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Space Jaman fourth is independ instead.
The first night of the one hundredth anniversary of the world's greatest sporting event, and no birthday party ever had an invitation list White Light Welcome to Atlanta's Olympic Stadium.
Well, the Olympics were in Atlanta in nineteen ninety six, and it was a really big gig for us. I mean there was I don't know, forty fifty sixty thousand people every night in Centennial Park.
Bill Bergman and Andrew Kastner are two members of the band Jack Mack and the Heart Attack. They were slated to perform ten nights in a row at the ninety six Olympics Center stage the gig of a lifetime.
We rehearsed a special show just for that Olympic gig, and every night we would come on after Travis Tritt or Kenny Rodgers or all kinds of different people, and we would play eleven at night to one in the morning.
But the sixth night of their run would be their last.
There was a lot of security to get backstage.
They ran us through inter pole. I mean I played saxophone and the guy literally looked down my horn through the tube.
But anybody could get into the audience. I don't even know if there was any security at all.
Well no, I mean you had fifty thousand people wearing their backpacks into that park, and it was a ginormous stage, and they had these two caterpillar looking things on each side of the stage that were one hundred and fifty feet long on one hundred feet up in the air, and that's where they would show the videos. We were seven stories up and we're playing our set and we're grooving, I mean, everything is just perfect.
And then we were getting towards the end of the set and we did an original song called I Walked Alone, And it was right after the song ended and our lead singer started announcing the next song.
Oh yeah, are you still out there? Yeah, that's what I'll talk about. So we got caught it to the sun comes up.
But you know what, see what about now we had them, we have the.
Privilege of working with this season, and that's when the bomb went off.
We just froze in place. The whole band just froze. We didn't know what to do, and then somebody came up to us and said we got to get out of the park.
It was instantaneous pandemonium, like the world rarely sees.
Some ideas are so explosive they changed the world, but sometimes they jeopardize the very ground we stand on, leaving ordinary lives in their wake, rippling out for generations. I'm Cola Cassio and this is Flashpoint, Episode one, the Eyes of the World. In the summer of ninety six, Atlanta was booming, known the world over for products like Coca Cola and CNN.
Atlanta was a bustling hub of Americana.
We were the mecca of hip hop, the home of the braves, and that summer we were hosting the Centennial Olympic Games.
Ten years ago, bringing the Olympics to this city was the improbable, some would say lappable motion of a local real estate lawyer and former Georgia football player Billy Payne. But pain is from an ambitious city where grand notions are not dismissed.
Now has its games, and it.
Also has its opportunity to find itself for the world.
Atlanta is unique.
It's not movie famous like New York or la It's not a city people dream of living in. It's hot, the traffic sucks, the bugs bite, it's a little bit shitty, but in all the right ways.
It's a place where I just think people can be themselves.
Earlier this year, I found myself downtown just past midnight, standing in line and wrapped around the block with hundreds of other people. We were there to listen to Andrey three thousand play a flute for two hours, and people were dressed to the nines. I'm talking suits, velvet, kashmir, you name it. It felt like a true homecoming for someone who helped put our city on the map. And when he took the stage, the first thing he said was, it's good to be back home. Atlanta is my home.
I was born here, I grew up here. I always thought I'd move away to some other big city. I tried that, but I ended up finding my way back, and I grew into myself here.
For reasons you'll come to understand.
I've always been obsessed with the bombing at the Olympics, the ripple effects of that summer, everything that happened in the following years, all the lesser known parts of the story. But back in ninety six, with the eyes of the world on Atlanta and millions of people descending on the city too busy to hate, we had finally arrived in the world stage.
It was our time.
As an anchor reporter. For thirty seven years, I covered all kinds of things. My name is Monica Kaufman Pearson. I am a former reporter and anchor with WSB Television, and I was there in September nineteen ninety when they said.
The International Olympic Committee as awarded the nineteen ninety six games to the city off at.
And I can still see to this day, Mayor Maynard Jackson rubbing his hands through his hair and just grinning from ear to ear. The place just broke out, I mean, screams, tears, jumping up and down because the committee had been working on this for such a long time.
People went bonkers. I'm Keent Alexander.
