President didn't know of incident during speech in Georgia
BREAKING NEWS
NBC News and news services
Updated: 6:53 p.m. ET May 10, 2005TBILISI, 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.
1430 Local Time Bush Leaves Tblisi
1800 Local Time (approximately) US informed of incident
(approximately 3.5 hours afterward)
OR
Per another calculation:
1430 Local Time Bush Leaves Tblisi
0030 Local Time US informed of incident (approximately 10 hours afterward)
We'll have to see....
We do know the Tblisi Freedom Square speech was in the morning, perhaps late morning at that, local time today....
Wait a second here... ~possibly~ a hand grenade? Since it clearly didn't 'splode... perhaps it was ~possibly~ not a grenade? Now it's just some kind of "device"?