Georgians Play Down Bush Grenade

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

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

But Georgian security officials say the intent may have been to scare people or attract attention, and that Mr. Bush was not in any danger, reports CBS News' Bill Gasperini.

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

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 President Bush's speech, hit someone in the crowd and fallen to the ground.

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

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

"None of us in the press corps noticed any unusual activity and in fact, sources tell CBS News that the Secret Service also did not witness an object being thrown nor any disturbances in the crowd," reports White House Correspondent Bill Plante.
The White House Wednesday said President Bush was never in danger during the incident, reports CBS News Correspondent Peter Maer. Spokesman Scott McClellan said Secret Service and FBI agents in Georgia are still investigating the case. President Bush learned of the incident just as Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base last night, when Secret Service officials informed Mr. Bush of the reports.

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.

It still isn't clear who brought the grenade into Freedom Square, where President Bush praised Georgia's new democracy in front of a huge crowd, reports Gasperini, nor is there word as to how the person could have passed security checkpoints with a grenade.

Security was very tight at 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 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.

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