Rudolph pleads guilty in Olympic bombing

ATLANTA -- A defiant Eric Rudolph pleaded guilty Wednesday to carrying out the deadly bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and three other attacks, saying he picked the Summer Games to embarrass the U.S. government in front of the world "for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand."

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"Because I believe that abortion is murder, I also believe that force is justified ... in an attempt to stop it," he said in a statement handed out by his lawyers after he entered his pleas in back-to-back court appearances, first in Birmingham, Ala., in the morning, then in Atlanta in the afternoon.

Rudolph, 38, worked out a plea bargain that will spare him from the death penalty. He will get four consecutive life sentences without parole for the four blasts across the South that killed two people and wounded more than 120 others.

Rudolph expressed remorse in his statement only for the Olympic bombing, saying "I do apologize to the victims and their families." In all the attacks, he said he intended only to target "agents of the Washington government" or "abortionists."

In the Atlanta courtroom, Rudolph sat stone-faced and answered questions calmly and politely. In Birmingham, though, he winked toward prosecutors as he entered court, said the government could "just barely" prove its case, and admitted his guilt with a hint of pride in his voice.

The statement -- a rambling, right-wing manifesto on 11 typewritten, single-spaced pages -- marked the first time he offered a motive for the attacks.

"The purpose of the (Olympic) attack on July 27th (1996) was to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand," Rudolph said in the statement, in which he also quoted the Bible repeatedly, condemned homosexuality and complained that the Olympics promote "global socialism."

The plan, he said, "was to force the cancellation of the Games, or at least create a state of insecurity to empty the streets around the venues and thereby eat into the vast amounts of money invested."

He said that because he was unable to obtain the necessary high explosives, he "had to dismiss the unrealistic notion of knocking down the power grid surrounding Atlanta and consequently pulling the plug on the Olympics for their duration."

The bomb that exploded at the Olympics was hidden in a knapsack and sent nails and screws ripping through a crowd at Centennial Olympic Park during a concert. A woman was killed and 111 other people were wounded in what proved to be Rudolph's most notorious attack, carried out on an international stage amid heavy security.

Rudolph said that he had planned a much larger attack on the Olympics that would have used five bombs over several days. He said he planned to make phone calls well in advance of each explosion, "leaving only uniformed arms-carrying government personnel exposed to potential injury." But he said poor planning on his part made that five-bomb plan impossible.   Continued...