The Federal Communications Commission has received two separate bomb threats. An entertainment trade publication reports that both warnings came shortly after noon Tuesday, January 21st and forced hundreds of agency employees into Washington's chilly streets. The first threat was received by the agency's Cable Bureau, and the second was received a block away at the commission's M Street headquarters. The caller claimed that a bomb would explode at 1 p.m. Washington Metropolitan Police and Federal Protection Service bomb squads failed to turn up evidence of any explosive device. FCC employees returned to work at about 3 in the afternoon.
Police believe that the same person made both threats.
The FCC says that it could be March before another call is issued under Gate 2 of the vanity call sign program. No vanity calls dated since the end of last November have been processed because of what an FCC spokeswoman called unspecified computer related problems. According to the Gettysburg License Processing Facility, vanity applications have not been processed since last December 19th. While computer experts work to resolve the latest problems, Gettysburg personnel are continuing to hand process the pile of some 600 vanity applications that required special handling from the December 19 vanity call sign run. The FCC also is in the midst of processing several hundred refunds for earlier unsuccessful vanity filers.