Home > Bulletin on the Bush Bulge

Bulletin on the Bush Bulge

by Open-Publishing - Monday 18 October 2004
3 comments

The scandal of George Bush’s earpiece debate cheating device continues to grow.

I just got a look at the full Fox tape of President Bush’s May ’04 joint news conference with French President Jaques Chirac. In that tape, as in several other tapes I’ve seen, Bush can be heard seemingly getting prompting from another voice. About 12 seconds into the piece, the leading voice says, "And I look forward to working to" Bush comes in with "And I look workin’And I look forward to workin’ to" The verbal slip-up makes it clear that this is no electronic echo or sound synchronization problem.

At another point, about one minute and sixteen seconds into the tape, the leading voice lets out a loud exhale of breath. Bush does not follow suit. There is no preceding voice when a reporter is heard asking a question. Also, at one minute and 28 seconds into this tape, Bush reaches up and manipulates something in his ear, at which point there is a static noise and the sound of a speaker acting up, until he removes his fingers from his ear.

There is no wire going up to his ear, indicating that the earpiece in his right ear is wireless.

***

Meanwhile, the ongoing saga of the President’s Bulge offers some disturbing insights into the sad state of the Fourth Estate in America.

Let’s start with CNN.

This once daring and innovative all-news television network, after falling into the hands of Time-Warner and particularly of late, has become so frightened by the marketing success of Fox News that it has virtually become a clone of Rupert Murdoch’s semi-official Bush propaganda network. This became apparent to me when I was living in Taiwan last spring. The CNN International edition I watched in Kaohsiung was showing graphic reports of slain civilian victims of U.S. bombs in Iraq, and of dead and wounded American troops—images that my friends back home in the U.S. weren’t seeing.

Obviously, CNN had the tape and felt it was newsworthy, or they wouldn’t have been showing such scenes abroad, but they were hiding it all from the viewers at home.

In my personal case, I received a call last Wednesday from CNN International, which wanted to interview me for a program to be broadcast globally discussing the scandal of the bulge on President Bush’s back in the debates. A limo was dispatched to my house to deliver me to a studio in Philadelphia, where my portion of an interview was uplinked to the CNN satellite.

No CNN viewer in the U.S. caught this interview. Only viewers in the rest of the world.

Here in the U.S., the only news program that bothered to interview me on this story for national TV was MSNBC, which did a short Q&A at noon on Wednesday.

Since writing my initial expose in Salon magazine, I was deluged with requests for interviews by local station news programs and talk show hosts, all of whom gave the story serious coverage. But no calls from national radio news programs—not even NPR, which never did a piece, only a commentary a week late on its On the Media program.

On the big TV networks, the story was handled as comic relief. It made Letterman, Leno and Comedy Central, but not the news programs—though they are the ones with the video archives which reporters should be combing for more evidence of Bush’s high-tech speaking aids. If they bothered to do such digging, they’d find, as I have, that Bush also had that peculiar bulge on his back on other important occasions, as when he went to answer questions from the 9/11 Commission. Would Americans want to know about that? I should think they would.

The New York Times and the Washington Post both did quick stories on the bulge after the story first appeared in Salon magazine, but both have since dropped the matter, at least as far as its being a hard news story, never having made more than a few perfunctory phone calls (The Times did run a White House Letter today by one of their Washington correspondents describing the bulge as having become an "objective correlative" that raises many wider political issues among voters). Despite receiving ridiculous responses and non-responses from the White House and the Bush Campaign, both papers have obviously decided not to assign investigative reporters to the case, preferring to let the story wither away.

Here in Philadelphia, things have been even more lethargic. My own hometown paper, the once proudly investigative Philadelphia Inquirer, gave the issue of the presidential bulge a wire-service paragraph, and didn’t bother to have anyone contact the local investigative reporter who had broken the story. Nor did Philadelphia’s local radio talk show hosts consider interviewing me about the Salon story, though stations, both NPR affiliated and commercial, were calling last week from all over the country.

What is one to make of this lack of reportorial curiousity about evidence of a massive fraud—possible cheating by the president on three nationally televised campaign debates—on the part of the national media?

If it were just a matter of lousy news judgement, it would be bad enough, but the fact that both the Times and the Post saw the need to publish serious stories about the matter the day the story broke, and that CNN saw it as important enough to air on CNN International, shows that something worse is going on—the deliberate deep-sixing of a story embarrassing to the president.

The White House and the Bush campaign, for their part, continue to dismiss questions about what Bush was wearing in the debates, and on other occasions, by attributing the story to "the Internet." In fact, as has been the case with many of the important stories about the Iraq war and the Bush administration, the Internet is proving to be where the real journalism is happening.

