9 October 2004. J. writes:

I have carefully reviewed the image that was taken during the Presidential debates where picture was obtained from the back which show an interesting bulge.

First, the President is likely wearing body amour. The jacket is not concealing the armour well and it is "printing though" his clothing.

Second, there are four elements that appear to be "printing" on the back of his suit coat. While it is impossible to identify the system, we can review various equiment of the same size and shape.

1. A "box" section of the device which appears to be located between his shoulder blades, and just over his spine. This is the "bodypack."

2) A wire running vertically up his back across his shoulder blade.

3) A shadow behind his right ear may be an ear-piece, but it is difficult to tell due to the poor resolution of the picture. It would be most unwise for a public figure to use an ear piece that was visible, so this may just be a shadow.

4) There appears to be something actually IN his ear, and it is likely a monitor or cueing prompter.

A system like this works by receiving a signal from a wireless microphone being used by a coach or advisor who is speaking to the person wearing the system. The "bodypack" receives the signal and supplies the coaching or cueing to the ear canal by either a hard wire, or though a magnetic neck loop induction system. The covert neck loop systems are very popular in cases where the speaker does not want the public to know they are being coached.

The frequencies for these units are very well known, and someone can sit outside many concerts with radio monitoring gear and listen to the assistants reading the words to the songs to the musicians, coaching them what to say, and quite often someone can sit outside a comedy club and listen to one-liners to cue the comedians and entertainers. Around political events these types of systems are very, very popular as the politician can have a half dozen members of his staff feeding him data, thus creating the illusion the suit has a clue of what he speaks.

When the president visited Boston back in March 2004 he stayed at the Park Plaza Hotel. The signal from the system he was using could clearly be heard 1500+ feet away, and one of his advisors could be heard doing voice checks and then feeding him data about the school he was about to visit.

The funny thing about these kinds of system is that mischief makers can set up a transmitter thousands of feet away and feed persons bogus data, and really cause them to screw up their public appearances.

Here are links to some of the more popular systems the government uses, and one which the White House has purchased over the past few years.

http://shure.com/pdf/specsheets/spec_psm/psm700.pdf

http://www.comtek.com/IFBCueing/ifbcueing.html

I can supply you with frequency tables for the more popular systems they are using.

http://www.comtek.com/IFBCueing/ifbcueing.html

IFB & Cueing
RC-216 Receive-A-Cue

The RC-216 Receive-A-Cue system is a professional quality, digitally synthesized wireless cueing system operating in the interference-free 216-217 MHz band. The IR-230 induction receiver and NTC-102 neck-loop eliminates the need for visible wires going directly to the ear. With the adjustable volume control and low residual noise, this discrete earpiece is loud enough for even the most demanding environments. The dual function M-216 transmitter can be used with a lapel microphone for live cueing, or the AUX input and whip antenna can be used to send cues from a line level audio input source. Also, the AUX input on the transmitter allows for prerecorded material to be played back from another sound source such as an MP-3 player, dat recorder, or even a feed from a mixing board. When using the mic input and the AUX input simultaniously, the AUX input will automatically lower it's level to prioritize the signal from the mic input. The complete RC-216 system includes:

* M-216 wireless microphone transmitter
* CM-183 omni-directional lapel microphone
* PR-216 personal receiver
* NTC-102 neck-loop transductor
* SM-N earphone assembly
* IR-230 inductor receiver
* Auxiliary audio input cable
* C-216 carrying case

AP-230
Auto-Prompter Kit

For use with miniature tape recorders, dat recorders, or MP-3 players for discrete cueing applications. Allows the user to listen to prerecorded cues when giving speeches or presentations. May also be used with all COMTEK personal receivers. The complete system includes:

* IR-230 universal-fit ear canal inductor receiver
* NTC-102 neck-loop transductor with two 32" down-lead cords (one 1/8" and one 3/32" plug)
* P-11 storage pouch.

8 October 2004. Thanks to K., who writes:

Here're 28 pics from the video of the debate that have been cropped and scaled (optimized for best quality) showing Bush's back throughout the debate with timestamps above so anyone can verify it's real.

Whatever the bulge is, it doesn't change shape, it holds its form throughout his movement, like metal wire would, so unless he's got some crazy thing going on with the guy who made that suit, he's wired.

The last photo shows Bush telling someone to "let me finish."

Another video has a interested ending where you see one of Bush's aids (or someone) come onto stage after the debate to grab Bush's notepad and look at Kerry's.

See also radio frequencies used by the White House and Secret Service, among them these for wireless body microphones:

http://cascanning.tripod.com/miscfreq/president.html

Special Usage (Technical Security) Division
408.0000	F1 RF ALARM
411.0000	F2 RF ALARM
408.5000	F3 TRACKER- F1
408.9750	F4 TRACKER- F2
406.2625	WIRELESS BODY MICROPHONE
407.8250	WIRELESS BODY MICROPHONE
407.8750	WIRELESS BODY MICROPHONE
407.9750	WIRELESS BODY MICROPHONE

8 October 2004. Thanks to C. Comments on this invited. Send to jya@pipeline.com

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/08/bulge/index.html

Bush's mystery bulge

The rumor is flying around the globe. Was the president wired during the first debate?

