WASHINGTON, March 8 (UPI) -- Jury selection for the trial of Eric Rudolph, the man accused of bombing two Atlanta-area abortion clinics, the 1996 Olympic Games and a gay nightclub, begins in April.
And according to two men close to the case, much could be learned from the 5-year investigation leading to Rudolph's arrest.
CNN journalist Henry Schuster and retired Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent Charles Stone published "Hunting Eric Rudolph: An Insider's Account of the Five-Year Search for the Olympic Bombing Suspect" earlier this week.
"I cover stories," said Schuster, senior producer of CNN's investigative unit and a specialist in the field of terrorism. "And this is just a story that the deeper you get into it the more interesting it becomes."
While international terrorism has become a key issue for law enforcement in the years after Sept. 11, 2001, "Hunting Eric Rudolph" illustrates the need to continue addressing the threat of domestic terrorism in the United States.
"There had been so many scenarios, so many preparations, against terrorism. Tens of millions of dollars had been spent. Thousands of police officers had been deployed. But that had not prevented one man, a goateed man with a hooded sweatshirt, from bringing terrorism back to the Olympic Games," Schuster and Stone wrote.
"These are terrorist instances that happened very close to home," Schuster said in a telephone interview.
"I think domestic terrorism is at a low ebb right now," said Stone, but he added that "you cannot ever totally discount domestic terrorism."
Rudolph will be tried first for his involvement in the bombing of a Birmingham abortion clinic in which he allegedly killed a security officer and seriously injured a nurse. If convicted, Rudolph could face the death penalty.
Rudolph's alleged stint as a serial bomber was fueled by a deep hatred for the U.S. government in general and law enforcement in particular.
Rudolph's mother, Patricia, began her adult life as a nun, later giving up the Roman Catholic faith and converting to the Baptist religion. Then she left the Baptist faith to join the extremist Christian Identity movement.
According to a report paraphrased in the book, "Christian Identity is described accurately as a belief system which maintains that white Europeans or Aryans represent the true chosen people of Yahweh, that they are the real Israelites. Jews are not considered the people of the Bible, but rather the spawn of Satan. CI minions, it says, believe the world is on the verge of a final, apocalyptic struggle between these good Aryans and Satan's evil minions, who include Jews, the federal government, mass media, U.S. banks, and homosexuals."
The authors describe Patricia Rudolph as "a woman who loathed the federal government with every fiber of her being and had weaned her children on this belief, years before her son ever got into trouble."
Although Eric Rudolph bombed a gay nightclub, his brother Jamie was described as a gay musician living in New York's Greenwich Village. His brother Daniel sawed off his hand in protest of Eric's arrest and videotaped the ordeal.
"It's just a stunning family," said Schuster in a phone interview. "That's a family you just cannot make up."
Investigative profiles described Eric Rudolph as a "lone wolf."
Although he hated the government and everything associated with it, he joined the military, where he was eventually kicked out.
Rudolph was also described as a "survivalist," capable of living alone in the wilderness for extended periods of time.
Rudolph retreated to the woods in rural North Carolina after the Olympic Park bombing, eluding federal investigators until 2003, when an officer found him at a dumpster diving for food in a small town.
"It's important to realize that with a little bit more coordination the manhunt probably would not have happened," said Schuster.
Stone, who has worked in law enforcement for more than 25 years, agreed that the Rudolph case served as a lesson to investigators.
"It was a major case for law enforcement in general," said Stone, adding that the major reason Rudolph was able to elude officers for so long was that "there was a lack of communication within the FBI."
According to Stone, law enforcement officers could learn a lot from the case.
"I think it's very important that one group of people work the entire case no matter where it goes," said Stone.
For instance, when investigators first searched a storage unit that Rudolph was renting, none of the officers originally assigned to the case was present, causing them to overlook a critical piece of evidence.
But according to Schuster, the FBI was not the only group to learn lessons from the Rudolph case.
During the early hours of the 1996 Olympic bombing investigation, authorities wrongly believed a security guard named Richard Jewell was responsible for the bomb.
The media was quick to stake out Jewell's home, providing constant news coverage and ruining the reputation of an innocent man.
According to Schuster, members of the media, including CNN, walked the route that Jewell traveled the night of the bombing with one of Jewell's attorneys.
The path cleared Jewell of the allegations, "but by then, the damage had been done," Schuster said.
"One would like to think that lessons are learned," said Schuster. "I hope we're a little bit wiser."
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