An inactive [Soviet-made RPG-5] grenade was found 100 feet from where Bush made a speech in Tbilisi, Georgia, on Tuesday. Bush wasn't even aware of the grenade report until Secret Service agents on the plane told him about it as his plane was returning to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington.
U.S. Secret Service had been informed that a device — possibly a hand grenade — had been thrown near the stage while Bush spoke, hit someone in the crowd, and fell to the ground. Gela Bezhuashvili, secretary of the National Security Council, said: "The goal is clear — to frighten or to scare people and to attract the attention of the mass media. The goal has been reached..."
Investigators are examining the grenade, which Bezhuashvili said was a "so-called engineering grenade," found in "inactive mode."
Security was very tight at Bush's speech in Freedom Square. 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 had plastic bottles, which they used to squirt water on each other to cope with the hot sun. Young people horsed around during the speeches — especially when the translation was muffled and the speech unintelligible — and some threw bottles at one another for entertainment.
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by BigBank_Hank
Bookmarks