I’m still waiting for a call back from Mike Casper about a federal lawsuit filed Monday.
I’m not holding my breath.
The lawsuit accuses Casper of forcing three people to leave a taxpayer-financed Social Security forum in Denver after they arrived in a car with an anti-Bush bumper sticker that read “No more blood for oil.”
The suit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Leslie Weise and Alex Young, names Casper as the so-called mystery man that the White House and Secret Service have refused to identify since the March forum.
The lawsuit filing makes you wonder why the Bush administration continues to let three political lightweights feast like gnats on its elephantine behind. A relatively harmless bite has now festered into a boil at a time when the president – already mired in allegations of political dirty tricks in the Valerie Plame case – truly doesn’t need it.
Media across the country have written about the self-proclaimed “Denver Three.” Some members of the Colorado congressional delegation demanded a criminal investigation to determine if someone illegally posed as a Secret Service agent.
The Justice Department eventually said no. But because the White House won’t deal with it, the intrigue has continued. The Denver Three went to Washington. The Denver Three got a website. The story of the Denver Three now has more episodes than some prime-time network dramas.
The new lawsuit sparks yet another wildfire of bad publicity that could have been avoided.
Casper and I talked twice in April and once in May about his role in ejecting Weise, Young and Karen Bauer from the Denver Social Security forum. The three never did anything to disrupt the event, but someone with an earpiece and lapel pin made them leave before President Bush arrived.
In our first two conversations, Casper, a General Services Administration manager who runs a government office building, admitted he was at the forum but refused to say whether he threw out Weise, Young and Bauer. In the third conversation, he denied he threw them out but said he worked at the forum as a White House volunteer and saw them there.
Casper also said Weise, Young and Bauer were well-known Bush protesters, something all three deny.
The ACLU suit will get at the truth. It’s a heck of a lot easier to stretch facts in media interviews than in depositions under oath.
Whatever the facts are, it remains hard to defend excluding people from public events for thoughts rather than actions.
That makes Casper’s waffling less baffling than eight months’ worth of White House and Secret Service stonewalling to protect his identity.
I heard Casper’s name associated with this business the day after the Social Security forum. Despite repeated requests specifically about Casper, those in authority have yet to confirm or deny his role.
It took a freelance videographer staked out at Casper’s residence and a law firm private investigator to finally get enough information for Weise and Young to decide Casper was the guy who ejected them and Bauer.
Nobody seems to care. I called Washington on Tuesday to check on an open-records request about the Denver Social Security forum. I filed the request with the Secret Service on Aug. 3, the day the criminal investigation concluded without charges.
Today, three and a half months later, the Secret Service still hasn’t decided if it can give me its report of the incident.
My request, a freedom of information clerk told me, was in “final review” with no deadline for a decision.
What a shame.
The ACLU suit concerns a pattern of unconstitutional repression by the White House at Social Security forums in North Dakota, Arizona, West Virginia and New Hampshire, as well as Colorado.
Obstructing efforts to find out who did what where only raises more suspicion.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
