WASHINGTON (AP) — The chief White House spokesman says a
Thursday meeting among the president, a Harvard University
scholar and the policeman who arrested him will be "about
having a beer and de-escalation."
Robert Gibbs says the session, weather permitting, is planned
for a picnic table outside the Oval Office. According to
Gibbs, "The president wants to continue to take down the
temperature a bit."
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., who is black, was
arrested last week by Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge,
Mass., police department, who is white, after an
investigation into a suspected burglary found no burglars but
escalated into a heated exchange between the men at Gates'
home.