Return to Transcripts main page

Next@CNN

Eric Rudolph Captured

Aired May 31, 2003 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOPHIA CHOI, CNN ANCHOR: Eric Robert Rudolph, captured after a five-year manhunt. The suspected Olympic Park bomber, is now in custody. Coming up this hour, a special report Rudolph was caught. We'll talk with the police bomb expert who was on duty when that bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park, and we'll get some insight into what drives a person like Eric Robert Rudolph.
We start with where and how Rudolph was captured. Rudolph may have lived off the land while on the run, but according to sources, Rudolph was rummaging through trash when he was actually found.

CNN's Mike Brooks is live from Murphy, North Carolina, with details -- Mike.

MIKE BROOKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Sophia.

Eric Robert Rudolph sits in Cherokee County Jail. Just right behind me here, you see the courthouse, and right behind that is the jail where he is being held right now.

Now, it all started early this morning when an officer with the Murphy Police Department here in North Carolina was on routine patrol. Or he -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) early this morning, he saw what he -- was a suspicious person walking behind a shopping center. He went to approach him, the person ran. He ran and was hiding behind some wooden pallets.

He then pulled his weapon, ordered the man on the ground. They handcuffed him, he had some backup units arrive to assist off the officer. Is a officer who's got less than a year on the job. Twenty- one-year-old Officer J.S. Postell, who's with the Murphy Police Department.

Then they took him in for questioning. He gave, the person gave the name of Jerry Wilson. They didn't know exactly who he was. One of the deputies with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office actually recognized him and said he thought that it was Eric Rudolph.

After further questioning, he said that he was in fact Eric Robert Rudolph.

So, again, he's here in custody. I spoke with the FBI a short time ago, and they said that he was going to be transferred from here in Murphy to Asheville, North Carolina, for arraignment on Monday. Now, he may go either tonight or tomorrow. We have just received a picture of the -- a photograph from the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department of Eric Robert Rudolph. This is the picture that was taken early this morning. And we see that he has short hair, very thin, with a moustache. So this is the most recent photograph that was taken by Cherokee County Sheriff's Office here at the jail of Eric Robert Rudolph, Sophia.

CHOI: All right. Mike Brooks reporting live for us from Murphy, North Carolina, the site of the capture this morning. Thanks, Mike.

And now for some geographical perspective. We have satellite images showing just how close Eric Robert Rudolph still was to the various locations he is suspected of bombing. Let's take a look at those now.

As we've told you, Rudolph was arrested behind a business in Murphy. I want to take you closer in to Murphy. That's in Cherokee County. Rudolph was arrested behind a business there in North Carolina just south of Cherokee. That's in Nantahela National Forest, where authorities believe he had been hiding since 1998.

Rudolph was just a two-hour drive from Olympic Centennial Park. Let's go there next, zoom out on the computer here -- there. Two hours away in Atlanta, the first place he is suspected of bombing back in 1996. Now, this bombing killed one person and injured more than 100 others.

We'll scoot you over so you can take a better look at it. Then in January 1997, we take you to Sandy Springs Professional Center. This is north of Atlanta. This place was struck by two bombs, the second one going off an hour later. The building contained a clinic where abortions were performed.

And then just one month later, and across town from that site, you were just looking at, Sandy Springs, a gay nightclub called the Otherside Lounge was bombed.

Then at 7:33 a.m. on January 29, 1998, a blast ripped through the New Woman All-Women Health Care Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, killing off-duty police officer Robert Sanderson and injuring the clinic's head nurse, Emily Lyons.

The Olympic Park bombing in 1996 killed one woman and injured more than 100 others. Crowd control and protection in the aftermath became top priority.

CNN's Martin Savidge joins us from the site of the '96 blast with more -- Marty.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, as we've talked about, it's been the issue of crowd down here, especially on that night of 1996, July with all the people here for the Olympics. And crowd control and then crime scene investigation.

I'm joined to talk about hat very subject with Major Stan Savage, who's with the Atlanta Police Department, also with their special operations unit. And he was here the night of the blast.

Give us an idea of the scene you faced when you arrived.

MAJ. STAN SAVAGE, ATLANTA POLICE DEPARTMENT: Well, basically, it was very chaotic. Obviously the Olympics basically designated a peaceful time for us, and we had a number of people out here, the number of different stages, that were obviously just enjoying the festivities.

And obviously that blast obviously ripped right through the core of that. We had a number of first responders to include police, fire, ambulance, and I was with the police department with the SWAT team that actually had to respond.

And we were trying to, number one, get a handle on where the blast had initially happened, and determine those individuals who were injured. And there were a number of people who were injured just by the shrapnel and other debris that had injured, you know, just scores of people all around.

SAVIDGE: How do you prioritize? You obviously have to deal with injured, deal with the crowd, because there could be another explosive device, and preserve the crime scene, all at the same time?

SAVAGE: Well, I guess in that priority. The first thing, obviously, is the preservation of life, and so, you know, typically, at that time, we were, as you say, concerned with secondary and tertiary devices. And typically what we, you know, tried to do was try to determine a sanctuary or sanitized place where we can move people, you know, to an area of safety. And...

SAVIDGE: Were you worried there could be another explosion?

SAVAGE: Well, during that time, we were very worried, and we felt, as most law enforcement across the country, that those secondary and tertiary devices were in fact targeting first responders. And so, you know, we, you know, we were definitely concerned, and have been concerned about that every time we, you know, come in contact, or we have to respond to a chaotic or critical instance such as that.

SAVIDGE: We've seen the video. We're looking at it now again. Give us an idea of how large -- how many people were in the area.

SAVAGE: Well, it was -- obviously, you know, there were, you know, thousands of people out here, because obviously a lot of people didn't have tickets to some of the venues.

