A very interesting story at Salon today about the new use of wireless
technology, providing new meaning to the word "marionette."

Bush's mystery bulge

The rumor is flying around the globe. Was the president wired during the
first debate?
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By Dave Lindorff

Oct. 8, 2004



Was President Bush literally channeling Karl Rove in his first debate with
John Kerry? That's the latest rumor flooding the Internet, unleashed last
week in the wake of an image caught by a television camera during the Miami
debate. The image shows a large solid object between Bush's shoulder blades
as he leans over the lectern and faces moderator Jim Lehrer.

The president is not known to wear a back brace, and it's safe to say he
wasn't packing. So was the bulge under his well-tailored jacket a hidden
receiver, picking up transmissions from someone offstage feeding the
president answers through a hidden earpiece? Did the device explain why the
normally ramrod-straight president seemed hunched over during much of the
debate?

Bloggers are burning up their keyboards with speculation. Check out the
president's peculiar behavior during the debate, they say. On several
occasions, the president simply stopped speaking for an uncomfortably long
time and stared ahead with an odd expression on his face. Was he listening
to someone helping him with his response to a question? Even weirder was the
president's strange outburst. In a peeved rejoinder to Kerry, he said, "As
the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in
chief acts. I, I, uh -- Let me finish -- The intelligence I looked at was
the same intelligence my opponent looked at." It must be said that Bush
pointed toward Lehrer as he declared "Let me finish." The green warning
light was lit, signaling he had 30 seconds to, well, finish.

Hot on the conspiracy trail, I tried to track down the source of the photo.
None of the Bush-is-wired bloggers, however, seemed to know where the photo
came from. Was it possible the bulge had been Photoshopped onto Bush's back
by a lone conspiracy buff? It turns out that all of the video of the debate
was recorded and sent out by Fox News, the pool broadcaster for the event.
Fox sent feeds from multiple cameras to the other networks, which did their
own on-air presentations and editing.

To watch the debate again, I ventured to the Web site of the most sober
network I could think of: C-SPAN. And sure enough, at minute 23 on the video
of the debate, you can clearly see the bulge between the president's
shoulder blades.

Bloggers stoke the conspiracy with the claim that the Bush administration
insisted on a condition that no cameras be placed behind the candidates. An
official for the Commission on Presidential Debates, which set up the
lecterns and microphones on the Miami stage, said the condition was indeed
real, the result of negotiations by both campaigns. Yet that didn't stop Fox
from setting up cameras behind Bush and Kerry. The official said that
"microphones were mounted on lecterns, and the commission put no electronic
devices on the president or Senator Kerry." When asked about the bulge on
Bush's back, the official said, "I don't know what that was."

So what was it? Jacob McKenna, a spyware expert and the owner of the Spy
Store, a high-tech surveillance shop in Spokane, Wash., looked at the Bush
image on his computer monitor. "There's certainly something on his back, and
it appears to be electronic," he said. McKenna said that, given its shape,
the bulge could be the inductor portion of a two-way push-to-talk system.
McKenna noted that such a system makes use of a tiny microchip-based earplug
radio that is pushed way down into the ear canal, where it is virtually
invisible. He also said a weak signal could be scrambled and be undetected
by another broadcaster.

Mystery-bulge bloggers argue that the president may have begun using such
technology earlier in his term. Because Bush is famously prone to
malapropisms and reportedly dyslexic, which could make successful use of a
teleprompter problematic, they say the president and his handlers may have
turned to a technique often used by television reporters on remote
stand-ups. A reporter tapes a story and, while on camera, plays it back into
an earpiece, repeating lines just after hearing them, managing to sound
spontaneous and error free.

Suggestions that Bush may have using this technique stem from a D-day event
in France, when a CNN broadcast appeared to pick up -- and broadcast to
surprised viewers -- the sound of another voice seemingly reading Bush his
lines, after which Bush repeated them. Danny Schechter, who operates the
news site MediaChannel.org, and who has been doing some investigating into
the wired-Bush rumors himself, said the Bush campaign has been worried of
late about others picking up their radio frequencies -- notably during the
Republican Convention on the day of Bush's appearance. "They had a frequency
specialist stop me and ask about the frequency of my camera," Schechter
said. "The Democrats weren't doing that at their convention."

Repeated calls to the White House and the Bush national campaign office over
a period of three days, inquiring about what the president may have been
wearing on his back during the debate, and whether he had used an audio
device at other events, went unreturned. So far the Kerry campaign is
staying clear of this story. When called for a comment, a press officer at
the Democratic National Committee claimed on Tuesday that it was "the first
time" they'd ever heard of the issue. A spokeswoman at the press office of
Kerry headquarters refused to permit me to talk with anyone in the
campaign's research office. Several other requests for comment to the Kerry
campaign's press office went unanswered.

As for whether we really do have a Milli Vanilli president, the answer at
this point has to be, God only knows.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/08/bulge/

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 12:20:08 -0400, "norman s. smiley"
wrote:

On several
occasions, the president simply stopped speaking for an uncomfortably long
time and stared ahead with an odd expression on his face. Was he listening
to someone helping him with his response to a question?

Not at all.

That is the normal behavior of anyone with an empty head!