Group Claims It Sent Fatal Bombs : Terrorism: A letter says the acts are reprisals for violence by black men against white women. It threatens more attacks.

A group calling itself Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System has claimed responsibility for the mail bombs that killed a federal judge and a lawyer and vowed to kill more people in retaliation for “savage acts of violence by black men against white women,” authorities said Thursday.

The claims and threats were in a letter to Brenda Wood, an anchorwoman at WAGA-TV in Atlanta.

The FBI, making its strongest statement to date linking a specific group to the wave of violence in the South, said that the document “may be authentic and related to the recent bombing attacks.”

The letter, postmarked Dec. 21 and received Dec. 27, said that the group “assassinated” U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert S. Vance and Savannah, Ga., attorney Robert Robinson “in reprisal for the atrocities inflicted on Julie Love,” a white woman who was raped and murdered in Atlanta last year. Two black men have been charged in the slaying.

“Two more prominent members of the NAACP shall be assassinated, using more sophisticated means, as part of the same reprisal,” the letter threatened. Robinson had represented the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People in a desegregation suit involving Savannah schools before the 11th Circuit, which covers Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

“Anytime a black man rapes a white woman in Alabama, Florida or Georgia in the future,” the letter said, “Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System shall assassinate one federal judge, one attorney and one officer of the NAACP.”

Vance was killed on Dec. 16 at his home in Mountain Brook, Ala., when he opened a powerful nail bomb sent through the mail. On Dec. 18, a similar bomb killed Robinson at his office in Savannah. A third bomb, sent to the 11th Circuit Court building here, and one sent to the NAACP office in Jacksonville, Fla., were defused.

Federal investigators, including the FBI, postal inspectors, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the U.S. Marshals Service, as well as local and state officials, have said they believe that the bombings and attempted bombings are connected and may be racially motivated.

Authorities theorized that a white supremacist group or individual may have committed the crimes in retaliation for court decisions favoring black people, including school desegregation cases and cases against the Ku Klux Klan. Some of the klan cases resulted in substantial fines against the KKK.

The 11th Circuit Court handles a large number of civil rights cases, thus making it a likely target, along with the NAACP, which has represented black people in many of the cases.

The letter, parts of which were provided by the TV station, seems to bolster investigators’ theories.

Investigators believe that the letter may be authentic because it contains “similarities” to several “follow-up letters” that were sent to civil rights officials and some of the victims, according to one source close to the investigation. The “follow-up” letters were sent after the wave of bombings began this month.

Investigators say also that letters mailed last August to several TV stations and court officials around the country are similar to the newest letters. One letter was mailed to a Jackson, Miss., station on Aug. 21, the same date that a tear gas bomb exploded at the Atlanta NAACP office.

One investigator, noted, however, that the new letter has “more of a nasty, venomous, bigoted tone” than the earlier letters.

At one point, the letter describes in lurid detail the sex slaying of Love, a 27-year-old preschool fitness teacher, and says her case is “only one of thousands” like it.

Noting the letter’s language, the source asked, rhetorically, whether the writer or writers are “getting wacky” and thus more volatile.

FBI officials said that Americans for a Competent Federal Judicial System “is unknown to any of the agencies participating” in the investigation.

But the group’s name had come up last week, when rights officials reported that the name was on the “follow-up” letters. The letters also contained numbers on the bottom, much like a secret code, officials said.

Daniel Levitas, executive director of the Center for Democratic Renewal, an Atlanta-based organization that monitors hate groups, likened the letter writer or writers to the far-right group Posse Comitatus, which is based mainly in the Midwest and West. “The language in some of these letters criticizing the judiciary . . . seems to indicate to me that (the views are) consistent with that particular far-right group’s world view,” he said.