Full alert after Bush assassination scare

Press, 4 February 1982, Page 6

Full alert after Bush assassination scare

NZPA-Reuter Washington Riot squads assembled, helicopters hovered, streets were blocked and offices searched. But in the end, the authorities said it was just a chunk of cement which nicked the armoured limousine of Vice-President George Bush as he rode to the White House yesterday. Although the initial response centered on speculation that Mr Bush may have been fired upon, the police, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Secret Service jointly concluded later that “there was no assault.”

Instead, said special agent James Boyle of the Secret Service, F. 8.1. laboratory tests had demonstrated that the object which struck the car and startled Mr Bush and his bodyguards was “a substance conistent with the building materials being used in the area.”

A Bush spokesman, Peter Teeley, said the tests revealed no metal frag-

ments, showing instead that “the object contained clay and cement.”

“We heard a loud bang and drove on to work and that was it,” Mr Bush said later. “There really wasn’t heightened tension, even. There wasn’t anything scary about it at all ... Really, it's gotten out of hand.” . He said that when he first heard the bang, “I asked what it was and nobody was sure ... I thought it might have been a gun or something.” “Nobody was injured: Every- body is safe. The only harm was to the limousine,” where a V-shaped gash was found on the roof, said Jack Warner, of the Secret Service. He acknowledged that there was initial “speculation ... it was a gunshot.” The episode occurred about 7.25 a.m., and Mr Bush’s motorcade speeded up but did not take evasive action, proceeding to the White House as planned, Mr

Warner said. An F. 8.1. agent said the object seemed to have fallen from a building. The NZPA’s Washington correspondent, Hugh Nevill, writes: The reaction to the “projectille” that hit Mr Bush’s car shows how twitchy the protective services in Washington have become in the draught of assassins’ bullets and reports of a lurking Libyan death squad. With political assassinations and would-be assassinations a fact of life, the incident caused no general surprise, just a feeling of “here we go again” and speculation that the Libyan hit squad might be for real and in business. (Many Washingtonians, close to the centre of power, and blase, have long doubted the existence of the squad, which was announced by officials who never produced hard evidence to back up their assertions.)