Somewhere, as you read this, Eric Rudolph sits quietly, much as he always has, out of sight and beyond the reach of FBI and ATF agents. The 31-year-old native of Murphy, North Carolina is the leading suspect in the bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama that has attracted considerable attention on the heels of unsolved explosions in nearby Atlanta and Ted Kaczynski's serial killing.
Such high profile and devastating cases have raised the concern of a public made to feel quite vulnerable by the seeming randomness of attacks, and by the inability to prevent every bombing from being carried out. With such terror comes numerous misconceptions about the Americans who carry out these attacks. Who are they and why do they come to choose this form of violent expression? Who will we find was behind the Atlanta bombings? And are we missing the bigger picture of a war by focusing on the soldier?
A Little Knowledge in the Wrong Hands
Statistics made available by the FBI and ATE show that bombing incidents have increased steadily into the mid-1990s. Over 10,000 bombing incidents were recorded from 1991 to 1995. ATE statistics note that over 40 percent of these have an undetermined motive. And almost fifty percent of bombings are primarily the product of vandalism. Forty percent have an undetermined motive.
Chris Ronay, President of the Institute of Makers of Explosives in Washington, D.C., and the former Chief of the FBI's Explosives Unit, observes, "Things aren't necessarily worse." Ronay senses "kids are experimenting and that's where the numbers come from." An improvised explosive device, referred to as an I.E.D. by weapons specialists, can be made by almost anyone. "(People) can build pipe bombs with either low or high explosives by following instructions on the Internet or in The Anarchist Cookbook," says Alan Brosman, head of the Tactical Explosive Entry School in Southaven, Mississippi, which trains S.W.A.T. teams and other police and military personnel. Improvised explosive devices are homemade and link detonating components, such as a blasting cap or a fuse, with explosive material. The most commonly used of these I.E.D.s are pipe bombs. Brosman describes the pipe bomb as "available, accessible, and powerful."
And I.E.D.s can be plenty powerful. The 1,200 pound ammonium nitrate explosive used underneath the World Trade Center endangered the foundation of one of the largest structures ever built. A more powerful device used in Oklahoma City killed 168 in a flash and ripped open awareness to our vulnerability to bomb attacks. These two incidents were responsible for over $600,000,000 in damage.
Although the number of homicidal bomb attacks is low and relatively unchanged in the five year period where statistics are available, the scope of the attacks, when successful, has unnerved a public weaned on gruesome television images of bomb carnage from Israel to Ireland. Three Atlanta bomb attacks continue to vex a city that now wonders whether Mr. Rudolph is their man.
This is not the first time in recent memory that bombings rattled the security of a community. The very science of behavioral profiling owes its inspiration to the successful investigation of a series of bomb attacks in New York City in the 1950's. George Metesky was a former employee of Con Edison whose disgruntled rage over a work-related injury gave way to a series of bombings that began in 1940. Dubbed the Mad Bomber after sixteen years of periodic attacks, Metesky was eventually apprehended with the help of a psychiatrist. Dr. James Brussel patched together a profile of the Mad Bomber with an understanding of psychopathology, statistics, psycholinguistics, and savoir faire. In doing so, Dr. Brussel provided an example for the behavioral art of today's profilers.
Provided details about the materials in the explosives, the crime scenes, and the Mad Bomber's letters and the expressions they contained, Dr. Brussel proposed he was a symmetrically built paranoid man in his early fifties, polite, with a moderate degree of education. He believed English was a second language of a Slavic immigrant, who must have developed a chronic illness while employed at Con Ed. The psychiatrist further suggested that the Mad Bomber was living in Connecticut with a sister or an aunt. The Mad Bomber, later identified as George Metesky of Waterbury, Connecticut in January 1957, was found to be a Polish immigrant living with two sisters and suffering from tuberculosis.
Metesky, who had written various letters to news agencies and Con Edison, was eventually undone by the grandiose pride that compelled him to take public credit for his actions. And the letters that he signed "F.P." were remembered years later, when bombs began appearing in university settings with the inscription "F.C." Investigators who followed up on related attacks in the midwest had little idea at the time that their search would last sixteen years before the pride of Ted Kaczynski exposed him as the Unabomber.
