Max and Susan Tyler haven't heard from the Secret Service.

They should.

The Secret Service is reportedly investigating whether a Republican staff member illegally impersonated a federal agent when he removed Alex Young, Leslie Weise and Karen Bauer before President Bush's March 21 Social Security forum in Denver.

The Tylers, both 57, say the same man who threw Young, Weise and Bauer out of the president's taxpayer-financed public meeting threatened them with arrest but didn't banish them.

The Tylers say they never did anything wrong, nor did they intend to disrupt the Social Security meeting. But they did work for MoveOn.org, opposing Bush's re-election. And they are now part of Denver Progressives, to which Young, Weise and Bauer belong.

The Tylers also believed the bald, stocky man who removed the so-called Denver Three was a Secret Service agent. Though he never identified himself, he wore an earpiece and a lapel pin and acted like an agent, they said.

"I assumed he was someone with the authority to arrest me," Max Tyler said. "He stood out as one of the guys in charge."

His wife agreed.

"He had a white, curly wire coming out of the back of his ear," Susan Tyler said. "He acted like he was sort of running the deal, at least the logistics."

She saw the man approach Young and hustle him out of the Wings Over the Rockies museum more than an hour before Bush appeared.

Then she watched the man jog across the meeting hall and remove a woman who turned out to be Bauer.

So when this law-enforcement look-alike returned to where the Tylers sat and announced that the Social Security meeting was "a private event" where people could be asked to leave "for any reason" or "arrested for trespassing," the Denver couple figured the man had the authority to put them in jail.

Max Tyler was so convinced that he dictated notes into his Palm organizer as all this was happening.

The brief digital recordings are telling.

"Looks like they're being escorted out of the facility," one recording says of Young, Weise and Bauer.

In another, Tyler recorded his half of a cellphone call to Denver Progressives member Dave Reed: "Security has picked up, and looks like they were escorted out of the building. I'm not sure where they're headed. Are you in the building?"

© 2005 Denver Post

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