Al Johnson, chief of security for the Pentagon City Mall, told
Newsbytes on Monday, November 9th: "No one said that we were acting
on behalf of the Secret Service. We were merely enforcing our
regulations. While the group was not disruptive, it had pulled
tables together and was having a meeting in our food court area.
The food court is for people eating and is not for meetings. We
therefore asked the people to leave."
On the same day, Johnson was quoted was quoted in a Communications
Daily article by Brock Meeks as saying, "As far as I'm concerned,
we're out of this. The Secret Service, the FBI, they're the ones
that ramrodded this whole thing."
Newsbytes contacted Meeks to discuss the discrepancies in the stories and
was informed that the conversation with Johnson had been taped and was
available for review. This Newsbytes reporter listened to the tape (and
reviewed a transcript). On the tape, Johnson was clearly heard to make the
statement quoted by Meeks.
He also said, "maybe you ought to call the Secret Service. They're
handling this whole thing. We, we were just here," and, in response
to a Meeks question about a Secret Service contact, "Ah.. you know,
I don't have a contact person. These people were working on their
own, undercover, we never got any names, but they definitely, we saw
identification, they were here."