But, you know, this was a free ticket, if you will, so obviously we had thousands of people, you know, every night here in the park. And again there was good entertainment and, you know, an opportunity for people to come down and see the skyline on pretty nights and things of that particular nature.

And again, it was free, so we had a lot of people who were able to somewhat engage in the Olympic experience, maybe, who were not fortunate to, you know, get tickets to the venues. So and being an outdoor venue, we obviously had to be concerned with, you know, people still going in and about, because we had clusters of people at different places here in the park.

SAVIDGE: Did you learn from this? Did the Atlanta Police Department learn about crowd control, learn about -- well, learn from this tragedy?

SAVAGE: Well, yes, we've learned from that tragedy as well as a number of things we've had in Atlanta and dealing with crowd control. Obviously this was probably one of the most notable events we've had in our history, although we've had Super Bowl and a bunch of other stuff.

But we -- just like -- all of our law enforcement partners learned just, number one, how we better, you know, respond as first responders to events. We obviously look at areas in the event that we have an emergency to better accommodate individuals getting into and out of a venue, how that venue is set up initially, so that we can have things in place to scrutinize or to check individuals' bags, things of that particular nature.

And obviously that is the -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) obviously even intensified even more after the events of 9/11, so...

SAVIDGE: It certainly has. Major Stan Savage from the Atlanta Police Department, thank you very much for joining us today.

Crowd control, as he just points out, is something that has not gone away with the arrest of Eric Rudolph. It is still something in the days of terrorism very much in the forefront. Back to you.

CHOI: All right. Martin Savidge, reporting live for us. Thank you so much.

Well, you can also go to cnn.com for all the latest as the capture of Eric Robert Rudolph, the suspected Olympic Park bomber, unfolds.

We'll be right back more on the Eric Rudolph capture. We'll show you how scientific detectives linked Rudolph to the bombings in the first place.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: Police launched a manhunt for Eric Robert Rudolph in 1998 after his pickup truck was found near the site of the Birmingham attack.

Our investigative correspondent Art Harris joins us from Modesto, California, with more on how investigators linked Rudolph to that bombing and to others.

And I believe actually they linked that truck, because they -- a witness spotted that truck leaving the scene and then chased it and got the plate number. Isn't that correct, Art? ART HARRIS, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: That's correct. A witness who was at the site of the Birmingham bombing not only saw the truck but followed it, and then others took up the chase in traffic and got the license tag.

He's a fugitive, though, who has been wanted for five years, one of most notorious and elusive in law enforcement history.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS (voice-over): July 1996, Atlanta's Olympic Centennial Park. The first bomb goes off. One dead, more than 100 injured. Then two more bombs in Atlanta, both with delayed backup (UNINTELLIGIBLE). The FBI says they're designed to kill cops.

Some forensics (UNINTELLIGIBLE), like rare steel plating used to deflect shrapnel in one direction. Charles Stone worked with the FBI's bomb task force.

CHARLES STONE, GEORGIA BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: It's like working a serial homicide. You hate for another homicide to happen, but the more bombs you have, the greater the chances the bomber will make a mistake.

HARRIS: A year and a half after the Olympic Park explosion, a bomb kills an off-duty police officer at a Birmingham, Alabama, clinic that performs abortions. Two witnesses see a man driving away in a pickup truck, and tag number, and finally a name.

DOUG JONES, U.S. ATTORNEY: We have issued a warrant for a Mr. Eric Robert Rudolph, white male, age 31.

HARRIS: The next day, the FBI learns Rudolph lives here in Murphy, North Carolina. Former sheriff Jack Thompson tells CNN he finds the trailer, but the FBI tells him to wait for their agents. About three hours later, agents find the light on, the door open, but Rudolph is gone.

(on camera): You missed him by how much?

STONE: A matter of hours, if not minutes.

HARRIS (voice-over): Now he's wanted in connection with all the bombings.

From lab testing, the task force learns a mill nearby in Franklin, North Carolina, is the only place in the Southeast that makes rare steel plating used in two bombs, and smokeless powder was used in the first Atlanta bomb, dynamite in the others.

According to investigators, Eric bought the powder and apparently stole the dynamite.

The FBI tells CNN it played the 911 tape for several people close to Rudolph, who said it sounded like the suspect, but experts say the tape may be too short to use in any trial. Six months after vanishing, he's back, then takes off in a friend's truck with food and supplies. Later he's blamed for cabin break-ins.

STONE: Why would somebody take men's underwear, shoes, and soap, and things like that? Somebody that's surviving in the woods.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: A survivor who has been training for this mission, law enforcement believes, since childhood, when he played war in the woods, used manuals about herbs and survival, and watched special forces train in the mountains of North Carolina to pick up cues that left police trying to pick up his clues, Sophia.

CHOI: Art, I want to show you a picture, and our audience a picture too, the latest mug shot. This is the official mug shot of Eric Rudolph. And he looks quite different from the shot that we saw on the most-wanted posters. He looks much thinner, he's got a moustache now, and his hair is cut short.

You've been tracking this case for so long, staring at that FBI most-wanted poster. What are your thoughts as you see this new picture of him?

HARRIS: Well, I'm looking at his eyes, and they look almost eerie to me, very sunken deep, staring, gazing, as if, you know, someone has spent a lot of time either alone or perhaps hypnotized, someone who looks just, you know, obsessed with a mission that he apparently was on for all these years, and then certainly eluding the police, you know, in hiding in the mountains for five years, it's believed.

This picture is so in contrast to the exclusive home video you have been seeing on CNN and will see later and tonight at 8:00 p.m. in the CNN special of Eric Rudolph, a much portlier, more well-fed fellow, who grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, ate a lot of trout that his family raised in a pond outdoors, would hunt and fish, and survive on the land.

