Original subtitles

[audio logo]

Oh, yeah.

You having a good time?

[cheering]

Oh, yeah.

[explosion]

JIM BACON: We heard a tremendous blast,

and all of a sudden all chaos ensued.

Everybody started running.

RICK SCHWEIN: He set the thing up to hurt people in a mass way.

[crowd clamoring, whistle]

MARK MCKAY: We don't know if that person

is going to strike again.

[blows whistle] Let's go!

MARK MCKAY: Who did this?

Is it part of a strategy or is it a singular event?

We didn't know any of that.

[theme music]

Hello, and welcome to How It Really Happened.

I'm Jesse L. Martin.

In the summer of 1996, all eyes were on Atlanta, Georgia

for the Centennial Olympics.

The southern city put on quite a show for the opening ceremony

as Muhammad Ali lit the Olympic flame.

But just eight days later, at a celebration in Centennial Park,

a security guard noticed a suspicious backpack

under a bench.

Security and law enforcement moved quickly

to evacuate the massive crowd, but time was not on their side.

This is how it really happened.

[indistinct chatter]

It's a weekend night in Atlanta.

It's hot.

The streets are packed.

[groovy music]

There is entertainment at Centennial Park.

The beating heart at night of the Olympics.

(SINGING) Something about you

Driving me crazy

They had music playing, bands coming in.

They had food in the park.

I would say probably 40,000, 50,000

people in the park that night.

Very festive evening.

People partying.

This is where the party's at.

Party of the century.

I was a reporter/anchor, part of the Olympic team for CNN,

and we made our way through the park on the outer edges.

I was hustling.

We're about 10 minutes before the broadcast starting.

We have security teams that are working through the crowds,

watching for anything out of the ordinary.

We're taking all the precautions we can.

TOM DAVIS: I was making my last pass through the park.

And as I was walking up the sidewalk right there

by the NBC Tower, I was approached by a young man

named Richard Jewell.

Richard was assigned as a security guard for that tower.

Richard Jewell had spotted this backpack,

military model backpack.

Placed underneath the bench that was

directly in front of the tower.

He had handled a number of suspicious bags

in the park over the previous days,

and we just tried to identify if anybody owned the bag.

And that's what Richard and I did.

And, of course, nobody claimed it.

I called it in to our command post

and told them that we had a suspicious bag,

and they dispatched our bomb diagnostic team.

And the evaluation team looked at the knapsack,

and got a glimpse on the inside.

And then, they backed up from the bag and told me at that time

that it did look suspicious and that they

had called for a bomb squad.

So in the meantime, we were in the process

of trying to set up a perimeter, to evacuate the immediate area.

But as we're moving people from that area--

[explosion]

Whoa.

--there was an explosion behind me.

I was only standing about 18 yards from it.

It was a very forceful blast.

A lot of heat, and it just completely

forced me to the ground.

Believe me, it was a bomb.

Right, right, right.

Let's go, please.

I felt it--

felt to go through me.

I felt it in my chest.

It was pretty jarring.

I looked at my producer, Mike, and said,

that was a heck of a way to end the show,

thinking positively that maybe that was pyrotechnics.

He immediately said, no, I think something bad just happened.

[whistle]

[crowd clamoring]

I looked up and I saw smoke.

Smoke was rising from the front of the venue.

Security guards were saying, get out, get out.

[whistle]

TOM BACON: The police and everyone started

yelling, get down, get down.

There's a bomb.

People started just running, running out of the park as fast

as they could.

We made a beeline down the street,

up the stairs, got in front of the camera.

PRESENTER: This is CNN Breaking News.

We have had word now of an explosion

at the Centennial Olympic Park.

We're going to go now to Mark McKay, who is live at Nike park.

Mark.

In the vicinity of about 10 minutes ago,

there was a loud, very concussive explosion

that occurred right in the vicinity

of the AT&T Global Village.

That is the building that you see right over my shoulder here.

There were a good number of people in the park.

There was a band playing.

We actually were making our way through the park from CNN Center

to get to this location when the explosion occurred.

I saw the sense of panic to get out.

It turned serious very fast.

It was very loud.

It made you wince.

It made you wince when you heard it, and a lot of people

just had a very startled look.

And immediately as we reached the gates,

they were hustling people to get out of the park.

