Domestic terrorists had never before used the diabolical tactic of a delayed second bomb, long part of the playbook in Belfast and Beirut. But otherwise the attack looked all too down home. The larger explosive “was a “bubba bomb’ “–the kind of crude, black-powder weapon most commonly built so far by right-wing radicals, one investigator told NEWSWEEK. The first question, he said, is whether the new nail bomb matches one used in the July 27 bombing at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park. That bomb, constructed from lead pipe, killed a bystander; a federal task force formed after the attack joined the new investigation.
Abortion-rights advocates saw the blast as a setback. There had been no such attacks in Atlanta since 1984. On the same morning as the Atlanta bombings, the pro-choice Feminist Majority told a Washington news conference that violence targeting abortion rights had dropped 39 percent in a year. Afterward, officials warned clinics to beware of attacks timed to coincide with the anniversary this week of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
