Letter Claims Responsibility for 2 Bombings in Atlanta

A letter purportedly sent by an ultra-fundamentalist group called the Army of God claimed responsibility Monday for the weekend bombing of a lesbian nightclub and last month’s attack on an abortion clinic.

Federal investigators said they were trying to determine whether the letter was legitimate. They were also checking into a telephone call made Sunday to the Gay Community Yellow Pages in which a caller claimed that a Los Angeles neo-Nazi organization bombed the nightclub.

Bobby Browning, spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said it was too early to tell whether either of the claims was legitimate. The letter, which was sent to the Reuters news organization, contained details about how the bomb was made, but authorities declined to comment on specifics and asked the news organization to withhold some information.

“It’s really too early to tell the value of the letter,” Browning said. “We’ll have to see whether it contains information that only the person responsible would have known.”

He also said there was no way to know for sure whether the letter writer really was affiliated with the so-called Army of God, which has been blamed for a number of crimes directed at abortion doctors and clinics across the country.

The two-page, handwritten letter, which was postmarked Saturday from an Atlanta branch post office, threatened “total war” against the federal government and promised further attacks on homosexuals and their supporters.

The letter referred to abortion as the annual “murder” of 3.5 million children and said the practice would not be tolerated.

Mary Ann Mauney, research director of the Center for Democratic Renewal, an Atlanta-based organization that monitors hate groups, said three men calling themselves the Army of God kidnapped an Illinois doctor and his wife in 1982. Two years later, the group was blamed for bombing two abortion clinics in Virginia, she said.

The group also has published a manual that provides detailed information on how to make bombs and use other means to destroy abortion clinics.

Bryan Levin, director of the Center on Hate and Extremism at Stockton College in Pomona, N.J., said the manual contains a declaration of war against what the writers call “the children-killing industry of Amerika.”

Up until now, the group has not been known to take responsibility for any anti-gay or anti-lesbian activity.

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The Otherside Lounge, a club frequented by lesbians, was the third target hit by pipe bombers in Atlanta in the last seven months. The other two were a suburban building containing an abortion clinic and an outdoor concert in a park during the Summer Olympics.

Friday night, one bomb exploded in a patio area of the nightclub, injuring five people. Police used a remote-control robot to safely detonate a second bomb, which was found in the club’s parking lot.

A similar two-bomb strategy was used at the abortion clinic. Authorities speculated that the first bomb was designed to lure investigators and rescue personnel into the vicinity of the second bomb, which contained life-threatening nails as shrapnel. The first bomb at the abortion clinic did not contain nails, authorities said.

Both of the bombs planted at the nightclub contained nails, as did the one that exploded last July in Centennial Olympic Park. That bomb killed one woman and injured more than 100 people. A second person died of a heart attack triggered by the bomb.

The Olympic park bomb was made with a black powder mixture instead of the dynamite reportedly used in the bombs planted at the abortion clinic and the nightclub.

Authorities revealed little information about the telephone call made Sunday to the Gay Community Yellow Pages, but a spokeswoman for the company, which is based in Phoenix, said the female caller left a voice-mail message at about 7:25 a.m. Sunday. She claimed to represent a group called the Sons of the Confederate Klan that she said bombed the nightclub. The caller said the organization, which she also called SOCK, is a new neo-Nazi organization based in Los Angeles.

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Neither the Center for Democratic Renewal nor the Center on Hate and Extremism had heard of such a group.

The Gay Community Yellow Pages has 11 offices around the country, and unanswered calls are all bounced to the headquarters. Because of that, company officials were not sure where the call was made. They said there is no office in Los Angeles.

As the investigation into the bombing continued, members of Atlanta’s gay and lesbian communities reacted to the assault on their community with a mixture of concern and defiance.

Owners of gay and lesbian bookstores reported that their shops were packed all weekend. “People just wanted to come and be with other people and show their support,” said Philip Rafshoon, owner of the Outright Bookstore.

“The mood is the same as after the bombing at Centennial Park, which is, ‘[Expletive], we’ll go where we want to go,’ ” he said.

Linda Bryant, co-owner of Charis, a bookstore frequented by lesbians, speculated that the target was not so much homosexuals as women. Bars that cater to gay men are much more plentiful and usually have more customers, she said. “My feeling is that this was very much directed at women--lesbians but also at women,” she said.

While some gays criticized national political figures for being slow to denounce the bombing, Melanie Rosen of the Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Center praised the way authorities are conducting the investigation.

The task force already in place to investigate the abortion clinic bombing is handing the nightclub bombing as well. Additional personnel were flown in from Washington over the weekend, bringing the total number of investigators to almost 100, Browning said.

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Investigators were being extremely “sensitive” and “understanding” in conducting their inquiry, said Rosen, speculating that that may be because the bombs apparently were intended to harm law enforcement personnel as well as lesbians.

Even if the bomber’s motive ultimately was to maim or kill members of the law enforcement community, Rosen said, the nightclub was chosen because of its clientele.

“The Otherside is known as a lesbian bar, and it’s not known as anything else,” she said. “And it sits in an area that is full of other bars. It was not a coincidence that this is the bar that was bombed.”

Gays rallied Sunday near the site of the weekend bombing and at the state Capitol. Another rally is planned for this weekend.

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Times researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.