Trio Probed for Possible Ties to Olympic Blast

SPOKANE, Wash. — Three men charged with several bombings and bank robberies in the Pacific Northwest also are being investigated for possible links to the Olympic park bombing in Atlanta, a newspaper reported Sunday.

While anonymous Justice Department and FBI officials told the Spokesman-Review newspaper that the Spokane bombing suspects are being investigated in the Atlanta case, they cautioned that they have other leads and no solid suspects.

“At this point, they are our strongest lead in the Olympics bombing,” a Justice Department official told the newspaper. “But there’s a lot more work to do, and it’s really early on in the investigation.”

FBI spokesman Ray Lauer said it was logical to investigate the men for the Olympic bombing.

“If you are looking for a bomber, you look at known suspected bombers,” Lauer said from Seattle. “To label them as suspects [in the Atlanta case] would be too harsh of a step at this time.”

The three men are being held without bail on charges of robbing banks and bombing one of the banks, an abortion clinic and an office of the Spokesman-Review.

They were arrested Oct. 8 near Yakima, Wash., after a military surplus dealer, encouraged by a $130,000 reward, reported that he recognized a parka worn by a masked gunmen in a bank surveillance photo.

The dealer, from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, told the FBI he sold two of the men a military backpack and spoke with them about time-delay detonators, and also told them how to wash fingerprints off the backpack, the newspaper said.

The Olympic bomb, which killed a woman and injured 111 people on July 27, was hidden in a military backpack and was triggered by a battery-operated timer.

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The bombs in Spokane and Atlanta have similarities: They were made with galvanized steel pipe and, apparently, black powder. But while the Atlanta bomb used a timer, the Spokane devices were set off by fuses lighted by matches, the newspaper said. No one was injured by the three Spokane pipe bombs.