Your tax dollars at work. At least he wasn't driving.
Secret Service agents who said they were escorting one of President Bush's daughters picked up a TCU student early Sunday from the county jail after his arrest for public intoxication, Sheriff Dee Anderson said Wednesday.
Anderson said William Ashe Bridges, 18, was polite and courteous, but also "very intoxicated" and "very vocal" in saying that he was Jenna Bush's boyfriend.
He was placed in a cell alone, to ensure his safety, for about four hours, then allowed to make a call from his cellular telephone, the sheriff said.
Anderson said jail officials believe that he called for Jenna Bush and her Secret Service escort.
"A few minutes later, a black Suburban and some Secret Service agents showed up," Anderson said, adding that jail personnel were told Jenna Bush was in the Suburban.
Bridges, a TCU freshman, entered the vehicle and "they were on their way," the sheriff said.
When contacted Wednesday night by phone, Bridges said, at first, that "it wasn't really a big deal." He refused to discuss the events further. "I guess I really don't want to say anything," he said.
The White House also declined to discuss Jenna Bush's friendship with Bridges, or whether she was at a weekend party near Texas Christian University that was halted by police and Texas Alcholic Beverage Commission officers. Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said: "We are not going to have a comment."
Officers arrived at the private residence in the 2700 block of Sandage Avenue shortly after midnight on Sunday after receiving complaints of loud music and beer bottles in the yard and the street, TABC Sgt. Robert Cloud said.
Cloud said he arrived at the scene and was told of reports that "Jenna Bush was there and the Secret Service was up the road." He said he didn't see the agents or Bush.
Once Bridges was placed in custody, Cloud said, "he asked initially if Jenna was all right. He told me they had gone to high school together in Austin and were friends."
A young woman was also arrested at the party, because her driver's license was thought to be fake, and a young man -- believed to be one of the party's hosts -- was taken into custody on a charge of providing alcohol to minors, Cloud said.
Jenna Bush, 19, a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, could not be reached to comment.
Bridges' father, Austin surgeon Robert Bridges, said that his son and Bush were "just friends," and that he was not aware of any "boyfriend- girlfriend kind of relationship." They have known each other since both began high school in Austin, the elder Bridges said.
Robert Bridges said he was not aware of his son's arrest. "We're disappointed," he said.
A charge of public intoxication is a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a maximum fine of $500. While it is handled as a written citation, offenders, if considered a risk to themselves or others, are often taken to jail to sober up, Cloud said.
Anderson said jail staff members notified him that they might have a close friend of the president's daughter in custody. "My instructions to them was to treat him just like any other prisoner, [and] be sure to keep him safe," the sheriff said.
Jailers were, at first, skeptical when Bridges described himself as Bush's boyfriend, Anderson said. They changed their minds, however, once the prisoner made his call and the black Suburban pulled up. "I think they became fairly convinced fairly quickly that they [ the agents] were the real people when they showed up," Anderson said.
He said Bridges was kept in the jail for four hours, which he called plenty of time for the teen-ager to sober up. According to an offense report, Bridges was officially booked in at 2:58 a.m. Sunday and released just less than three hours later, at 5:46 a.m.
In an interview in December 1999, early in the presidential campaign, George W. Bush acknowledged concerns about the privacy of his twin daughters Jenna and Barbara. Barbara Bush is a freshman at Yale University.
"One of my great hesitancies about making this race is I really don't want their lives to be affected by me, and I know it's going to be," Bush said then. "It is something that troubles me because I love them and I can understand," he said.
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