OpEdNews - Page 7 of Article: The Bushes & the Truth About Iran

Few politicians are going to want bodyguards around if they write down the details of sensitive meetings or assignations with illicit lovers. Reasonably, the agents might have to fudge or leave out some of the facts.

Bush's Alibi

As it turned out, only one Secret Service agent on the Bush detail supervisor Leonard Tanis claimed a clear recollection of the trip to the Chevy Chase Country Club that Sunday. Tanis told congressional investigators that Mr. and Mrs. Bush went to the Chevy Chase club for brunch with Justice and Mrs. Potter Stewart.

But at "Frontline," we had already gone down that path and found it to be a dead end. We had obtained Mrs. Bush's protective records and they showed her going to the C&O Canal jogging path in Washington, not to the Chevy Chase club.

We also had reached Justice Stewart's widow, who had no recollection of any Chevy Chase brunch. So it appeared that Tanis was wrong and he later backed off his claims.

The inaccurate Tanis account raised the suspicions of House International Affairs Committee counsel Spencer Oliver. In a six-page memo urging a closer look at the Bush question, Oliver argued that the Secret Service had withheld the uncensored daily report for no justifiable reason from Congress.

"Why did the Secret Service refuse to cooperate on a matter which could have conclusively cleared George Bush of these serious allegations?" Oliver asked. "Was the White House involved in this refusal? Did they order it?"

Oliver also noted Bush's strange behavior in raising the October Surprise issue on his own at two news conferences.

"It can be fairly said that President Bush's recent outbursts about the October Surprise inquiries and [about] his whereabouts in mid-October of 1980 are disingenuous at best," wrote Oliver, "since the administration has refused to make available the documents and the witnesses that could finally and conclusively clear Mr. Bush."

Secret Flight

Unintentionally, Bush's eldest son poked another hole in the assumption that the government would never doctor official records to help cover up international travel by a protected public figure.

For Thanksgiving 2003, George W. Bush wanted to make a surprise flight to Iraq. To give Bush's flight additional security and extra drama phony flight plans were filed, a false call sign was employed, and Air Force One was identified as a "Gulfstream 5" in response to a question from a British Airways pilot.

"A senior administration official told reporters that even some members of Bush's Secret Service detail believed he was still in Crawford, Texas, getting ready to have his parents over for Thanksgiving," Washington Post reporter Mike Allen wrote. [Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2003]

Besides falsely telling reporters that George W. Bush planned to spend Thanksgiving at his Texas ranch, Bush's handlers spirited Bush to Air Force One in an unmarked vehicle, with only a tiny Secret Service contingent, the Post reported.

Bush later relished describing the scene to reporters. "They pulled up in a plain-looking vehicle with tinted windows. I slipped on a baseball cap, pulled 'er down -- as did Condi. We looked like a normal couple," he said, referring to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Though the melodramatic deception surrounding Bush's flight to Baghdad soon became public since it was in essence a publicity stunt it did prove the ability of high-ranking officials to conduct their movements in secrecy and the readiness of security personnel to file false reports as part of these operations.

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