Turner Broadcasting accepts blame, promises restitution

Turner Broadcasting System yesterday accepted full responsibility for the guerrilla marketing campaign that caused a scare in Boston.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said that the company had agreed to pay the cost of the massive effort to defuse what authorities had believed was a potential bomb plot. Those costs are expected to top $500,000 in Boston and approach another $500,000 for the MBTA, Cambridge, and Somerville.

"We have no intention of shirking the responsibility onto any other company," said Shirley Powell, a spokeswoman for Turner Broadcasting. "We are taking full responsibility for this."

The statement was issued as friends of a local artist involved in the guerrilla advertising campaign said he was told by a New York marketing executive five hours into the scare not to tell anyone.

According to an e-mail one friend provided to the Globe, the executive at Interference Inc. told the artist, whom the agency had hired to install the small, battery-powered light screens in Boston, to remain silent, even as dozens of police officers collected the devices and shut down highways, subway lines, and part of the Charles River.

The executive asked Peter Berdovsky to "pretty please keep everything on the dl," slang for down low, or hush-hush, according to the message Berdovsky sent to his friends . The Globe was told by two of Berdovsky's friends about the e-mail they say he sent at 1:25 p.m. Wednesday, three hours before Turner Broadcasting, an Interference client, disclosed that the scare was a marketing campaign gone awry.

A third friend later provided a copy of the e-mail.

The attorney general's office, Berdovsky's lawyers, and Turner Broadcasting would not comment on the authenticity of the e-mail, and the Globe could not immediately verify it.

"Peter was terrified at this point," one friend, Toshi Hoo, said in an interview yesterday. "He was expecting them to handle it, but they weren't handling it. They let the entire country stay on terror alert."

"That's pretty much when he started" e-mailing us, said another friend, Travis Vautour of Cleveland Circle. "He said he was respecting their wishes at first, to an extent. . . . I kind of wished that they didn't ask him to be quiet about it at first. Timing was everything, yesterday. We may have missed our chance to really bring the light on everything."

The e-mail suggests that the creators of the marketing blitz were trying to hide their involvement and doing nothing to stop the scare.

When they decided to speak out about two hours later, they called their client, the Cartoon Network, rather than alerting any of the numerous law enforcement agencies involved, further delaying notification about the marketing campaign. The network's parent company, Turner Broadcasting, issued a statement at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Mayor Menino said angrily yesterday that "if that's true, that's totally irresponsible."

Yesterday, Interference's chief executive, Sam Ewen, hung up when reached on his cellphone and did not respond to e-mails and phone messages. His office in SoHo was locked, and there was no answer at his home in Brooklyn.

Powell said Turner accepts blame for the scare sowed by the campaign for "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a late-night cartoon.

In a full-page ad appearing in the Globe today, Turner Broadcasting apologizes to the citizens of Boston. "We never intended this outcome and certainly did not set out to perpetrate a hoax," the letter says. "What we did is inadvertently cause a great American city to deal with the unintended impact of this marketing campaign. For this, we are deeply sorry."

Though some residents complained that law enforcement agencies overreacted, Menino said that Michael Chertoff, US secretary of homeland security, called him yesterday morning and congratulated the city for acting responsibly.

"I'm very proud of how the public safety officials worked," Menino said in an interview, calling the massive response "seamless."

Richard A. Clarke, a former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, agreed.

"It looks like an overreaction in retrospect, but having been in that kind of position before, it's usually better to react than not," Clarke said during a chat with readers on Boston.com. "If you don't react and you are wrong, the results are much worse than if you react and are wrong."

City and state officials huddled yesterday on legal strategy, with some wanting to just recoup their costs, but others wanting to sue and seek more money to punish the company.

Last night, Attorney General Martha Coakley was working on details of an agreement with Turner. Menino is pushing for other concessions, such as funding for youth programs.

Coakley said in a statement she was working with officials from Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville to "resolve this matter as quickly as possible." No formal agreement had been reached, she said.

Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone of Somerville said he wanted to force Turner Broadcasting to pay additional punitive damages for the anxiety and fear caused in his city and would consider breaking ranks with Coakley and suing the company if necessary.

"We're prepared to file our own suit," Curtatone said in an interview. "We're certainly going to seek punitive damages against Turner to prevent others from pulling this stunt in the future."

As officials haggled over the details of the agreement, Berdovsky, a 27-year-old artist who lived in Arlington until recently, and his friend, Sean Stevens , 28, a self-employed computer consultant from Charlestown, appeared in Charlestown District Court, waving and smiling as they were each arraigned on a felony charge of placing a hoax device in a way that causes panic and a misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct. Both men pleaded not guilty and were released on $2,500 bail. If convicted, they face up to five years in prison on the hoax charge and six months for disorderly conduct.

In the legal community, there was disagreement whether the hoax charge was appropriate because it requires prosecutors to prove the men intended to cause fear. The judge, Paul K. Leary , pointed out that Berdovsky and Stevens say they intended only to participate in an advertising campaign.

"If what they intended to happen is for people to discover the devices and get publicity, then that's not going to be enough to get a conviction," said Boston University law professor David Rossman .

Prosecutors defended their actions. Assistant Attorney General John Grossman said bomb squad members who examined the lighted signs immediately detected three components that suggested the contraptions could be bombs. He said the black signs, about the size of a laptop computer, had what appeared to be a duct-tape wrapped package with a wire running into it and a power source, which would be needed to detonate a bomb.

"The devices looked like bombs " and had an "ominous nature," Grossman said.

Grossman indicated that the investigation is shifting toward the companies and individuals who hired the two men. "We are aware that these defendants are not at the top of the hierarchy here," he said.

In a State Police report, investigators say that Berdovsky told them he met a man in Brooklyn last November who asked him to participate in a "promotional stunt" and steered him to Interference. The company promised to pay Berdovsky and Stevens $300 each to install 40 of the signs around Boston. A marketing company official, whom Berdovsky identified as Adrienne Yee, sent him an e-mail listing the "do's and don'ts" of where to place the signs. Target areas included train stations, overpasses, "hip and trendy areas, high traffic areas of high visibility."

Berdovsky told police they put up the signs in two waves, 20 about two weeks ago, then a second wave of 18 Monday night into Tuesday. The second wave -- Berdovsky called it Boston Mission 2 -- was photographed by a third person, identified in court papers as Dana Seaber . Seaber, 27, has not been charged.

Stevens was interviewed separately and "freely admitted to the same involvement as Berdovsky," police said. Stevens also handed over three signs with batteries and two expandable poles used to place the magnetic signs.

Maria Cramer and John R. Ellement of the Globe staff and Globe correspondents Jack Gillum and Daryl Khan contributed to this report. Levenson can be reached at levenson@globe.com; Mishra at rmishra@globe.com.