The FBI s Investigation into Richard Jewell

Lone Wolf Terrorism and the1996 Atlanta Olympic Bombing

Introduction

The 1996 Atlanta Olympic Bombing was the act of “lone wolf” terrorist Eric Rudolph, motivated by an ideological standpoint from which he opposed abortion, homosexuality, corporatism, and the US government’s promotion of what he viewed as “the values of global socialism” (Rudolph, n.d.). Rudolph would eventually be captured in 2003 and convicted of the Atlanta bombing along with the bombings of two abortion clinics and a lesbian bar. Prior to his arrest, attention had been placed on security guard Richard Jewell, who discovered the backpack bomb at Centennial Olympic Park and alerted authorities just before its detonation. Jewell became a suspect, at least in the media, during an FBI investigation that included a raid on Jewell’s home. Jewell’s reputation never fully recovered from the suspicion placed upon him following his heroic efforts to save lives. Jewell went on to sue the Bureau and even to testify before Congress about the need for an investigative method that would better protect the rights of people like him. This paper will discuss the policy impact of the Atlanta Olympic Bombing, how Homeland Security should address investigative matters, and how DHS could mitigate the risk of future lone wolf terrorist attacks.

Policy Impact

Since the 1996 bombing, DHS has published several documents aimed at protecting the public, such as “Mass Evacuations: Planning for Sports Venues,” “Christian Extremism as a Domestic Terror Threat,” and “Patterns of Radicalization: Identifying the Markers and Warning Signs of Domestic Lone Wolf Terrorists in Our Midst” (Chapman, 2012). The last of these focused on the pattern of radicalization common to three of the most high-profile lone wolf terrorists in US history—Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, and Eric Rudolph. The report sought to help “law enforcement to prevent tragedies emerging from the identified population through psychological assistance, evaluation, training, or, in the worst case, detention” (Springer, 2009, p. v). One of the key defining characteristics of the three terrorists was their experience of isolation, loneliness, and socio-cultural pressure from their familial environments to conform to strident ideologies (Springer, 2009).

In the more than 20 years that have passed since the Atlanta bombing, DHS has developed a strategy for combating lone wolf terrorism, most recently evidenced by its Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence (CTTV Framework) and a Public Action Plan designed to identify emerging threats and promote information sharing. This strategic framework and the associated action plan rely heavily on digital information sharing tools that were not available in 1996 but that, thanks to the arrival of social media and the much more accessible Internet of the Digital Age, have made information sharing much easier.

While the value of monitoring for signs of lone wolf terrorism is indisputable, the problem that Jewell identified was the lack of professionalism in the leaking of his name to the press and his belief that the Justice Department does not hold itself accountable to the degree that it should given its service to the public (The Activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Part III, 1997). In that regard, further policy reform is needed. Issues of trust are important when it comes to federal agencies conducting investigations into terrorism, and if the public feels—as was certainly the case with Richard Jewell—that federal agencies lack the necessary ethical and professional standards to engage in investigations of this nature it will be less likely to assist in the kind of information sharing that the strategic framework and associated action plan of the DHS calls for and depends upon.

Addressing Investigative Matters

One of the important arguments about lone wolf terrorists is that they are never really alone. As Weimann (2016) points out, “they are recruited, radicalized, taught, trained and directed by others” typically through cyberspace and social media platforms (p. 1). This argument helps to support the case that DHS should focus attention on information sharing and working within the digital space to comb through publicly available records that might highlight individuals who are susceptible to terroristic indoctrination. However, digital surveillance raises its own ethical questions, particularly when it comes to the rights of individuals to exercise free speech, who determines what the line should be between hyperbolic rhetoric and threatening speech, and how such speech should be monitored, controlled, prevented or policed (Utset, 2016). The dangers of a government agency spying on the lives of American citizens has come up before, notably in Congressional investigations into Operation CHAOS and the spying programs of the intelligence community in the latter half of the 20th century. Those investigations showed that there was no clear ethical framework laid out by the intelligence community when it came to monitoring the lives of Americans.

Privacy rights and professional/ethical standards were important elements in Jewell’s testimony before Congress. His argument was that investigators should not collaborate with media in framing a narrative during an ongoing investigation and that anyone who does should be held accountable. Accountability was the primary aim of the testimony: Jewell wanted to bring focus on the need for the Justice Department to exercise a higher degree of accountability if it wanted to foster trust with the American public. He believed that his story and the tarnishing of his own reputation in the aftermath of the Atlanta bombing were more than sufficient to bring notice to this important aspect of investigative work.

The two themes tie together. On the one hand, the DHS is tasked with preventing lone wolf terrorism, which means it must find ways to promote information sharing so that isolated and dangerous individuals with extremist ideological views and violent tendencies can be identified and dealt with in the appropriate manners before a violent assault occurs. On the other hand, the DHS has to address the issue of protecting the rights of the public so that the public can trust federal agencies when it comes to information sharing.

Jewell responded to the investigation into his life and background with candor and openness. As a security guard, he identified with law enforcement (Brenner, 1997). Even though the FBI never named him as a suspect, however, the media began to draw more and more attention to him as if he were the prime suspect in the bombing. It quickly appeared that some collaboration between the Bureau and media elements had existed to foster this narrative. This was not the kind of professionalism in investigation that Jewell had anticipated as an innocent man who believed in the criminal justice process and the right of a person to maintain his innocence until proven guilty in a court of law. What became evident through his trial by media was that the court of public opinion had assumed a powerful position in the theater of justice—and it could cause irreparable harm both to those under scrutiny by federal agencies and to the reputations of those same federal agencies.

