White House Briefing Room Clear After Bomb Threat Phoned In
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(Bloomberg) — Secret Service officials declared the White House briefing room safe after interrupting the daily news conference Tuesday and evacuating administration staff and reporters because of a bomb threat.
Officers brought dogs to check inside the room, in the West Wing of the White House, and the area immediately outside. Reporters and photographers were sent to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the western end of the White House grounds.
President Barack Obama was at the White House, and neither he nor his family were evacuated. White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the threat was phoned into the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police.
The threat was directed only at the White House press office and briefing room, Earnest said. “No one else was affected,” and Obama wasn’t in danger, he said.
The Secret Service evacuated the briefing room out of “an abundance of caution,” according to a statement from the agency.
It was the second evacuation of a government building on Tuesday. Earlier in the day, one floor of the Dirksen Senate Office building was evacuated after a bomb threat. It came during a hearing on the Transportation Security Administration.
The U.S. Capitol Police were investigating a report of a suspicious package in a room at the Dirksen building after the threat, a spokeswoman said in an e-mail.
To contact the reporters on this story: Toluse Olorunnipa in Washington at tolorunnipa@bloomberg.net; Mike Dorning in Washington at mdorning@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net Justin Blum, Don Frederick
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