JIM BACON: Right now, we've got thousands and thousands

of people evacuating the area.

The police moved in very quickly.

And as far as we know now, from eyewitness accounts,

we've got some injuries.

I remember very distinctly the smell of gunpowder.

I don't think I'll ever forget that.

Oh, yeah.

You having a good time?

[cheering]

Oh, yeah.

[explosion]

Whoa.

JIM BACON: Right now, it is just an absolutely chaotic scene,

and millions of people here are running up the street,

and the police are running in.

I can't personally see anybody that's hurt,

but several eyewitnesses have told me

varying accounts of injuries.

And the accounts that I have heard

make it sound like the injuries are indeed serious.

[ominous music]

I looked around, people were screaming,

many injured, laying around.

JIM BACON: A policeman was hit with shrapnel

and was bleeding profusely on the ground.

A number of other people in the area here have been hit

and are hurt.

TOM DAVIS: We just tried to deal with that situation

the best we could.

Going person to person trying to determine

the severity of their injuries.

And as we were doing that, one of them was just laying there,

and she wasn't moving.

And when I walked up to her, I just

put my fingers down on her carotid artery

just to check to see if I could get a pulse, and I got nothing.

[sirens wailing]

Numerous emergency vehicles are now descending on the scene.

We're seeing ambulances and a lot of fire units,

and the area seems to be certainly being

sealed off as investigators get in there

and tend to the injured.

[sirens wailing]

It is very chaotic.

You have people down, people wounded.

We were walking down the street.

Boom. Big explosion.

The guy-- girl's leg got blown off.

SURVIVOR: It felt like it was gonna--

oh my God, dude. - It felt like an--

SURVIVOR: There's, like, people were hurt.

--earthquake.

TOM DAVIS: Medical people got there very, very quickly,

and started dealing with the injured people.

[blows whistle] Let's go!

Come on.

TOM DAVIS: So we were just trying

to make sure that they all got loaded

up and carried to the hospital.

[blows whistle]

REPORTER: What blew up? What blew up?

A car? A truck?

I'm not sure. It had to be--

all I know is I heard wah and kabuck, you know?

Just like a big pipe bomb.

Damn, something just hit me.

The sound itself was more than any earthquake I've ever heard,

and it actually shook the ground.

There's people just running out.

I mean, terrified.

People crying and people were injured.

Back up!

Back up!

Back-- back up!

Back up!

CNN was putting things on live almost immediately.

So for people to see footage of a bombing

almost instantly after it happened was startling.

People use the term war zone.

Imagine it's dark.

Every kind of red and blue light.

The park has been sealed.

Emergency units from ambulances to fire units, paramedics

have arrived on the scene, along with a number

of law enforcement agencies.

We started getting more and more witnesses that were nearby

and starting to hear about the amount of injuries, the shrapnel

that went everywhere.

It was like standing next to heavy artillery

when it goes off, is the best way I could describe it.

We were about two minutes away from the stage.

You know, right, almost at the stage.

And it was just-- it was just boom.

It was so loud it rang our ear-- my ears.

CNN has been able to confirm through just talking with law

enforcement officials here in the city of Atlanta

that there is at least one confirmed death and at least 38

confirmed injuries.

TOM DAVIS: Alice Hawthorne, who was there with her daughter,

was killed by a piece of shrapnel.

A Turkish cameraman dies running to the scene.

KITTY PILGRIM: Law enforcement officials believe, we are told,

that it was a bomb that exploded at around 1:20 this

morning Eastern time at the heart

of the Olympic Centennial Park.

When it happened, it seemed very shocking to everyone,

and especially such an iconic event as the Olympics.

Our role as part of an FBI SWAT team

was to lock the village down, protect the athletes.

The concern was, would there be an attack

in the Olympic Village?

Is this part of a larger scheme?

The park was closed.

It was a crime scene, and they brought

in a lot of federal agents from the ATF and from the FBI

and from the GBI.

And together, they worked the crime scene.

Centennial Park becomes a cordoned off area.

And then, the bomb techs came in,

and they were sweeping through the area

slowly, carefully, marking evidence,

bagging where necessary.

[sirens wailing]

In the immediate aftermath of the bombing,

all personnel that had been designated

to the forward command post set up

protocols for collecting evidence,

identifying witnesses, and coordinating

other response personnel.