I was the United States Attorney in the Northern District of Georgia, so technically that made me the chief federal law enforcement officer. During the Olympics, I was an underground Atlanta where they had big monitors, and they had hundreds and hundreds of people. None of us could really believe it, and there was just massive celebration.
Was the first thing in the morning. Many of the front page versions.
Of the Atlantic Constitution had this icon on a huge tyke it's Atlanta than one of them actually said as a subtitle, city explodes in thrill of victory, which it turns out as ironic.
With a one point seven billion dollar price tag, the city of Atlanta had under six years to transform into a worthy host city. The Olympics hosted millions of attendees and span twenty nine facilities, including five new venues, plus a brand new park in the middle of downtown to serve as a congregating spot for the general public, Centennial
Olympic Park. On July nineteenth, the date finally arrived. Opening ceremonies, the one where Muhammad ad Leave valiantly raises shaking torch and lit up the night.
I look it, Spohalid Ali. What apoment.
But less than ten days after that iconic moment, the Games my home An America's sense of collective safety would crack wide open, and it only took one Southern nut to fuck it all up. July twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six, twelve forty five am. The music is blasting, people are partying, Everyone's enjoying themselves. At Centennial Park, Georgia, Bureau of Investigation agent Tom Davis was walking next to the Light and Sound Tower when he was approached by a local security guard.
I was approached by a young man named Richard Jewele, a security guard there for the NBC tower. Richard explained to me that he was having problems with intoxicated individuals throwing beer cans into the tower and we asked for some help. So I walked over to the front of the tower with Richard, and as we walked around to the front part of the tower, we observed a number of college aged individuals scooping up beer cans. They threw the beer cans away and then basically just disappeared into
the crowd. Richard and I walked back around to the front of the tower, and as we were standing there talking, he looked down and pointed to an army top backpack that was underneath the bench right in front of the tower, and he said to me that someone must have left that backpack there, and then turned to me and asked me how I wanted to deal with the situation.
Then at twelve fifty eight am, a nine one one operator answered a call, A turn.
Of your bomb and nail park and you have a.
Burning Here's an actual recording of the nine to one one operator trying to contact the Atlanta Police Department command center. First she got a bit signal, then after three minutes she finally got a dispatcher on the line.
I just got this man call talking about it because a bomb said to go out in thirty minutes to the Centennial Park.
Oh lord, yea.
At the time of the Games, many of the venues that had just been built specifically for the Olympics hadn't yet populated their way into the nine to one one database.
So if you need to look it up, it simply wasn't there.
It didn't exist, Okay, way apart, and you put it in and it won't go in.
No, this is why information about the bomb threat never made it to law enforcement at the park, where Tom Davis and Richard Jewel were still trying to figure out what to do next.
So I told Richard we would just follow our protocol, and the first step in that protocol was to try to determine if anybody in the immediate area own the backpack. This was a very popular part of the park. There was a show going on at the time, and families would come, individuals would come and they would put lawn chair out there, they would put spread blankets out there. It's just a real grassy knoll area, right in front
of the NBC twwer. So we just started moving through that area talking to people and asking them if they owned the backpack that was under the bench by the tiwer, and of course no one claimed it. So after several minutes of doing that, the next step in our protocol is to call it in as a suspicious package. So I called our command post and told them what we had, and they dispatched a bomb diagnostic team to the area.
Shortly after one am. The diagnostic team comprised of FBI and ATF agents. We're dispatched to Tom and Richard's location. Here's Richard on sixty minutes. We'recalling.
What happened when one of the ATF agents went to check out the back.
He crawled under the bench and with his pen light, he was laying flat on his stomach and he was undoing the top of the bag with his hand, and all of a sudden, he just froze and he tensed up, and he just rolled out of the way. When he rolled out of the way, he jumped up and ran over to the other agents that were standing about ten
feet away. What really made me think this is bad is there was like a little line in training that they taught you, and it was if you see an ATF agent running, you better be in front of him.
You know.
I was just a rookie. It's a rookie cop. And we graduated just in time for the Olympics. We were considered the Olympic class, so they were trying to rush classes through because of course the Olympics was the biggest sports event in the world. I fell into this cadence of fourteen hour shifts, six days a week, one day off a week.
