Young Republicans chairman confronted Woman bounced from Bush event

Young Republicans chairman confronted
Woman bounced from Bush event recalls Klinkerman

By Ann Imse, Rocky Mountain News
April 27, 2005

The chairman of the Colorado Young Republicans was one of the people involved in a March 21 incident in which three Denver residents were forcibly removed from a speech given by President Bush because of a bumper sticker.

Jay Bob Klinkerman, leader of the state group for Republicans ages 18 to 40, admitted in an interview that he was at the gate of the Wings over the Rockies Museum when the three people were stopped.

Klinkerman also was identified as being involved in the incident by Karen Bauer, one of the three removed. She confronted him about it at a Young Republicans event Tuesday night.

Two of the three who were removed, Bauer and Leslie Weise, said that Klinkerman is the event volunteer who was wearing a magenta shirt and smiley-face tie that night, and told them, "Secret Service is coming down to talk to your group."

Then a man who looked and acted like a Secret Service agent arrived and threatened them with arrest. He allowed them to enter but then found them 20 to 30 minutes later and forced them to leave.

But Klinkerman, 31, of Thornton, told the Rocky Mountain News that he never said anything to Bauer and Weise about the Secret Service.

He declined to identify the man who threatened the trio with arrest.

The real Secret Service says the man who ousted Bauer, Weise and Alex Young from the president's speech was actually a Republican Party staffer. The Secret Service has told the three that the man admitted to an agent that he ousted them because they arrived in a car with a "No more blood for oil" bumper sticker.

The service is investigating that man on possible criminal charges of impersonating a Secret Service agent. He was wearing a dark suit, earpiece and lapel pin.

The Secret Service and the White House know the man's name but have refused to reveal it. The White House has said he was a volunteer "concerned that these people were coming to the event to disrupt the event."

Bauer and her friends said they did nothing. They want to sue the man for violation of their freedom of speech.

Klinkerman said he had never met the man before the event March 21.

Bauer and Weise said they were stopped at the gate by a man who checked their names on their tickets against a sheet of paper. He told them to wait with the man now identified as Klinkerman.

Klinkerman said he doesn't know how the three were picked out from the crowd, and that he didn't see them removed. He declined to answer other questions.

On Tuesday night, Bauer introduced herself to Klinkerman as one of the three in the incident, and said she had questions that she would like to ask him.

Klinkerman replied, "I won't talk to you about that without a lawyer." He declined to give her his attorney's name and refused to talk to her further.

Bauer said she would have asked, "Who trained him? Did the White House train him? Who was he working with? How were we ID'd?"

"He knows who he passed us on to," she concluded.

imsea@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5438

Comment from progressivegrannie: Freedom of speech denied by the Bush goons!