd, 2007 8:18 pm
Bush aides tied to Denver 3 case

By Bruce Finley / Denver Post

A former White House official who ordered three activists expelled from a 2005 Denver public forum with President Bush says it was White House policy to exclude potentially-disruptive guests from Bush's appearances nationwide.

The former official, Steve Atkiss, revealed the policy today in an interview after two volunteer bouncers identified him and a current White House staffer, Jamie O'Keefe, as the officials who ordered the so-called "Denver Three" activists sent away.

Atkiss is now a U.S. Department of Homeland Security chief of staff.

In their sworn depositions today, Michael Casper and Jay Bob Klinkerman, who served as bouncers at Bush's 2005 event in Denver, for the first time named the White House officials who they say ordered the Denver Three to be excluded.

An American Civil Liberties Union legal team is using a lawsuit to challenge the expulsion of these activists, arguing in federal court that it violated their constitutional free-speech rights. The Denver Three were ticketed to attend the event and said they were not disruptive.

Atkiss said ticketed guests who disagree with Bush can stay at public forums if they are well-behaved, "but certainly, if there's an indication somebody's primary intent is to cause trouble, we are looking to avoid trouble."

Atkiss was interviewed today by mobile phone from an Alabama runway where he was waiting for a helicopter.

"If it became obvious and apparent somebody is there to create a fuss, there was an effort made to ensure that didn't happen," Atkiss said.

The expulsions before Bush's 2005 appearance in Denver happened at a time when "there was a concerted effort on the part of a lot of organizations to go way out of their way to intentionally disrupt the president's speeches," he said.

Just as the First Amendment protects free speech rights of Americans, he said, "the president has a right to express his opinion without being shouted down."

U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel now must guide the legal case.

Today's revelations by volunteer bouncers Casper and Klinkerman showed that the decision to eject the activists "was made at the highest levels of the White House," suggesting a policy of excluding potentially-disruptive critics at events nationwide, ACLU legal director Mark Silverstein said after the men were deposed in Denver's federal courthouse.

White House spokesman Blair Jones declined comment.

The bouncers' statements appeared to contradict a White House spokesman's assertion in 2005 that volunteers at the Bush event were responsible for ejecting the Denver Three - self-described progressives Alex Young, Leslie Weise and Karen Bauer. Only Young and Weise are involved in the federal lawsuit.

That spokesman, Scott McClellan, who resigned last year, could not be reached for comment.

McClellan at the time also said: "The White House wants a diversity of voices at these events."

"We finally uncovered what we've been looking for all along. It took us 15 months," lead attorney Martha Tierney said after the depositions.

"Our goal is to find out if there is a White House policy. & We'd like to know how high up it goes," she said.

The plaintiffs' ultimate objective: a federal court ruling that a policy of excluding event guests violates the First Amendment.

"We would hope, then, that the White House would change their policy," Tierney said.

According to attorneys for both sides in the lawsuit, the bouncers testified today that Casper informed White House officials Atkiss and O'Keefe at the 2005 Bush forum that several local volunteers had identified the activists as people with a history of disrupting political events.

The White House officials then directed Casper to "please ask them to leave," which he did, the bouncers said in their depositions.

Federal judges earlier ruled that attorneys could depose the bouncers, asking who told them to eject the activists and what those authorities said.

Attorneys for Casper and Klinkerman had moved for this case to be dismissed, saying they operated under orders from federal officials and were therefore immune from lawsuits over the 2005 incident.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday denied a motion to block the depositions.

The incident happened on March 21, 2005, shortly before Bush arrived for a town hall meeting at the Wings Over the Rockies museum in east Denver. The event was a public, taxpayer-funded forum about Social Security and Bush administration plans to privatize that system.

Young, Bauer and Weise obtained tickets from the office of then-U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez to attend the event. They arrived in a red 1999 Saab hatchback that had a bumper sticker on the back reading, "No more blood for oil."

They also wore T-shirts under their jackets that said "No more lies." They had considered revealing the T-shirts but decided not to. They staged no protest.

They claim that Klinkerman pulled them out of a line and told them to wait, then called Casper. They say that Casper and other Republican Party volunteers then removed them from the event before Bush arrived.

The three said Secret Service agents told them they were ejected because their vehicle displayed an anti-Bush bumper sticker.

The Secret Service later investigated whether a Republican volunteer committed a crime of impersonating a federal agent. The U.S. Attorney's office in Denver declined to press charges, giving no explanation. Democratic lawmakers had requested an investigation.

Federal judges eventually ordered Casper, a federal Government Services Administration employee, and Klinkerman, an auto worker who led Denver-area Young Republicans, to submit to the legal questioning.

The Bush administration has run into similar trouble elsewhere after critics were ejected from Bush appearances.

People in North Dakota complained they'd been put on a list of guests who should not be allowed to enter an event in 2005. And the ACLU filed a case on behalf of two West Virginia residents arrested in 2004 after refusing to remove anti-Bush T-shirts at a Bush campaign event.

The ACLU has looked into whether there was a pattern of illegally preventing critics from speaking at Bush public forums.

The Denver Three case could set a precedent for how exclusive a White House event can be. During the administration of the elder President Bush in the early 1990s, a federal court of appeals in Missouri held that White House staffers can exclude people from presidential events if those running the event believe the people are likely to be disruptive.

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NOTE FROM DEBORA MYERS:
A teenage peace activist from our local peace group here in Farmington, NM, was excluded from a BUSH appearance a couple of years ago. He is a gentle loving spirit and accompanied his parent's, whom are also peaceful, gentle people and are known, respected and loved in our community. They are American's of Indian descent. God Bless America-especially now, as the current regime in power has turned our government into what our original patriots fought against!

-Debora Jo

Excerpted with permission from http://www.michaelmoore.com