2 Arrested In Boston Bomb Scare

Electronic Ads For A Late-Night Cartoon Placed On Bridges Called "A Hoax"

(CBS/AP) 
There were no reports from police Wednesday of residents in the other nine cities spotting similar devices.

Authorities are investigating whether Turner and any other companies should be criminally charged, Coakley said. It wasn't immediately clear Wednesday who might have hired Berdovsky.

“We're not going to let this go without looking at the further roots of how this happened to cause the panic in this city,” Coakley said at a news conference Wednesday night.

Those conducting the campaign should have known the devices could cause panic because they were placed in sensitive areas, she said. Turner did not notify officials of the publicity campaign until around 5 p.m., nearly four hours after the first calls came in about the devices, she and others said.

At least 14 of the devices were found, Coakley said.

"Hoaxes are a tremendous burden on local law enforcement and counter-terrorism resources and there's absolutely no place for them in a post-9/11 world," Knocke said.

Authorities said some of the objects looked like circuit boards or had wires hanging from them.

The first device was found at a subway and bus station underneath Interstate 93, forcing the shutdown of the station and the highway.

Later, police said four calls, all around 1 p.m., reported devices at the Boston University Bridge and the Longfellow Bridge, both of which span the Charles River, at a Boston street corner and at the Tufts-New England Medical Center.

The package near the Boston University bridge was found attached to a structure beneath the span, authorities said.

Subway service across the Longfellow Bridge between Boston and Cambridge was briefly suspended, and Storrow Drive was closed as well. A similar device was found Wednesday evening just north of Fenway Park, police spokesman Eddy Chrispin said.

Wanda Higgins, a 47-year-old Weymouth resident and a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, heard about the threat as she watched television news coverage while preparing to leave work at 4 p.m.

"I saw the bomb squad guys carrying a paper bag with their bare hands," Higgins said. "I knew it couldn't be too serious."

Messages seeking additional comment from the Atlanta-based Cartoon Network were left with several publicists.

[csgeorge-2009]

What is wrong with those people?
The devices were Lite-Brites with a cartoon character on it!
The next bomb scare will be cause by someone leaving a McDonald's bag in a trash can!

[rthomaswhite]

sensationalist journalism at its best. Seriously guys try to at least focus on facts, this is horrible. Even refering to this as a bomb hoax is absurd.

[yoitsemo]

And if you were wondering what these "devices" looked like that fooled everyone, here's the video the guys who put them up made.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doD_VpT_yAY

[yoitsemo]

In at least five major cities across the United States (two including Seattle and Atlanta) are very large murals of the same characters that take up an entire side of multiple story buildings. So this isn't the first time the cartoon has been advertised in the public without any idea of what it is really representing.

I heard on another news story that these "electronic devices" have actually been hanging up for around two weeks now but no one really noticed them. Kind of scary to think that if these were even close to something dangerous to the public, what could happen if they went unnoticed for more than a day.

I also agree with the constant use of the word "hoax". It's completely unneccesary. Like I said earlier, this isn't the first time this cartoon has been advertised in such a large scale way outside of the normal boundaries of marketing.

[rustysan-2009]

Preposterous nonsense, propogated by sensationalist journalism and a defensive government. I am bemused by the constant use of bomb hoax terminology when a hoax is defined as, "something intended to deceive or defraud", this was never intended to deceive people into believing the packages were bombs. Come on guys, you are all smart folks, let's report it as it is, a Marketing campaign mistaken as a bomb threat.

[docthink]

For goodness sake, this is just the worst of the blame game. The Boston police were chasing a red herring. There was no wrong. Enough! Let the slacker-guys go, and try and learn from this. If things weren't so secret, the police could have promoted the image and someone would have seen and all would have been well. Let the guys go.

[cleanby]

I think that all of the city officials and law enforcement folks that perpetuated (and caused) this scare should be the ones in jail. How stupid are they. And more importantly, if there ever is a real attack like this, I would hope that they would do a better job of diagnosis the risks involved. Really, how long does it take to figure out the 'devices' were harmless electronic billboards.