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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Does the Bush-is-wired story make sense? A variety of experts weigh in.
Oct 15, 2004 | The first time Joseph Cannon watched the Sept. 30 presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry, he was too "nervous" to notice anything strange about the president's mannerisms, let alone his clothing. It was only on a second viewing with his girlfriend that Cannon, a graphic designer and prolific, Bush-bashing blogger in Los Angeles, saw what the world has now come to call the Bush Bulge.
"Bush seemed to have a wire, or an odd protrusion of some sort, running down his back," Cannon wrote on Oct. 2. Naturally, he searched around the Web for clues as to what the bulge could be, and, as often happens online, the evidence he found seemed to converge upon a conspiratorial, yet not-implausible hypothesis -- in this case, an old suspicion that the president receives help during speaking engagements by using an in-ear prompting device, a direct wire to advisors concealed behind the Oz curtain.
Cannon is among the handful of bloggers you'll find at the bottom of the bulge affair, one of the originators and prime exponents of the story that Bush was wired in the Coral Gables, Fla., debate. He's not a typical conspiracy theorist (he says he's not "convinced" that Bush was being prompted during the debate, only "persuaded,") and says he'd change his mind if other facts came to light. It's hard to know whether that's really the case, but Cannon sounds reasonable enough. And, indeed, many of the other Web-based proponents of this theory seem reasonable, especially when you consider their evidence and take the obvious next step by consulting expert opinion -- security guys, in-ear prompter trainers, the people who actually make and use these devices.
What one finds from talking to these people is that the question of whether Bush wears a wire is a real question, one they're willing to seriously entertain. And while many in the media are quick to wrap it in the damning weave of "conspiracy theory," equating it with such golden hits of yesteryear as the "Hillary Killed Vince Foster" tale, it's in fact much simpler and more evidentiary than that. Will we ever really know if Bush was wearing a prompter in the 2004 presidential debates? Perhaps not. But we're certain never to know if we don't look at the evidence.
Consider, for instance, the testimony of James Atkinson, the president of the Granite Island Group, a countersurveillance firm in Gloucester, Mass. Atkinson is an expert at wiretap detection and bug sweeping, whose clients include both private companies and the U.S. government. "I've done a tremendous amount of work for presidential Cabinets," Atkinson says. "I've worked for Cabinet members, plus staff and advisors ... in the [George H.W.] Bush administration, and in both terms of the Clinton administration." Whenever he's on a job, he uses a spectrum analyzer, a device used to detect signals from all possible sources -- including those used by commercially available wireless prompting systems, the kind frequently used by television broadcasters and actors. When he goes to Washington, Atkinson says he often hears ear-prompting signals coming from the White House. "I have personally sat outside the White House with lab-grade testing equipment -- and have cataloged, monitored and confirmed that wireless monitors are being used," he says. "When you go into a place to check for bugs, every frequency in the spectrum is suspect until you can identify it -- and there are thousands of frequencies. I have found wireless mike signals transmitted during [White House] press briefings, with multiple subject advisors. You'll hear the speaker, and another voice will cut in, like 'It's 28 million' -- and the speaker will repeat, 'It's 28 million.' The speaker will institute certain delays or will ask the question again, and will receive a prompt."
On a Web log of bulge news he's been keeping at cryptome.org, Atkinson wrote: "When the president visited Boston back in March 2004 he stayed at the Park Plaza Hotel. The signal from the system he was using could clearly be heard 1500+ feet away, and one of his advisors could be heard doing voice checks and then feeding him data about the school he was about to visit." Asked by Salon who heard the signals, Atkinson said, "I heard it. In Boston I was working a project several blocks away from where the president was speaking. It's archived. You want to keep archival copies of things because of liability issues -- if you sweep for bugs and a bug is later found, you can show that it wasn't there when you did the sweep."
