An attack on former President George W. Bush in 2005 that was brushed off at the time could have caused serious injuries to the then-president, the Washington Examiner reports.
Jared Cohen’s “Accidental Presidents,” which comes out April 9, details an incident in May, 2005, when a Georgian man threw a grenade at Bush during a trip to Tbilisi, Georgia. The grenade, which was live, ended up bouncing off someone and landing more than 60 feet away from Bush, and was so tightly wrapped in a handkerchief that it failed to go off.
The FBI attaché to the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi told The Guardian at the time that "this hand grenade appears to be a live device that simply failed to function due to a light strike on the blasting cap induced by a slow deployment of the spoon activation device".
Former Vice President Dick Cheney recounted, “I gather it was pretty serious, but I actually didn’t know and I don’t think the president knew until we were back in the car."
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added that she was more worried when Bush threw the first pitch of one of the games of the 2001 World Series, “I was just scared and I thought, I know he’s wearing a bulletproof vest, but what if someone just shoots him.”
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