But someone who is much more closely cropped than the long- haired, easygoing Eric Rudolph we've seen in other pictures.

CHOI: All right. Art Harris, thank you so much. I heard your cell phone ringing. We'll let you get that call. I'm sure it's one of your sources calling. Thanks, Art.

Coming up right here, reaction from police in North Carolina, and from Eric Rudolph's former in-laws to the end of a five-year manhunt.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: As we've been reporting, Eric Robert Rudolph, a suspect in the Olympic Park blasts and several other bombings in the Southeast, was arrested early today in a small town in the North Carolina mountains. Authorities in Cherokee County, North Carolina, held a news conference on the details of Rudolph's arrest. Here's some of what they had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF MARK THIGPEN, MURPHY, NORTH CAROLINA, POLICE: This morning at approximately 3:27 a.m., Officer Jeffrey Scott Postell was on routine patrol and noticed a suspicious person behind the Save-a-Lot Grocery Store here in Murphy. Officer Postell investigated the person, detained him, called for assistance due to the suspicious nature of the activity. He thought he actually had someone who was possibly breaking into one of the businesses.

He detained him. The backup units arrived. After they arrived, which included a USTVA and the sheriff's department's personnel, along with other officers from our agency. They then transported him to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department, where a collaborative effort was made to identify him.

Mr. Rudolph had given a false name and date of birth, which we could not get any positive results back through our NCIC-DCI systems. And at that time, one of Sheriff Lovin's officers was familiar with Mr. Rudolph, thought he had made an ID of him.

And I'll let the sheriff address that part of the situation.

KEITH LOVIN, CHEROKEE COUNTY SHERIFF: After bringing Mr. Rudolph back to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, Deputy Matthews, who was the first deputy to assist Officer Postell, who had known Mr. Rudolph before all these other occurrences, told the officers that that's who it looked like.

They went back and advised him that the information he had given initially was inaccurate, and they asked him for his name, and he told the officers there that his name was Eric Robert Rudolph.

And at that point, our deputies and officers contacted Chief Dickey (ph) and myself. And after coming in and talking with Mr. Rudolph, he was able to give us other verifying information. We contacted the Fairview investigation and other agencies that had been working on this case for some period of time.

They come in, and through fingerprint records, we were able to verify that it was actually Eric Robert Rudolph.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHOI: Eric Robert Rudolph spend nearly five years as a fugitive, and during that time both law enforcement agents and the news media scoured everything from dense forest to mine shafts to court records, trying to piece together details of his life.

And joining us is senior producer Henry Schuster, who has covered the story for CNN.

And Henry, you reported just a little over a year ago that the search was once involved 200 law enforcement officers, dramatically scaled back, though. Were they giving up, or just changing tactics? HENRY SCHUSTER, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER: Well, I think we've heard some people throughout the day saying they weren't getting any fresh leads. The only way they were getting leads was when we would do a program, for instance, our "Hunt for Eric Rudolph," which is being repaired tonight. They would get leads then.

But instead, they had changed tactics, and they were finding that the best way of going about this was a small presence up in the Murphy-Andrews area of North Carolina. What they would do is they would occasionally visit Eric's friends, those people who had known him in high school, some of the people he had spent some time outdoors with.

And what the message to them was, Look, if you hear from him, we want to you to remember a couple things. Number one, there's a million-dollar reward. And they thought that was a pretty good incentive. But the other thing they were telling them is, In our eyes, he's a cop killer, and that was their message from the FBI to the -- to his friends, and that was a way of trying to keep the pressure on, should he be getting any support from anybody.

And again, that's a question which we still don't know the answer to. They alluded to that today, that they were going to investigate that, but that's something that we're only find out in a little while.

But that was their tactic. They really were not actively looking for him. The sort of days of flying radar over -- flying helicopters over the forest were gone, the days of a big presence, a big task force presence up in the area were gone. There was really two or three agents up there.

CHOI: Why? Because he was so good at hiding out, you think? And they just figured, OK, we're never going to get him unless someone turns in him in or we happen to stumble upon him?

SCHUSTER: I think that was part of it, yes. I mean, they reach a certain point in their investigation where, as a -- it's a fugitive search at that point, and they're not getting leads any other way. They're not going to go away, but then again they don't need 200 people to be working on that.

They need -- you know, frankly, they needed those people to do other things. There was still crime going on. The FBI had a use for its people, and so did the other agencies.

But they didn't give up. And in fact, what happened was that they were even more willing to deal with the media.

There was one other thing that they did do. At the beginning of every hunting season, they would hold -- they would put up signs, they would try to hold meetings with hunters and hunting guides. And they would try to deputize them and say, Look, if you're out in the woods, if you see anybody, if you see any evidence that somebody's been out there, let us know. We think it could be Eric Rudolph. We'd want to investigate. And again, they always mentioned that reward, because they thought that was good incentive. Now, as it turns out, if anybody's going to qualify for the reward, it might be Officer Postell, for his stop.

CHOI: All right. Henry, thank you so much. See you in a bit.

Tonight on "CNN PRESENTS," "The Hunt for Eric Rudolph," featuring exclusive home video of the suspected Olympic Park bomber that we've been showing you only here on CNN. That's at 8:00 p.m. Eastern for "CNN PRESENTS."

Coming up in the next half hour, much more on the Eric Rudolph capture, including an interview with an FBI agent who worked on one of the bombings that Eric Rudolph is charged with. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: I'm Sophia Choi at CNN Center in Atlanta. "NEXT@CNN" continues in just a moment, but first here's what's happening at this hour.

He's been charged in four terrorist attacks that killed two people and wounded 150, and he's finally been captured. Eric Rudolph was arrested early this morning in Murphy, North Carolina, by a rookie police officer on routine patrol. We'll have more on the capture in just a minute.