Bombing ultimately is a grandiose and destructive form of self-expression. Improvised explosive devices are exactly that; each made by the architect in his own style, with signature detonator, case, delivery, and explosive materials. Each target is personally chosen and reflects the attacker's personal conflicts. The device can be tailored to direct damage and to maximize it, and to detonate under certain circumstances.
Like Metesky, Mr. Kaczynski proved to be a loner with even more primitive social skills, but with careful attention to detail for his attacks and for evading detection. And like the Mad Bomber, the Unabomber maintained deeply held grudges for communities he once worked in—science and academia. He targeted universities and technology figures while law enforcement frantically sought to trace him. Unlike Metesky, the Unabomber displayed a high degree of sophistication in his bomb manufacture and delivery. one device placed on a plane, he rigged an altimeter for the detonation to occur when the airliner reached a certain height. In another, a gravity sensitive device detonated when the object was picked up. He placed dummy addresses so mail would be "returned" to the sender, the Unabomber's intended target.
Also, tracking the Unabomber was made more difficult by his practice of mailing explosives from all over the country, leaving little chance, even with today's high-tech forensic science equipment, to trace them. The very paranoia which isolated the Unabomber and Metesky heightened their caution to avoid detection, and separated them from others who would notice their activities or would break their confidence.
Investigators had acquainted themselves with the distinct features of the Unabomber's carefully hand-crafted bombs, and the increasing lethality of their power. Details released to the public were sketchy. The Unabomber's ability to elude capture was transforming him into an underground counter-cultural anti-hero, and authorities, as in all high profile criminal cases, sought to limit the risk for copy-cat crimes.
Apocalypse Now
Bomb terror catapulted from the package bomb variety with the February 26, 1993 attack on the World Trade Center that killed six and caused half a billion dollars in damage. The explosion of a rented vehicle filled with ammonium nitrate fertilizer would be copied horribly only two years later; but this attack marked the spillage of Palestinian-sympathetic terrorism into the American arena.
Perhaps it therefore should not have been a surprise that the April 1995 attack on the Murrah Office Building in Oklahoma City immediately drew suspicion as an Arab sanctioned attack. Saddam was still around, so was Kaddhafy, and the weapon was a truck filled with explosives—remember the Marine barracks in Beirut? But the arrest of former US military personnel Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols confirmed long held fears of domestic crime watchers; that the anti-big government resistance by Americans was turning violent.
The sheer loss of life was staggering. The Oklahoma City attack was followed by an overflow of public backlash directed against the anti-big government movement. Even the Unabomber, in later letters, deplored the attack and the loss of life it brought. The national impact of the Oklahoma City bombing knocked the Unabomber off the front page, but not for long. Only days after the attack, the Unabomber mailed his most lethal package to a California timber executive who was killed instantly. He issued a threat to bomb Los Angeles International Airport, and sent long letters to news agencies. By the end of the summer, the Unabomber had reclaimed the nation's attention.
It was Ted Kaczynski's enlarging appetite for recognition, and his brazen challenge to the New York Times and Washington Post to publish his manifesto to assert his influence, that ultimately led to his downfall. His brother David, reading the newspaper, recognized the peculiarities of his brother's expression and began an inquiry on his own that eventually cracked the case. On April 3, 1996, federal agents took Ted Kaczynski into custody. The reign of the Unabomber was over.
Fear Comes to Atlanta
The spring arrest of the Unabomber began a bizarre saga of the very thorough dissection of his past, and a sentimental portrait of his vulnerability never expected by the agents who tracked a serial killer all those years. How did those web sites depicting the Unabomber as a hero influence the bomber who targeted the 1996 Olympic Games? We do not yet know. But on July 27, 1996, at a late night free concert at Centennial Park in Atlanta, a masonry nail-laden pipe bomb rigged to a Big Ben clock detonated under a park bench. This only minutes after police received a call warning them of the device. Revelers were cleared from the area, but one person was killed and 100 injured. While the loss of life would have been greater had there been no advance warning, the quality of the bomb was not in dispute. "Nails, nuts and bolts, or glass are used in a pipe bomb to intensify fragmentation and casualties within a 360-degree radius of the explosion . . . the only purpose is to take human life," explained Robert Taubert, former FBI supervisory special agent.