Forum posts

  • The Post’s Mike Allen took several questions about the Bush "bulge" on Friday’s Live Online.

    Are you guys still working on the story, he was asked.

    "Oy. Yes, we remain interested in this story, mainly because so many people are talking about it and because the White House and campaign responses have been so contradictory. Democrats love it — Mike McCurry talked with reporters on the Kerry plane on Wednesday about how the alleged bulge in the back of Bush’s jacket continues to pay play out on the blogosphere and TV. ’It’s been on the Internet for a week,’ McCurry said. Bush aides will tell you it is ridiculous, but they can’t explain the bulge. Some of them tell you it’s a cheap suit, some of them tell you it’s one of his best suits. I thought maybe it was a Secret Service James Bond device, but they swear it is not. And they say he was not wearing a vest. Anybody who can help solve the mystery, I welcome your thoughts."

    Well why not ask Bush directly, he was asked.

    "The last time the president took questions from the full press corps was when he appeared in the Rose Garden with Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, on Sept. 23, and he did not call on any newspaper reporters," Allen wrote.

    Tim Russert did ask Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman directly, on Meet the Press yesterday — and did not get a serious response. Here’s the exchange:

    "MR. RUSSERT: Before we go, Mr. Mehlman, clear up this mystery that has been raging on the Internet. This was the first debate, George Bush at the podium, the bulge in the back of the suit. All right. Come clean. What is it?

    "MR. MEHLMAN: The president, in fact, was receiving secret signals from aliens in outer space. You heard it here on Meet the Press. . . .

    "MR. RUSSERT: It was not a bulletproof vest or magnets for his back or anything?

    "MR. MEHLMAN: I’m not sure what it was, but the gentleman responsible for the tailoring of that suit is no longer working for this administration."

    Elisabeth Bumiller writes in the New York Times: "The bulge — the strange rectangular box visible between the president’s shoulder blades in the first debate — has set off so much frenzied speculation on the Internet that it has become what literary critics call an objective correlative, or an object that evokes large emotions and ideas."

    • When you see the "bulge" on Kerry’s back too, I hope you will take a serious look at the choices we have...it’s regime rotation, nothing more.

      This story is just misdirection, Kerry’s got the bulge too, they’re both cheaters. Kerry can’t even stick it to bush good, when EVERYBODY knows he could. wake up and look for yourself.

      And what’s that little section popping out near his waist?

      And exactly why are third party candidates(with national recognition), getting arrested just because they want to debate? I mean if both the bones brothers can use wireless earbuds, what are they scared of...oh yeah, they’re scared you’ll wake up.

      kerry *cough* on.

      http://www.infowars.com/headline_photos/141004bushwired.jpg

  • Is Bush wired AND hiding a health problem?
    Is Bush wired AND hiding a health problem?

    Sat. October 30: Just released

    http://bulgegate.blogspot.com

    .....

    Don’t know the story? Get up to speed:

    Would you be upset if Bush failed to disclose something critically important to you?

    President Bush has a bulge on his back. It’s been called "Bulgegate" and the "The Bush Bulge" and it has appeared in all of the 2004 Presidential debates. The "bulge" has been called a "badly tailored shirt" which the President claims to have worn in all 3 debates, mind you.

    The "3 bad shirts theory" is to the media, it seems, acceptable: the President has a wardrobe full of bad expensive shirts! We have an obvious bulge, so do we have a transmitter, defibrillator, or something else?

    There are also two wires-like objects found on President Bush. Links are which lead to more information regarding the "bulge". Are the "bulges" and "wires" connected in some way?

    These insights have compelled me to ask in my latest article: could it be a defibrillator? The President has a genetic disposition to AF (read study) and has not submitted for a physical this year which goes against tradition. Why has the President not submitted for a physical?

    Read the entire article here: http://bulgegate.blogspot.com

    ........................................
    BULGEGATE UPDATE — http://bulgegate.blogspot.com
    ........................................

    The "Bulge-gate" news story has gotten a lot of attention, largely being supported by the suspicion President Bush was wearing an earpiece in the debates. To support this theory we have seen a bulge on his back, past evidence of earpiece use, a wire under his tie, and strange speech patterns.

    Bush could be "wired" and also have a health problem because 2 relevant tracks of evidence have consistently appeared. I am going to publish another photo soon to demonstrate that if the Bulge on Bush’s back was a communications device, it was big. If it was something else, we need to know what it is.

    I don’t suspect many believe it is only a health related issue happening here, I certainly don’t. Bush could actually be both "wired" and have had a medical device on, nothing has made this impossible so far, although statistically less likely.

    I wanted to restate the defibrillator case to keep all options alive as long as there is evidence to support it. That increases the chances of important information coming forward.