We go to the hospital and start interviewing people

about what had happened, what they had seen,

what they had heard.

Well, we start interviewing business owners,

looking for whatever they might have to help the investigation,

you know, whether it be videotapes

or people that might have come or gone

overnight and seen anything.

It's hectic, but it is controlled.

We've had a lot of planning, a lot of training,

and all that kicks in in the first few hours.

[pensive music]

The first person to catch sight of the suspicious knapsack

that turned out to contain the bomb

was security officer Richard Jewell.

Mr. Jewell is joining us from our studio in Atlanta.

I spotted the bag lying on the ground under the bench.

And then, once we actually determined that it there

was a suspicious item, we tried to get as many people

out of the area as we could.

But we got about 150 people off the grass

area right directly in front of the bomb before it exploded.

[explosion]

Whoa.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?

We did a press conference in the morning.

At approximately 1:25 AM this morning,

an explosive device detonated in the Centennial Park downtown.

At this point, we understand that we have 110 injured

and two people who have died.

At approximately 1:00 A.M. also, the Atlanta Police

Department received a 911 call.

The individual is, we believe, a white male with

an indistinguishable accent.

CALLER (ON PHONE): There is a bomb at Centennial Park.

You have 30 minutes.

The bomb had gone off within 15 or 20 minutes of the call.

[explosion]

We were wondering if it was a setup, particularly

when it went off early.

[sirens wailing]

Is he targeting second responders,

knowing that they might be around that bomb,

trying to render safe?

The motives of the bomber at that point, I don't think

are clear to any of us.

If you're just joining us or just now hearing

about the explosion at Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park

overnight, two people were killed.

The FBI reports at least 110 people injured,

but, of course, those reports will vary as reports are coming

in from different hospitals.

We will spare no effort to find out

who was responsible for this murderous act.

We will track them down.

We will bring them to justice.

We will see that they are punished.

We cannot be intimidated by acts of terror.

As tragic as it was--

and it was very tragic--

the decision was made to continue with the Olympic games.

There's an element of, we're not

going to give in to terrorism.

[pensive music]

I was assigned to work the crater

area where the bomb blew up.

I found a-- fragments of what appeared

to be some kind of a backpack and a metal plate.

I saw two Eveready Energizer 6 volt lantern battery fragments

from two different batteries.

There were parts of a timing device, a mechanical timer,

which kind of gave investigators a clue as to how that device

functioned by a time delay.

TOM BUSH: There were cut nails laying around on the ground.

These were added for shrapnel effect to fly through the air

and kill people.

KITTY PILGRIM: We did hear quite early on that the bomb had been

designed to cause the largest number of injuries with nails

and directed blast to cause real human hurt.

FEMALE REPORTER 1: Doctors say shrapnel

injured many of the more than 100 patients treated.

DOCTOR: Some metal, perhaps some glass.

We don't know.

That's gonna have to be determined

as the pieces are removed and as any X-ray

activity goes on as well.

FEMALE REPORTER 1: Doctors say injuries range from minor cuts

to more serious chest and abdominal wounds.

If you could picture a military-style backpack about

as full as you could fill it up, that's what

this bomb looked like in size.

There were three pipe bombs that were mounted onto a steel plate,

directing the blast in a particular direction.

There were an additional several pounds

of nails added as shrapnel.

This device was 40 pounds of pipe bombs,

and it gave you the feeling that we're not dealing

with, you know, a rookie.

RICK SCHWEIN: Those early hours are really

important because you're trying to preserve forensic evidence,

you're trying to identify a good timeline,

you're trying to determine who did this.

And is it a lone actor or is it a group?

Are there gonna be follow on attacks?

Is it part of a strategy or is it a singular event?

And we didn't know any of that.

[tense music]

The samples were taken, given to the guy in charge of the FBI

team, and he sent those to Washington, DC

to be analyzed to identify the explosive.

MALE REPORTER 1: While the FBI waits for lab results.

Federal agents are working on a timeline,

trying to figure out the 911 call.

It was made from a public telephone close to the park,

and we were trying to identify where that phone was

and who might have been able to see who was making the call.

Remember, two different things were happening at the same time.

In the park, Richard Jewell had spotted a backpack.

And what they don't realize is that there's

been a 911 call, warning that there's

a bomb in Centennial Park.