A massive search for a suspect included even the State Department, and law enforcement focused on security guard Richard Jewell until he was cleared in late October. The FBI endured public embarrassment from its hasty public indictment of Jewell, who was initially credited with saving many lives by assertively directing people away from the area. Others have also been targeted by the vigorous nationwide law enforcement effort. Chuck Barbee, one of those people, has since been convicted of bombing an abortion clinic in Spokane. Mr. Barbee's wife, Carolyn, told The Echo, "They paid (an arms dealer) $130,000 in reward money to say my husband did it . . . he even said my husband was involved in Atlanta . . . we weren't anywhere near there."
Officials have not definitively linked the next bombing, January 16, 1997 at an abortion clinic in the suburb of Sandy Springs, to the Olympic attacker. Two bombs, constructed with dynamite and flooring nails, and rigged to a Baby Ben clock; the first, outside the clinic, damaged the structure but injured no one. The second, detonated an hour later in the parking lot, injured seven emergency workers who had responded to the first call. This chilling targeting of emergency and investigative personnel has been compared to examples of foreign terrorism, most notably in Israel, Ireland, and Spain, where delayed bombs have been detonated to maximize deaths of military personnel.
The two-bomb attack was repeated one month later, February 21, at The Otherside Lounge, a gay and lesbian nightclub along a popular party strip. The dynamite/wire nails combination, rigged to a Baby Ben clock, injured five that Friday night. Police were alert for a second explosive, and found it in a backpack in the parking lot. They were able to detonate it without injury. This time, the attack was followed by a note from an entity referring to itself as "we," claiming responsibility for the two bombings of 1997. The letter, sent to major news agencies, asserted the abortion clinic and nightclub bombings were carried out by the Army of God.
The Army of God was first mentioned in 1982, claiming responsibility for the kidnapping in Edwardsville, Illinois of an abortion doctor and his wife, demanding a ransom and that President Reagan abolish abortion. After releasing the two, Don Benny Anderson was caught and convicted of the kidnapping plus three abortion clinic bombings in Florida and Virginia. In 1993, Rachelle Shannon shot and wounded a Wichita, Kansas doctor and was sentenced to ten years in prison. Later she was convicted of arsons to six abortion clinics in the Northwest. Buried in her backyard was the Army of God manual. It is commonly believed that potential bombers pick up on the manual and make it their own. But Bob Fink, an Atlanta based security consultant, points out that the Army of God manual contains instructions for how to assemble plastic explosives and ammo-mum nitrate bombs.
The Atlanta attacks "use a technique you can get out of a (U.S.) military field manual," he states. Mr. Fink added the manual is available "all over, at gun shows." The Atlanta attacks drew national attention and an intense investigative response—and no further word from anyone responsible. But the strategy of targeting police and agents for injury by attracting them to an explosive, which may have been the original intention of the caller to the police on the night of the Olympic Park bombing, was eerily reminiscent of the angry anti-big-government extremism that Timothy McVeigh displayed long before the Oklahoma City attack. And the language of the letter, and its link to the anti-abortion movement through invoking the Army of God and "the murder of 3.5 million children every year," rattled abortion rights activists who have long feared a continued escalation of the raucous abortion debate. Since 1982, over $13,000,000 in damage to abortion clinics around the country has resulted from almost 200 arsons, bombings, and shootings.
Card Carrying Member?
In response to a rising tide of terrorist acts linked to left wing causes, most specifically the United Freedom Front in 1982, the FBI elevated its counterterrorism program to the highest investigative priority. Guidelines classifying terrorism were established, including the endorsement of violence, political motivation, and group activity. Terrorism was redefined by the State Department as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience." The proactive approach to terrorism reversed in part the significant curbs on federal investigative powers that grew out of the Watergate era revelations of numerous FBI improprieties during the Hoover era. And since then, the United States has been able to thwart most of the terrorist plots before they could be carried out.
