Olympics Bomb Probe Looks At Nw Trio Spokane Bombing Suspects Are ‘Strongest Lead’ In Atlanta Case

Copyright 1997, The Spokesman-Review

An intriguing trail of evidence may tie suspects in the Spokane Valley bombings and bank robberies to the unsolved bombing at the Olympic Games last summer in Atlanta.

A military surplus dealer who led the FBI to three accused domestic terrorists now says he sold the Sandpoint men a military backpack and spoke with them about a time-delayed detonator.

The Olympic bomb - which killed a woman and injured 111 people - was hidden in a military backpack and triggered by a time-delayed device.

Telephone records may place at least one of the Spokane suspects, Charles Barbee, near Atlanta about the time of the July 27 attack.

The Atlanta bomb exploded near a park bench in the AT&T Global Village, at part of the Olympic Centennial Park.

Barbee worked for AT&T in Georgia, Florida and Idaho before leaving the telephone giant, describing it during a 1995 interview as a godless, immoral corporation that mistreated Christian white men.

“We have to be ready to conduct guerrilla warfare,” Barbee said at the time, describing his anti-government, Christian Identity beliefs in the same interview. “That’s how it will be won.”

Justice Department and FBI officials at several levels confirm the Spokane suspects are being investigated in the Atlanta case. But officials caution they have other leads and that the Sandpoint men are not yet suspects.

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

Another federal official said there are “some real interesting” connections between the Atlanta bombing and the Spokane suspects.

“They certainly haven’t been eliminated,” the official said.

Barbee, 42; Robert S. Berry, 42; and Verne Jay Merrell, 51, are scheduled to stand trial Feb. 10 in U.S. District Court in Spokane. The trial could be delayed because the men are refusing to give court-ordered handwriting samples and be photographed.

The men told a federal judge this month they are “ambassadors for the kingdom of Yahweh,” and claimed that the government has no authority over them. Yahweh is an English rendering of a Hebrew name for God that is commonly used by white supremacists.

They are charged with the April 1 bombings of The Spokesman-Review’s Valley office and a nearby U.S. Bank branch, which also was robbed.

They also are charged with bombing a Planned Parenthood clinic and robbing the same U.S. Bank branch on July 12 - two weeks before the Olympics bombing.

If convicted of the 12 charges against them in Spokane, the three men face life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

They were arrested Oct. 8 near Yakima, more than two months after a military surplus dealer recognized a parka worn by one of the masked gunmen in a bank surveillance photo.

The 40-year-old Coeur d’Alene businessman said he sold similar parkas to the men.

The dealer began talking to the FBI on Aug. 18, enticed by a $130,000 reward, but worried about being falsely accused of involvement in the Spokane bombings.

“I was really afraid of getting all caught up in this,” the informant said in an interview days before the FBI moved him to a secret location.

Even his Coeur d’Alene attorney now says he doesn’t know where the FBI is hiding and protecting his client.

In December, after the FBI released photographs of the type of backpack used in the Olympics bombing, the informant told investigators he’d sold Barbee and Berry a similar backpack.

“They asked, ‘How do you get fingerprints off one of these?”’ the informant recalled. He said he told them to wash the backpack in soapy water.

The Spokane Valley bombers were unsuccessful in constructing time-delayed devices they hoped would ignite firebombs in their stolen get-away vans.

According to the FBI informant, the Sandpoint men also talked to him about time-delayed detonators similar to one later used in Atlanta.

With those new leads, FBI agents began checking telephone records and the whereabouts of the three men on July 27.

Justice Department sources confirm they have records of telephone calls made from the Atlanta area to Barbee’s North Idaho home about the time of the Olympics bombing near the AT&T Global Village stage.

Barbee worked for AT&T in northern Florida, where he was raised, and in Georgia.

“It’s not a moral company,” Barbee said in late 1995 after leaving his $50,000-a-year job with the company in Idaho. He said AT&T held gay and lesbian awareness sessions and “coerced managers to join United Way.

“Half the people I worked with were women,” Barbee said during that interview. “They were working instead of being helpmates to their husbands, as God requires.”

Barbee was a member of a Georgia hunting and gun club as recently as 1993, his former friends said. He visited Florida two weeks after the April 1 bombing in Spokane, his family members confirmed.

Merrell worked at a nuclear power plant in Crystal River, Fla., before moving to Idaho in the mid-1980s. His parents still live in Florida.

