Port Is Shut Down After Threat Found

Longshoremen at the Port of Hueneme near Oxnard on Monday discovered a threat against President Bush and Jews written inside a ship that had recently arrived from Guatemala, authorities said.

A tense afternoon followed, as dozens of law enforcement and military officials from at least six agencies swarmed the vessel and sealed off the 135-acre port in Ventura County. But an exhaustive sweep of the vessel and the port found no imminent threat -- there was no nitroglycerin, as alleged in the note -- and port operations were returning to normal Monday night.

The U.S. Secret Service, however, will continue to investigate the incident because a threat was made against the president, said Tony Chapa, special agent in charge at the Secret Service’s Los Angeles office.

“We take every threat as being a serious threat,” he said. “We don’t look at anything on its face as a prank. We are going to take every single threat as something for us to investigate fully.”

Shortly before noon, longshoremen were unloading bananas from the Panamanian-flagged ship Wild Lotus when they found the message written on a beam in the interior of the ship. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the message, written in black marker, read: “Nitro + glycerin a gift for G.W. Bush and his Jewish gang.”

Law enforcement officials evacuated the vessel’s 20 crew members and swept through the ship, the port and two other docked ships, which were also carrying bananas. Divers were sent under the ship to check for explosives. Officials then asked the crew members to return to the ship and conduct their own sweep to determine if anything was unusual. Nothing was found.

In the meantime, the port was shut down for several hours “as a precaution,” said Will Berg, marketing director for the Oxnard Harbor District.

The Port of Hueneme is the only deep-water harbor between Los Angeles and San Francisco. According to its website, it is the top seaport in the United States for citrus export and is one of the nation’s top ports for automobile and banana imports.