It happened so fast, and without fanfare, that even his former vice president shrugged it off, but a May 2005 grenade attack on former President George W. Bush in Tbilisi, Georgia, “was serious,” according to an upcoming book.
In “Accidental Presidents,” out April 9, author Jared Cohen reports that the weapon was thrown so close to Bush during a trip to the former Soviet satellite that “shrapnel would hit him upon explosion.”
Fortunately, he wrote, the grenade ricocheted off a girl and fell 61 feet short of Bush. What’s more, it was so tightly wrapped in a red tartan handkerchief meant to conceal it that the firing pin didn’t deploy properly and the “chemical reaction got stuck.”
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said, “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.”
And Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she was more worried about her boss’s safety back home when he threw out the first pitch of a 2001 World Series game. “I was just scared and I thought, I know he’s wearing a bulletproof vest, but what if someone just shoots him.”