For the second time in a week, tornadoes have hit central and northern Illinois. Last night's storms destroyed about 15 homes and damaged dozens more. Several people were injured by broken glass and debris.

Riot police and protesters clashed today in France on the eve of the Group of Eight summit. Some demonstrators threw rocks and smashed windows to break up a meeting of France's Socialist Party. Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. A huge demonstration is expected tomorrow.

And beginning on Monday, a new U.S.-led team of international experts will intensify the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Iraq Survey Group consists of more than 1,300 investigators from the U.S., Great Britain, and Australia.

And now to our top story on this Saturday. Eric Robert Rudolph is said to be a very proficient outdoorsman. He used those skills to elude authorities. Police launched a manhunt for Rudolph in 1998, and as investigative correspondent Art Harris reports, years of frustration would follow for his pursuers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS (voice-over): North Carolina's Nantahela National Forest, a half-million acres of wilderness, natural habitat for wild animals, poisonous snakes, and, the FBI says, at least one deadly human predator, accused serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. For five years, the FBI has fielded hundreds of agents, spent more than $20 million, and found evidence Rudolph Washington here, but no Rudolph.

Early on, the FBI enlisted two unique trackers to help, a cave expert...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To hand mark.

HARRIS: ... and a folksy cop from Georgia.

CHARLES STONE, FMR. TASK FORCE MEMBER: It's just like when you're hunting, you're listening with your ears, you're seeing, you're sensing things. Eric has got that down to a fine art.

HARRIS: Charlie Stones, 25-year veteran of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He feels he knows Rudolph. He's hunted the suspected bomber from day one.

STONE: How could one man elude all the law enforcement personnel that have been looking for him over the last three years?

You have the double canopy forest, you had the Appalachian trail. Yes, I believe he's staying on the trails and roads, so he with move from point "A" to "B" with relative ease and without any real danger of being discovered.

HARRIS: After teams of bloodhounds, high-tech helicopters, and an army of agents couldn't fine Rudolph above ground, the FBI went underground.

DARREN FREE, FBI: And this thick, as you can tell, 15 feet over there, it could be a mine, and we'd walk right by it.

HARRIS: Darren Free's part Cherokee Indian part Indiana Jones. He taught agents how to search caves and mine safely.

FREE: I can smell the sulfur and the copper.

HARRIS: Free's explored these minds since he was 12 years old, about the same age as Rudolph when he discovered the woods and caves here.

FREE: They may have went further down.

HARRIS: Is there a way to tell if Rudolph's been here?

FREE: Oh, yeah, you could have told, with the tracks and all that there was no tracks. Someone hadn't probably been in here in 60 years or so.

This is just one out of about 400.

Okay, fellows...

HARRIS: the same Rudolph seen in this exclusive video obtained by CNN who dug out this secret room beneath his house. Should be able to convert a cave into a home, says Free.

FREE: I feel that his, like I said, it's just a good as a Motel 6. Who knows, he may even have a Jacuzzi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHOI: Tracking Eric Rudolph was Charles Stone's life for the last several years. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was one of several state agencies that joined the FBI in that search. Stone recently retired from the GBI, and he joins us, now.

Charles, thanks for joining us.

STONE: You're quite welcome, Sophia.

CHOI: So, you're one of the people who, you know, kind of a sense for how easy it might be for, you know, the invasion for Mr. Rudolph. But let me ask you this -- were you surprised he actually came into town, because he's such a loner, and we kept hearing he, you know, would just stay in the wilderness?

STONE: Sophia, he's a loner, but he had to come in to re-supply himself. He had tried it once before, of course, when he went to Mr. Nordmann and ultimately was able -- Mr. Nordmann went to the authorities and told us about it. When -- he still had to get foodstuffs and things like this. I've been told, today that he was probably rummaging for food -- looking for food that had been discarded in the dumpster. Plus, I would think he would need to satisfy his needs for human contact by actually watching people.

CHOI: Well, you know, we've heard time and time again it is so hard to catch these "lone wolf"-type terrorists, tell us about the difficulty you found as you were walking through the wilderness, there, in search for him.

STONE: Well, in the western North Carolina Mountains where he was hiding, you run into a lot of problems as far as fugitive apprehension. The first is the terrain. It's wilderness area, it's mountainous terrain, you're going up and down hills all the time. You have a double canopy forest, you have deciduous trees -- oaks, maples, poplars, things like that, and then underneath them you have the mountain laurel. So, that helps defeat forward-looking infrared radar and things of that nature. Plus the Nantahala National Forest, where he was hiding, is crisscrossed with miles and miles of gravel roads and hiking trails, so Eric could move about a great deal without worrying about leaving any signs for trackers or witnesses to find.

CHOI: Tell us about the caves, because we keep hearing about these caves that investigators are looking for, possibly one or two caves in particular, where he might have been actually making these bombs and...

STONE: Right. We found some material that indicated Eric at least had an interest, if he was not in fact living underground. We found manuals dealing with underground living, stories of how the Viet Cong had underground cities. In all probably, I would think Eric utilized old mines. There are a few caves in that area, they were checked relatively easily and everybody knows about, but there are a lot of old mines that nobody had been into for years, and we used both maps and stories from the local population about mines, and we would go to them and clear the mines, and they have just mines, literally, anything that could be taken from the earth, they mined, and some of them were small holes and some were vast complexes in the area. And, if they aren't on a map, you have to depend upon anecdotal evidence to get them located in the clear. I mean, I doubt very seriously we ever came close to clearing half the mines that we knew about.

CHOI: You think if he doesn't fess up, will you ever find that one cave or mine that you're looking for?

STONE: Hopefully since he was apprehended last night, they will be able to backtrack either hopefully with his cooperation or by using dogs, backtrack to his hiding places. I believe -- my personal belief he had multiple camps, he probably one base camp and several spiked camps.