Most involved in terrorist activity are arrested after stealing the monies to finance their operations, or weapons and materials needed to carry them out. With political elements to crime introduced at sentencing, these offenders are treated more harshly. But as we learned from the arrest late this past month in Las Vegas of a microbiologist suspected of planning a biological attack, you can only retain someone who has purchased bubonic plague (as Larry Wayne Harris had only a few years earlier) for so long.
There can be no doubt domestic terrorism is a growing problem. The FBI has 900 open domestic terrorist cases. Before the Oklahoma City bombing they had 100. The strong and compassionate response of the American public to the Murrah Building disaster, echoing even throughout the recent trial of conspirator Terry Nichols, apparently was not so unanimous. Is terrorism behind the Southern bomb attacks? Perhaps, but the link may be more spiritual than anything. Southeast Regional Director of the Anti-Defamation League Jay Kaiman explains that an individual "influenced by a conspiring ideology takes matters into his own hands."
What is broadly described as extreme rightist terrorism has spawned from a small church in California that moved to Hayden Lakes, Idaho and grew into the Christian Identity Movement. Says Mrs. Barbee, a Christian Identity devotee, "We follow biblical law, and the commandments of the Old Testament. We don't have a problem with anyone, we just don't believe in race mixing." But disciples of Christian Identity have since become leaders in Nazi sympathetic cells such as The Order, Aryan Nation, Sheriff's Posse Comitatus, and the White Patriot Party (born and headquartered in Georgia).
Organizations that adopted a violent agenda were confronted by the new law enforcement policy of the mid 1980's. This included the emphasis, at the direction of Attorney General William French Smith on the decapitation of the leadership. Because these new groups were poorly organized, not particularly well educated or skilled, of lower socioeconomic class, and badly financed, eliminating the group leadership had powerful extinguishing effects. Thirty-three terrorist acts were committed in the southeast between 1980 and 1984; this total declined to two between 1985 and 1989.
Individuals acting alone are not designated as terrorists and cannot be investigated as such. This classification is partly how the leaderless resistance has become almost a necessity to the anti-big-government, white supremacy, and anti-abortion movements. And there is no doubt that the wiring of the American public and connection of all levels of education and socioeconomic status through the World Wide Web have enhanced this approach as well. The Internet provides access to hate literature, even instructions for violence. Most importantly, however, the Internet connects people—no matter how isolated—and enables them to feed off one another.
Law enforcement authorities have not regarded the anti-abortion movement with the same terrorist suspicion as the white supremacy and anti-big government communities. The antiabortion movement is well organized and well financed, even as its organized leadership eschews violence. More importantly, the movement is connected with some of the most traditional, law abiding elements of America. Much of the anti-abortion movement is distancing itself from the destructive and injurious violence reported all over the country. But the continued high pitch of the abortion debate makes such a distinction about as easy as separating Iraqis from Saddam Hussein.
Anti-abortion activities drew closer attention when on January 28, 1998, a bomb containing nails exploded outside a Birmingham, Alabama abortion clinic, killing a security guard and injuring a nurse. A short time later, a letter mailed to Atlanta news organizations attributed responsibility to the Army of God. Certain qualities of the note, including a mention of the type of dynamite used, appeared to be identical to the first note. A second note, postmarked in Asheville, North Carolina and mailed to the Cherokee Scout, a small newspaper in Western Carolina, was written in red block lettering and claimed that the "Army of God is more than one." That note was not believed to have been prepared by the same source as the previous two.
Unlike previous incidents, witnesses saw a man flee the scene at the time of the explosion. The Nissan truck he exited in was traced to Eric Rudolph. That truck was eventually found just off a small road, and not too many miles away, from the Cherokee Scout newspaper. One local resident familiar with the area commented, "it looked like someone had ditched it." When bomb residue was identified in the truck, and in a storage locker belonging to Mr. Rudolph, a warrant was issued for Eric Rudolph's arrest.
