The Emperor's New Suit

Tailor to presidents Georges de Paris falls on his needle, says the box-bulge is just a pucker along the jacket's back seam. Wow. I've never seen a suit, or any garment, with a back like this -- except maybe that lumpy dress I once made in home economics, with the darts inside out.

Note to the White House press claque: Enough with the “internet conspiracy buffs” BS, hacks! This is something called a story. Remember those? Off your knees!

New: An earpiece in Bush made him an instant whiz kid on Indonesian politics, speculates State Department contract interpreter Fred Burks, who first interpreted for Bush at a September 19, 2001 meeting with Indonesian president Megawati Soekarnoputri. In a letter published on democrats.com and reprinted at this website, (and confirmed in a telephone conversation with IsBushWired) he says Bush displayed an astonishing grasp of obscure details of Indonesian politics during a 90-minute meeting. "I concluded either that Bush was much more intelligent than we had been led to believe, or that somehow someone was feeding answers to him through a hidden earpiece...Having worked directly with President Bush twice since then, and having additionally talked with many of my fellow interpreters who have worked directly with him, I am now certain that he could not have had that much knowledge of Indonesia. He doesn't even read the daily newspaper to keep up with what's being reported in the press. I am convinced that he must have been using some sort of earpiece through which someone was telling him what to say."

Odd Goings-on in Tennessee

Somebody claiming to be "Brad Menfil" of Knoxville, TN, recently posted on Portland's Indymedia site that he was told by a Bush campaign worker named Scott Zale that Bush is known among many campaign workers to be wired. Here's the text of the post, followed by a rebuttal that raises more questions than it answers:

"I have contacts within the Republican Party. I was told by Scott Zale, a Repulican operative in eastern Tennessee that he knows it to be a fact that Bush was wired. He said that within the Bush campaign, there are certain mid-level staffers that have leaked this tidbit because it was just "too fantastic to ignore."

Zale told me that the transmission device is popular with other high profile officials in the Bush administration. It helps everybody stay "on message." Zale said that Bush was only fed ready responses to just certain types of questions. He didn't know which questions those were but admitted that Bush just sounded(to him)to be more articulate at certain "oportune" times.

Zale confided that he was told that the president wore a loose fitting jacket during both debates. The device protuded because Bush has a tendency to hunch over and shrug his shoulders a lot.

This is a true story as it was told to me. If you want to know more, please contact Scott Zale at the Bush-Cheney campaign headquarters in Knoxville, Tn. Thanks."

IsBushWired called Bush-Cheney in Knoxville and confirmed that a Scott Zale was known there, though the woman who answered the phone said, "he's hardly ever here. He has a day job."

Meanwhile,somebody posting as "Scott Zale" repliedon the portlandindymedia site, under the headline "Scott Zale speaks for himself":

Please shut down this blog. I was informed this morning by the national editor of the Knoxville Times that my name was invoked by a man named "Brad Menfil" in regards to this out-of-control story.

It is true that I work for Bush-Cheney here in Tennessee. My office is in Gatlinburg, not Knoxville. Although I do happen to work at least two days a week in Knoxville. I am a staff accountant and one of my duties is to process local contributions. As part of that duty, I have to wire funds to the national committee in Washington D.C. So I do have national Republican contacts and have heard many things.

"Brad" is not his real name but I suspect he is or may be my counterpart in the Washington collections office. He has probably been to Tennessee about 15 times in the last 7 weeks, though he does not live here. I won't give his real name (even though he felt it was necessary to give mine).

The Knoxville Times called me at 6am this morning asking me to confirm or deny the "Bush is Wired" story they read here at Portland IMC. My immediate response was, "What is the Portland IMC?" and I then I issued a "no comment". Other than that, I did say that "Brad Menfil" is not a real person.

Please stop speculating about this. Our president is a great man and can only get hurt by this. I suspect this isn't going to go away and I regret anything that I said to "Brad" that may contribute to downfall of a great man and president.

Please drop this for the good of our country. We have bigger problems and should not be distracted by matters that don't ultimately determine the measure of an honest man. I want to say that the right answers are what matter most, not whether or not those answers were "fed" my someone else. President Bush is a good messenger regardless.

Thanks, Scott Zale, Senior Staff Accountant, Bush-Cheney Tennessee.

The person writing as "Brad Menfil" then posted back to Portland Indymedia:
"Scott Zale is right, "Brad Menfil" is not my real name and I didn't hear this story from him, he heard it from me. Sorry Scott.
I do work for Bush-Cheney and I can olny say that the substance of my first posting is correct, even though I used a fake name. I hope everybody understands why I would do this. I got a call from Scott this morning (actually, about 10 minutes ago). He said that he had been contacted by ABC and Fox after his own posting. I don't share his belief that ignoring this would be good for the country. I'm sorry I involved Scott and didn't have enough courage to use my real name. I hope the truth gets out and Scott is absolved.
Thanks for reading this, "Brad Menfil."

IsBushWired looked at the Knoxville Times online. It didn't look at all like a real newspaper, as Glenn Ward, editor of The South Knoxville and Seymour Times Sentinel confirmed. "I've never heard of it," he said. Looking at the website, he agreed that it seemed to be a lot of clippings taken off news wires. So, who called Mr. Zale at 6 in the morning? Or did anybody call Scott Zale at all? Scott Zale seems to exist, but who can be sure? Maybe somebody else used his name to write to Portland Indymedia.

Update: Webmeisters, thanks for your work in digging up the provenance of the Knoxville Times site; many of you reported that it was created 8/19/2003 in Australia by a John Mcevoy, who owns a company Mainstream Capital EC, headquartered in Manama, Bahrain, with offices in Sydney, Australia. A PRWeb July press release announced it was launching a new search engine called 100.com.

Curiously, when I first looked at the Knoxville Times site Monday afternoon, there was no masthead, no information about ownership, not even an email address or the word "Tennessee" in the title. Following my posting about the "fake" newspaper Monday afternoon, the site added a box explaining, "The Knoxville Times is essentially a local Knoxville newspaper, but with a national and international perspective....The biggest advantage we have is that we are an online newspaper, which means we are constantly refreshing our stories as more and more information comes to hand."

The lead story, however, about environmentalist protestors at a local coal company exective's home in West Knoxville Sunday night, is not a story at all, but a link to a posting about the action by the protestors at an anarchist website, www.infoshop.org.

The "newspaper" box goes on: "We like to think if you're looking for breaking news out of Knoxville, Tennessee, the United States, or the world, you'll look for it first at the Knoxville Times."

Hmmm. I don't think so. It's a genuinely weird front for something or other. Who is John McEvoy, anyway, and who's the editor?

The Zale letter also reads in part like an official Bush-Cheney production, whereas "Brad Menfil's" second letter sounds faintly genuine -- if there's a real person in any of this. But I wouldn't bet on it. It could all be fiction cooked up by Karl Rove and Co. We won't waste any more time on it unless a credible source gets in touch with us with a great deal of information that checks out.

Incidentally, legit editor Glenn Ward said his own newspaper, which can be Googled (though they don't have a web site yet) has been reporting lately on the recent shutdown -- for no obvious reason, he said -- by the FCC with "heavy FBI involvement" of a tiny, 100-watt unlicensed radio station in the area that had been reporting critically on local matters, including the federal TVA project. )