That information never gets to them.

CALLER: There is a bomb in Centennial Park.

You have 30 minutes.

It didn't make it to us at our command post.

MALE REPORTER 2: According to police department transcripts,

there was a 10 minute delay in dispatching police after the 911

call due to bad phone connections,

jammed lines at the police command center,

and a frantic search for the park's address.

It's always the small things that create problems.

The address for Centennial Park had

not been incorporated into the 911

communications center database.

DISPATCHER: OK, wait a minute.

Centennial Park.

You put it in and it won't go in?

OPERATOR: No.

Unless I'm spelling Centennial wrong.

How are we spelling Centennial?

DISPATCHER: C-E-N-T-E-N-N-I-A-L.

OPERATOR: I'm spelling it right.

It ain't changing.

Centennial Park is not going.

TOM DAVIS: If we had had the 911 call when it came in along

with a suspicious bag, I think that we

may have been able to create a larger perimeter.

There would have been a more-- more of a sense of urgency

on our part, but we just didn't have the benefit

of that information.

Welcome back to How It Really Happened.

The search is on for whoever planted a bomb

in Centennial Olympic Park.

Richard Jewell, the man who discovered the bomb,

was initially hailed as a hero for saving lives,

but within days, the FBI receives

a tip and the investigation takes an unexpected turn.

[pensive music]

I'm glad he spotted it, because if we had to move

the people away that were seated directly in front of that bag,

we'd have had a number of deaths in the park.

Him spot in that bag and then us dealing with it as we did--

he saved lives that night.

JEANNE MESERVE: Do you feel you did all you could?

Yes, ma'am.

The only thing I wish we could have done

was got everybody out of the area.

I feel for the victims and their families.

And it's a very, very bad thing, and I just hope that we

catch the people that did it.

This seemed like a hero.

And he was the hero.

That's the important thing to remember.

He was the hero of this story.

He was flattered.

I mean, he's a regular person.

He wants to talk, but he doesn't want to talk.

He doesn't feel all that comfortable with everybody

saying he's the hero when there were many heroes that day.

At the bomb site in Centennial Olympic Park,

investigators spent the day sifting for clues.

Authorities tell CNN there could be an arrest in just days.

After we get done analyzing an explosive device,

you try to make a mock up of the device

so you can more understand it.

You want to be able to reconstruct the bomb.

This is the size of the pipe bomb.

This is the size of the battery that was used.

This is the type of clock timer that was used.

We have a bomb database.

ATF has one.

FBI has one.

They are actually connected where they can say,

hey, here's some of the components

that we're looking at.

Do you have anything like this?

WOODY JOHNSON: Of course, we are looking at

and thinking about every group that could

be the source of the terrorism.

And after the phone call, we're slowly concluding,

but leaving the door open that it's an American

either operating by himself or with a group.

We also are running a tip line, and receive

several hundred calls.

We had three different major groups of tips--

two White Militia groups, and then the third

were providing information about Richard Jewell.

The president of Piedmont College, which

is one of the places Richard had worked before, he calls the FBI

and he says, you know, I had some problems with this guy.

You might want to take a look because Richard

had been overzealous in his enforcement duties.

He was stopping students.

He was stopping faculty.

He was doing it by the book.

He was a little bit of a pain in the ass,

and that eventually, you know, got him pushed out from his job.

With all of the pressure on them,

they dug deeper and deeper.

They saw things that they thought were suspicious.

Richard Jewell was described as a wannabe cop.

He was described as being really aggressive

on this particular college campus where he'd

been a campus police officer.

He'd had some trouble, failed employment

with other law enforcement.

So when you put these things together, it's like,

all right, this is a guy we probably need to take a look at.

And the FBI goes back and they look at the CNN interview again,

and they're convinced that he was self-aggrandizing.

He was trying to pump himself up.

I was in law enforcement before I got this job.

I've been in law enforcement for six years in Georgia,

and I just came down to Atlanta to do the games.

And you have to understand that there's a context for this,

which is that during the LA Olympics,

there had been a bomb scare, and the guy who finds the bomb was

a guy who had planted the bomb.

And he had been in law enforcement,

so now the FBI'S playbook is, well, some dude did it in LA.

Maybe some dude did it in Atlanta.

And it just snowballs.

