Protesters Uncover Bush Brain Security Lapse

Secret Service Didn't Know Karl Rove Had Brain

Shortly after the Bush Administration took office, the president signed Executive Order 32458, a classified order that authorized the Secret Service to protect the president's brain, in addition to the customary protection of the entire president.

The Bush's Brain order was necessary because the president often entrusted his brain to senior staff members, sometimes for days at a time. It seemed wise to have Secret Service protection for both the president, even though he was often just a shell, and for the brain, which is seen as a critical tool needed to run the Government.

The reason the president hands his brain over to others varies. Frequently, after a tough day at the Oval Office, he will hand it to an aide, saying, "I'm just too tired to carry it home." The president almost always assigns the brain to a senior staff member just before departing for a weekend retreat at Camp David.

Sometimes the president simply forgets the brain, leaving it on a shelf in a closet in his White House residence. The Bush brain once sat on a shelf in the presidential bedroom at the White House, while the presidential shell enjoyed a two-week vacation in Crawford, Texas. The brain was only discovered when a valet unpacked the presidential bags after arriving back in Washington.

The media picked up intimations early on that the president didn't seem to be always connected to his brain. A couple of enterprising Texas writers even built an entire book around the idea that Karl Rove, the president's chief political operative, had permanent custody of the brain. That wasn't the case, of course.

But no one fully grasped the severity of the detached Bush brain problem until last Sunday. First, White House aides hadn't realized just how often the president handed over his brain, sometimes to even junior White House staff members he scarcely knew. Second, everyone thought the Secret Service always knew where the Bush brain was at any moment so that appropriate protection could be provided. Wrong!

On Sunday afternoon, a group of protesters from National People's Action in Chicago arrived outside Karl Rove's house in the fashionable Palisades neighborhood in northwest Washington. They stood on his lawn, pounded on his windows and chanted slogans, generally setting up a most bothersome ruckus. They want the Bush Administration to support proposed legislation that would improve educational opportunities for immigrants.

What no one knew, including the protestors, was that last weekend Rove took Bush's brain home, probably to do some fine tuning relating to how next to deal with the Condoleezza Rice and Richard Clark imbroglio. It is also believed that Rove takes the Bush brain home sometimes to coax it into reading some newspapers.

Rove reacted angrily to the intrusion and called the District of Columbia police. In addition, get this! He called the Secret Service. Why the Secret Service? They're not charged with providing security for presidential aides.

Turns out, the Secret Service didn't know where Bush's brain was. They thought it was with the president. Rove, in his frantic telephone call to the White House, kept shouting into the phone: "I've got the brain! I've got the brain!"

Had they known that Rove had the Bush brain, a Secret Service detail would have been on duty outside the Rove home and busloads of National People's Action protestors wouldn't even have gotten into the neighborhood, let alone onto the Rove lawn.

Not surprisingly, the Secret Service is refusing to comment on its lapse. Presumably, a new system that always tracks the location of the Bush brain is now in place, assuring that it will always have full protection.