President Bush’s Bangor International Airport campaign rally Thursday and the obligatory gaggle of anti-war demonstrators it attracted was not nearly as memorable as President Richard M. Nixon’s controversial 1971 airport rally which came at the height of the Vietnam War.

Sporting the long hair and grunge look that was de rigueur for card-carrying hippies at the time, the 1971 batch of dissidents carried signs the likes of “Stop The War – Are You Trying To Beat Hitler’s 6 Million?” and “Keep Maine Clean; Send Nixon Home.” One demonstrator wore a black skull mask and white shroud. There was at least one pornographic sign, another featuring a swastika and a Bangor welcome to “Tricky Dick,” as well as several that were so far out it is doubtful that even their creators got the message.

Unlike Thursday, when demonstrators and their mixed bag of messages protesting everything from the Iraq war to abortion on demand were kept far away from the rally, Nixon’s nemeses were up close and personal, separated from the action only by a chain-link fence.

The Secret Service had made it clear to local police in briefings prior to his arrival that Nixon wanted no signs – pro or con – in his immediate vicinity at the rally. When protesters showed up before Nixon’s plane had touched down, holding their placards aloft and chanting anti-war slogans, police confiscated the signs, dumped them next to the old Northeast Airlines terminal, and returned to their assigned duty posts.

Demonstrators, of course, re-trieved their props the minute police had turned their backs, and lugged them back to the rally site. Cops then returned in force to confiscate the placards, destroying some of them – an act which ultimately led to a round of accusation, denial, threatened lawsuits by the aggrieved and finger-pointing between local police and Secret Service poobahs that was ludicrous then and seems even more so in rereading news accounts three decades later.

The Maine Civil Liberties Union jumped in, demanding that Nixon apologize for condoning multiple violations of the Constitution, not to mention the Magna Carta and possibly portions of the Pure Food and Drug Act, as well.

Nixon’s “apology” came in the form of praise for a local woman who had impulsively torn from a protester’s hands the aforementioned sign suggesting that Maine could best be kept clean by sending Nixon packing. Praised her and sent her a charm bracelet, he did. And promised to help should she ever venture to Washington in search of work. Alas, the subsequent impeachment thing short-circuited that idea. But, hey – it’s the thought that counts in these things.

Local police finally owned up to ripping a few signs from the clutches of the protesters. But they said the Secret Service had made them do it and then had ridden out of Dodge City under cover of darkness, leaving our guys holding the bag. The Secret Service said the locals had acted on their own.

And so it went, until Bangor City Manager Merle Goff conducted an investigation that concluded there was “little supportable evidence that our officers acted other than in a restrained and responsible manner under the circumstances…”

Two weeks later, the Secret Service issued a terse blurb stating it had been in error when it had insisted it had not asked the locals to confiscate the signs. The story gradually faded away.

Today, ask graybeard newspaper staffers what they recall about the flap and chances are they will cite a priceless BDN photograph that pretty much summed up the dog and pony show.

Police had denied that they had commandeered any signs, which was not a particularly brilliant move in light of the fact that members of the news media and seemingly every Tom, Dick and Harry had come equipped with a camera to record the historic event. The late Sgt. John Agnew, then head of the airport police department, declared on local television, “I observed no police officers confiscating signs…”

That remarkable assertion was too delicious to go unrewarded. The next day, the NEWS published photos of local and state police confiscating signs, with the piece de resistance being a three-column cut of Sgt. Agnew “his very own self,” as my redneck friends might say, tossing one of the protest placards to the ground.

The photo caption pointed out that Agnew’s eyes were closed, which would explain his sign-confiscation observation difficulties, and that Francis Woodhead, Bangor’s new police chief standing alongside Agnew, hadn’t seen anything, either, because he was facing in the opposite direction.

It was a truly a Kodak Moment for the ages.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net