Secret Service probes student's 'Kill a Bush' comment

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Dark_Star
train driver pervading a desktop

Registered: 08/20/04
Posts: 31,859
Loc: Uranus

Secret Service probes student's 'Kill a Bush' comment

#6204349 - 10/23/06 10:43 PM (19 years, 9 months ago)

SUSQUEHANNA UNIVERSITY
Secret Service probes student's 'Kill a Bush' comment
Agent probes student's Web page comment
By John Finnerty
The Daily Item
October 19, 2006
James Burgess, 20, was walking out of the library at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove when he got a cell phone call from a fraternity brother warning him that the head of the university's Department of Public Safety and someone who appeared to be a plainclothes police officer were looking for him.

Mr. Burgess, a Selinsgrove Area High School graduate, said he couldn't figure out what they wanted to speak to him about, but he still did not immediately head back to his residence at the Phi Mu Alpha music fraternity house on University Avenue in Selinsgrove.

A few minutes later, they found him anyway.

But, the man with Susquehanna's director of public safety Tom Rambo wasn't actually a plainclothes police officer, he was an agent from the U.S. Secret Service.

The agent had come to ask Mr. Burgess about his page on the Internet social network Facebook. Mr. Burgess's page included the phrase: "Save a tree. Kill a Bush."

Mr. Burgess, the Secret Service agent and Mr. Rambo then went back to the public safety office where the agent asked the college student about 10 pages worth of questions, exploring things like whether he owned firearms, if he had an interest in bomb-making and if he had ever attended presidential appearances.

After questioning him, the agent told Mr. Burgess that he'd contact him again if charges were going to be filed. Mr. Burgess has not heard from the Secret Service since that interview three weeks ago.

Mr. Burgess said he hasn't been contacted since, but he has dropped the comment from his Facebook page, replacing it with: "Censored."

The targeted phrase had been on his Facebook page for about a year — and Tuesday, Mr. Burgess said he couldn't even recall where he picked up the phrase. But sometime this fall, somebody tipped off Susquehanna's Department of Public Safety about the comment.

Based on that tip, Mr. Rambo, "followed protocol" and alerted the Secret Service about the page, said Betsy Robertson, a Susquehanna University spokeswoman.

"You just don't threaten the president," Ms. Robertson said.

Mr. Burgess's mother, Beverley Conrad, of Selinsgrove, more or less agreed.

"He's a really good kid," Ms. Conrad said. "But he's opinionated. I'd rather have him that way than not. But I told him, 'There are lots of things that you can joke about, but there thing that even if you're joking, you'll still get in trouble. You can't say anything about killing the president."

Mr. Burgess is just one of several cases nationwide where students have been questioned by federal agents over questionable comments on Web pages. Most recently, a 14-year-old girl in California was questioned about a threatening message on her MySpace page.

But with the recent spike in school shootings, the drive to check on young people who have written even apparently satirical references to violence is understandable, Ms. Conrad said.

"I hate to say that I don't blame them ... but I don't," she said. "My feeling is that they had a right to come and see what it was all about."

Mr. Burgess said that while he quickly dropped the comment from his Facebook page, the episode certainly didn't improve his view of the president's administration.

And now, on a practical level, he's wonders if the episode will result in him being pulled aside by inspectors the next time he goes to the airport or even if his actions will be monitored by the federal government.

He said, though, that the reactions he's heard from other students has largely been supportive.

"They're mostly, 'More power to you,'" he said.

A message left at the Harrisburg office of the Secret Service for this article was not returned.

http://www.dailyitem.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
AID=/20061019/NEWS/610190326/-1/NEWS

He's a good friend of some of my lifelong friends........I guess you really have to watch what you say these days folks.

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