Tagalong Found on Bush’s Press Jet

A man without proper press credentials walked onto a jumbo jet chartered by the White House travel office Friday, flew with journalists and White House staff members from South Africa to Uganda, then continued with them to a compound where President Bush was meeting with the Ugandan president.

The man, who traveled aboard the United Airlines Boeing 747 that was chartered for reporters, photographers, camera crews, White House staff members and Secret Service agents, was not noticed as an interloper until the group was inside the compound on Lake Victoria.

He was spotted by Curtis Jablonka of the White House travel office and was apprehended by the Secret Service.

Deputy Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, who was traveling with the White House contingent, told reporters of the incident and said: “He was never a threat. He was never near the president.”

The president flew here with his senior staff members aboard Air Force One.

Officials said the man, whose name they did not immediately release, was later arrested by Ugandan authorities and charged with entering the country illegally. They said he was not armed. Nor, said Jablonka, according to Reuters news agency, was he carrying a passport or a press credential for the trip.

“He has nothing,” Reuters quoted Jablonka as saying.

The man was believed to have boarded a bus with other reporters at a hotel in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital, then got on the press plane at South Africa’s Waterkloof air force base for the flight to Uganda.

Reuters said a reporter from the American Urban Radio network, April Ryan, said that she had encountered the man in Pretoria at the hotel used by the media and that he said he was traveling with the group to Uganda. She said he described himself as a reporter from Soweto, a township on the outskirts of Johannesburg, but he did not appear to be credentialed for the trip.

After the plane landed at Entebbe International Airport, the man apparently boarded one of the buses waiting to take the passengers into the city. The bus went to a compound that included a hotel and an AIDS clinic. Bush met with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at the compound, toured the clinic and gave a speech.

The man was apprehended outside the clinic while Bush was touring the facility.

On most presidential trips, domestic and foreign, the press charter ferries junior White House staffers and a few Secret Service agents as well as journalists.

Although seats are assigned to individual passengers, no tickets or boarding passes are issued. The travelers’ credentials are occasionally checked by foreign authorities as passengers board in foreign countries, and most of the passengers are recognized on sight by White House officials.

On the president’s five-country trip through Africa, about 130 passengers are traveling on the wide-body jet, so many seats are empty.

The discovery of the man prompted the Secret Service to examine the aircraft for explosives, a member of the White House travel office said.

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Times wire services contributed to this report.