President Bush's security detail challenged by four scares in two weeks
By Deb Riechmann
ASSOCIATED PRESS
3:20 p.m. May 11, 2005
WASHINGTON – Security scares have jarred President Bush's Secret Service detail four times in the past two weeks, including one scare it didn't know about until it was all over.
On Wednesday, the West Wing of the White House was evacuated after a two-seat plane wandered into restricted air space over the compound. The White House raised its threat level to red – the highest – for eight minutes.
The president, who was on a bike ride, was not inside at the time. Vice President Dick Cheney, first lady Laura Bush and former first lady Nancy Reagan, overnighting at the White House for a special event, were moved to secure locations.
The day before, foreign security officials said they found a grenade about 100 feet from where Bush was speaking in Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Georgia. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Wednesday that the Secret Service had no reason to move Bush because security officials in the ex-Soviet republic didn't tell them about it until after Air Force One had left the nation.
Georgia's National Security Council chief Gela Bezhuashvili said Wednesday that he suspected the grenade, which he described as inactive, was planted to undermine the upbeat event. He denied reports the grenade was thrown – contradicting a statement from Secret Service spokesman Jonathan Cherry, who said it hit somebody in the crowd and dropped to the ground.
Georgian security officials said the grenade was inactive. McClellan wouldn't confirm that.
"I don't know that that's been determined from our standpoint," McClellan said, adding that FBI and Secret Service investigations were under way.
On April 27, Bush was rushed to an underground White House bunker and Cheney was whisked outside the compound when a "radar anomaly" – perhaps a flock of birds or pocket of rain – was mistaken for a plane flying in restricted airspace, officials said. The late-morning scare was determined within minutes to be a false alarm.
Later that day, security officials sent a robotic device to investigate what turned out to be a harmless bag left along Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.
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