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[at-l] Bombing Suspect On Most Wanted List (AP)

Everybody
This is an on topic post, imho, considering the search area is on/near the AT.
TraderJohn

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI wants to question the man charged in the first fatal
U.S. abortion clinic bombing about the 1996 Olympic blast and two other
attacks in Atlanta. The bureau offered a $1 million reward and added him to
its 10-most-wanted list Tuesday.
The reward for Eric Robert Rudolph was increased from $100,000 ``to get
national attention,'' FBI Director Louis Freeh told a news conference.
Already charged with the Jan. 29 bombing of a Birmingham, Ala., abortion
clinic, Rudolph is sought for questioning in three Atlanta bombings because
``some similarities in the bombings ... indicate the possibility that the
crimes are related,'' Freeh said.
The Atlanta blasts began at Centennial Olympic Park in July 1996, where one
person was killed and more than 100 injured.
But officials stopped short of calling Rudolph a suspect in the Atlanta cases
because there is not enough evidence to charge him with those attacks.
``We're here to ask the American people for their help,'' Attorney General
Janet Reno said. ``Whoever committed these acts might kill again and must be
brought to justice.''
The 31-year-old carpenter and experienced outdoorsman has eluded hundreds of
agents on a federal-state-local task force since the Birmingham bombing, which
killed an off-duty policeman working as a security guard and injured a nurse.
Rudolph's truck was spotted near the clinic that day.
``The combined effort of these law enforcement agencies has not been enough,''
said John W. Magaw, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
``The American people are needed. Help make your country safer and make the
million-dollar phone call'' to the task force's toll-free number,
1-800-575-9873.
Rudolph was last seen Jan. 30 near his home in rugged western North Carolina
where his truck was abandoned and the search has centered, Freeh said, adding
that Rudolph could be overseas now but investigators presume he is still in
this country.
``We looking all over the country,'' Freeh said. A survivalist, Rudolph has
the experience to survive alone in the wild and ``could have gotten on the
Appalachian Trail and walked to Maine or Florida.''
So far, there is no evidence Rudolph is receiving assistance from anyone nor
that he belongs to any extremist group, Freeh said.
Nevertheless, Freeh saw ``a significant linkage'' between the Birmingham and
Atlanta cases. He cited the fact that letters claiming responsibility and
signed ``Army of God'' were sent after the Birmingham incident and after a
February 1997 bombing at a gay bar in Atlanta and that abortion clinics were
targeted in Birmingham and Atlanta in January 1997.
Freeh also said all the bombs ``were powerful anti-personnel devices -
containing nails - that were designed to kill and maim.''
So far, investigators are not able to say Rudolph wrote the block-lettered
Army of God letters, which fulminate against abortion and homosexuals, nor
that his voice matches that in a telephoned warning before the Olympic
bombing, Freeh said.
And Magaw said photos and videotapes taken by citizens in Centennial Olympic
Park show ``no real close look-a-likes'' to Rudolph.
Investigators earlier had said they believe all three Atlanta attacks were the
work of the same person or people.
On March 17, the task force investigating the Birmingham bombing was merged
with an older task force assigned to solve the Atlanta bombings. The Southeast
Bombing Task Force is working in Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina on all
four attacks.
Some forensic links between Rudolph and the Atlanta bombings could be merely
coincidences, said a senior agent on the case, who requested anonymity. ``But
in this business if you can pile up enough coincidences, sometimes you get
somewhere,'' the agent said.
The Olympic and Atlanta abortion clinic bombs had one-eighth-inch- thick steel
plates, designed to direct the blasts. These plates were found to have the
same general formulation of steel, the agent said. Some of the manufacturers
who make that type of steel sold it in the Southeast, including to a
metalworking plant in Franklin, N.C., where an associate of Rudolph worked,
the agent added.
Another federal agent said lab analysis showed that 1 1/2-inch flooring nails
used in the bombs in Birmingham and at the Atlanta abortion clinic came from
the same batch as nails found in a storage shed rented by Rudolph. The batch
of nails ``was produced and sold in a small area,'' this agent said.
Freeh said investigators still are trying to learn whether Rudolph was in
Atlanta at the time of those bombings.
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