Potemkin President: 2002 guidelines to protect Bush from seeing protesters

The guidelines for appearances by president Bush was recently obtained by the ACLU under an FOIA request, and it details the many ways that both Bush and the media were to be blocked from seeing protesters:

any event must be open only to those with tickets tightly controlled by organizers. Those entering must be screened in case they are hiding secret signs. Any anti-Bush demonstrators who manage to get in anyway should be shouted down by "rally squads" stationed in strategic locations. And if that does not work, they should be thrown out... It directs the White House advance staff to ask local police "to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in the view of the event site or motorcade route."

The "Presidential Advance Manual" is in this PDF.

Much of this could have already been figured out, but it's good to have their tactics in a formal form. It's also interesting to note that the manual is from October 2002, just over a year after 9/11 and while Bush's popularity was still above 60% (link).

Politics · Wed, 08/22/2007 - 15:35 · · Importance: 1