Bomb Found in Federal Courthouse in Atlanta : Terrorism: Another device kills a Savannah lawyer. Attacks may be linked to NAACP tear gas incident.

A bomb was safely removed from the building housing the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, but a Savannah attorney was killed when another bomb exploded in his office. The fatal blast came two days after the package bomb murder of an 11th Circuit judge in Alabama.

In Birmingham, Ala., where authorities were investigating the bombing that killed U.S. Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance on Saturday, FBI Agent Tom Moore said: “The preliminary investigation (in Savannah) indicates strong similarities to the other explosive devices in Birmingham and Atlanta.”

The FBI said the attacks might be linked to the August, 1989, tear gas bombing of the NAACP’s regional headquarters in Atlanta. Special Agent William Hinshaw said in Savannah that the agency is warning lawyers, judges and NAACP activists in Georgia and Alabama to be suspicious of strange packages.

In Atlanta, frightened employees were evacuated from the five-story downtown court building before the device discovered there early in the day was disarmed by munitions experts. Security was tightened at other federal buildings in Atlanta.

Authorities said that the Atlanta bomb had been found in a package in the courthouse mail room. They refused to say to whom it was addressed but said it resembles the powerful device that killed Vance and severely injured his wife, Helen, at their Mountain Brook, Ala., home in the Birmingham suburbs.

Investigators said they are exploring a possible connection between the Atlanta and Birmingham bombs. Officials said that the two incidents have been placed at the top of the FBI’s list of investigations.

“I can assure you, we will leave no stone unturned,” FBI agent Allen P. Whitaker told a news conference in Birmingham.

Jim Holland, a postal inspector, told the same news conference that “there could be a significant connection between the two packages.”

In Savannah, attorney Robert Robinson, a black civil rights activist and city alderman, died after undergoing emergency surgery for injuries he suffered in the bomb blast in his office around 5 p.m., officials said.

Robinson, 42, “lost his right arm, his left hand and some upper body tissue and (had) severe damage to his legs,” according to a fellow alderman, Floyd Adams.

A federal official who assisted in the investigation of the Savannah attack described the “grisly” scene in Robinson’s office in the city’s historic district, where the bomb blew a rectangular hole in the attorney’s second-floor desk.

“It would have been difficult to imagine anyone surviving that attack,” said the official, Lance Hearns, an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Hearns said the package had been delivered in the regular mail just before noon Monday, but that Robinson had not collected it until he returned to the office.

“He carried it upstairs to his private office,” Hearns said. “It was a very unfortunate scene.”

At a Savannah news conference late Monday, FBI agent Bob DeLoach said it was “definitely a possibility” that white supremacists had sent the bomb that killed Robinson.

Agent Hinshaw said the FBI also warned the NAACP that the attacks appear to be related to the Aug. 22, 1989, tear-gas mail bomb attack at the NAACP’s Atlanta offices, in which eight people, including an infant, were injured.

The caustic gas bomb was sent to the civil rights organization via Postal Service “Priority Mail.” It was addressed only to the NAACP, not to any individual, and had a phony return address.

Several investigators in Birmingham trying to find clues to Vance’s murder were immediately dispatched to Atlanta Monday. Both the Atlanta and Birmingham devices are said to be “nail bombs,” in which nails are packed into an explosive device, and both were delivered through the mail. In addition to the FBI, the Marshals Service and Postal Service, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and local police officers and sheriff’s deputies are taking part in the investigations.

Authorities continued to comb court records, looking for cases that could provide motives for the judge’s slaying.

The 12-member 11th Circuit handles federal appeals from Alabama, Georgia and Florida, and the bulk of the circuit’s caseload is drug-related. Investigators said that they are ruling out no possibility, including the theory that Colombian cocaine bosses may be behind the murder.

However, in Washington, a senior official who is close to the investigation went to great lengths to play down that possibility, asserting that all the characteristics of the bombing make it unlikely.

“None of it seems to match what you would expect from trained killers trying to deliver a message,” the official said.

Another official said, “I don’t think it makes any sense. You look at motivation in this business, and the only person who says, ‘I’d like to get rid of that appeals court judge,’ is a trial court judge who has been reversed (by the appellate court jurist).”

The official, emphasizing that he was being facetious to make a point, said that appellate court judges “are, by and large, a pretty faceless people. You have to look very carefully at a newspaper report of their decisions to see who wrote them. It wouldn’t make a point” for Colombian drug kingpins to be going after an appellate court judge, he said.

A knowledgeable source said Monday night that several federal judges in Florida had received anonymous telephone calls from a man with a Spanish accent on the afternoon that Vance was killed.

