November 04, 2006 05:32 PM UTC

Ted Who?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Ted Haggard? At the White House? Weekly conference calls with high-level staff? No, the Rocky Mountain News reports from Washington, you’re thinking of somebody else. They’ve never heard of this guy.

Well, maybe once or twice he was there, like a tourist or something.

He made frequent visits to the White House and was included in a select group of religious leaders briefed on the administration’s agenda during a weekly teleconference with White House staff, a session meant to “feel the evangelical pulse,” he’s said.

“We have direct access (to the White House),” Haggard told a Wall Street Journal reporter shortly before the last presidential election, adding that he could take a concern to the president through staff and get a response within 24 hours.

Asked Friday about the Haggard controversy, White House spokesman Tony Fratto downplayed the pastor’s connections to the Bush administration.

“He had been on a couple of (conference) calls but was not a weekly participant in those calls,” Fratto said, adding that Haggard had been to the White House “one or two times.”

“But there have been a lot of people who come to the White House,” Fratto said.