Vince Velaskaz recalls that late night in the park, even though the clock just past midnight, the spectacle of the Olympics drew a staggering crowd of fifteen thousand individuals. They celebrated the day's victories and champions, blissfully unaware of the backpack that had just been found. Vince himself was a few mere blocks away, and news of the discovery had not yet made its way through the police radio.
I'm in uniform. I've got a orange traffic vest on, because that's what we tried to where they wanted you to stand out and want people to know that you were police.
The weather was good. I recall it was hot. It's July.
I remember that, and you know we bulletproof vest under your I mean, I'm just sweating bullets with a towel on my neck. I remember being worn out.
Yeah, there was a band playing. There were a lot of people, but I do you remember a very friendly atmosphere.
This is Mark McKay. He was a reporter for Seeing in Sports at the time.
I was day to day working in evening shift.
At that time, CNN had various sports programming half hour shows, so we were preparing the sports cast, and then it started getting to be close to time to air. Well, we weren't able to get into the Marietta Street entrance to where we needed to get across to our live shop because we didn't have the right credential, So we basically we turned around and we ended up being on the perimeter of the park. My producer and I get on the other side of the AT and T Global
Village stage and this explosion happens. We felt it, you could feel it in your chest. And I looked up and I could see the smoke coming above the stage. I immediately thought, Wow, that was a heck of a way to end the show. Pyrotechnics producers are good. My producer Mike said, no, I think something bad just happened.
The pressure from the bomb knocked me on my ass, like literally pushed me backwards. It rattles your brain. I'm supposed to know what's going on, but I felt for a moment helpless. And then I hear screaming and people just screaming and running. I tell you, the chaos was indescribable. I couldn't tell who was who. My gut told me something bad happened. Something intentional happened. It wasn't us, the good guys that did this. It's a bad person.
I remember vividly security guards at one of the entrances to the park basically just telling people.
To get out, get out, get out, get out.
So I make my way to the live shot location. Now the camera and the lights were already set up to go live anyway. I get to the top of the platform and putting my earpiece in and I'm told, hey, we're going to have seen in breaking news.
Hello everyone, I'm Andrea Zinga at the CNN Center in Atlanta. 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.
Hello, Mark.
Our location is just north of the Centennial Olympic Park in the vicinity of About ten minutes ago, there was a.
Loud, very conclussive explosion.
That I contacted the command post and let him know that we had an explosion then that we needed help. I looked around and there was a lot of screaming, a lot of people that had been injured, and we just we just started trying to deal with the injuries. At that point, we're explaining in a couple of words, I would just say outter chaos.
They were about start.
A new song and then.
You know, just a really loud, annoyed and there was some people bleeting.
They were still hitting people. We were rushing people to medical.
It was a regular news day. I literally was getting ready to go to bed when my phone brings and says, you've got to come back to the station. A bomb's gone off in Centennial Olympic Park. We're going right now to Mark engel Mark. What can you tell us? What have you seen? Who have you talked to?
What happened?
Well, Monica, from what I understand from witnesses who've been interviewed here so far, a sound tower that's where the explosion occurred.
We had a lot of people say earlier that they thought when the explosion occurred it was part of the music. I mean, in today's rock and roll era you have smoked. It was just it was just crazy, That's the only way to describe it. It was something you see in movies, but you never expect to see in your town, particularly during an event where everybody in the world is watching you. City and watching what's happening during the Olympics. It was definitely it just took your breath away.
When the bomb went off.
The GBI, that's the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, swiftly jumped in. Retired agent Charles Stone remembers arriving on Sena and I.
Heard one of my people on the radio call in saying there's been a mom a cent Unior Olympic Park. We have multiple officers now, so we jumped in my car and we got there relatively quickly, and you know, there were casual fleege everywhere.
I remember an explosion. I remember seeing my mother turn to a complete three sixty, which is probably gonna be the most lasting memory out of all of it.
This is Fallen Stubbs speaking to CNN in two thousand and one. At the time of the bombing, she was just fourteen years old. Fallen was attending the games with her mother, Alice Hawthorne.
