40 Volunteers Search for Bombing Suspect

Forty volunteers, including teenagers and a family dog, joined ex-Green Beret James “Bo” Gritz in his search for bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph. They hit the North Carolina woodlands, trying to succeed where more than 200 federal agents have failed. In 1992, Gritz helped negotiate an end to the FBI siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and was a mediator in the 1996 standoff with Montana “freemen.” Volunteers wore red, white and blue caps and scarves to identify them as part of Gritz’s search effort, called “Operation Cross.” Volunteers pledged to relinquish any claim to a $1-million reward offered for information leading to Rudolph’s arrest. Rudolph, 31, has been a fugitive since the Jan. 29 bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Ala., that killed an off-duty policeman and severely injured a nurse.