Max and Susan Tyler haven’t heard from the Secret Service.
They should.
The Secret Service is reportedly investigating whether a Republican staff member illegally impersonated a federal agent when he removed Alex Young, Les lie Weise and Karen Bauer before President Bush’s March 21 Social Security forum in Denver.
The Tylers, both 57, say the same man who threw Young, Weise and Bauer out of the president’s taxpayer-financed public meeting threatened them with arrest but didn’t banish them.
The Tylers say they never did anything wrong, nor did they intend to disrupt the Social Security meeting. But they did work for MoveOn.org, opposing Bush’s re-election. And they are now part of Denver Progressives, to which Young, Weise and Bauer belong.
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The Tylers also believed the bald, stocky man who removed the so-called Denver Three was a Secret Service agent. Though he never identified himself, he wore an earpiece and a lapel pin and acted like an agent, they said.
“I assumed he was someone with the authority to arrest me,” Max Tyler said. “He stood out as one of the guys in charge.”
His wife agreed.
“He had a white, curly wire coming out of the back of his ear,” Susan Tyler said. “He acted like he was sort of running the deal, at least the logistics.”
She saw the man approach Young and hustle him out of the Wings Over the Rockies museum more than an hour before Bush appeared.
Then she watched the man jog across the meeting hall and remove a woman who turned out to be Bauer.
So when this law-enforcement look-alike returned to where the Tylers sat and announced that the Social Security meeting was “a private event” where people could be asked to leave “for any reason” or “arrested for trespassing,” the Denver couple figured the man had the authority to put them in jail.
Max Tyler was so convinced that he dictated notes into his Palm organizer as all this was happening.
The brief digital recordings are telling.
“Looks like they’re being escorted out of the facility,” one recording says of Young, Weise and Bauer.
In another, Tyler recorded his half of a cellphone call to Denver Progressives member Dave Reed: “Security has picked up, and looks like they were escorted out of the building. I’m not sure where they’re headed. Are you in the building?”
Then comes this note: “3:38. Security guard comes up and says this is a private event and people will be arrested for trespassing if for any reason they feel like it. People will be asked to leave for any reason.”
Tyler’s recordings are no smoking gun. But what he and his wife say they experienced raises legal questions that the Bush administration continues to dodge and the Secret Service can’t afford to ignore.
The person who threatened the Tylers didn’t have the power to arrest them.
Although the agency won’t name him, the Secret Service has determined that the man who banished the Denver Three was a Republican staff member.
The White House continues to refer to him as a “volunteer,” as opposed to a security risk. Last week, chief presidential press secretary Scott McClellan said he wasn’t “aware” that the man was acting under White House instructions.
Asked Tuesday about the Tylers’ claims, assistant press secretary Allen Abney referred to McClellan’s earlier statement. Bush’s spin doctors, it seems, would have Americans believe that any old Republican Party member gets to wear a lapel pin and an earpiece at an official White House event.
They would also have Americans believe any old volunteer can throw people out of a taxpayer-financed meeting and threaten to arrest those who stay.
Maybe that works for the president’s propaganda preachers.
Max and Susan Tyler – for two – aren’t buying it.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
