Guardsman says he knew making bomb threats was 'stupid'

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A national guardsman accused of making five bomb threats to Tennessee National Guard posts said in a signed statement that he knew it was stupid "but I kept doing it anyway."

"Each time I made a call, I would think that this was stupid and I was going to be caught ...," Robert Wayne Black said in the statement made Sept. 18 to state and federal authorities.

It was read Friday during Black's detention hearing in U.S. District Court. Black faces up to 50 years in prison and $250,000 in fines if convicted on five counts of threatening to damage property using fire and explosives.

Black did not give a motive but described how he called in the threats, usually from pay phones on the way to work. He said he was among the hundreds of people evacuated because of the threats.

During one evacuation, he said, "I was talking to my co-workers and they were saying how the caller needed to be caught and how upset they were. I just agreed with them."

Black, 38, of Smyrna, was arrested on Sept. 18 when he was observed making a call from a pay phone at a drug store near the Tennessee Guard Armory. A bomb threat made at the same time was traced to the pay phone.

The area was being watched by dozens of agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the state fire marshal's office, Nashville Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

In an audio tape made of the phone call, the caller is heard saying: "Yes, I just want to let y'all know that what happened last week at the World Trade Center is going to happen to you at Berry Field today." Berry Field is where the Tennessee Air National Guard operates.