Eric Rudolph's Family Values
The intense manhunt underway has not yet yielded Mr. Rudolph, who reportedly last resided in Murphy, North Carolina, a mountainous and wooded stretch of Appalachia. Mr. Rudolph, who stocked up on non-perishables before disappearing, spent eighteen months in the military and has survivalist experience. At first glance, Mr. Rudolph appears to fit the profile of a disaffected loner who eventually drifts into a cult or an extremist group based on whom he encounters as an adult.
The events of Mr. Rudolph's life, however, suggest that he is not someone who necessarily gravitated to anything, but was instead homegrown. Mr. Rudolph's mother, according to Mr. Potak, took him in his youth to the Church of Israel, an affiliate of the Christian Identity movement, in Shell City, Missouri. Mrs. Rudolph reportedly moved the family to Western North Carolina in order to be near other adherents. Young Eric was remembered by a teacher for having written a paper denying the existence of the Holocaust. And even at an early age, he was recalled as not providing a social security number to avoid being traced.
The Rudolph family has remained close—close enough that they seem to be the only ones who have had any recent contact with the suspect. And Eric Rudolph himself, according to press sources in Asheville, recently sold the family's home for $65,000. News reports indicated that in recent years, Mrs. Rudolph provided financial support for the legal defense of one Thomas Brarnman on charges relating to explosives. And almost immediately after the Birmingham bombing, the family retained an attorney. Is his mother the villain?
Not necessarily. Mrs. Rudolph could be a devotee with a nonviolent agenda. If Mr. Rudolph is involved, we may be witnessing the ambivalence of someone emotionally tied to his mother and her ideas, simmering with hostility and paralyzed from forming a stable adult identity. He may feel too weak to direct rage at a figure so spiritual and potent in his life as she.
Sources of the Southern Poverty Law Center have connected Mr. Rudolph to Nord Davis, the founder of the Northpoint Tactical Team, a militia group that is affiliated with Christian Identity. Christian Identity, says Mark Weitzman, director of the task force against hate at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in New York, "sanctions bombing because it believes that in a war, any action is justified." But Sheriff Jack Thompson of Cherokee, North Carolina told The Echo, "I talked to [Davis] on several occasions . . . we never had a problem with him." Rudolph may have been quite home-grown.
The militia movement has been linked to the extreme right through the closely related ideologies of many of its devotees. But many militia members insist that connecting them with violent attacks simply because they staunchly defend the right to bear arms is unfair. Robert Stallings, a Tennessee Colonel militia member indicates, "Violence should only be in response to an activity against the populace. Abortion is a political issue, not a military one." Mr. Weitzman observes that the militia movement includes a majority of disaffected people who feel powerless to be heard, and a minority manipulative core who are extremists and see the movement's potential for the disruption of society. But Mr. Stallings disputes this psychopath-leading-the-sheep characterization. "Those people who arm themselves like Hitler goons, well, we're as afraid of them as we are of the government."
According to Mark Potak of the Intelligence Project (former Klan Watch) at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, "The patriot group count has gone from 224 in June 1995 to 858 in the Spring of 1997." Former FBI Behavioral Science Services agent Robert Ressler suggested that "militias spring up as a result of government oppression, for example, Waco, Ruby Ridge, and Richard Jewell, where government was trodding on the rights of citizens." Mr. Stallings offered sympathies to minority groups' anger of reports of overzealous police response resulting in killings—deaths later explained as justified. "We don't hate anybody. But we do hate people who come in and take our property and throw people in jail without due process of law."
Mr. Ressler thinks the military must be wary of personnel passing along weapons to militias. "The anti-government climate is attractive to the military right-wing people who consider themselves patriotic," says Joe Conley, former FBI Behavioral Science Services agent, "and these people could use the military as a convenience to carry out their ends." "The military could turn on itself," he cautions. "I don't want to suggest it is widespread," noted Mark Pitcavage, an author who tracks militia activities. "But the Army is concerned enough to have periodic investigations."