[tense music]

We get a call from somebody over at the Atlanta Journal

Constitution, and the guy says, we're

about to run a special edition, extra edition,

naming Richard Jewell as a suspect,

and we want to send you over a copy.

The information gets leaked that he's a suspect.

There are these guys running around with newspapers.

And out of the corner of my eye, I see the headline.

FBI Suspects "Hero Guard May Have Planted Bomb."

Well, I know damn well who the hero guard is.

I just can't freaking believe it.

He was praised as a hero for spotting a suspicious knapsack

in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park

and for helping evacuate some people

before its contents exploded.

But now, Richard Jewell, the Olympic security guard

who spoke openly to CNN and others

about the events of last Saturday,

reportedly is himself a suspect in the bombing.

How did that all come together as quickly as it did?

Made those of us who don't know police work

and don't know detective work say, wow, that was quick.

MALE REPORTER 3: Do you have any way of knowing why they

would consider you a suspect.

Mm, no, I have no idea.

MALE REPORTER 4: Did you do it?

[scoffs] No, sir.

I didn't do it.

We went over to his house and said, we want to interview you.

And he said, can I come to the office?

We decided to try to bring him out by telling him

we're gonna make a training video

and we need his experience on tape so that we can use it

in the future, and just try to see

while two agents are interviewing him,

talking with him.

And we thought, well, if he's involved in this thing,

you know, his ego might eventually incriminate him.

I call the FBI headquarters.

I'm Watson Bryant.

I'm Rich Jewell's lawyer.

I understand you have him down there and I want to talk to him.

They said to me, we don't have him.

They're telling me he's not there when he is there.

So I called them back, and this time they connect me to him.

I ask him what he's doing.

He's telling me he's helping them with a training film.

I ask him has he seen the newspaper.

He says he is not.

And then, I read him the headline.

All I want to know is, is he free to go?

Is he under arrest?

No, he's not under arrest.

So he's free to go?

Yes, he's free to go.

Great.

They were interviewing him dishonestly,

and so I told him to get out of there.

Then, I met him over at his apartment,

where there was a media swarm.

Stop for a second.

--was over 10 Minutes.

Did they say you're a suspect, Mr. Jewell?

What kind of questions were they asking?

Somebody that made this device knew what they were doing.

Does Richard have enough training, has he done devices?

Does anyone know or have seen him purchase equipment?

You just dig into his whole lifestyle.

We got the search warrant pretty quickly

for his mother's apartment, where he was living at the time.

In Atlanta, federal agents are focusing on the home of a man

recently hailed as a hero.

FEMALE REPORTER 2: Armed with a federal search warrant,

FBI agents entered the Atlanta apartment of security guard

Richard Jewell, searching for evidence

that might tie him to the Saturday morning bombing

in Centennial Olympic Park.

WATSON BRYANT: And then, they searched the apartment.

Now, they're deep in here.

I didn't know why they were doing what they were doing,

and I also was naive enough to believe

that they wouldn't be doing this unless they

had a good reason for it.

FEMALE REPORTER 2: From time to time,

agents emerged carrying bags or boxes, but would not comment.

And today, neither would the once talkative Jewell.

[playing trumpet]

FEMALE REPORTER 3: It was the reopening ceremony, not

of the games, but of the park.

The park where a bomb went off early Saturday morning.

[singing, playing guitar]

Now, they've returned to sing and pray

and remember the victims.

[pensive music]

Centennial Olympic Park was back in business,

and there was a resolve to bring people back.

You need your bag off your body.

TOM DAVIS: We had bag checks--

Put your umbrella on the table, sir.

--magnetometers set up at every entrance,

about twice the number of security

people assigned to the park.

So there was quite a few changes made.

Gates opened to the left.

Gates opened to the right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

In the meantime, the investigation proceeds,

and they do have people chasing other leads.

The public was asked if anyone had

photographs or video of Centennial Park

before the explosion--

[explosion]

--and after the explosion to please

in that video in to the FBI so it could be analyzed.

We were hoping, since almost everybody coming to the Olympics

has got a camera and taking pictures,

that they could've provided us with something

that would be helpful.

It was a pretty massive undertaking,

so we're talking 35 millimeter film and any other video

from video cameras that they might have been carrying so we

could use that to try to identify anyone in the area

of that particular tower.