    .......................................

    Cannonfire (also of note are the articles about potential voter fraud) continues to publish almost daily on the evolution of the Bulge story, noting:

    "The bulge-spotters’ argument may be better served if we keep these pictures as far as possible from the Adobe treatment. Any use of Photoshop, however innocent in intention, allows Bush apologists to howl that evil librul hoaxters concocted the entire controversy."

    This is a good point, and as the evidence builds that sentiment will become reinforced. These techniques need to be used carefully and to enhance evidence, not generate it.

    http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2004/10/bulge-spotting-new-national-sport.html

    .......................................

    BushWired has updated its extensive archive of links, evidence, comments and news articles. See the latest:

    http://www.bushwired.blogspot.com

    .......................................

    Finally Chris Suellentrop (deputy Washington bureau chief for Slate.com), is interviewed on WNYC’s radio show "On the Media":

    http://www.wnyc.org/onthemedia/transcripts/transcripts_101504_bulge.html

    Excerpts:

    "
    BROOKE GLADSTONE: So where is most of the coverage of this mysterious bulge coming from?

    CHRIS SUELLENTROP: There was speculation about this in 2000, believe it or not....

    ...
    BROOKE GLADSTONE: And what’s your answer?

    CHRIS SUELLENTROP: I think it’s definitely a story to write about [...] I think the press obviously missed the Swiftboat story for a long time [...] I’ve never seen a, a wrinkle in somebody’s clothes that came out as a rectangle. [LAUGHTER] So, you know, I think it’s a real question.

    ...
    BROOKE GLADSTONE: Do you think the internet is helping reporters to get to the bottom of this, or is it having the effect of discrediting the whole story from the outset?

    CHRIS SUELLENTROP: [...] the idea that there was a rectangle on the president’s back became obscured by the fact that all these left-wing bloggers were saying "the president is wired," which was sort of a leap unsupported by the evidence, and so then people immediately dismissed the rectangle and said this whole thing is phony; [...] Now, having said that, without them — would we be talking about it? I don’t know. It’s a good question.

    ...
    BROOKE GLADSTONE: So the White House would like it to go away. Do you think reporters would also like it to go away?

    CHRIS SUELLENTROP: Probably. I mean look, I think reporters want to set the agenda and not have the agenda set for them, and for better or for worse, if they feel like they’ve gotten pushed to this story and they don’t think it’s worthy of covering, it’s the kind of thing they want to go away.

    ...

    BROOKE GLADSTONE: [...] Do you find that a lot of mainstream reporters are using the excuse of covering the coverage to cover the story?

    CHRIS SUELLENTROP: That’s right. Now it’s covering the blogs or covering the buzz on the internet. So you can say well, we’re not giving credence to this story — we’re just covering what people are chatting about on line. And some of the people that have sat out the story have said, look, we don’t want to do that story.
    "

    .....................................

    A few days ago photo enhancements exposes a wire leading from the bulge on the President’s back, Salon.com has also published on the same topic. Read both accounts here:

    http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/29/bulge/index_np.html
    http://bulgegate.blogspot.com (test the theory for yourself!)
    ...

    http://www.blueoregon.com/2004/10/bush_busted_by_.html
    Says: "Well, now it appears that one of the most respected scientists in the photo analysis field has determined conclusively: Bush had some sort of artificial device under his coat."
    ...

    Puppetstring has been updated with a comment I grabbed from Colin Green at:

    http://www.journalscape.com/Colin/2004-10-29-11:02

    "
    If we follow this theory through the bulge would be the receiver/relayer, the wire up the right shoulder is to an inductance loop, perhaps in his collar, and it also looks to me that there is a wire traveling down his back, which would correspond to the wire seen behind his tie. This wire that we can see is actually quite prominent by way of its thickness, say 5mm. Such thickness would only normally be used to convey power - from a battery pack somewhere on his person, to the receiver on his back. Also note that the tie wire disappears into the left hand side of Bush’s jacket - the same side as the wire seen own his lower back.
    "

    Go to and scroll to the bottom:

    http://puppetstring.blogspot.com/2004/10/was-there-wire-behind-that-tie_23.html#comments

    ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’

    Something to remember: http://img44.exs.cx/my.php?loc=img44&image=badtailor.jpg
    READ MORE HERE:

    http://www.bushwired.blogspot.com

    http://www.bushbulge.com (send an automatic letter to the media)

    http://www.puppetstring.blogspot.com

    http://cannonfire.blogspot.com

    http://bulgegate.blogspot.com

    http://isbushwired.com
    ...
    http://politicalcommentator.blogspot.com

    ...
    ’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’