A Washington state based newspaper has reported that three men, currently charged with bombing an office of The Spokesman and a Spokane Planned Parenthood clinic, are the FBI’s strongest lead in the Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park bombing. Though the men are not yet considered suspects, the paper cites circumstantial evidence linking the three Idaho men to the bombing. The men are currently held without bail for the newspaper and clinic bombings; they were arrested after a military surplus dealer reported that he had sold the men a parka and military backpack that was worn by a masked gunman in a bank surveillance photo. The dealer also spoke with the men about how to operate time-delay detonators and told them how to wash fingerprints off the backpack. The Centennial Park bomb was placed in a military backpack and triggered by a battery-operated timer.
The men, Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Verne Jay Merrell belong to the Phineas Priesthood, a white supremacist group. Barbee worked for AT&T but quit the company in 1995 because he considered it “immoral.” He complained that the company held sensitivity workshops on homosexuals, encouraged managers to give to the United Way, and mistreated Christian white men. He also noted that women comprised half the workforce when they should have been at home taking care of their families as God mandated. He advocated “guerrilla warfare.” The Olympic bombing happened near the AT&T global village.