Early news reports traced a 12-volt battery used to ignite the Olympics bomb to a Florida hardware store chain, although investigators now say it could have come from another state.

“There’s a string of peculiar coincidences that we’re taking a close look at,” a Justice Department source said.

But officially the 100-member task force investigating the Olympics bombing would not talk about any possible connection to the Spokane suspects.

“We just don’t have any comment,” said FBI spokesman Jay Spadafore in Atlanta.

After misidentifying Olympics security guard Richard Jewell as a suspect, FBI agents were harshly warned not to talk about the case by their boss, FBI Director Louis Freeh.

In Spokane, FBI agents are still gathering evidence on the bombings and bank robberies, and are hunting for a fourth suspect who reportedly has been identified.

The bombs in Spokane and Atlanta have some similarities: They were made with galvanized steel pipe and, apparently, black gun powder.

But most pipe bombs share common characteristics - law enforcement officers call them “Bubba bombs.” And there are differences in the Spokane and Atlanta bombs, the most obvious being the detonation systems.

A battery and timing device triggered the Olympics bomb, while orange safety fuse and matches ignited the Spokane bombs.

The Atlanta bomb was constructed of three, foot-long galvanized pipes packed with powder. The pipes were fastened with baling wire and sandwiched between a metal plate and a plastic container filled with 3-inch concrete nails.

Before it exploded, someone knocked the pack on its back, potentially saving several lives by lessening the impact of the explosion.

The Spokane bombers used a single pipe in each of the April 1 bombings, but switched to a more lethal style of bomb - composed of two 6- to 8-inch pipes - in the Planned Parenthood bombing on July 12.

Unlike the Olympics bombing, no one was injured by the three pipe bombs set off in Spokane. But investigators believe the bombers of Planned Parenthood intended to cause death or injuries.

The informant told FBI agents that the men regretted not killing anyone in that bombing.

Berry, Barbee and Merrell are charged only with crimes committed in the Pacific Northwest. But according to federal prosecutors, the three showed a penchant for travel.

They are accused of driving to Pocatello, Idaho, last September and Hood River, Ore., in October to steal 4-wheel-drive vehicles.

They were arrested in October after driving to a Portland bank that had been warned by the FBI and locked its doors, apparently preventing another robbery.

In addition, according to the informant, the men bragged about robbing banks in other states, including California. Another informant told the FBI he went with the men when they scouted out banks to rob in the Southwest.

The three men all have ties to America’s Promise Ministries, a Christian Identity church based in Sandpoint. There are reports that at least two of the men attended an America’s Promise conference in February 1996 in Leesburg, Fla.

The Christian Identity religion holds that people of northern European ancestry are the true Israelites and that Jews are impostors.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo 2 Graphics: 1. An Olympics connection? 2. Where terrorism struck

MEMO: Bill Morlin is a staff writer for The Spokesman-Review and has covered white supremacy and anti-government groups for 17 years. Jess Walter is a former Spokesman-Review reporter who is now a free-lance writer and author.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Bombing chronology April 1 - Masked men detonate a pipe bomb outside The Spokesman-Review’s Valley office and then rob and bomb a nearby U.S. Bank branch. Before leaving the bank, they shout statements about the Montana freemen siege, which started a week earlier. They also leave behind notes at the newspaper and the bank bearing the symbol of the Phineas priesthood, a secret white supremacist sect. July 12 - The bombers strike a second time, setting off another pipe bomb at a Planned Parenthood clinic in the Valley and again robbing the same U.S. Bank branch. July 27 - Three pipe bombs explode inside in a military backpack left under a bench in Centennial Park at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. One woman is killed and 111 people are injured. July 30 - Security guard Richard Jewell is publicly identified as a potential suspect in the Olympics bombing. Aug. 18 - A military surplus dealer in Coeur d’Alene contacts the FBI through his attorney and identifies three Sandpoint men as suspects in the Spokane bombings and robberies. Oct. 8 - The three suspects - Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Verne Jay Merrell - are arrested near Yakima after a foiled bank robbery attempt in Portland. Oct. 26 - The Justice Department says Richard Jewell is no longer a suspect in the Olympics bombing. Dec. 9 - The FBI posts a $500,000 reward and publicly displays the type of green, military-style backpack, known as an Alice pack. A few days later, the informant in the Spokane bombing case tells the FBI that he sold the suspects a backpack like the one used in the Atlanta bombing and provides other details.