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Group’s Letter Claims It Was Responsible for Thwarted Truck Bomb

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

An organization calling itself Up The IRS Inc. has claimed responsibility for leaving a powerful chemical bomb on the back of a pickup truck in West Los Angeles last week, and investigators said Wednesday that the group may be linked to other, similar bombings in Southern California.

In a three-paragraph letter to the Santa Monica Outlook newspaper, the organization said it had targeted the Internal Revenue Service office on Olympic Boulevard because of “high, unfair and ambiguous taxes.”

The letter warned that the IRS and other, unnamed government agencies “can expect to see more of these events and with increasing severety (sic) with successive events.”

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Excerpts from the letter were published by the Outlook on Wednesday.

“I think we’re taking this seriously, since this is the second time they have claimed credit for bombing that building,” said Rob Giannangeli, an IRS spokesman in Los Angeles. “Of course, whenever anything like this happens--people doing destructive things because they don’t agree with taxes--(it) always causes us problems. But I want to emphasize that our people are just doing their jobs. They don’t write the tax laws.”

Although Up The IRS Inc. also claimed credit for the Sept. 19, 1988, bombing of the underground garage beneath the same West Los Angeles office building, police said it was too early to say if the two letters are authentic or even from the same group.

FBI spokesman Fred Reagan declined to discuss the case, saying only that the agency had obtained the original letter from the newspaper and that it was being studied by specialists in a crime laboratory.

Reagan also declined to say if the owner of the truck had been found, or questioned, or if authorities believe that the IRS was the intended target of the bombings.

Other law enforcement officials, however, said that investigators are working under the assumption that the letter is authentic and that the organization may be linked to a third incident three years ago. In that case, handmade mortars were used to launch explosive devices at a Laguna Niguel federal building where the IRS has offices. The devices did not explode and no one was injured.

“There are just a lot of common threads,” said Sgt. Bob Giles, an intelligence officer with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “There are a lot of things that lead us to believe that this may be the same group.”

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Giles said he has been working with a local and state task force, formed after the September, 1988, Los Angeles bombing, to determine if the same people or organization were responsible for all three incidents.

“Everyone right now is going almost in the same direction, running a cooperative effort among the local FBI agents and all the police agencies involved,” Giles said.

No one ever claimed responsibility for the Laguna Niguel attack, in which at least two explosive devices were fired at the Chet Holifield federal building on the afternoon of March 2, 1987.

In the latest incident, last Thursday, five 55-gallon steel drums filled with explosive chemicals were found loaded into the back of a Dodge pickup truck on Colby Avenue near Olympic Boulevard. Police said the drums were attached to detonators and had apparently been set to go off early Thursday when the truck was found burning.

Bomb experts eventually disarmed and removed the drums after a tense day in which 16 blocks were evacuated and traffic was backed up for miles.

IRS spokesman Giannangeli said the tax agency employs 230 people on the fifth floor of the City National Bank building in the 15500 block of Olympic Boulevard.

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From the beginning, investigators have been reluctant to discuss the case, and they were not saying Wednesday if they believed that the letter claiming responsibility was authentic.

The letter said the explosives were placed in the area to celebrate George Washington’s birthday.

“George would have applauded and had a good laugh at the distress of the theives (sic) in the IRS office,” it said. “It should be obvious that the timing of the event was intended to minimize the probability of harm to people and to maximize the disturbance and to maximize the cost to the IRS and their landlord, City National Bank. We are happy no one was injured and hope everyone enjoyed a leisurely day.”

The letter went on to explain that “the chemicals used are explosive (and quite common) and could have exploded because of the fire’s heat or from the shock of one of the minor explosives that were set off. There were no detonators attached directly to the barrels. That would have produced an explosive equivalent to about 800 pounds of dynamite.”

Police would not comment on the accuracy of the letter’s contents.

Detective Patrick Metoyer, a supervisor with Los Angeles Police Department’s criminal conspiracy section, said he had little information on the group, but added he suspected that “it is the same one” involved in the 1988 Los Angeles bombing.

“We are just trying desperately to identify the perpetrators of these incidents, to get these cases solved,” he said.

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