Questions Are Raised About Call to Police Before Atlanta Blast

As new questions were raised Monday about the handling of a 911 call to police, the FBI said it still has no suspects in the weekend bombing of an Olympic gathering in a downtown park.

Authorities expressed confidence, however, that an arrest would be made. “History leads me to believe we will make an arrest,” said FBI special agent David Tubbs, the agency spokesman in Atlanta. “We will continue working this case until we make an arrest.”

Composite drawings have been made of people seen in the area about the time of the explosion, but “we’re not ready at this time to label anyone a suspect,” he said.

Atlanta Police Chief Beverly Harvard emphatically denied that a dispatcher delayed taking action for 10 minutes on an anonymous call warning that a bomb would explode in Centennial Olympic Park in 30 minutes.

“There was not a lag in terms of a call coming in and no action taking place,” she said. “There was no lag.”

She insisted, as she did Sunday, that police followed established protocol in first dispatching an officer to the location where the traced call was made and dispatching a second officer to the site of the alleged bomb and, thirdly, notifying the bomb management center.

The bomb exploded as the bomb management center was being notified.

Those procedures, she said Sunday, are under review. But new questions have been raised about when the call came in to police headquarters. A local television station reported Sunday that the call was placed at 12:58 a.m., not 1:07 a.m., as police have maintained.

Authorities have maintained that, as a practical matter, the discrepancy is of no consequence, since a state trooper on patrol in the park spotted the device on his own about 1 a.m. and summoned a bomb management team consisting of an FBI agent and an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The bomb exploded at 1:25 a.m. as the officers were moving people away.

Nine law enforcement officers were injured in the blast, including six state troopers, two Georgia Bureau of Investigations agents and one Drug Enforcement Administration officer.

Morris Dees, founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center and author of a recent book on the militia movement, speculated that the 911 call was designed to lure federal agents to the bomb.

“I don’t think that was done for any charitable reason,” he said of the call. “I think it was done to draw as many law enforcement officers to the site as possible to try to kill some of them.”

Dees said the attack has the earmarks of the patriot movement--loosely organized, anti-government, right-wing cells, such as the Viper Militia in Arizona and a group in Macon, Ga., that was arrested in April for possession of pipe bombs.

According to early reports after the arrests, the men had planned to set off pipe bombs during the Olympics. Later, authorities said the targets had been state agencies. The suspects are being held without bond at the Bibb County Jail pending trial.

Such groups might attempt to disrupt the Olympics, Dees said, because such international gatherings are viewed as harbingers of a world government, which the groups oppose. He noted that a group known as the Order had planned to bomb the Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984 before its leaders were arrested.

Tubbs, speaking at a press conference Monday, declined to speculate on why the bomber might place a call to tip off the authorities. “The answer to that would be sheer speculation at this point,” he said.

He said composite drawings won’t be released until after authorities gather more evidence linking individuals to the bombing, and he appealed Monday to people who were near the area where the bomb went off to contact the FBI in Atlanta at (404) 679-9000 or (800) 905-1514.

He also refused to release a tape of the 911 call made shortly before the explosion. Playing the tape in public would spark thousands of people to call, and “we prefer to focus in on an individual before we begin playing that tape,” he said.

He added: “We’ve not at this point focused on any individual or group.”

He did, however, read what he said was the entire message given to the dispatcher: “There is a bomb in Centennial Park. You have 30 minutes.”

“As you can see, it was a very simple, nonspecific message. There was no more information given, and there was certainly nothing in the call that would’ve given anybody involved in security in Centennial Park an idea of where to start looking for a bomb.”

Bomb scares have become almost a commonplace occurrence in Atlanta since the explosion. “There are a lot of copycats out there who are finding great fun in disrupting the Games in whatever way they can,” said Bob Brennan, spokesman for the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games. “It’s very unfortunate. But we must be very careful in dealing with these kinds of threats.”

Authorities said bomb squads are investigating each threat or report of a suspicious object.

Since Saturday, bomb squads have been dispatched to investigate 48 suspected bombs, Tubbs said. The number of threats and suspicious items have far exceeded that amount, but most of the threats were deemed not credible, he said.

“There have been no additional explosive devices found nor any arrests made,” he said.

Less than two hours after he made that statement, authorities closed off a block of Peachtree Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, to investigate a possible bomb at a building that houses some Olympic offices. A knot of spectators huddled near police barricades to watch. Behind them, thousands of others clogged the street, trading pins, hawking tickets and crowding into restaurants. A police spokesman later said no bomb was found.

As the investigation continued, workers prepared for the reopening today of Centennial Olympic Park, filling in the small crater left by the bomb, making repairs and restocking food and merchandise. A memorial service is planned for 10 a.m., to be led by former Mayor Andy Young, a Congregationist minister and co-chairman of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games.

“There will be an increased security presence,” Brennan said. “What we’re trying to do is increase security in the park without interfering with the spirit in which it was conceived and designed.”

In a demonstration of the city’s defiance, Mayor Bill Campbell, members of the U.S. basketball Dream Team and Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls attended a concert by James Brown at the House of Blues, on the edge of the barricaded Centennial Olympic Park. An earlier Brown performance had been disrupted by the bombing.

Afterward, Campbell mingled with spectators outside and assured them that the park would reopen and things would return to normal. “We’ll have more security,” he said, “but we’re still going to have a good time.”

Brennan said Olympic organizers had not begun to count up the amount of lost revenues resulting from closure of the park, which contained a store that sold Olympic merchandise and other concessions. “I must tell you very honestly that I don’t think that has occurred to anybody,” Brennan said. “The potential psychic damage has been much more significant.”

John Hawthorne, whose wife, Alice, was killed in the blast, criticized Olympic officials Sunday afternoon because no one had contacted the family. Young met with family members later Sunday.

Young said Hawthorne’s family was not immediately contacted because “we all were in a state of shock. There was certainly no disrespect.”

Olympic staff members visited with victims and their families Sunday and Monday, Brennan said.

“We intend to maintain contact with those folks for as long as it is helpful to them during this difficult time,” he said.