ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610280085
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ATLANTA
SOURCE: Associated Press
Federal prosecutors on Saturday cleared Richard Jewell as a suspect in the Olympic Games park bombing, ending a three-month ordeal that saw the security guard go from hero to suspected terrorist overnight.
``Based on evidence developed to date, your client Richard Jewell is not considered a target of the federal criminal investigation into the bombing. Barring any newly discovered evidence, this status will not change,'' U.S. Attorney Kent Alexander said in a letter to Jewell's attorney.
``We are overjoyed,'' said Jack Martin, one of Jewell's attorneys. ``It says what we have known all along - that he is no longer a suspect in the bombing.''
Jewell - who repeatedly maintained his innocence and was never charged - has not worked since he was identified as a suspect and now hopes to put back the pieces of his life.
``The first step was a long process,'' Jewell said to reporters at his apartment. He told them he would have more to say Monday, leaving them with a hometown World Series cheer: ``Go Braves!''
No one else has been publicly identified as a suspect in the July 27 bombing at Olympic Centennial Park that killed one and injured more than 100. A Turkish cameraman also died of a heart attack in the rush to cover the bombing.
Alexander said the attention on Jewell was ``highly unusual and intense,'' but he did not apologize in the letter. The government has apologized only twice in recent history, both in cases where people had been formally charged.
``This is the way the government apologizes,'' said Lin Wood, another attorney for Jewell. ``I view this letter as the government's apology to Richard Jewell.''
Wood said Jewell would continue to pursue defamation lawsuits against news organizations that reported he was a suspect, ``and it's a good possibility that we will, down the road, institute legal action against members of the FBI.''
Wayne Grant, another attorney for Jewell, said a lawsuit would be filed against the first news organization to identify Jewell as a suspect, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and NBC for comments made by anchor Tom Brokaw.
Ron Martin, editor of the Journal-Constitution, declined comment, as did NBC News spokeswoman Lynn Gardner.
In a CBS ``60 Minutes'' interview broadcast last month, Wood accused Brokaw of insinuating that Jewell was guilty by saying: ``Look, they probably got enough to arrest him. They probably have got enough to try him.'''
Brokaw replied during the interview that he emphasized in finishing his on-air remarks: ``Everyone, please understand absolutely he is only the focus of this investigation - he is not even a suspect yet.''
Jewell had been working as a private security guard in the park when the pipe bomb exploded. He was initially hailed as a hero for alerting police to an unattended knapsack and for helping clear people away.
But the knapsack exploded in a hail of nails before the evacuation was complete.
Three days later, the Journal-Constitution quoted anonymous sources who called Jewell, 33, a prime suspect. Those sources have never been revealed.
``I'm innocent. I didn't do it,'' Jewell said the next day to reporters who mobbed him as he returned home from yet another round of FBI questioning.
Investigators apparently didn't believe Jewell, whose career in police and security work included an arrest for impersonating an officer. They had said he fit a common profile for a lone bomber: a former police officer, military man or aspiring policeman who seeks to become a hero.
FBI agents carted away a mountain of material from the apartment he shares with his mother, and from his former home, a cabin on a hill in northeastern Georgia.
Agents also took hair samples and fingerprints, but Jewell declined to give a voice recording that investigators had sought to compare with a 911 call made minutes before the bombing.
Jewell's attorneys have maintained, and law enforcement sources generally have confirmed, that neither the searches of Jewell's property nor extensive interviews with his friends and associates turned up any conclusive evidence against him.
It soon became clear that there were problems with the theory that Jewell might be involved. The time line of the discovery of the bomb, which detonated 23 minutes after the knapsack was found, showed that it would have been impossible for him to have both found the bomb and to have made the 911 call that warned police about the device a minute after he found it.
``This is a good, polite and decent man who did his job the night of the Olympic Park bombing; and unfortunately, because he did his job and did it correctly, he was branded unfairly as a criminal,'' Wood said Saturday. ``He's not a criminal. He's a good man.''
A month after the bombing, Jewell's mother appealed to President Clinton to clear her son. Attorney General Janet Reno said she sympathized, but she refused to comment on Jewell's status as a suspect.
The New York Times contributed to this story.
LENGTH: Medium: 97 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Richard Jewell said Saturday that finally beingby CNBcleared by prosecutors is ``the first step'' toward regaining a
normal life. color.