By Dave Lindorff

Oct. 8, 2004  |  Was President Bush literally channeling Karl Rove in his first debate with John Kerry? That's the latest rumor flooding the Internet, unleashed last week in the wake of an image caught by a television camera during the Miami debate. The image shows a large solid object between Bush's shoulder blades as he leans over the lectern and faces moderator Jim Lehrer.

The president is not known to wear a back brace, and it's safe to say he wasn't packing. So was the bulge under his well-tailored jacket a hidden receiver, picking up transmissions from someone offstage feeding the president answers through a hidden earpiece? Did the device explain why the normally ramrod-straight president seemed hunched over during much of the debate?

Bloggers are burning up their keyboards with speculation. Check out the president's peculiar behavior during the debate, they say. On several occasions, the president simply stopped speaking for an uncomfortably long time and stared ahead with an odd expression on his face. Was he listening to someone helping him with his response to a question? Even weirder was the president's strange outburst. In a peeved rejoinder to Kerry, he said, "As the politics change, his positions change. And that's not how a commander in chief acts. I, I, uh -- Let me finish -- The intelligence I looked at was the same intelligence my opponent looked at." It must be said that Bush pointed toward Lehrer as he declared "Let me finish." The green warning light was lit, signaling he had 30 seconds to, well, finish.

Hot on the conspiracy trail, I tried to track down the source of the photo. None of the Bush-is-wired bloggers, however, seemed to know where the photo came from. Was it possible the bulge had been Photoshopped onto Bush's back by a lone conspiracy buff? It turns out that all of the video of the debate was recorded and sent out by Fox News, the pool broadcaster for the event. Fox sent feeds from multiple cameras to the other networks, which did their own on-air presentations and editing.

To watch the debate again, I ventured to the Web site of the most sober network I could think of: C-SPAN. And sure enough, at minute 23 on the video of the debate, you can clearly see the bulge between the president's shoulder blades.

Bloggers stoke the conspiracy with the claim that the Bush administration insisted on a condition that no cameras be placed behind the candidates. An official for the Commission on Presidential Debates, which set up the lecterns and microphones on the Miami stage, said the condition was indeed real, the result of  negotiations by both campaigns. Yet that didn't stop Fox from setting up cameras behind Bush and Kerry. The official said that "microphones were mounted on lecterns, and the commission put no electronic devices on the president or Senator Kerry." When asked about the bulge on Bush's back, the official said, "I don't know what that was."

So what was it? Jacob McKenna, a spyware expert and the owner of the Spy Store, a high-tech surveillance shop in Spokane, Wash., looked at the Bush image on his computer monitor. "There's certainly something on his back, and it appears to be electronic," he said. McKenna said that, given its shape, the bulge could be the inductor portion of a two-way push-to-talk system. McKenna noted that such a system makes use of a tiny microchip-based earplug radio that is pushed way down into the ear canal, where it is virtually invisible. He also said a weak signal could be scrambled and be undetected by another broadcaster.

Mystery-bulge bloggers argue that the president may have begun using such technology earlier in his term. Because Bush is famously prone to malapropisms and reportedly dyslexic, which could make successful use of a teleprompter problematic, they say the president and his handlers may have turned to a technique often used by television reporters on remote stand-ups. A reporter tapes a story and, while on camera, plays it back into an earpiece, repeating lines just after hearing them, managing to sound spontaneous and error free.

Suggestions that Bush may have using this technique stem from a D-day event in France, when a CNN broadcast appeared to pick up -- and broadcast to surprised viewers -- the sound of another voice seemingly reading Bush his lines, after which Bush repeated them. Danny Schechter, who operates the news site MediaChannel.org, and who has been doing some investigating into the wired-Bush rumors himself, said the Bush campaign has been worried of late about others picking up their radio frequencies -- notably during the Republican Convention on the day of Bush's appearance. "They had a frequency specialist stop me and ask about the frequency of my camera," Schechter said. "The Democrats weren't doing that at their convention."

Repeated calls to the White House and the Bush national campaign office over a period of three days, inquiring about what the president may have been wearing on his back during the debate, and whether he had used an audio device at other events, went unreturned. So far the Kerry campaign is staying clear of this story. When called for a comment, a press officer at the Democratic National Committee claimed on Tuesday that it was "the first time" they'd ever heard of the issue. A spokeswoman at the press office of Kerry headquarters refused to permit me to talk with anyone in the campaign's research office. Several other requests for comment to the Kerry campaign's press office went unanswered.

As for whether we really do have a Milli Vanilli president, the answer at this point has to be, God only knows.

28 images of the bulge excerpted from the debate video.