Audio By Carbonatix
The tapeworm has turned: A tip-top secret tape making the rounds these days promises “the truth” about all the deal-making behind Denver International Airport. Pop it into the VCR, though, and what do you get? “Corruption in High Places,” a 56-minute quasi-talk show starring Stew Webb, January 1993 Westword cover boy and conspiracy theorist extraordinaire. In a variation on his standard theme, Webb (no relation to Mayor Wellington–even this conspiracy doesn’t stretch that far) promises to tell all about everything from the S&L debacle to corruption at HUD to Iran-Contra gun-running to “fraud and bribery involving the new Denver airport,” tying together everyone from Henry Kissinger to Neil Bush to Webb’s former father-in-law to yes, Westword itself. Pointing to a six-year-old story about one of young Bush’s ventures, Webb announces that after the article was published, its author, Brian Gaffney, couldn’t get a job in the news media and “is now waiting tables in Aspen, Colorado…another whistleblower reporter who was hammered.”
Close, but no cigar, Stew. Gaffney, now a KUSA-TV producer for Paula Woodward, actually wrote the profile of you for Westword. The author of the Bush piece was Bryan Abas, who is indeed up in Aspen–working as a reporter for the Aspen Daily News. (And, in fact, Abas is cutting such a wide journalistic swath through the mountain town that he was the subject of an April 1 story in his own paper, detailing a mythical attack on “Brian Abias” that landed the reporter in the hospital–where officials refused him treatment. According to the April Fool’s spoof, the Pitkin County sheriff’s long list of suspects in the incident was actually a copy of the Aspen phone book; his “shorter list is a phone book with the names of people crossed out who have moved out of state.”)
Webb, who spent a significant amount of last year in the federal detention facility in Littleton after making harassing phone calls to his former father-in-law, is selling copies of the video for $25; he’s also pitching membership in Guardians of American Liberties, dedicated to “ridding ourselves of the New World Order.” Pssst! The group meets in Denver this Sunday.
Conspiracy or coincidence? You decide: While Denver officials insist they will stand firm against the Winter Park Resort Association, refusing to approve a land swap with the U.S. Forest Service unless and until the WPRA agrees to pay the city more money for the Denver-owned facility, a computerized skier survey recently appeared at the mountain’s Sunspot Lodge. After asking such basics as age and address, the survey gets down to business: If “ski-in, ski-out” condos were built at the base (such construction would be possible only if the swap is made), just how big a unit would the skier want to buy?
Someone got carried away: Understatement of the decade goes to the copywriter who, in describing DIA’s far-from-flawless baggage system in the just-released “Official Souvenir Program” for DIA, came up with this doozy: Passengers “will be pleasantly surprised to find their bags waiting for them at the terminal.”
You and us both, pal.