Larry King Live on August 18, 2008:

…KING: From Lake Forest, California, we welcome — it’s always great to see him, a frequent visitor to this show. Not frequent enough, by the way. Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Church, best-selling author of “The Purpose Driven Life.” and on Saturday, he conducted those interviews with Senators Obama and McCain at the Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency.

Let’s take care of one thing right away. You introduced Obama and said that Senator McCain and said he was in a cone of silence.

WARREN: Yes.

KING: Now, obviously, Rick Warren would never tell a mistruth.

Did you not know that he was in an automobile?

WARREN: I didn’t know they had put — hadn’t put him into the Green Room yet. No, I didn’t. When we walked in, I knew he hadn’t been in about 10 minutes earlier. And I figured within the 10 minutes we got there, they had put him in.

The whole thing is really kind of bogus, Larry. The Supreme — I mean, the Secret Service were with him the whole time. Then our facility’s staff — our security staff were with him. And he was put in a building completely separate from everybody else. And there’s no way he could hear. I’ve been talking about this all day. There was a rumor going around that he watched the program on a monitor in the Green Room that we had him in.

Well, there’s only one problem with it. My staff, Chuck Taylor, disconnected that thing two days before it happened. So if he — if they had happened to turn it on, it would have been all just static.

And both Barack and John agreed to the terms that said we will not listen to the other’s, we will not get the questions in advance.

Actually, what happened is I did give Obama one in advance that I didn’t get to Senator McCain because he wasn’t there. Right before we started, I wanted to tell them there’s going to be one question that I’m going to ask you for a commitment on. And I didn’t think that was fair to ask for a commitment publicly without setting them up. And it had to do with orphans.

And so I did get to tell Senator Obama about that question. But because Senator McCain wasn’t there, he hadn’t — he didn’t have that question yet.

KING: All right.

Well, could he have heard it in the car, though, if he was still arriving at the event?

WARREN: You know what, if — not a chance. The Secret Service would have reported it. When he showed up, there were — and he says he didn’t. You know, I…

KING: All right.

WARREN: …I just have to accept his integrity on that.

KING: Sure…

[emphasis added]

I don’t think so.

What the United States Secret Service (protective mission) does:

Authorization

Today, the Secret Service is authorized by law to protect:

   * The president, the vice president, (or other individuals next in order of succession to the Office of the President), the president-elect and vice president-elect

   * The immediate families of the above individuals

   * Former presidents and their spouses for their lifetimes, except when the spouse remarries. In 1997, Congressional legislation became effective limiting Secret Service protection to former presidents for a period of not more than 10 years from the date the former president leaves office

   * Children of former presidents until age 16

   * Visiting heads of foreign states or governments and their spouses traveling with them, other distinguished foreign visitors to the United States, and official representatives of the United States performing special missions abroad

   * Major presidential and vice presidential candidates, and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election

   * Other individuals as designated per Executive Order of the President

   * National Special Security Events, when designated as such by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

Note that nowhere does their mission include keeping candidates from listening to KNX News Radio 1070 in Los Angeles.

Uh, yep, on Larry King Live ten years ago, July 14, 1998:

…KING: Is anything said, Tim, when you sign on about confidentiality?

MCCARTHY: Well, there’s no document that you sign, at least by the time I retired, Larry, about confidentiality. However, going on to the president, presidential detail, or vice presidential detail, it was made very clear to you in your briefings that what what you see there and what you hear there would remain there.

And not only because much of it could be confidential, much of it is classified, secret and top secret, but also for the issue that we’re talking about, I believe, today, that if the protectee feels that the agents could relay information to others about what’s going on, certainly, as Jerry said, the issue of proximity will change, and there will be mistrust of the agents.

And you have to remember, when an individual becomes a protectee of the Secret Service, whether it’s a foreign dignity, a candidate for the presidency or anything else there’s mistrust to begin with. They’re worried for example if they’re a candidate from the Republican Party and the president is a Democrat, that they may be passing information back to the president, for example, or to his staff. It’s not true. And it doesn’t happen.

But it’s difficult to get over that mistrust that they have that you’re an intelligence agent. And this is, as Jerry said, I couldn’t have said it better — it’s going to plant the seed of mistrust between the protectors and the protectees…

[emphasis added]

Uh, Larry, don’t you have staff who are supposed to research your past shows? Sloppy. Just plain sloppy.

This is the idiocy that gets foisted on our public discourse and on campaigns in general when our media sucks so badly that amateurs at a non-public sponsored event take over their role.

…KING: Now, obviously, Rick Warren would never tell a mistruth…

No, of course not Larry, but it’s still just ducky to be ignorant…