We knew that location of the bomb.

We had a time frame when the bomb was put there.

So we were just looking for anybody who had a picture

of that site at that time.

And we got one video that had somebody

there with the backpack between their legs for about an hour

before the bomb detonated.

Bingo, you know?

It's gotta be the guy.

You tell a literate individual sitting on the bench,

but you couldn't get anything really specific about the image.

There was no definition to it.

And we literally called this individual-- he

became known as the Blob Man.

We just couldn't do anything with it.

The FBI didn't have the expertise or the technology

to really improve much.

When someone had the idea NASA might have some capabilities

that we need to look at from things

they do with their satellite imagery.

Capabilities that was very, very advanced

specifically to enhance the video.

JACK DAULTON: So it was sent to NASA.

[pensive music]

In 1996, I was head of the Solar Physics Team

at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

One thing that was going on at Marshall Space Flight Center

was trying to fix Hubble images.

We had computer techniques that could basically

put the image back together.

Take a star that looked blurry and turn it back into a star.

We had taken a lot of the blurry Hubble images

and made them quite presentable.

The FBI was aware we were doing all of this.

And shortly after the bombing, the center director

at Marshall Space Flight Center had been contacted by the FBI

in Atlanta, asking for help clearing

up the image of the bomber.

Myself and my colleague Paul Meyer

ended up really working on it.

We knew that this was really important, that we were doing

something that would perhaps save people's lives,

if you catch him before he does it again.

The first thing they gave us was a video from the night

of the bombing of the backpack.

It was very dark, hard to see.

Remember, this is 1996, when video was a VHS for consumers.

Notoriously poor quality.

Even the best one we had, which was of broadcast quality,

even that was hard because it was so dark that night.

We had at least two other critical videos from the night

that were from families.

One of those videos caught the bomber

actually sitting on the bench where the backpack was left.

We couldn't really define anything,

but he was sitting in an area at the right time,

at the right place.

You just knew you were looking at the bomber.

But the images were too dark, too noisy to try to do any image

restoration on a single image.

Paul and I had to invent a brand new process for stabilizing

video to get the clean images.

It was, um-- it fascinating to watch the progression, but it

would not happen overnight.

There's been no statement.

Did they tell you now not to leave town?

The investigation of Richard Jewell plays out in the media.

They got television stations focused at his residence,

waiting for him to be arrested.

Are you under arrest?

WATSON BRYANT: It's quite a ride to go from the hero

to the villain, so he was devastated by the idea

that people believed that he could be the bomber.

Where are you at--

What kind of questions were they asking?

WATSON BRYANT: And just seeing it day after day, the avalanche

of negative publicity.

Every time you turned a channel, it was

on, over and over all day long.

You've been to the FBI?

MALE REPORTER 5: Can you give us your reaction

to what's happened today?

CNN has learned federal agents are working on a timeline,

trying to figure out if Jewell had enough time

to make the 911 call, then return in time

to discover the bomb.

There's a phone call to 911 operator,

and the phone call says--

CALLER: There is a bomb in Centennial Park.

You have 30 minutes.

It was made from a public telephone close to the park.

We say to ourselves, well, wait a minute.

How does Richard Jewell go from being where

he is to walking several blocks away to make the phone call,

and then come back?

And we set a stopwatch.

We walk from Centennial Park up to the phone, which

is a few blocks away, make a phone call, hang up the phone,

walk back.

MALE REPORTER 5: According to the FBI timeline,

the 911 warning call came in at 12:58 AM.

The FBI says, the bomb went off at about 1:25 AM.

That's some 27 minutes after the warning call.

I realized that he didn't have the time to make that call,

get to the park and then leave--

MALE REPORTER 5: The GBI agent who says Jewell pointed out

the suspicious knapsack to him says it was about 23 minutes

from the time Jewell first asked for his help

until the bomb exploded.

--nor would he have had time to plant the bomb,

go to that bank of payphones, and get

back to the park and his duty station if he was the bomber.

MALE REPORTER 5: If the time lines are right,

that means Jewell came to the GBI agent around 1:02 AM.

That would have left Jewell only some 4 minutes

to make the 911 call and return to his post in the park.

It's 3 and a half blocks from the payphone to the park.

I only know that for the 20 minutes prior to the detonation

of the bomb, Richard was right there with me,

trying to get people to move.

