Page 114 - Encyclopedia Of Terrorism

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88———Centennial Park Bombing

Holland, Jack. Hope Against History: The Course of black acting suspiciously in the moments before the
Conflict in Northern Ireland. New York: Henry Holt, bombing.
1999. Within three days of the bombing, however, Jewell,
McKittrick, David. Making Sense of the Troubles. Belfast: who had been lauded as a hero for two days following
Blackstaff, 2000. the bombing, was named as a suspect. He was also the
O’Brien, Brendan. The Long War: The IRA and Sinn Fein. first defendant named in a lawsuit charging that secu-
2nd ed. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1999.
Taylor, Peter. Provos: The IRA and Sinn Fein. London: rity had been slow to evacuate the area, causing exten-
Bloomsbury, 1997. sive injuries. From August to October 1996, authorities
made concerted efforts to link Jewell to forensic evi-
dence, though hair samples and voice identification
tests did not confirm his involvement and he was
CENTENNIAL PARK BOMBING cleared. Later suspects included members of the Phineas

Priesthood, who were caught in Spokane, Washington,
after bombings at a newspaper, a bank, and a Planned
In the early-morning hours of July 27, 1996, a
pipe bomb exploded in Atlanta’s Centennial Park, the Parenthood clinic. They, too, were cleared.
after-hours meeting place of the 1996 Olympic By June 1997, however, a handful of clinic and
Games. The bombing killed one person and injured antigay bombings in the Atlanta and Birmingham,
more than 100 others. A Turkish cameraman at the Alabama, areas led investigators to another suspect—
scene died of a heart attack. Eric Robert Rudolph. On October 14, 1998, more
A few minutes before 1 A.M., Richard Jewell, an than two years after the fact, Rudolph was charged in
AT&T security guard, alerted officials to a suspicious connection with the Centennial Park bombing. As of
group of rowdy drunks near a sound tower in the park. 2002, he remains at large, believed to be hiding out in
Jewell had also noticed a suspicious green knapsack the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina,
that had been left after the group dispersed. At 1:07 A.M. though some doubt he is still alive.
the police received an anonymous 911 call. The voice See also BOMBINGS AND BOMB SCARES; ERIC RUDOLPH
on the phone, which investigators would later identify
as that of a white male with a slight Southern accent, Further Reading
said, “There’s a bomb in Centennial Park. You have
“Olympic Park Bombing: Special Section.” CNN. http://
30 minutes.”
www.cnn.com/US/9607/27/olympic.bomb.main/.
Minutes later, bomb experts identified wire and a U.S. Congress. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
pipe bomb in the knapsack and began evacuating Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Govern-
the area. Shortly after 1:20 A.M., the bomb exploded; ment Information. The Atlanta Olympics Bombing and
investigators later discovered it to have actually been the FBI Interrogation of Richard Jewell. Washington, DC:
three pipe bombs filled with smokeless gunpowder, GPO, 1997.
nails, and screws. Flying shrapnel caused most of
the 111 injuries that night. By 2 that morning, all of
downtown Atlanta had been sealed off. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
From the start, authorities believed the bombing to
be an act of domestic terrorism, partly because of the
crude nature of the homemade pipe bomb, and partly The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an inde-
because the attack did not appear to have an overtly pendent agency of the U.S. government responsible
political target. (Later reports suggest that the bomb for amassing and assessing foreign intelligence to aid
was intentionally set to hurt the law enforcement offi- the president, the National Security Council (NSC),
cers assisting in the evacuation, a suggestion in keeping and other officials in making national security deci-
with the domestic terrorism hypothesis.) Early suspects sions. Such information is considered to be the first
included a local group of extremely violent skinheads line of defense against terrorism.
and the Georgia Militia, a group that had been arrested In 1947, as a direct result of the intelligence failure
in April 1996 for allegedly building pipe bombs. An that allowed Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor,
eyewitness account reported four white men dressed in U.S. president Harry S. Truman signed the National