London Financial Times
OBSERVER: Homeland Security has been alerted
Financial Times; Jul 08, 2004
Asa Hutchinson, under-secretary at the Homeland Security Department, surely has a lot on his mind. Now he has to contend with the fall-out from John and Ken, the hosts of Los Angeles' most popular drive-time talk show, who told listeners to give him a piece of their mind.
Brimming with bile, they announced the White House had called to demand Hutchinson's phone number and e-mail address be removed from their KFI 640 station website.
Claiming they had been informed that "thousands" of messages were jamming the system and preventing Hutchinson from getting his job done, the hosts responded by repeating his contact details on air.
Hutchinson's first mistake, by their account, was to call off a series of sweeps by the Border Patrol - which had netted more than 400 undocumented immigrants in the LA area - and to propose that the patrolmen stick closer to the Mexican border. The duo had hailed the actions as a long-overdue counter to the flood of "illegal aliens", who, they have claimed ad nauseam, number 2m in southern California and cost taxpayers $5bn a year.
Hutchinson's second mistake was to imagine that a "swill-spewing spokeshole" (their generic term for all media officials) from the Bush administration would carry any weight with them. "We're terrified!" bawled John Kobylt, relishing the recognition. "It's John and Ken against the White House."
Hutchinson has the cajones to be on their show.
When are your heroes Feinstein and Boxer going to be on their show.