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Possible explosive device hurled toward Bush
President didn't know of incident during speech in Georgia

Jim Watson / AFP - Getty Images
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, right, holds up President Bush's hand in front of a crowd at Freedom Square in the Georgian capital Tbilisi on Tuesday.


BREAKING NEWS
NBC News and news services
Updated: 6:53 p.m. ET May 10, 2005

TBILISI, Georgia - A device, possibly a hand grenade, was thrown toward the stage on which President Bush addressed 300,000 cheering Georgians on Tuesday, but it was not discovered until after the president's appearance, NBC News has learned.

It was the only incident to mar what had been a triumphal appearance by the president in the former Soviet republic, where he said Georgia to the world that determined people can rise up and claim their freedom from oppressive rulers.

The incident happened while the president was speaking in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. The event was heavily secured, with agents keeping watch from rooftops.

According to U.S. law enforcement officials, someone threw a hand grenade that landed with 100 feet of the stage where the president was speaking.

Secret Service didn't see device
NBC’s Pete Williams, reporting from Washington, said none of the Secret Service agents accompanying the president saw the device. A Georgian security official working the crowd saw it, picked it up and took it away.

NBC Moscow bureau chief Thomas Bonifield, who was at the event, said that at no point did there appear to be any inkling of anything amiss.

After Bush finished his speech, he and first lady Laura Bush and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and his wife came out to wave to the crowd.

When Bush was leaving the stage and walking to a covered tunnel about 20 yards away, he waved to onlookers and shook hands with well-wishers. There did not appear to be any sort of rush to get Bush away from the event, Bonifield reported.

TBILISI, Georgia - Georgia's security chief said Wednesday that an inactive grenade was found near the site where President Bush made a speech in Tbilisi.

Gela Bezhuashvili, secretary of the National Security Council, said the Soviet-era grenade was found 100 feet from the tribune where Bush spoke on Tuesday.

U.S. Secret Service spokesman Jonathan Cherry said Tuesday that his agency had been informed that a device, possibly a hand grenade, had been thrown near the stage during Bush's speech, hit someone in the crowd and fallen to the ground.

Bezhuashvili said, however, that it was not thrown but "found."

"The goal is clear — to frighten or to scare people and to attract the attention of the mass media," he said. "The goal has been reached and that is why I'm talking to you now."

"In any case there was no danger whatsoever for the presidents," he said, referring to Bush and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

Bezhuashvili said the grenade was found in "inactive mode." He described it as an "engineering grenade" — one that is used for demolition or to simulate the effect of an artillery shell. Such grenades' blast-effect can be fatal at close range, but unlike offensive grenades, they are not designed to spread shrapnel.

"I am not an expert, but it was not possible to detonate it there," Bezhuashvili said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy, Khatiya Dzhindzhikhadze, said "this question will be resolved jointly by American and Georgian specialists."

Security was very tight at Freedom Square, where Bush and Saakashvili gave speeches. Georgian police were deployed, and U.S. snipers were visible on the rooftops, scanning the crowd with binoculars.

U.S. agents, together with their Georgian counterparts, manned the security gates, making even Georgian performers — who in some cases were decked out with fake ammunition as part of their costumes — remove every piece of metal before passing through the detectors.

Many in the crowd were carrying plastic soda bottles, which they used to squirt water on each other to stave off the heat after hours of standing without shelter under the bright sun. There were many young people horsing around during the speeches — especially when the translation was muffled and the speech unintelligible — and some threw plastic bottles at one another for entertainment.

SKINZ_DOMIN8 wrote:Didn't World War I start in that same area of Europe? Just a thought.

Didn't World War I start in that same area of Europe? Just a thought.