It was Friday morning, and Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News was sitting on the Bush campaign plane as we flew from Milwaukee to Grand Rapids, Mich. Slater was telling his fellow journalists about his conversation with Bush in the fall of 1998, when he asked Bush if he had ever been arrested since 1968 and Bush said, "No."

Slater's recollection was reported in a New Republic story last year, and recounted in Salon Friday morning.

Suddenly Bush communications director Karen Hughes appeared. (Cue Darth Vader theme song.)

Her jaw was clenched. Her eyes were shooting piercing glares into Slater's amiable mug.

"That conversation was off the record, wasn't it, Wayne?" she said.

Slater said it wasn't. The mood grew even tenser. The crowd increased in size.

So Hughes tried again, explaining why she had cut off the 1998 conversation, which had left Slater with the impression that Bush was on the brink of correcting his lie before Hughes abruptly ended the conversation.

Bush "was hinting that something had happened, that's why I stepped in and stopped the conversation," she said.

Of Slater's recollection that Bush had lied to him, Hughes said, "I disagree with that. I walked up to the conversation and I stopped the conversation."

Hughes was asked again about Bush's "No."

"The governor disagrees with that," she said. "The governor does not believe he said that. He has not addressed that issue."

Hughes returned to the front of the plane.

Then, only a few minutes later, she was back.

"The governor refutes that," she said of Slater's recollection.

Slater is a respected member of the press corps, the bureau chief for more than 10 years in the Austin bureau of the Dallas Morning News -- which is generally considered a pro-Bush newspaper that recently endorsed him for president.

Then Hughes tried something new -- if characteristically audacious.

Since Slater had finished that conversation with the impression that Bush had lied to him, but was on the verge of admitting the lie, Hughes said, "Wayne acknowledges that he left that conversation with the impression that the governor had been arrested," she said. In other words, Slater left the conversation thinking Bush lied when he denied being arrested since 1968, so therefore Bush was telling the truth.

Cameras wanted to film Hughes as she hovered in the aisle. She said no cameras. They said please. So she said she was going back to the front of the plane to put on her lipstick. She didn't come back.

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