CHOI: All right, Charles, thank you so much for joining us. Charles Stone, formerly with the GBI.

STONE: Thank you.

CHOI: The capture of Eric Rudolph and the long and frustrating journey for federal laws enforcement authorities. Rudolph dodged a federal dragnet for years, dating back to the '96 Olympics.

Former FBI special agent, Michael Rising was among those tracking Rudolph over the years. He joins our Martin Savidge at Centennial Park in Atlanta, and we'll talk with Marty and with Rising when we come back. We'll also talk to someone who studies terrorist groups, as well as the "lone wolf"-types and get his thoughts on what drove Eric Rudolph. Back in two minutes, stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: Many terrorists are a part of a vast global networks with sophisticated communications and planning, but suspect Eric Rudolph fits a different profile what some experts call the "lone wolf," the political and social aims are often the same as those who are joiners, only the tactics are different. Joining us, now, with more on what makes this kind of person tick is Daniel Levitas. He's the author of "The Terrorist Next Door" and an expert on the militia movement, as well as racists and radical organizations.

DANIEL LEVITAS, "THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR": Good afternoon.

CHOI: Thanks so much for joining us.

So, what makes this kind of person tick from your research?

LEVITAS: Well, Rudolph was clearly politically motivated in the crimes he was alleged to have committed. He was opposed to abortion, he hated lesbian and gay people, his views on race were filled with venom. And so, he was motivated from a political framework to attack those political symbols that he opposed. The abortion clinic in Birmingham and allegedly the abortion clinics, also, in Sandy Springs; the gay lounge here -- gay-lesbian nightclub here in Atlanta.

CHOI: And we can kind of track this kind of profile to some other high-profile cases like the Unabomber.

LEVITAS: Well, clearly from a "lone wolf" point of view, what you have there is an individual who's going out and committing these highly charged political crimes, but very intentionally not involving a group so as to limit the possibility of infiltration or surveillance, that's where the terminology, "lone wolf," comes in. We've also had other cases of individuals linked to white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups going out on their own committing murders, shooting sprees, in the past several years across the country.

CHOI: Timothy McVeigh come to mind?

LEVITAS: McVeigh and Nichols, again, there were two involved and perhaps, we don't know if there were others involved in Oklahoma City, but clearly Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and similar crime, but again not technically a "lone wolf," in that there were certainly two people involved.

CHOI: What's similar about this case and another case I'm going to talk about right here is the targeting abortion clinic. James Kopp, recently convicted of killing abortion Dr. Barnett Slepian, any similarities you see there?

LEVITAS: Well, absolutely. There has been growing, in the United States, for the past 20 years, a political underground network of people who publicly declared their commitment to murder abortion providers and unfortunately, the justice department has not kept this particular wing of the antiabortion movement under the kind of aggressive surveillance that's been needed and it's one of the reasons why it took so long for find James Kopp. He fled the United States successfully. And another point about the "lone wolf" approach, which relates to the Rudolph situation, is that they may commit these crimes as individuals, but afterwards, they often receive support from a network of people who help hide them or shelter them. We saw this with James Kopp, who was assisted in his flight from the United States by supporters of the movement, and I suspect we'll see more evidence coming out in the Rudolph case that he got support from people in that community, in North Carolina where he was hiding.

CHOI: Yes, because it's hard to believe five years as a fugitive, and he's totally alone, working totally alone? That would be quite surprising. So, who do you think in that community would kind of look at Rudolph as a hero and try and help him?

LEVITAS: Well, a couple things. One, clearly people whose views were aligned with Rudolph on the abortion question might well have assisted him. And then there's another kind of longstanding tradition in that part of the country of opposition to federal authorities, whether it's derived from the old moonshiner's tradition or what have you. I mean, there were bumper stickers that were seen in that community that said "Run, Eric, Run," which were endorsing Rudolph's flight from justice. So, I think it'd be a mixture of people who just dislike the federal government in a particularly aggressive way or who sided with Rudolph on the abortion question.

CHOI: It's one thing to kind of taunt the authorities by putting up a poster, and it's another to really go out and help a fugitive. So, you really think that these people would go out and help someone like Rudolph?

LEVITAS: Well, I think he received help from some members of that community. I think, obviously, the vast majority of people in that community would have been eager to collect the $1 million reward and eager to turn Rudolph in. But, the point being that when an individual goes out as a "lone wolf" and commits a crime of political violence, racist violence, hate motivated violence, or like Rudolph, they are acting alone, but they often are then able to draw on the support of people in their movement to assist them afterwards.

CHOI: All right. Daniel Levitas, thank you so much for joins us. Your book is called "The Terrorist Next Door."

LEVITAS: Thank you.

CHOI: Thank you.

Well, as we mentioned, the capture of Eric Rudolph ends a long frustrating journey for federal law enforcement authorities. Rudolph dodged a federal dragnet for years dating back to the '96 Olympics, and former FBI special agent, Michael Rising was among those tracking Rudolph over the years, and he joins our Martin Savidge at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, and Marty, he's got a special interest in this case, he was actually a victim.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Right, he has a fascinating story to tell, Sophia, as we stand here on a very wind- blown Olympic Centennial Park. Mike Rising, retired FBI agent now joins us.

And Mike, you were here or -- not at this particular park, but part of the initial aftermath, right?

MIKE RISING, FMR. FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Right, Martin, when the bomb went off at Centennial Park, I was actually at home, and the entire office had predetermined jobs, functions that they would enact in an incident occurred and I was called about 2:00 in the morning and my role was to act as an investigative agent in the command center for the park bombing case.

SAVIDGE: Then we fast-forward about six months, I believe, now January of 1997.

RISING: Right.

SAVIDGE: And we have the bomb -- initial bomb that goes off outside the abortion clinic.

