Guardian Article on Bush's mystery Bulge

[Quixote1818]

Bush's mystery bulge

The rumour is flying around the globe. Was the president wired during the first debate?

Dave Lindorff
Friday October 8, 2004

Was President Bush literally channeling Karl Rove in his first debate with John Kerry? That's the latest rumour 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 behaviour 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, signalling he had 30 seconds to, well, finish.

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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 website 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, Washington, 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."

Article concludes at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/salon/0,14779,1323334,00.html

[SheilaT]

1. Did you see

"The Emperor's Club" from a couple of years ago? Towards the end there's a lengthy scene in which a character is participating in a knowledge bowl type of competition, and he's being fed answers through a small ear device.

I was reminded strongly of that during last night's debate.

[papau]

4. With 2 debates and 2 bumps on the back, do we expect a 3rd next week?

[Quixote1818]

5. I hope he is searched before the debate takes place.

If he has a bulge the moderator should ask him to take off his jacket so we can see what is causing the bulge.

[PartyPooper]

13. Great pictures of our puppet-in-chief...electronic strings pulled by Rove!

[Karenina]

15. The "inconsistency" here is

the entire wave of modern communication devices washes up on the shore of MINIATURIZATION. WHY something so easily detected?

[alcuno]

2. I don't want to see the words "Bush" and "bulge" in the same sentence.

It's creeping me out.

[Quixote1818]

3. Perhaps Bush secretly likes John Kerry?

[grasswire]

6. does this make sense?

"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."

That wouldn't work in a debate, though, when the ebb and flo is unpredictable.

[Quixote1818]

7. It would if Bush got stuck! Then they could throw him a short message

and that would remind him what to say. It's like having the title of an answer thrown to you to get you back on track. Notice Bush seems to pause for several seconds and looks confused then he will start to answer. He looks weird to me at these moments. He looks nervous! Why would they not want a camera from behind???? Something smells really fishy!

[Ladyhawk]

8. If someone was feeding him answers during the first debate, that person...

...was as stupid as Bush.

Sorry, I'm not buying it...unless technical difficulties caused *'s poor showing.

[Name removed]

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[zinsky]

11. Maybe Bush Really IS a Reptile!!

I have often suspected that the Bush family is a throwback to an earlier point in evolutionary history, where reptiles were dominant.

This hump on his back may be a vestigial fin or something, reflecting his retrograde evolutionary status. He certainly has very low powers of reasoning,, which is indicative of lower forms of life.....

[obiwan]

12. Quick way to find out...

it's called a "frequency scanner."

[AnnInLa]

14. "Let me finish"

I just finished watching Farenheit 9/11 for the third time, and Moore caught bush* in a news conference, insisting, "Let me finish!"....I think this is just something he says frequently.

[bloom]

16. I think it explains a lot....eom

[bush equals idiot]

17. The interesting thing

is that his official campaign spokeswoman just said it was merely a wrinkle in his jacket.

The denial is now officially on record. I think she just officially acknowledged the concern of the story. That's what we needed. It just gave the media more reason to stay on it now. Because no one with a cerebellum thinks that's a wrinkle.

[Quixote1818]

18. I agree, it may not be a radio device but it's certainly not a wrinkle

It's definitely something attached to his back. Perhaps he does have a bullet proof vest on.

[MADem]

19. Has ANYONE ELSE noticed

...that there seem to be more than a few "deleted posts" on the threads that talk about this subject??? Are the Bushistas that frightened that they try to disrupt this forum in an effort to squelch this story?

The fact that they are pooping on the parade so hard makes me suspect that this line of inquiry is FRIGHTENING to them. Perhaps they'd better learn to be VERY afraid...hell, we've had four years of feeling that way!