OpEd: Boston Bomb Shakes Atlanta Memories

(ATR) Boston is asking the same questions Atlanta was asking after a deadly bombing as the 1996 Olympics headed to the final week.

Who did it? Why? And how to recover from such a shattering experience?

While there are differences between the two tragedies, the coincidences are spooky, with both involving iconic global sports events and a bomb aimed at spectators "outside the fence" of event security.

The "who" of the Atlanta bomb blast took nine years to answer and provided a lesson that law enforcement appears to be following in Boston: Don’t rush to judgment.

In the Atlanta bombing, a security guard sounded the alert about a suspicious backpack he had found under a bench at Centennial Olympic Park as a crowd into the thousands lingered past midnight. Minutes later the backpack exploded, sending shrapnel through the crowd, killing one person and injuring more than 100.

Hours later, the security guard became the chief suspect in the case. And leaks of that information to the press resulted in Richard Jewell becoming the vortex of a storm of misplaced suspicion.

He didn’t do it.

A range of media from newspapers to TV networks were forced to apologize – and settle lawsuits he filed.

So far, police and the FBI have maintained a cone of silence over their investigation, thus avoiding the hysteria that overcame Atlanta in the days after the attack. In this post-9/11 world, law enforcement has shown restraint from automatically linking it to foreign terror, a link never made in Atlanta.

Nine years after the Atlanta bombing, Eric Robert Rudolph, a survivalist with extreme right wing views, was apprehended and convicted of that attack as well as three other bombings. The "why" is another matter – at least in the case of the Olympic bomb. Rudolph bombed two women’s clinics and a gay bar out of hatred born from his extreme religious and political views.

Why he attacked the Olympics is still not clear. He said he did it to protest "global socialism of the U.S." but told the judge at his sentencing in 2005 that "I would do anything to take back that night". Rudolph is in prison for life.

It’s a good bet that whoever struck the Boston Marathon won’t have a convincing excuse for this senseless act, either.

The Atlanta bombing led Olympic organizers to consider postponing events in the hours after the incident, But only the park was closed, while Olympic events proceeded.

Centennial Olympic Park reopened two days later with speeches filled with talk of resilience and recovery. And mag-and-bag stations were added at every entrance to the downtown park, which hundreds of thousands of people had entered without restriction during the first 10 days of the Atlanta Games.

Just as Munich brought the Olympics to recognize the safety of athletes and coaches, the Centennial Olympic Park bombing made Olympic organizers realize how slack security could put spectators at risk. As a result, public spaces at future Olympic Games have been secured to prevent repeats of this sort of violent attack.

Security already poses complex challenges to organizers of major sports events. The aftermath of the Boston attack will likely add another layer to confound the experts. How security for the next Boston Marathon might change is not yet known. The London Marathon set for next weekend will go on with increased scrutiny, even in the absence of intelligence to suggest there is a similar risk.

How to protect these sanctuaries of sport without snuffing out the joy of the occasion may be the real challenge ahead.

Written by Ed Hula.