Posted 14 April 2005 - 11:45 AM
Oh, I agree - I have to not think about it. Atlanta is a great city in many ways and unfortunately, what most people remember is the bomb and some tacky street vendors around downtown. To me, that in now way reflects this city that I have called home since early in 1996.
Here is some text from the article for anyone who cares - he did plan to bomb five straight days of the Games to shut them down.
Olympic attack aimed to shame U.S. government
By BILL RANKIN, BILL TORPY
Published on: 04/14/05
Eric Rudolph planned to detonate five bombs on successive days during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics to force the cancellation of the Games in hopes of using the worldwide stage to humiliate the federal government.
In his first public explanation for his attacks, Rudolph said he conducted his violent campaign against the government because of its "abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand."
Rudolph abandoned his plan after his first bomb killed a woman and injured 111 other people at Centennial Olympic Park, he said in an 11-page statement released Wednesday by his legal team.
The 38-year-old North Carolina man pleaded guilty to the park bombing and three others — two in Atlanta and one in Birmingham — during 1997 and 1998.
Before the Olympic Park blast, Rudolph claimed he made two 911 calls in a frantic effort to warn authorities. He said he was thwarted in his first attempt because the operator hung up. Authorities previously believed that he had called 911 only once.
Rudolph, who likened himself to the heroes of the American Revolution, expressed regret over the Olympic casualties, but called them collateral damage of justified violence. "Because I believe that abortion is murder, I also believe that force is justified . . . in an attempt to stop it," he said. "The agents of this government are the agents of mass murder."
"I make no apologies" for the attacks, he said.
Rudolph, a former soldier, said all government agents "are legitimate targets in the war to end this holocaust."
Robert Sanderson, an off-duty police officer killed in the Jan. 29, 1998, bombing of a Birmingham women's clinic where abortions are performed, "may have been a good guy" but he worked "at a place that murders 50 people a week," Rudolph said.
He scoffed at the generally favorable public perception of Emily Lyons, a nurse who lost an eye in the Birmingham attack. "Nothing is more demonstrative of the degenerate nature of American society than the portrayal of the abortionist Lyons as an heroic victim," he said.
"I have no regrets for my actions that day," Rudolph said.
Focused on abortion
In his sometimes rambling and occasionally eloquent manifesto, Rudolph assails homosexuality as "aberrant sexual behavior" and the Olympics as a "celebration of global socialism." Yet he justified his militancy mostly on the government's tolerance of abortion.
He also lashed out at anti-abortion advocates as "liars, hypocrites and cowards" for not going far enough to stop "the worst massacre in human history."
He attacked President Bush and his "plastic people" supporters for waging war in Iraq while allowing abortion to continue unabated in the United States.
U.S. Attorney David Nahmias questioned Rudolph's explanation of his motives. The prosecutor said he believed Rudolph was using abortion to mask a broader array of hatreds. People who knew Rudolph told investigators that he more often expressed strong feelings against "blacks, Jews, homosexuals and the government," Nahmias noted.
Rudolph's statement appears "to be an effort to garner support for his terrorism," the U.S. attorney said.
Rudolph spent years pondering the government's role in abortions before acting. "In the summer of 1996, the world converged on Atlanta for the Olympic Games," he wrote. ". . . I decided to act."
He didn't intend to harm "innocent civilians" even though he recognized "many civilians could be killed or wounded."
Rudolph deposited a 40-pound bomb in a knapsack in the crowded park after midnight on July 27. The bomb, which had a 55-minute timer, consisted of three 12-inch-long metal pipes packed with explosives and covered with five pounds of 3-inch masonry nails. Many of the victims still carry metal from the bomb in their bodies.
"There is no excuse for this," Rudolph said, "and I accept full responsibility for the consequences of using this dangerous tactic."
Rudolph said he made his first 911 call about 10 minutes after planting the bomb. During the call, he said, the operator hung up after apparently failing to understand him because he was using a device to disguise his voice.
He sought another phone booth — outside a Days Inn — where he ditched the contraption and called 911 again. Authorities have placed the time of the second call at 12:58 a.m. Fearing he would be detected, Rudolph rushed the call and didn't provide the bomb's location, saying only that it would explode in 30 minutes. It exploded at 1:20 a.m.
"The result of all this was to produce a disaster — a disaster of my making and for which I do apologize to the victims and their families," Rudolph wrote.
Nahmias, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta, said Wednesday this was the first time federal authorities had heard Rudolph's claim he had made two 911 calls.
After the park bombing, Rudolph said he hurried to a vacant expanse of land that he had been using as a staging area east of Atlanta off I-20. Amid piles of "illegal garbage dumpings," he detonated the other four bombs and "left Atlanta with much remorse." His description appears to match the location of what is now Stonecrest Mall.
FBI also targeted
After the Olympic bombing, he resolved to "improve my devices and focus the blasts upon a very narrow target."
He carried out two attacks in the winter of 1997 — a Sandy Springs women's clinic where abortions are performed and an Atlanta gay nightclub — plantingtwo bombs at each location. The second devices were intended to maim police and other emergency responders.
Rudolph also revealed that while he hid for more than five years in the mountains of western North Carolina, he planned attacks on an abortion clinic near Asheville, N.C., and the FBI command headquarters in Andrews, N.C.
"Hunted and haggard, I struggled to survive," he wrote. "But I am a quick study, and so I learned to adapt to my situation. I adapted so well, I decided to take the fight to my enemies."
But he abandoned the strike against the abortion clinic when a truck he stole could not make the 200-mile trip to Asheville.
Instead, he concentrated on the nearby FBI command center, where the search for him was coordinated. He studied the agents' movements, learning their schedules to the minute. "Finally, the device was moved into place and as the agents approached the door the next morning, the final decision had to be made," Rudolph wrote. "The agents didn't die that day. Perhaps after watching them for so many months their individual humanity shown through the hated uniform."
Rudolph said he often hid in a small dugout under a rock to avoid detection from helicopters with heat-sensing devices.
"One cold day in December of 1998, I huddled underneath a rock for half an hour as the chopper slowly hovered overhead," he wrote.
After the helicopter left, he said he dusted "the icy dirt" from his clothes, looked to the horizon and said, "I am still here."
In closing his 11-page manifesto, Rudolph acknowledged that "talking heads on the news opine that I am 'finished,' that I will 'languish broken and unloved in the bowels of some supermax.'
"But I say to you people that by the grace of God I am still here — a little bloodied, but emphatically unbowed."
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