Klan Plans Marches to Protest King Celebrations : The South: The KKK moves heighten tensions in the wake of possibly racial bombings. Authorities are ready for trouble.

Planned marches by the Ku Klux Klan to protest Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday celebration have heightened tensions here in the wake of a series of bombings and attempted bombings that remain unsolved, civil rights and law enforcement officials said Wednesday.

Klan organizations plan at least two marches next month--one on Jan. 6 and the other on Jan. 20. A permit has been issued for the first demonstration, and one for the second is pending, police said.

In many places around the South, such demonstrations have flourished since King’s birthday was declared a national holiday on Jan. 20, 1986.

The marches, always occasions for anger among civil rights activists and extra precautions among law enforcement officials, take on additional significance this year because the FBI has said that white supremacists are prime suspects in bombings that killed a white federal judge in Alabama and a black lawyer in Georgia.

The theory is that supremacists, angered by court decisions against them, may have committed the murders in revenge. Klan members have denied responsibility for the crimes.

“I’ve never heard a speech made where anybody cut down a federal court judge, except to say they’re all scum,” one local klansman said.

Nevertheless, Pat Clark, director of Klanwatch, part of the Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center, said that the klan, in planning the rallies, could be responsible for “heightening the tension because of the bombings.”

She said klan leaders are “flaunting the situation,” adding that “their mode of operation has been to capitalize on tense situations. In their minds, they see (the marches) as an opportunity to exploit tension.”

Police MajW. Holley, commander of the Atlanta department’s special operations division, called the pending klan rallies “a sore spot that can hurt as far as crowd control is concerned.” He added that he was “concerned about counterdemonstrators” who might become unruly or clash with klansmen.

Meanwhile, investigators continue to seek clues to the two bombings and two attempted bombings. Authorities said Wednesday that they have not narrowed their list of suspects down to one group or individual and that, although a racist motive seems likely, other possibilities have not been ruled out.

“We have a broad spectrum of possibilities,” said Tom Moore, an FBI agent in Birmingham, Ala. “We’ve interviewed a few people who’ve had alibis.”

Joseph W. Hardy, an agent in the Atlanta FBI office, said that investigators have covered “an initial flurry of leads” and now “are following subsequent leads. We continue to turn new leads.”

Powerful package bombs delivered through the mail killed Robert S. Vance, a judge of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court, in Mountain Brook, Ala., and Robert Robinson, a lawyer, in Savannah, Ga.

Other bombs were removed from a court building in Atlanta and the NAACP office in Jacksonville, Fla., and defused.

In addition, a Maryland judge was injured when he opened a package bomb delivered to his home, but authorities believe that device was sent by a “copy cat.”

Officials are on alert for more bombs and plan to bolster their forces for the planned demonstrations.

They expect more than 100 klansmen and their sympathizers to attend the first demonstration, which is to be held at the state Capitol building here. Klansmen want to hold the second rally on federal property near King’s tomb in downtown Atlanta. Officials expect that rally to attract fewer people than the first one.

Stoney Johnson, a spokesman at the King Center, which is organizing a Jan. 7-15 celebration of the murdered civil rights leader’s birth, said the center had no official comment on the demonstrations. But he said his personal view is: “They have the right to protest, and I’ll defend their right to protest.”

Although the klan’s estimated membership has dropped from 15,000 in 1980 to a current 6,000, it is still the best known of the white supremacist groups, which now claim a total of 20,000 hard-core members nationwide.

The planned marches are but the klan’s most recent high-profile activity. In Georgia, the klan holds rallies periodically, including one last September in nearby Gainesville that centered on protests against the influx of immigrants in this state.

Earlier this month, in a town called White Settlement, Tex., the klan offered to join protesters at an anti-abortion rally, but the anti-abortionists were angered when they learned that klansmen wanted to save only white babies. The two groups wound up protesting separately against abortion rights.

And this week in Lakeland, Fla., klan leaders initiated a “Krush Krack Kocaine” campaign to rid streets of crack dealers. Although klansmen asserted that they will help police by forwarding information to them, the NAACP and law enforcement officials suspected that minority members would be the sole targets.

Given such recent tactics, some klan observers view the Atlanta marches as publicity stunts and urge civil rights activists to stay away from the rallies.

“When the KKK comes to town, it is important that those concerned with justice engage in a dialogue with the larger community” about positive issues, said Daniel Levitas, executive director of the Center for Democratic Renewal, also known as the Anti-Klan Network.

But, like other activists, Levitas noted the potential for an “emotional reaction” among klan opponents.

Therefore, state and local law enforcement officials are preparing for the worst but have refused to say how much their forces will be increased.

“There will be adequate security means taken,” said Bruce Pickett, head of the anti-terrorist squad at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Staff researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.