I saw my mother on the ground. I got up van, I ran to try to find her, help, try to find her anybody. Some people told me to lay down, get down, get down, and I was like, wait, my mother, And all I could remember was looking over and I saw her, and I saw like twenty people around her, A lot of people, I guess, trying to resuscitate her.
Fallen also sustained injuries in the bombing. Hers were not life threatening, but sadly, her mother, who had been struck by shrapnel, was killed by the bomb. Alice Hawthorne was forty four years old. All told, there were one hundred eleven injuries and one death as a direct result of the explosion.
Lately, we've become strangely.
Decent to these sorts of horrific events, with the mass shooting nearly every day, But this one's always stuck to me, and every time there's another mass casualty, it brings me right back here, asking the same questions everybody was asking that summer.
How could someone do that? And why how does a person get to that point?
By daybreak, the news was global and the Centennial Olympic bombing was a national security concern. President Clinton addressed the nation in a White House press briefing.
The bombing gets Centennial Olympic Park this morning was an evil act of terror, an active cowardice that stands in sharp contrast to the courage of the Olympic athletes. I want to make clear our common determination. 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. Let me say finally that an act of vicious terror like this is clearly directed at the spirit of our
own democracy. It seeks to rip also at the spirit of the Olympics. But we must not let these attacks stop us from going forward. We cannot let terror win. That is not the American way.
With increased security contributes to the victims, the games would continue with only a few events delayed. As President Clinton thank the security personnel, the media took it a step further and crowned to hero guard Richard Jewel, who saved countless lives when he found and reported the abandoned back.
It was a pretty glorious time for him.
I was excited and even a little honored to meet him because I had heard he was the one who found the bomb. It was so clear that had that bomb not been identified early on, and spectators hadn't been pushed away by the hundreds, that there would have been massive casualties. So all right, just shook his hand and said thank you. He was saying, I'm just doing my job.
I just happened to be at the right place at the right time and did the job that I was trying to do. 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 I mean, this is the Olympics. It's supposed to be a time of joy for the world, and it's very very bad.
While the events were tragic, the outcome could have been much worse. In addition to Richard Jewles's quick actions, there was another group of unsuspecting heroes. A group of young men coming from the Speedo tent slightly moved the backpack containing the bomb. The FBI would later name this group the Speedo Boys. According to Agent Charles Stone, the shifting of the bag made a huge difference.
When they first saw the pack, they had thought it had sound equipment in it. They noticed it moved it. But the net effect of it they saved hundreds of lies because it was a directional bomb like a claymore. And what they did they tilted the bomb back so the majority of the frightened went way above the heads of everybody in the crowds and forth. If he had been left in the same place, we would have had hundreds of fatalities.
Local, state, and federal authority works around the clock to identify who was responsible for the bombing, coming through hours of tape, thousands of pieces of evidence, and interviewing hundreds of witnesses, including multiple interviews with Richard Jewel.
He was the hero for three days.
Then on July thirtieth, the day Centennial Park reopened to the public, local newspaper, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, named Jula's suspect, citing an unnamed source who was later revealed to be an FBI agent.
Well, just moments ago, the FBI went up the steps to Jewel's apartment, which is on the second floor of this building. Behind me. They did not identify themselves to reporters, but at the door we heard them identify themselves as FBI agents to Jewel.
Mister Jewel has been fully cooperative and permitted the agents to enter the apartment and conduct the court authorized search.
Since Saturday, the FBI has questioned him five times. They're very thorough.
They will do whatever it takes to catch who did it, and I will system in any way I can.
The speculation is that the FBI is close to making the case. In their language, they probably have enough to arrest him right now, probably enough to prosecute him, but you always want to have enough to convict him as well.
There are still some holes in this case.
Unbeknownst to Jule, the FBI.
Had been surveilling him and it was his behavior that stood out.
Hey did he act? I of course, we did a lot of background on it. He had made statements if anything happened at the Olympics, he wanted to be in the middle of it. It was immediately brought back the bomb. Dick from LAPDHY put down a fake mom.
