Tape May Link Blanton to 1963 Bombing

In a packed, hushed courtroom, prosecutors Friday played an FBI surveillance tape from 37 years ago in which the accused bomber of the 16th Street Baptist Church told his wife he had planned the bombing under a river bridge where the Ku Klux Klan’s most violent cell held its meetings.

Jurors heard Blanton’s then-wife, Jeanne, tell him in the summer of 1964 that the FBI had asked her why he went to the Cahaba River south of Birmingham on the Friday night before the bombing. She said she didn’t know the answer, then asked him to tell her.

“The meeting where we planned the bomb,” he answered.

“What do you need a meeting for?” Jeanne Blanton was heard to ask.

“You have to have a meeting to make a bomb,” Blanton said.

The tape is perhaps the most important government evidence in a case so old that few eyewitnesses or former Klan colleagues of Blanton’s remain alive. So far, witnesses have testified graphically of Blanton’s hatred of blacks--as well as Jews and Catholics--and his desire, as a long-ago girlfriend, Waylene Vaughn, testified Thursday, for “a chance to kill . . . .”

But Blanton’s attorney, John Robbins, said before the tape was played, “They’ve done a fine job of proving my client was a racist. That doesn’t make him the bomber.”

After the tape was played, Robbins was no more impressed with the state’s case. The tape, made on a reel-to-reel recorder in 1964, was barely understandable, with background noise as loud as the voices. Jurors were given a transcript--which the presiding judge refused to release to reporters--and also were supplied headphones to filter out interference.

At the end of Friday’s proceedings, presiding Circuit Judge James Garrett allowed reporters to listen to the tape with headphones, and they had varying interpretations of what Blanton had said. All, however, heard his wife ask why he had gone to the river and heard Blanton answer that he had gone to a meeting to “plan the bomb.”

The powerful bomb exploded about 10:24 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, blowing a massive crater in the wall of the stately church, instantly killing four black girls who were in the ladies’ lounge, dressing for a youth service. Blanton is charged with four counts of murder--one each for Denise McNair, 11, and Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14.

The tape was not discovered until after the FBI reopened the investigation of the bombing in 1996, according to FBI case agent Bill Fleming. He testified that he found it while searching the FBI’s “el-sur,” or electronic surveillance room, for any wiretaps from the original FBI investigation. He also found tapes of conversations between Blanton and a Klan informant who spent long hours with him in the years after the bombing. Some of those tapes are to be played today.

Attendance at the trial had been sparse, but amid reports that crucial evidence would emerge, there were more than 200 people present Friday--about equal numbers of blacks and whites.