By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
The Secret Service on Thursday issued a statement, calling “inaccurate” a story in The Atlantic entitled “How the Secret Service Almost Shot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
Ed Donovan, a Secret Service spokesman, stated:
“In September of 2007, one of our personnel assigned to the Iranian presidential protective detail accidentally discharged one round from a Heckler & Koch MP-5 into the floorboard of a Secret Service vehicle while conducting an equipment inspection. At the time of the discharge the vehicle was parked in a motorcade staging area at the United Nations. There were no protectees or foreign security personnel in the vicinity of the vehicle at the time of the discharge. There were no injuries sustained by anyone as a result of the incident.”
“The Secret Service takes weapons handling and safety very seriously and a full investigation was conducted by our Inspection Division at that time. This matter was handled internally and in an appropriate manner.”
The Atlantic reported that President George Bush’s daily intelligence brief contained this: “A U.S. Secret Service agent, in an apparent accident, discharged his shotgun as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was loading his motorcade at the InterContinental Hotel yesterday.”
The Atlantic wrote:
The agent was adjusting the side-mounted shotgun on one of the motorcade’s armored follow-up Suburbans when it discharged. “Everyone just stopped. The Iranians looked at us and we looked at the Iranians. The agent began to apologize. Ahmadinejad just turned his head and got into his car.” And that was it.