Charles is talking about something that happened at the nineteen eighty four Olympics. In Los Angeles. Officer James W. Pearson of the LAPD discovered and diffused a bomb found on a bust that was seemingly intended for Turkish Olympic athletes. Days later, after failing a life detector test, Pearson admitted to place the bomb on the bus himself in an effort to appear as a hero to the media and his peers. Richard Jewell was suspected of pulling the same stunt with US.
Now is Richard Jewell.
The security The day started with Katie Kurk hailing Richard Jewell a savior, but by the end of the day Jewel was a possible suspect. Did he crave the limelight? After the bombing, Jewel approached the network seeking publicity a sign psychiatrist say of the hero syndrome.
For good reason, the Centennial Olympic Games had to go on. But for that to happen, the public needed to feel safe. They needed to believe that they were in good hands, that the FBI was in control. By marking Jewel as the prime suspect, the FBI was carefully indicating that not only did they have their guy, but also there was no threat of additional attacks.
I did do a story on the reopening of the park, which became a celebration with music and prayer, any resilience, and a promise that this was not going to stop the Atlanta Olympics from continuing.
I think it's great bark pulgas to us, and we'd capable of anybody to take it away from us.
I'll be watching for a package that's unattended.
I'm wanting to see everybody get back in there and really prove to the guys that did this that they can't defeat us, that we're really able to overcome this and a move on.
They wanted to show that this person, these people whoever did this, was not going to stop the spirit of the Olympics.
Having a suspect who could quickly and neatly be found guilty in the court of public opinion. It down only checked both boxes, and this wasn't some cynical charade manufacturer to keep Atlanta open for business. The FBI really did think they'd crack the case. They really did think they had their guy.
Once the forensics were done, once everything was wrapped up on the investigative side by the authorities, they indeed opened the park and they weren't afraid to come back in, and they poured back in. I remember there was dignitaries, prayers for the victims, and then people came.
Back and they continued to celebrate. The ninety six games.
Were confident half pay while the buds were fighting.
That was a time and now order for.
Four consecutive gold medals in a single event.
Thirty five year old Laurel.
Lewis American gymnastics teen men or women has won a team gold medal.
I don't fully gettended.
On August fourth, nineteen ninety six, the Centennial Games concluded. No further incidents impacted the Games that summer, and the victims of the bombing were remembered with a moment of silence at the closing ceremony. But this story was far from over. They told us they had the bomber because they thought we were safe. They thought it was okay, but they were dead wrong. No one could have possibly known at the time, but something was breaking. This bombing
had a lineage. It was part of something much bigger, one spark in a groundswell of violence that would impact.
So many lives.
I remember where I was.
This is Leah Lance, one of the many who felt the ripple effects of the bomb.
I was downtown hanging out with some friends at the House of Blues, which is across the street from Centennial Park. I was really relieved that I'd made at home and left early and wasn't there when that happened. That night was a close call for me, But it was the next bomb that's the one that changed my life.
Eat Tree Industrial Boulevards ninety four.
It's nine thirty five and we go to Rob Standler, our.
News director with a breaking news store.
Steve I am at two seventy five Carpenter Drive. This is a three story building that parallels Roswell Road. It's right behind Good Old Days in Sandy Springs where a suspected bomb has gone off in this building.
Flashpoint is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeartMedia. I'm Your Host. Cole Le Cassio, Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV. Flashpoint was created, written, and executive produced by Doug Mattica and myself on behalf of seven nine nine seven. Lead producer is Alex Espostad, along with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Stadman.
Our associate producer is Wit Lacasio.
Editing by Alex Vespostat with additional editing by Liam Luxon and Sidney Evans. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Station sixteen, original music by Jay Ragsdale mixed by Dayton Cole. Thank you to Orrin Rosenbaum and the team at Uta Beck Median Marketing and the Nord Group Special thanks to Angela q, Tyllye, Revive Mattica, and Tim Livingston. For more podcasts like Flashpoint, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast
stat or visit us at tenderfoot dot tv. Thanks for listening, Thanks for listening to this episode of Flashpoint. This series is released weekly absolutely free, but for ad free listening, early access and exclusive bonuses, you can subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts or at tenderfootplus dot com