There's no way Richard could have made the phone call.

There are people who are beginning to get skeptical.

I think what they did was cherry pick a bunch of stuff,

you know?

Like, he fits the profile of the lone bomber.

There is no damn profile of a lone bomber.

This is just total made up stuff.

There's no hard evidence in there.

MALE REPORTER 6: Are you Mr. Jewell's attorney?

His lawyers are doing a good job,

and they keep going at the FBI, and he suffers

and he suffers mightily.

Eventually, they start being more clues.

And there are some people who think, wait a minute,

this guy did it?

Where does he have the bomb training to do this?

Well, we couldn't find any evidence that he had ever made

or been interested in bombings.

Did whole variety of background checks

that led to his personality assessment.

We eventually just said, I think the odds are extremely

remote that he did this.

[ominous bellowing music]

We thought it'd be a good idea,

when we got the clearance letter,

to set up a press conference.

We all were there, and Richard got up and spoke.

I am not the Olympic Park bomber.

I am a man who, from July 30 until October 26th,

lived every waking minute of those 88 days

afraid that I would be arrested and charged

with a horrible crime--

a crime I did not commit.

It made the mainstream media all around the world.

It was the lead story everywhere.

It was a good day, but at the same time,

I think all of this finally got to the Jewells.

RICHARD JEWELL: For 88 days, I lived a nightmare.

For 88 days, my mother lived a nightmare too.

Now, I must face the other part of my nightmare.

While the government can tell you that I am an innocent man,

the government cannot give me back

my good name or my reputation.

Instead of being remembered as a hero,

he is remembered as either a victim or as a guy that got away

with it, and that is-- it's shameful

that that has happened to somebody

that did such a good thing.

It's proven that Richard Jewell is not the bomber.

And by that time, we're following up on new information,

leads are coming in, and then going

back and reevaluating other leads that have been exhausted.

It's very frustrating because we weren't making any progress.

Only way you get more clues is if another crime is committed.

You're not rooting for another crime to be committed,

but it's gonna help you build a case.

[tense shrieking music]

Story just in here for you.

There's been an explosion-- according to an associated press

write through this morning-- an explosion in a building

just North of Atlanta.

On January the 16th, I was driving in my car to the office,

and I heard over the radio that there

had been an explosion at the Sandy

Springs Professional Building.

The building does house an abortion clinic, we're told.

Happened at 9:30 this morning or around then.

It's at the Atlanta Northside Family Clinic.

No injuries reported.

Don't know the cause yet.

The abortion clinic was on one corner,

and someone had placed a small bomb device with a timer on it

at the door of the clinic.

And when it went off, it blew out a lot of windows

and made a big mess.

So when I respond there, the crime scene around the building

has been set up.

I go inside the tape, and I'm conferring with other agents.

I walked out of the crowd, over where

two vehicles had been parked.

I'm standing there on the phone--

[explosion]

[yells]

--and the second device went off.

My reaction was not of surprise.

It was anger.

Son of a bitch.

This asshole has set up another one.

I had never been concussed by a blow like that.

[explosion] - [yells]

JOE KENNEDY: We were showered with dirt, and a lot of people

were injured.

There were people on the ground, and that's when things

went into a different mode.

TOM BUSH: So you lose your hearing,

and we've got people down, vehicles that have

been affected by the blast.

And so now, you're in a real full blown panic.

JOE KENNEDY: Everyone worked to try to secure the scene

and attend to the possible victims.

I got a chunk of meat carved out of my right ankle,

then I had like three puncture wounds in the back,

but the bulk of it hit me in the side of the head.

The second bomb had been perfectly placed.

Someone definitely thought it over.

Had the first one as a ruse to draw people in.

I mean, what he had done was the perfect way

to go after law enforcement.

Now, we're looking at an individual

who is targeting first responders,

targeting abortion clinics.

OFFICER (ON RADIO): Hey, control,

we just had another explosion down here at the center.

Nearly six months after the Centennial Park bombing,

Atlanta is rocked by another explosion, this time

at a women's health clinic.

Is this connected to the Centennial Park attack?

And if so, who is planting these bombs and why?

The hunt for the person or people responsible

continues in part two of Atlanta Bombing.

I'm Jesse L. Martin.

Thank you for watching.

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