Did W's earpiece disrupt the sound system at the 2/5/04 prayer breakfast?

[highplainsdem]

We've had topics here recently about the earpiece Bush was apparently wearing during the National Prayer Breakfast on February 5. (See the photo above from us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20040205/capt.sge.hrr76.050204183407.photo00.default-305x333.jpg , my DU topic about this at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1046994 -- that has a blowup of the photo -- and another recent topic about it, at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1030343 , which also shows the blowup.)

We've also had topics here, more than 8 months ago, about news stories appearing that day about a very bizarre disruption of the sound system during the breakfast, a disruption that caused "what sounded like a burst of machine-gun fire as President Bush was speaking," according to the AP story about this on CNN's website, at http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/05/bush.loudnoise.ap/index.html . I found a link to that story within CNN's own story about the prayer breakfast ( http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/05/bush.breakfast/index.html ), which was linked to the DU thread at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1087626 ). There was another thread about the CNN story in the General Discussion forum that day, and also a thread in the Latest Breaking News forum about Newsday's copy of the AP story (which CNN had changed the title of, though they used the full AP story otherwise), http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x347864 .

I didn't find anything in the archives suggesting that anyone linked the photo showing Bush wearing an earpiece to the sound-system disruption, which the White House deputy press secretary had explained away as being due to "an interaction between wireless microphones and the sound system." The last messages posted about the machine-gun sound had been posted several hours before the topic with the photo appeared, so it's likely they were pages apart on the GD board.

I Googled this, too, trying to find out whether anyone else had noticed that a photo showing Bush wearing what appears to be an earpiece was taken at the same event where a wireless system interfered with the sound system. As far as I can tell, the photo and news stories haven't been linked before.

Last week I sent a link to the topic I'd started with the blowup of that photo to James Atkinson, the security and countersurveillance expert who'd been quoted at http://cryptome.org/bush-bulge.htm giving his professional opinion about the type of wireless system Bush might have been using in the debates. He told me that the photo showed what appeared to be an inductive earpiece. When I saw the http://cryptome.org/bush-piece.htm page with his Oct. 20 comments that a lot of other photos which some people might think show an earpiece are instead just showing lighting reflections, I wrote to him again to ask whether he'd changed his mind about the prayer-breakfast photo. An Oct. 22 clarification has been added to that page now, finally including the breakfast photo as the only one that appears to show an earpiece, but still noting that it "could be challenged as an effect of lighting." (I suppose it could, but it looks like some artificial device to me. There are other photos of Bush's left ear on that page with fairly similar lighting that don't show anything resembling what appears to have been in his ear at the prayer breakfast.)

I wrote to Dave Lindorff about that photo, too, and also mentioned the AP/CNN stories. Lindorff has since posted the photo on his website, http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/ , and I hope everyone who hasn't checked out his website already will read everything he's written there since Oct. 4 about whether Bush is using a wireless cueing system. Lindorff has written about this for Salon, and he's bothered by the lack of mainstream media coverage of this story in the US. CNN did interview Lindorff, but only for CNN International -- that interview was never shown here in the States.

If anyone here has the expertise to know whether a wireless cueing system of the type James Atkinson described at http://cryptome.org/bush-bulge.htm could interfere with the sound system the Washington Hilton might have been using for the prayer breakfast, I'd really appreciate your posting about it here. I'd also appreciate your asking anyone you know who has such expertise -- especially if they might be willing to have their expert opinion quoted.

One of the DUers commenting here 2/5/04 on the news story about that machine-gun-like sound mentioned the odd lack of response from the Secret Service to what would normally be a very alarming sound to them (that message is at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x347864#347930 ). Judging by the news story, Bush didn't react very much, either. (There's a link to video of the event at http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/05/bush.loudnoise.ap/index.html , but I can't get it to work.)

I think it's really odd, too, that they didn't react more...unless they were already well aware that the cueing system the president uses can sometimes interfere with sound systems that way.

[highplainsdem]

1. Bumping this, in case someone here knows if a wireless cueing system

could disrupt a sound system in the way those news stories described.