Scott Powers speaks out on his closet captivity at Biden event

Scott Powers, the Orlando Sentinel reporter who was detained awkwardly in a closet at a fundraiser for US Vice President Joe Biden, spoke out about his ordeal on Monday.

In what appeared to be a strange and disrespectful treatment of an American journalist, the staff of US Vice President Joe Biden held Scott Powers, a veteran Orlando Sentinel reporter, in a storage closet for hours. The staff's reasoning behind the odd imprisonment was that Mr. Powers was not allowed to speak to the $500-a-plate guests. On Monday, Scott Powers shared his story with ABC's "Good Morning America," saying: "The protocol is they didn't want me to talk to anybody," according to a report in the Chicago Trbune. However, Powers detailed the disconcerting experience in an Orlando Sentinel blog entry. "I was kidnapped," Scott wrote. "That was news to me. My paper and I conspired to cover this up, to protect Vice President Joe Biden and his staff from charges they had imprisoned me at a fundraiser last week. That was news to me too." Powers then explained how events had unfolded, the closet seeming more like an accommodating storage room. "I called it a closet, because it was stuffed with shelves, boxes, baskets and other items in storage, and it felt like a closet," he wrote. "The vice president’s office called it a room used for storage. It had a light, a window somewhere in the back behind the shelves full of boxes, and a few square feet of open space in the front. They set up a small table and a chair for me. They offered me food, which I declined, and brought me a bottle of water. They closed the door. I sat to wait, mistakenly thinking it would be only a few minutes. The door wasn’t locked, though every time I opened it and stepped out to see what was going on a staffer told me I couldn’t come out yet. He’d let me know." Powers further detailed how he had taken a picture of his environment and emailed it to his office, where it was posted with his original commentary: "Sounds like a nice party." His Sunday night blog entry credited the blogosphere with taking the story to a new level, however in comments Powers made to Drudge Report, his frustration at his mistreatment seemed closer to his original state of mind: "It was frustrating and annoying that I was not given a chance to do my job fully and properly," Powers said. "This was an extreme, and extremely inappropriate way of handling the press… it was essentially a rude and uncomfortable way to treat a reporter."