A recent disclosure of a covert operations operation within the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) shows the degree to which public trust in America’s institutions can be undermined (Winter, 2021). As Winter (2021) notes, “the government’s monitoring of Americans’ social media is the subject of ongoing debate inside and outside government, particularly in recent months, following a rise in domestic unrest. While posts on platforms such as Facebook and Parler have allowed law enforcement to track down and arrest rioters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, such data collection has also sparked concerns about the government surveilling peaceful protesters or those engaged in protected First Amendment activities.” The question arises: what will happen if users of social media begin to feel that their social media activity makes them suspects in the eyes of a federal agency that has a history of collaborating with media to create a media trial in the court of public opinion? The blowback could be disastrous from a public relations perspective, and it could also undermine real efforts at identifying the development of lone wolf terrorism or the organization of terrorist activities, especially if that development and organization are taken offline, making it more difficult for agencies to monitor them.

Observers of the recent public disclosure of iCOP have their own questions. Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program stated that “it appears that iCOP is meant to root out misuse of the postal system by online actors, which doesn’t seem to encompass what’s going on here. It’s not at all clear why their mandate would include monitoring of social media that’s unrelated to use of the postal system” (Winter, 2021). And if the USPS is monitoring social media accounts in a way that is outside its purview, what is one to surmise about any of the other myriad federal agencies and their approaches to data harvesting and monitoring?

These issues dovetail with the main issue raised by Jewell after the way he was treated by federal investigators in response to the Atlanta bombing: the federal government has a great deal of power and a great deal of responsibility when it comes to addressing terrorism and how it is investigated. The American public still possesses rights afforded it by the Constitution—but those rights seem to be routinely violated with very little repercussions doled out to the agencies that violate them. If DHS is going to combat the development of lone wolf terrorism and thwart potential terrorists like Eric Rudolph before they can act, it is going to need the trust of the American public. When disclosures such as the USPS’s iCOP emerge, it undermines whatever trust in government the public might have.

Recommendations for the Future

The decentralization of media and information that the Internet brought about in the early days of the 2000s has largely been reversed due to the monopolization of platforms and services by the Big Tech firms of Google, Amazon, Facebook and Twitter. These firms harvest and share users’ data on a regular basis; it is part of their business model to do so. Users largely agree to have their data collected and shared when they use these platforms—but they also expect a modicum of freedom to use the platforms as they see fit. When President Trump was banned from several platforms for incitement, it increased tensions in the public, particularly between supporters of the President and those opposed to his views and antics. The fact that Congresswoman Maxine Waters has made similarly inciting comments in public (with respect to protests and riots) but has not been banned from the same platforms indicates that the platforms have a political skew in terms of how they are managed and operated. This realization by the public further exacerbates tensions. What is to be done when the public is divided, polarized and people are angry over the way their freedoms or their perception of the way their freedoms are violated? The spate of mass killings across the US since the lifting of lockdowns in many states in 2021 is an indication that anxiety and tension are at boiling points.

The reason this is important is simple: just as Eric Rudolph had an ideological motive for bombing the Olympic Games in 1996 out of protest for the way he perceived the American government to be aligning itself with global socialism, people today are developing the perception that elements of the American government are in league with Big Tech and the left-leaning ideologies of Silicon Valley. This perception can serve as the catalyst for aggressive, hostile and violent action or organization. Indeed, iCOP has been shown to be monitoring social media specifically for the purpose of identifying far-right organizations and protests. This comes even as Antifa protests are organized in the open with little apparent resistance from government. On the contrary, Congresswoman Waters actively and publicly promotes the protests/riots of the Black Lives Matter organization, often associated with Antifa.

A bifurcation has occurred that will have drastic implications in the future. Just as Rudolph lashed out as a lone wolf terrorist in 1996, it is quite likely that others will do so today or in the near future. Isolation and loneliness have only increased as a result of the 2020 lockdowns. This may explain the eruption of mass shootings in the recent weeks: individuals who have been isolated are now emerging to take revenge on a society that they see as antithetical to their own beliefs and core values. Moreover, the sheer number of these shootings suggests that there are many lone wolves coming out of the woods. What can DHS do to stem the tide of violent domestic terrorism apparently emerging in communities all over the nation?

Playing into the ideological fears of lone wolf terrorists and potential terrorists by engaging in the type of activities that they deem most threatening to their rights, their privacy and their values is not going to help. The government has to be more accountable in terms of how it approaches its investigative work and how it engages in the monitoring of citizens. When it acts in such a way as to scandalize certain segments of the public, it only makes those segments potentially more dangerous.

But what other option might the DHS have given the circumstances? It is a fair question. The reality, however, is that just because the tools and technology are there to facilitate the monitoring of citizens’ lives and activity does not mean they should be used the way they are apparently being used by federal agencies. Just as federal agencies and the intelligence community lacked an ethical framework during the days of Operation CHAOS, it seems they similarly lack one today. Yet a government without an ethical framework is not one that the public will know, love and trust.

DHS should be more engaged in developing, sharing, abiding by and enforcing a proper ethical framework that can be used in the administration of agencies engaged in data collection, surveillance, and policing and investigative efforts. If the experience of Richard Jewell shows anything in the wake of the Atlanta bombing it shows that federal agencies then did not have a very good handle on lone wolf terrorism or how to conduct an efficient and effective investigation into a lone wolf terror attack. Indeed, it was not for another 7 years that the actual culprit in the bombing was apprehended. By that point, Jewell’s reputation had been devastatingly tarnished, and the reputation of federal agencies tarnished as well.