DENVER-
A volunteer said Friday he was acting on orders from White House staffers when he helped eject three people from a Colorado appearance by President Bush, according to the volunteer’s attorney.
The volunteer, Michael Casper, said in a deposition that two White House staffers directed him to eject the three after Casper observed what he considered suspicious behavior, attorney Sean Gallagher said.
He identified the two as Steve Atkiss, the White House deputy director for travel, and Jamie O’Keefe, the White House’s lead advance staffer for the 2005 event, said Gallagher, who was present for Casper’s deposition.
White House spokesman Blair Jones said he could not comment on pending litigation.
Two of the three people who were ejected filed a federal lawsuit claiming they were told to leave the taxpayer-funded event because of their political views. They said they arrived in a car with a bumper sticker reading “No blood for oil” and had T-shirts saying “Stop the lies” under their clothes but did not show them.
The lawsuit names Casper and Jay Bob Klinkerman, who were both volunteers with the event’s host committee. Klinkerman, former chairman of the Colorado Federation of Young Republicans, and Casper both gave depositions Friday.
Klinkerman’s attorney, John Zakhem, said his client had little involvement in running the event and couldn’t identify any officials who might have issued directives.
The lawsuit also listed five unnamed people as defendants. Martha Tierney, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Atkiss and O’Keefe were two of those unnamed defendants and they would be named in a new lawsuit.
Leslie Weise, one of plaintiffs, said Casper’s deposition was “an important milestone.” She and co-plaintiff Alex Young have argued that the White House had a policy of ejecting dissenters from the president’s appearances.
“We have some information that this has happened at other events,” Tierney said. “Our goal is to get a ruling from the court that says such a policy violates the First Amendment.”
Young, Weise and a third person who did not join the lawsuit were ejected from the Wings Over the Rockies Museum at the former Lowry Air Force Base before the president arrived to promote his proposal to revamp Social Security.
The original lawsuit said Young and Weise believed Casper was a Secret Service agent because he wore a radio earpiece, a dark suit and a lapel pin that gave the appearance of authority.
A Secret Service investigation into allegations that Casper was impersonating one of its agents determined he was a staff member with the host committee, and federal prosecutors declined to press charges.
Casper and Klinkerman have claimed they cannot be sued because they were entitled to qualified immunity as government workers. U.S. District Judge Wiley Daniel in October denied their motions to dismiss the lawsuit, and they have appealed to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
At issue was whether the two were acting as federal officials or as private individuals at the direction of federal officials during Bush’s appearance, and how closely they were supervised.
