Movie promotion bombs for L.A. paper

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A newspaper promotion for Tom Cruise's upcoming "Mission: Impossible III" got off to an explosive start when a county arson squad blew up a news rack, thinking it contained a bomb.

The confusion: the Los Angeles Times rack was fitted with a digital-musical device designed to play the "Mission: Impossible" theme song when the door was opened. But in some cases, the red-plastic boxes with protruding wires were jarred loose and dropped onto the stack of newspapers inside, alarming customers.

Sheriff's officials said they rendered the $350 news rack in the suburb 35 miles north of downtown Los Angeles "safe" after being called to the scene Friday by an individual who thought he'd seen a bomb.

The incident was the most spectacular of several bomb reports made by newspaper buyers. In West Los Angeles, federal police at the Veterans Administration Medical Center called in the sheriff's bomb squad after a newspaper buyer spied the 6-inch-long, 2 1/2-inch-wide box and its wires.

By then, deputies were aware the box was a musical, not explosive, device.

Times officials said the devices were placed in 4,500 randomly selected news boxes in Los Angeles and Ventura counties in a venture with Paramount Pictures designed to turn the "everyday news-rack experience" into an "extraordinary mission."

It was just that, at least for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department arson squad.

"This was the least intended outcome. We weren't expecting anything like this," said John O'Loughlin, the Times' senior vice president for planning.

Newspaper executives said the "singing news racks" were the first of their kind. They are scheduled to remain in the boxes until next Sunday, two days after the film is to open.

Retired Los Angeles County sheriff's Sgt. Mike La Perruque, now security manager for the Times, said law-enforcement agencies around Los Angeles were advised Friday afternoon that the devices were a movie promotion and not dangerous.

"I got a call from one agency even as I was on the phone making the notifications," he said.