RISING: That's correct. I was in the FBI Atlanta field office that morning and was assigned to the Atlanta Public Corruption and Civil Rights Squad. A call came in from the U.S. Attorney's Office that a bomb had gone off at the abortion clinic in Sandy Springs. I was a civil rights coordinator for the field office at that time, and was directed to go out to the site, make a determination as to what had gone on, and call the first assistant at the U.S. Attorney's Office and kind of give them a lay of the land as to what was going on.

SAVIDGE: And Eric Rudolph is suspected in both of these incidences, but it's what happened next after you got on the scene that really affected you, obviously.

RISING: Right. I got there in about 30 minutes; I hooked up with another FBI agent. We conducted an initial walk-through, through the original crime scene area. The first bombing location, we had walked to the opposite side of the building where all of the federal law enforcement, ATF, FBI, local firefighters had arrived, and we were in a crowd of about 30 to 50 people, and I had been directed to call the U.S. Attorney's Office, so I walked away from the crowd so that I could operate the cell phone. Unbeknownst to me, I walked over to where two vehicles had just been moved, and I was leaning against one of the cars, and on the opposite side of the vehicles, about 13 steps away, was where the second device was, and it was about an hour later in total that bomb went off while I was on the cell phone to a speaker into the U.S. Attorney's Office.

SAVIDGE: And what happens next?

RISING: Well, it was -- as I've told you before, it was like deja vu. I had been wounded in by a rocket propelled grenade in Vietnam in 1969, and when that explosion went off, it was almost exactly the same type of a force. It -- I had the -- my cell phone in my left hand, all the full force of the blast came over the top of the car and under it and I was immediately struck on the side of the head with about a shotgun blast load of pet (ph) nails and wires, and I got three puncture wounds in the back and two in the foot and had a hunk of meat cut off of my right ankle, and it knocked me about three or four feet to the right. And I remember letting out a few choice words over the phone and here the four prosecutors that all knew me, there, they're hearing this horrendous explosion and my let out with a yell and I said basically, I said another bomb's gone off. I've got to get off the phone.

And I was bleeding pretty extensively from the head, and I felt I was probably OK, but I wanted to sit down, and did not want to take the chance of going into shock and passing out someplace, and so I backed up and sat down on a retaining wall and if you remember the big black cloud of smoke, two of my buddies, a GBI agent and another follow ran right back into that smoke about the time I sat down, they grabbed me and drug me out of there and plopped me down under a Crepe Myrtle Bush and that was my -- the end of my investigative role at the bombing.

SAVIDGE: You were off the case because, now, you changed as going from law enforcement to a victim. RISING: Absolutely, I'd become a victim witness in the case, even though I was an active special agent. So from that point forward, I was out -- I was at home for three weeks recovering and from that point forward, had no other involvement in the hunt and the investigation which led to his Rudolph's arrest, here.

SAVIDGE: And now today, your feelings?

RISING: I feel great. When I initially -- I heard the news from my brother-in-law in Oklahoma, he called me, and I thought he'd been caught in Oklahoma, he said no, it was up in North Carolina. I had some good personal feelings about the fact he had been caught, but actually I feel a lot better towards the -- there were just hundreds and hundreds of federal and local agents and law enforcement officers involved from that day forward in trying to put this case together, and the manhunt for Rudolph and those guys, they just, you know, non- stop dogged determination, and I really feel good for them that this part of the case is over, and now we can get on to the trial portion of the case.

SAVIDGE: Mike Rising, thank you very much.

RISING: Thank you, good talking to you.

SAVIDGE: Retired FBI agent. Good to see you back here, healthy.

Olympic Centennial Park is where it all began, Sophia. And there's still a lot of feelings, even though it was a long time ago -- Sophia.

CHOI: You're right about that. Marty, thanks.

And, if you were listening closely to Marty's interview, there, you probably heard some dogs barking in the background. When we come back, we'll take you back to Martin Savidge, and we'll talk with a police dog handler about what search dogs can do to find fugitives. Stay with us, back in two minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: The search for Eric Robert Rudolph involved a massive manhunt in the mountains of western North Carolina, Bloodhounds were on the front line. Let's go back, now, to Martin Savidge at Centennial National Park where he's joined by two special guests to tell us more about what it takes to sniff out a suspect -- Marty.

SAVIDGE: Sophia, say hello to "Elvis." He is in the Park, as a matter of fact. Elvis is a full Bloodhound in the capable hands, right now of Scotty Abercrombie (ph). But, we are going to talk to Duke Blackburn who is the owner of Elvis and a number of other search dogs and talking about -- how do you train a dog to search for people? And, I imagine you've searched for a lot of folks.

DUKE BLACKBURN, GEORGIA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: Well, we have. A dog -- a Bloodhound has a natural ability or, you know, instinct to follow a human scent or a scent, and we have to fine-tune that to make them find either a scent specific -- be scent-specific a certain person, but most of our dogs are hot trackers, so they follow the last -- the man's scent that goes through, so it's usually the hottest track that's gone through.

SAVIDGE: How good are they, in other words, how keen is his sense of smell?

BLACKBURN: They say it's, you know, 100 or 200 times ours. I think it's even more, but, you know, they've been documented times they find people -- the ones that I really believed, you know, two days old tracks, and things like that, you hear about month-old track, but I don't really believe that, and but, you know, a good six hours, eight hours, would be right on them.

SAVIDGE: And that is the familiar call we hear from a Bloodhound?

BLACKBURN: That's pretty much it. They don't bark, contrary to all the movies, they don't bark when they're on the trail, most of them don't. They're real silent, and all they're doing is looking for -- to be petted or the affection when they find somebody.

SAVIDGE: And, what will Elvis do when he has found somebody? How do you know? What does he tell you?

