Bush team shrugs off transmitter claim

GEORGE BUSH’S campaign team has played down reports that the president was fitted with a transmitter to allow him to receive help during a televised debate.

During the public discussion with presidential opponent Senator John Kerry, an apparent bulge could be seen in the middle of Mr Bush’s back under his suit.

A number of internet sites have claimed the president was wearing a device that allowed an adviser to feed him answers to questions in the debate last week.

It was also alleged that on several occasions Mr Bush stopped speaking for a period and stared ahead as if listening to a voice. Other reports suggested the president could have been wearing a bullet-proof vest.

Dave Lindorff, a reporter with the news and current affairs website Salon.com, was one of the first to suggest the apparent bulge could be a device.

He wrote: “There’s definitely something under there pushing up through the suit.”

He added that the device would not necessarily have been electronic, since there are magnetic and fibre-optic technologies that can achieve the same effect.

“These gadgets have been around for quite a while,” he said. “They just keep getting better and better.”

The White House refused to comment on the record, saying it would not dignify a baseless issue, and referred questions to the Bush-Cheney campaign. Mr Bush’s campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt told the Washington Post the claims were “preposterous”.

The president’s tailor, Georges de Paris said the bulge was nothing more than a fold along the jacket.

Meanwhile, Mr Bush and Mr Kerry both campaigned in New Mexico yesterday as they swung through the south-west on their way to tomorrow night’s final debate in Arizona.

Mr Bush criticised Mr Kerry on the war on terror, while Kerry criticised the president’s energy policies.

Mr Bush went after Mr Kerry for suggesting that the anti-terror battle should reduce terrorists to “a nuisance” from the current full-time crisis.

“Our goal is not to reduce terror to some acceptable level of nuisance. Our goal is to defeat terror by staying on the offensive,” said Mr Bush

“We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives but they’re a nuisance,” said Mr Kerry.