Three months ago, the three were thrown out of a taxpayer-financed Bush Social Security event in Denver by a person they thought was a Secret Service agent, reportedly because of a "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker on one of their cars. Similar incidents have occurred at other presidential events around the country, and the three have not been silent since.

Last week they were in Washington demanding to know the identity of the "mystery man" who ejected them, and they got some unlikely support from Republicans in the Colorado Congressional delegation. One of them was Representative Marilyn Musgrave, a reliable Bush ally.

"I really do believe in free speech, and if you try to quell people it just makes them more determined," Ms. Musgrave said in an interview after meeting with the trio. "So they just want to get to the bottom of this, and I think that's fair."

So does the Secret Service, which in a letter last week to Representatives Mark Udall and Dianna DeGette, both Colorado Democrats, said that it was continuing a criminal investigation into whether anyone had unlawfully impersonated a Secret Service agent, and that when the findings were concluded they would be sent, as is routine, to a federal prosecutor to see if charges should be filed.

The White House was having none of it.  "It's clear that these three protesters are trying to advance their own political agenda," Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said in an interview Friday. Asked who the mystery man was, Mr. McClellan did not respond and then said he had no interest in going over yet again the events in Denver on March 21.

The Denver Three are eager to. (They are Leslie Weise, a lawyer; Karen Bauer, a temporary office worker; and Alex Young, a computer technician. All volunteered for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, in 2004, and their trip to Washington was paid for by a liberal group.)

As Ms. Weise tells it, the three drove together to the event in her car, which displayed the bumper sticker. She surmises that someone must have seen it while they parked because soon after they entered the event, at the Wings Over the Rockies Museum, a man with an earpiece in his ear, who she said acted like a Secret Service agent, confronted them and told them they would have to leave.

"I was frankly pretty scared and embarrassed, so I just did what I was told," Ms. Weise said.

The group had tickets to the event from the office of Representative Bob Beauprez, a Colorado Republican, and Ms. Weise said they had said or done nothing to cause a disturbance. She did say they had contemplated protesting beforehand, and wore "Stop the Lies" T-shirts under their clothes, but in the end decided not to. So why the T-shirts? "It was just a feel-good thing," Ms. Weise said. "It's silly."

They contacted the Denver office of the Secret Service, where Ms. Weise said an agent, Mike Leskovar, was apologetic and told them that it should not have happened and that the man who ejected them was not a Secret Service agent at all. The Secret Service later told them and their lawyer, Ms. Weise said, that the sole reason they were thrown out was because of the bumper sticker, that they knew the name of the man who did it and that he was on the White House host committee. But the agency has refused to reveal his identity.

Last Friday, a Secret Service spokesman in Washington, Jim Mackin, would only say that "we have an open criminal investigation" and that he would have no further comment.

In the meantime, the Denver Three's exploits are chronicled almost daily in the Colorado press. They have a Web site and pass out bumper stickers, playing on Mr. Bush's plan to add private accounts to Social Security, that say "Don't Privatize My Freedom." During their trip to Washington, the cameras were rolling when they tried, unsuccessfully, to hand-deliver a letter to the White House demanding answers from Mr. Bush.

For some Colorado Republican officials, it is a bit much. "It's kind of becoming a political witch hunt," said Jordan Stoick, Mr. Beauprez's press secretary, in an interview after the three had left his office. But Mr. Stoick did say he was sympathetic.

"We don't believe this should have happened to them," he said. "If it had been a Beauprez event, it wouldn't have happened to them."

Or as Mr. Udall put it when the trio visited his office last week, "The president's Social Security plans are in trouble, and he himself acknowledged early in the year that he had a hard sales job."  So it seemed "counterproductive," he added, to invite only people who agree with you.

By Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, June 27, 2005

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