BLACKBURN: Well, he'll start -- he'll start running in a circle or he'll start pulling his head up off the ground, instead of trailing, he'll start winding the person and looking around. But, that's usually the way they do.

SAVIDGE: All right, thank you. We appreciate it. Duck Blackburn, Scotty Abercrombie (ph), and Elvis, and at one time the dogs that Duke owns were all looking for Eric Rudolph, and of course that search has come to an end -- Sophia.

CHOI: All right, Marty, thanks for that. And, that's all the time we have now. NEXT@CNN will be back tomorrow at 5:00 eastern time, with a look at the big news stories of the day as seen through the lens of science and technology.

Tonight at 8:00 eastern time, CNN presents a special one-hour show, the hunt for Eric Robert Rudolph. Stay with CNN for the latest on the Rudolph capture and all the days top stories.

I'm Sophia Choi.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired May 31, 2003 - 15:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOPHIA CHOI, CNN ANCHOR: Eric Robert Rudolph, captured after a five-year manhunt. The suspected Olympic Park bomber, is now in custody. Coming up this hour, a special report Rudolph was caught. We'll talk with the police bomb expert who was on duty when that bomb exploded in Centennial Olympic Park, and we'll get some insight into what drives a person like Eric Robert Rudolph.
We start with where and how Rudolph was captured. Rudolph may have lived off the land while on the run, but according to sources, Rudolph was rummaging through trash when he was actually found.

CNN's Mike Brooks is live from Murphy, North Carolina, with details -- Mike.

MIKE BROOKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Sophia.

Eric Robert Rudolph sits in Cherokee County Jail. Just right behind me here, you see the courthouse, and right behind that is the jail where he is being held right now.

Now, it all started early this morning when an officer with the Murphy Police Department here in North Carolina was on routine patrol. Or he -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) early this morning, he saw what he -- was a suspicious person walking behind a shopping center. He went to approach him, the person ran. He ran and was hiding behind some wooden pallets.

He then pulled his weapon, ordered the man on the ground. They handcuffed him, he had some backup units arrive to assist off the officer. Is a officer who's got less than a year on the job. Twenty- one-year-old Officer J.S. Postell, who's with the Murphy Police Department.

Then they took him in for questioning. He gave, the person gave the name of Jerry Wilson. They didn't know exactly who he was. One of the deputies with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office actually recognized him and said he thought that it was Eric Rudolph.

After further questioning, he said that he was in fact Eric Robert Rudolph.

So, again, he's here in custody. I spoke with the FBI a short time ago, and they said that he was going to be transferred from here in Murphy to Asheville, North Carolina, for arraignment on Monday. Now, he may go either tonight or tomorrow. We have just received a picture of the -- a photograph from the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department of Eric Robert Rudolph. This is the picture that was taken early this morning. And we see that he has short hair, very thin, with a moustache. So this is the most recent photograph that was taken by Cherokee County Sheriff's Office here at the jail of Eric Robert Rudolph, Sophia.

CHOI: All right. Mike Brooks reporting live for us from Murphy, North Carolina, the site of the capture this morning. Thanks, Mike.

And now for some geographical perspective. We have satellite images showing just how close Eric Robert Rudolph still was to the various locations he is suspected of bombing. Let's take a look at those now.

As we've told you, Rudolph was arrested behind a business in Murphy. I want to take you closer in to Murphy. That's in Cherokee County. Rudolph was arrested behind a business there in North Carolina just south of Cherokee. That's in Nantahela National Forest, where authorities believe he had been hiding since 1998.

Rudolph was just a two-hour drive from Olympic Centennial Park. Let's go there next, zoom out on the computer here -- there. Two hours away in Atlanta, the first place he is suspected of bombing back in 1996. Now, this bombing killed one person and injured more than 100 others.

We'll scoot you over so you can take a better look at it. Then in January 1997, we take you to Sandy Springs Professional Center. This is north of Atlanta. This place was struck by two bombs, the second one going off an hour later. The building contained a clinic where abortions were performed.

And then just one month later, and across town from that site, you were just looking at, Sandy Springs, a gay nightclub called the Otherside Lounge was bombed.

Then at 7:33 a.m. on January 29, 1998, a blast ripped through the New Woman All-Women Health Care Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, killing off-duty police officer Robert Sanderson and injuring the clinic's head nurse, Emily Lyons.

The Olympic Park bombing in 1996 killed one woman and injured more than 100 others. Crowd control and protection in the aftermath became top priority.

CNN's Martin Savidge joins us from the site of the '96 blast with more -- Marty.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, as we've talked about, it's been the issue of crowd down here, especially on that night of 1996, July with all the people here for the Olympics. And crowd control and then crime scene investigation.

I'm joined to talk about hat very subject with Major Stan Savage, who's with the Atlanta Police Department, also with their special operations unit. And he was here the night of the blast.

Give us an idea of the scene you faced when you arrived.

MAJ. STAN SAVAGE, ATLANTA POLICE DEPARTMENT: Well, basically, it was very chaotic. Obviously the Olympics basically designated a peaceful time for us, and we had a number of people out here, the number of different stages, that were obviously just enjoying the festivities.

And obviously that blast obviously ripped right through the core of that. We had a number of first responders to include police, fire, ambulance, and I was with the police department with the SWAT team that actually had to respond.

And we were trying to, number one, get a handle on where the blast had initially happened, and determine those individuals who were injured. And there were a number of people who were injured just by the shrapnel and other debris that had injured, you know, just scores of people all around.

SAVIDGE: How do you prioritize? You obviously have to deal with injured, deal with the crowd, because there could be another explosive device, and preserve the crime scene, all at the same time?