According to the source, the caller asked each of the judges whether Vance were there and then hung up. Not until they learned later that Vance had been assassinated did the Florida judges suspect that the calls may have been meant as a warning, the source said.

Although investigators have refused to disclose details about the mail bombs, a source close to the investigation disclosed that the package sent to Vance bore the return address of Judge Lewis R. Morgan, a colleague on the 11th Circuit.

On seeing the familiar name on the brown-paper-wrapped box, Mrs. Vance said to her husband: “Look, here’s a package from Judge Morgan,” said the source, who is familiar with what the widow told investigators.

“I wonder if he’s sending me some more magazines like he did last year,” Vance responded. Moments later, the bomb exploded.

Vance was only the third federal judge to be killed in this century.

The judge, who was highly praised as a scholar and as a person, has been controversial at times. In 1985, he told a lawyer trying to prevent deportation of 1,500 Cuban refugees that the U.S. government “can keep the detainees in the Atlanta pen until they die.”

That same year, he was on a panel that cleared the way for prosecution of Ku Klux Klansmen in a violent 1979 confrontation with black civil rights marchers in Decatur.

No one has claimed responsibility for the judge’s murder, the Savannah bombing or the placing of the Atlanta bomb.

The Atlanta bomb was discovered shortly after 9:30 Monday morning in the court building’s mail room during an X-ray examination of mail. Pictures of it showed what “looked like electric wires,” a mail room employee said.

Court officials telephoned authorities, who carefully examined the device, taking fingerprints and other information that could help identify the bomb’s sender. At around noon, a member of the Atlanta police bomb squad, along with an FBI official, emerged from the building carrying the device. They loaded it onto a red truck, which sped away under police escort as bystanders looked on.

The bomb was taken to a site near the police academy, where it was safely defused late Monday afternoon. Officials said that they will examine the device, part by part.

FBI agent Whitaker said that the Atlanta bomb was addressed “to someone in the court system,” but he refused to elaborate. One source close to the investigation said that the bomb package carried the return address of an Atlanta attorney, but he refused to disclose the name, saying, “It’s being checked out.”

In the wake of the incidents, law enforcement officials have extended their precautionary warnings beyond judges to other court employees and their families. “We have notified court families to use procedures” that include screening any items they receive at home or work, Marshal Thomas C. Greene told the Birmingham news conference.

Security measures were heightened at federal courthouses around the country Monday.

In Los Angeles, about two-thirds of Los Angeles’ 30 federal District Court judges met with the U.S. Marshal, officials of the U.S. Postal Service and the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad at the federal courthouse to discuss security procedures.

Judge Terry T. Hatter said the meeting was useful but that he didn’t plan to do anything dramatically different. “We’re going to be more cautious, that’s just using common sense,” he said.

U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian said, “I don’t think (the Vance killing) is going to intimidate any judge in this country. We have a lot of confidence in the Marshals Service.”

U.S. Marshal Samuel Cicchino would not divulge what had been discussed in the meeting with the judges and said there would be no major changes in security at the U.S. courthouse. For years, all persons entering the building from Spring Street or Main Street have been required to pass through a metal detector, and every piece of mail and every package that arrives at the courthouse is put through an X-ray machine.

Cicchino said that on Monday one box that looked suspicious on an X-ray machine was opened by the police bomb squad. He said it turned out to be a package of Christmas cookies.

The marshal said that any person who receives an unordered package or anything else in the mail that looks suspicious should call the 911 emergency number and ask for help.

In San Francisco, the headquarters of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, clerks diverted all mail for appellate judges to the main federal courthouse, where it was X-rayed. Court of Appeals judges were given the option of having their personal mail checked, Mark Mendenhall, assistant executive for the circuit court, said.

Clerks were “taking very seriously” the possibility of violence and were seeking authorization for a screening device for mail and personnel.

“We’d like them in place today,” Mendenhall said. “Working through Washington takes longer than today.”

In Chicago, the U.S. Marshal’s office said it had taken several specific additional security measures at the federal courthouse but would not spell them out. Because of previous terrorist trials in Chicago and sensitive gang prosecutions, security at Chicago courts is already at a relatively high level.

In a related development, the Associated Press reported that Florida Gov. Bob Martinez, who said his life has been threatened by Colombian drug barons, said Monday that, as a result of Vance’s assassination, he will consider wearing a bulletproof vest. Martinez said he would reevaluate his previous refusal to follow the advice of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which had urged the governor to wear the vest during some public appearances.

Staff writers Doug Jehl in Atlanta, Larry Green in Chicago, Dan Morain in San Francisco and Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles contributed to this story.