How far can we read into the Rudolph-Davis connection? Asked about Mr. Rudolph, Nord Davis' widow responded that she did not recall who he was. The 31 year-old carpenter and handyman is surprisingly unfamiliar to abortion opponents and activists. The obvious question: Why does he take the lives of others when he has little known connection to the cause?
Detective Work
Now let us apply what we know about the Atlanta and Birmingham attacks to expand that illustration. The microanalysis of crime scene evidence, victims, targets, and communications from the perpetrators is inspired by the approach of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Division, documented in the writings of profile contributors such as Roy Hazelwood, Ann Burgess, and the enormous contributions of John Douglas.
The first attack yields significant information about the underlying conflict the bomber wrestles with. In Centennial Park in Atlanta, the Olympic bombing was carried out on a Friday night amidst revelers at a free concert. Would the choice reflect his personal resentment of the musical culture featured that night? Or did his choice of the Olympics reflect a 'major disappointment in athletics? Or was he hoping to capitalize on the Olympics in Atlanta to gain a lucrative job that might provide stability, possibly at the construction of the facilities? Did a lost love spurn him for someone connected with the success of the Games? Security at the Olympics was especially tight, and for him to enter undetected reflected careful planning and perhaps scouting of the facilities and schedule. There may not have been an easier opportunity for the bomber to place a device without detection; and bombers are especially careful to conceal themselves. Someone who had not before attacked would have been even more cautious.
Considering this all together, resentment for the Olympic organizing committee may have been especially inflamed because of preferential hiring that excluded this white male, already given to views about the inferiority of other groups. A painful, interpersonal and possibly romantic injury may then have precipitated the first attack. The sadness for his social inadequacy would move him to so disrupt the carefree dancing in the park that night; this attack on partiers was to be seen again with the Otherside Lounge bombing. And the foreign tourists exposed to injury would be entirely in keeping with the later passage from the letter, "Death To the New World Order."
What about the telephone call? Was this a means of drawing law enforcement to the scene, or merely ambivalence about causing so much devastation? Or, did a 911 call guarantee the chaos likely to unfold prior to the bomb going off? Given that no entity took responsibility after the bombing, I am inclined to believe that ambivalence was the motivating factor. The decision to attack law enforcement with secondary devices may have been influenced by the bomber's satisfaction over casualties being taken by police and security officials who converged on the scene just before the Centennial Park explosion took place.
As for the materials used in the explosion, they included masonry nails, which confirmed the lethal intent of the attacker. A lantern battery and a military backpack were used suggesting someone with an interest in the outdoors who may have been exposed to military training. Also recovered from the scene was a Big Ben alarm clock.
Fear of capture may have driven the Olympic Park bomber underground, at least until Richard Jewell was cleared. Details of the Olympic Park bombing were released to the public one month before the attack on the abortion clinic in Sandy Springs. The bombing took place with the clinic unoccupied, and the later Army of God note indicated this was by design. The same note listed such entities as "ATF, FBI, Marshall's (sic), etc." as targets. Mentioning the ATF first suggests a link to the anti-big-government groups particularly galled by the Waco incident.
The choice of target provided far easier means of escape without detection than Centennial Park. This suggests the attacks were carried out by different individuals, or that the bomber narrowly escaped capture at the Olympics and chose a much more cautious tactic. The choice of an outlying area suggested that the bomber had familiarity with that suburb, and access to a car as transportation. He may have been someone who traveled to that area for cultural or work reasons. The relative obscurity of the abortion clinic indicates that if the bomber acted alone, he may have worked in the Sandy Springs professional building housing the clinic, possibly in a transient manner (so detection would be more difficult) and was therefore able to case the clinic in a small suburb without drawing attention to himself.
According to the FBI, the Atlanta abortion clinic bomb contained dynamite and flooring nails, and Baby Ben alarm clocks were used as timing devices. Did the choice of clocks represent a copycat or a pattern?
Only one month later, on a crowded strip in Atlanta, a bomb went off in an outside patio of The Otherside Lounge on a Friday night. The materials used at The Otherside Lounge also included dynamite, nails, lantern batteries, and again, Baby Ben clocks. Again a backpack was used. Had the bomb been placed indoors, the casualty toll would have been much higher. Still, this attack was much more public— unless the bomber had access to the outside area at another point in time which enabled him to place the bomb undetected. Bombers are traditionally viewed as conflicted about their sexual identity and expression. The attack on a sexualized target supports this to be the case here as well.
