Suspect to Face Charge in ’96 Olympics Blast

Eric Robert Rudolph, who for months has eluded a massive manhunt as a suspect in the bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., abortion clinic, will be charged with the 1996 Olympic Games bombing and two other attacks in Atlanta, law enforcement sources said Tuesday.

In May, when Rudolph was placed on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh said that investigators had developed “a significant linkage” between the Birmingham bombing and the three earlier Atlanta attacks. Freeh said then that, while Rudolph was not an official suspect in the Atlanta bombings, he was “the only individual that we’re seeking right now” for questioning in those cases.

Investigators since have uncovered substantial other evidence linking the crimes but it is not likely to be made public when the charges against Rudolph are announced, a development that could come as early as today, according to the sources who declined to be identified.

The Justice Department action is designed to spur public cooperation in the hunt for Rudolph and to discourage anyone from helping the fugitive, the sources said.

Rudolph dropped from public sight soon after the Jan. 29 attack on the New Woman All Women Health Center in Birmingham, the first fatal bombing of an abortion clinic in the country. An off-duty police officer working as a security guard was killed and a nurse was severely injured as she arrived for work.

In the July 27, 1996, bombing at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park, one person died and more than 100 were injured.

The other Atlanta bombings now connected to the Olympics bombing were a January 1997 attack on an abortion clinic and a February 1997 blast at a gay and lesbian bar.

Rudolph, a 32-year-old carpenter from western North Carolina, has eluded law enforcement officials for about eight months. An experienced survivalist, he is believed to be hiding in the hills where North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia come together.

Technicians for the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have concluded that small steel plates built into the knapsack bomb that exploded in Centennial Park match metal plates in two bombs planted at the abortion clinic in an Atlanta suburb last year, according to federal sources.

The plates were designed to force the blast in one direction, according to investigators. Agents determined that the plates were fashioned from steel at a Franklin, N.C., Machine Co. after a search there in February. The Associated Press reported Tuesday that a “special order” of about 50 pounds of smokeless powder linked to Rudolph has now been tied to the Olympic bombing. A Tennessee gun dealer recently identified Rudolph as the man who bought the special order from him four years ago.

An analysis of bomb scene rubble connected the Atlanta abortion clinic bomb and the explosive used at the Birmingham clinic. And the rare type of flooring nails found at those sites matched nails found in a storage shed that Rudolph had rented in North Carolina, according to federal sources.

Those nails, however, do not seem to match the nails found in the Olympic blast, the sources said.

Federal sources declined to discuss why the charges naming Rudolph have been sealed. But agents have been conducting interviews to try to place Rudolph at the Atlanta bombing scenes and likely would want to protect potential witnesses until Rudolph is apprehended.

When the FBI last May upped the reward for Rudolph’s apprehension from $100,000 to $1 million, Freeh listed these reasons for a significant linkage between the Birmingham and Atlanta cases:

The bombs were all “powerful antipersonnel devices--containing nails--that were designed to kill and maim,” he said.

And letters sent to media outlets shortly after the Birmingham clinic bombing were signed by the “Army of God.” The same group or person also sent letters claiming responsibility for the bombings of the Atlanta clinic and bar.

The letters, all handwritten in block letters, railed against abortion and homosexuals.