Bomb Found Before Soviet Game

Bomb squad officers acting on a telephone tip found a time bomb at the Boston Garden Monday, hours before an exhibition hockey game between the Boston Bruins and a top Soviet team, police said.

No injuries were reported, and the arena was not evacuated.

The Jewish Defense League had warned that violence might erupt if the Bruins did not cancel the game with the Moscow Dynamo, but a JDL official disavowed any involvement in the planting of the device, calling it “a moral obscenity.”

An anonymous caller told Garden officials by telephone at 4:45 p.m. that a bomb had been left in a trash barrel in the building, police spokesman John Gillespie said.

Authorities searched the building and found the device in a first-floor canister. The bomb was put in a special container and taken to a police firing range where it was exploded, Gillespie said.

The Boston Globe, quoting police sources, reported that the bomb was a live hand grenade wired to a timing device. But the sources said it was unclear whether the grenade was set to go off.

No arrests had been made, but the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were called into the case.

Shortly after the bomb was removed, 150 chanting, sign-carrying demonstrators, including noted Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz, rallied peacefully but vociferously outside the Garden to protest the presence of the Soviet team.

The Bruins have defended the decision to participate in the exhibition game, one of four the Soviet team is playing in the United States. Bruins spokesman Nate Greenburg said extra security had been added for the game, which the Soviets won, 6-4.

About 50 police stood by and 75 Garden security officers stood inside the arena during the protest.

Two spectators were escorted from the arena for heckling the Dynamo team during the playing of the Soviet national anthem, but no other trouble was reported during the game.