Sen. Webb's Ordnance Aide

Phillip F. Thompson, a staff aide to Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., was waiting to clear security at the Russell Senate Office Building when a gun and two loaded magazines stashed in Thompson's briefcase suddenly loomed on the magnetometer X-ray screen. Thompson explained to the Capitol Hill police that he was "safekeeping" the pistol for Webb. But carrying a gun in Washington without a license is against the law no matter who your boss is. In rapid succession, Thompson was read his Miranda rights, arrested, and booked for participating in "a dangerous or violent crime," according to the criminal complaint and pretrial services report filed in D.C. Superior Court (see below and on the following four pages).

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Webb is a decorated Marine, a successful novelist, a former Navy secretary, and now a freshman U.S. senator. He has already been mentioned for the vice-presidential slot in 2008. But his chances won't be helped by his performance at a March 27 press conference about Thompson's arrest. Webb said very little except that he was himself a proud Virginia gun-permit holder ("I believe that it's important … to be able to defend myself and my family"). Asked where he's taken his gun, Webb answered, "I have never carried a gun in the Capitol complex, and I did not give the weapon to Phillip Thompson, and that's all that I think I'll say." Coincidentally, in the new film Shooter, Ned Beatty plays a U.S. senator who says, "I don't carry a gun," and then pulls out a Beretta 92.

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