Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Spokesman: Gibbons ‘made mistake’ over Reid car bomb

Updated Monday, Nov. 2, 2009 | 9:04 p.m.

Gibbons on Nevada Newsmakers

Gov. Jim Gibbons on "Nevada Newsmakers" on Monday.

Gov. Jim Gibbons today repeated his belief on a Nevada political show that the bomb in Harry Reid's station wagon in 1981 was a telephone book in a shoe box. The development came a week after Gibbons' claim was widely dismissed and the Reid campaign provided police reports and bomb squad log disproving the theory.

His spokesman later today said Gibbons "made a mistake." Dan Burns said Gibbons had heard from someone last week -- he didn't know who -- that it was a shoe box with a phone book in it.

Gibbons made a point of repeatedly saying he had read about the shoe box with a phone book in it in the police report.

On Sam Shad's "Nevada Newsmakers" show on Monday, Gibbons was asked by co-host Ray Hagar about the claim he originally made on a conservative Las Vegas radio show.

"Wait a minute. Wait a minute, Ray. If you read the report, and I hope you read the police report. Did you read it? Did you read it?" he asked Hagar, who replied he did. "It didn't say car bomb. It said it was a shoe box with a phone book in it. The last time I defined bomb, it wasn't a shoe box with a phone book in it. If it is, Nextel is a weapon of mass destruction proliferator, because that is not a bomb."

The police report from 1981 has no mention of a phone book or a shoe box. Gibbons later repeated on the show, "I read the report, and the report said it was a shoe box with a phone book in it."

"That's not what I read," said Sam Shad.

"I was looking at the report that said it wasn't a bomb," Gibbons replied.

"I guess we'll agree to disagree on that."

Burns, Gibbons' spokesman, said a lot of people were talking about the incident last week after Sue Lowden, a Republican challenging the Senate Majority Leader, chuckled when asked if she recalled the incident and said she couldn't recall it happening.

Reid had mentioned the incident in one of his early television ads as proof that he drove the mob out of the gaming industry when he was head of the Nevada Gaming Commission.

Burns said, "The larger question is, there was no bomb in the car? And who said the mob did it?"

The police report listed the incident as an attempted homicide. It described the electrical device as "a wire leading from the distributor to the fuel tank." The bomb squad report described it as similar to an earlier attempt on another gaming commission member "but a little more sophisticated in that a ground was provided this time."

Reid’s campaign responded by calling Gibbons' assertion a "flat-out lie." The campaign said Lowden, who appears on "Nevada Newsmakers" on Tuesday, should “call Jim Gibbons out on it.”

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