Secret Service Cancels Gore Talk After Explosive Device Is Found

Secret Service officials canceled a planned campaign appearance by Democratic vice presidential nominee Al Gore on Tuesday night after an explosive device was found at a local high school where he was to speak.

No one was hurt in the incident.

Gore received word of the cancellation as he was preparing to fly from Marquette, Mich., where he spoke at Northern Michigan University, to this Colorado city about 70 miles from Denver. He had been scheduled to address a rally at the Rocky Mountain High School gymnasium.

Secret Service spokesman Carl Meyer said the device found under the bleachers was “a very crude, elementary type of device incapable of causing structural damage but (which) could have caused injury to people in the vicinity.”

Gore issued a statement thanking law enforcement officials, “whose skills and experience tonight so ably ensured our safety in a difficult and unfortunate situation.”

Upon arriving at the airport outside Ft. Collins, Gore told several hundred supporters that he appreciated their coming out to see him.

He began an abbreviated version of his stump speech with quips about the night’s events: “You know that I was really looking forward to a dynamite event over at the high school. We were planning on a real blowout; we were really going to raise the roof on that place.”