Most notable is the distance between the two bombs' placement at The Otherside Lounge. Bomb placement is done to afford easiest and quickest escape. Either the bomber at the lounge could not find parking closer to the spot within the club where the bomb was placed, or the bomber was inefficient, or— at least in the cases where two bombs were placed— the bomber had an accomplice who placed one bomb in the parking lot and later acted as a getaway driver for the person who placed it inside The Otherside Lounge.
The bomber either had to fill out regulation forms or steal the high explosive—risky in either case. Perhaps he was not so timid as the choice of the Sandy Springs clinic suggested he was. Or, perhaps he found dynamite through his work or connection to the military. The series of bombings being in Atlanta, carried out by someone with an automobile, suggests that the bomber either lived with someone who would notice if he went away to a more distant target, or that he worked at a job that did not allow him the freedom to get away.
The letters sent claiming responsibility were not unusual for a serial bomber. As we learned from the Unabomber's letters, his political ideology evolved over time. The writing included many spelling mistakes, some obvious, suggesting that the bomber acted alone. The orderliness of the bomber that meticulously guides him through choice and procurement of materials, site selection, and timing, and the arrogance of the bomber that compels him to call attention to himself in the first place, is not served by such an unsophisticated letter. If this were a group activity, why would the group not be sophisticated enough to look over the threatening note? The sloppiness contrasted markedly from the communications of Mr. Kaczynski, for example. So while the language in some parts is scripture-like, it is the expression of a disciple parroting an ideology articulated in the name of the church. This pattern is exemplified by words such as "sodomite" and "preversion (sic)."
The righteous tone of the letter, with absolute resolve reinforced by underlined letters, reflects specific expression that may well be lifted from paraphernalia of an organization. Someone who does not check his spelling thinks he is a lot smarter than other people do. Someone who writes in capital letters wants to get attention, and traditionally has trouble doing so. If we fit this into what we understand about narcissism, this is someone who may even be dismissed by other elements he encounters in the anti-big-government, anti-abortion, anti-homosexual and possibly anti-Semitic ("ungodly communist regime in New York") extreme right community.
Is Eric Rudolph, high school dropout, this man? He was observed leaving the scene of the Birmingham bombing, alone, committed on the day of a major hearing in the Kaczynski case. Most of the details of the construction of this bomb, a single device, were not yet issued by the FBI. But with the note 'sent after the Birmingham attack appraised as written by the same person who claimed Army of God responsibility, police felt stronger about a link. The post-Birmingham note, which continued to demonstrate the writer's poor corn mand of punctuation and spelling, and adaptation of the sarcastic expressions of anti-establishment literature (referring to Washington Beltway types as "commissar's") were consistent. The letter was apparently more focused on the abortion issue, which is consistent with what we might expect of the voiceless bomber who begins to find his expression through the omnipotence of destruction.
The shifting political ideology indicates the writer has been feeling around for an identification. He may be finding a more focused voice because of encouragement from another source with a specific agenda that has finally embraced him for being knowledgeable and valuable to the cause. This likelihood is supported by Mr. Rudolph's having apparently vanished after discarding his truck relatively close to a road where he could be picked up. Also, the mailing of an "Army of God" letter from Asheville, while deemed composed by a different writer, was sent to the very newspaper of Mr. Rudolph's residence. How can this coincidence be dismissed as a hoax?
Reports this week indicated that nails found in Mr. Rudolph's shed matched those used in the attack on the Atlanta abortion clinic. But the Atlanta-Birmingham connection was most certainly aided by the bomber's need to take credit for the attack. Will we see once again, as with the Unabomber and the Mad Bomber, the Dixie Bomber undone by his own hubris? Whether Mr. Rudolph is or is not the bomber, whether he is or is not apprehended, yes: Because these days, the bomber is not just a bomber, he is the American Bomber
