FBI: Georgia Grenade Was Threat to Bush
WASHINGTON, May 18, 2005 — -- The FBI and Secret Service have launched an international investigation to determine who hurled a grenade in a crowd during President Bush's speech last week in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia.
The device did not go off and no one was hurt. However, the grenade was live and the FBI said today it could have caused considerable harm to Bush and the tens of thousands of people who had gathered May 10 to hear him speak in Freedom Square, a main plaza in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.
"We consider this act to be a threat against the health and welfare of both the president of the United States and the president of Georgia as well as the multitude of Georgian people that had turned out at this event," said Bryan Paarmann, FBI attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi.
The Soviet-era RGD-5 grenade, which was wrapped in a red handkerchief, fell just 61 feet from where the president was speaking, sources told ABC News.
The grenade's pin had been pulled, but it malfunctioned and did not go off. It was snatched up and removed by a Georgian security officer. Georgian authorities did not tell the Secret Service about the incident until after the president had left the country.
"This hand grenade has a kill radius of about 15 to 20 feet and a blast radius of about 45 to 60 feet, and it has a fragmentation hazard zone that can go out to about 800 feet," said Maj. James Gavrilis, U.S. Army special forces security expert.
Potential for Mass Destruction
If the grenade had exploded, people in the immediate vicinity would likely have been killed. The president could have felt the blast and spectators hundreds of feet away could have been injured.
Security experts believe Bush probably would have been protected from flying shrapnel by the bulletproof shield that blocked the podium. But they say it was still an extraordinary breach of security.
"Really the issue is that someone was able to get a grenade that close to someone, a head of state, making a speech," said Gavrilis. "And that really is the concern."
The U.S. Secret Service plans to investigate reports that some people in the crowd were seen circumventing metal detectors. Any breach, according to security experts, is a potential threat to the president.
Security experts fear the grenade may have been a diversion for other armed suspects who may have been in the crowd.
If Georgian security officials had told Secret Service agents about the incident right away, they probably would have evacuated the president.
"The phrase is 'cover and evacuate' -- remove the president from the scene and then sort it out afterward," said Joe Petro, a former Secret Service special agent.
The grenade is being dissected at the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va. No arrests have been made in the case, but authorities are offering a reward equal to $11,000 for more information about the incident.
ABC News' Pierre Thomas filed this report for "World News Tonight."