SAVAGE: Well, I guess in that priority. The first thing, obviously, is the preservation of life, and so, you know, typically, at that time, we were, as you say, concerned with secondary and tertiary devices. And typically what we, you know, tried to do was try to determine a sanctuary or sanitized place where we can move people, you know, to an area of safety. And...

SAVIDGE: Were you worried there could be another explosion?

SAVAGE: Well, during that time, we were very worried, and we felt, as most law enforcement across the country, that those secondary and tertiary devices were in fact targeting first responders. And so, you know, we, you know, we were definitely concerned, and have been concerned about that every time we, you know, come in contact, or we have to respond to a chaotic or critical instance such as that.

SAVIDGE: We've seen the video. We're looking at it now again. Give us an idea of how large -- how many people were in the area.

SAVAGE: Well, it was -- obviously, you know, there were, you know, thousands of people out here, because obviously a lot of people didn't have tickets to some of the venues.

But, you know, this was a free ticket, if you will, so obviously we had thousands of people, you know, every night here in the park. And again there was good entertainment and, you know, an opportunity for people to come down and see the skyline on pretty nights and things of that particular nature.

And again, it was free, so we had a lot of people who were able to somewhat engage in the Olympic experience, maybe, who were not fortunate to, you know, get tickets to the venues. So and being an outdoor venue, we obviously had to be concerned with, you know, people still going in and about, because we had clusters of people at different places here in the park.

SAVIDGE: Did you learn from this? Did the Atlanta Police Department learn about crowd control, learn about -- well, learn from this tragedy?

SAVAGE: Well, yes, we've learned from that tragedy as well as a number of things we've had in Atlanta and dealing with crowd control. Obviously this was probably one of the most notable events we've had in our history, although we've had Super Bowl and a bunch of other stuff.

But we -- just like -- all of our law enforcement partners learned just, number one, how we better, you know, respond as first responders to events. We obviously look at areas in the event that we have an emergency to better accommodate individuals getting into and out of a venue, how that venue is set up initially, so that we can have things in place to scrutinize or to check individuals' bags, things of that particular nature.

And obviously that is the -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE) obviously even intensified even more after the events of 9/11, so...

SAVIDGE: It certainly has. Major Stan Savage from the Atlanta Police Department, thank you very much for joining us today.

Crowd control, as he just points out, is something that has not gone away with the arrest of Eric Rudolph. It is still something in the days of terrorism very much in the forefront. Back to you.

CHOI: All right. Martin Savidge, reporting live for us. Thank you so much.

Well, you can also go to cnn.com for all the latest as the capture of Eric Robert Rudolph, the suspected Olympic Park bomber, unfolds.

We'll be right back more on the Eric Rudolph capture. We'll show you how scientific detectives linked Rudolph to the bombings in the first place.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: Police launched a manhunt for Eric Robert Rudolph in 1998 after his pickup truck was found near the site of the Birmingham attack.

Our investigative correspondent Art Harris joins us from Modesto, California, with more on how investigators linked Rudolph to that bombing and to others.

And I believe actually they linked that truck, because they -- a witness spotted that truck leaving the scene and then chased it and got the plate number. Isn't that correct, Art? ART HARRIS, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: That's correct. A witness who was at the site of the Birmingham bombing not only saw the truck but followed it, and then others took up the chase in traffic and got the license tag.

He's a fugitive, though, who has been wanted for five years, one of most notorious and elusive in law enforcement history.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS (voice-over): July 1996, Atlanta's Olympic Centennial Park. The first bomb goes off. One dead, more than 100 injured. Then two more bombs in Atlanta, both with delayed backup (UNINTELLIGIBLE). The FBI says they're designed to kill cops.

Some forensics (UNINTELLIGIBLE), like rare steel plating used to deflect shrapnel in one direction. Charles Stone worked with the FBI's bomb task force.

CHARLES STONE, GEORGIA BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: It's like working a serial homicide. You hate for another homicide to happen, but the more bombs you have, the greater the chances the bomber will make a mistake.

HARRIS: A year and a half after the Olympic Park explosion, a bomb kills an off-duty police officer at a Birmingham, Alabama, clinic that performs abortions. Two witnesses see a man driving away in a pickup truck, and tag number, and finally a name.

DOUG JONES, U.S. ATTORNEY: We have issued a warrant for a Mr. Eric Robert Rudolph, white male, age 31.

HARRIS: The next day, the FBI learns Rudolph lives here in Murphy, North Carolina. Former sheriff Jack Thompson tells CNN he finds the trailer, but the FBI tells him to wait for their agents. About three hours later, agents find the light on, the door open, but Rudolph is gone.

(on camera): You missed him by how much?

STONE: A matter of hours, if not minutes.

HARRIS (voice-over): Now he's wanted in connection with all the bombings.

From lab testing, the task force learns a mill nearby in Franklin, North Carolina, is the only place in the Southeast that makes rare steel plating used in two bombs, and smokeless powder was used in the first Atlanta bomb, dynamite in the others.

According to investigators, Eric bought the powder and apparently stole the dynamite.

The FBI tells CNN it played the 911 tape for several people close to Rudolph, who said it sounded like the suspect, but experts say the tape may be too short to use in any trial. Six months after vanishing, he's back, then takes off in a friend's truck with food and supplies. Later he's blamed for cabin break-ins.

STONE: Why would somebody take men's underwear, shoes, and soap, and things like that? Somebody that's surviving in the woods.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: A survivor who has been training for this mission, law enforcement believes, since childhood, when he played war in the woods, used manuals about herbs and survival, and watched special forces train in the mountains of North Carolina to pick up cues that left police trying to pick up his clues, Sophia.

CHOI: Art, I want to show you a picture, and our audience a picture too, the latest mug shot. This is the official mug shot of Eric Rudolph. And he looks quite different from the shot that we saw on the most-wanted posters. He looks much thinner, he's got a moustache now, and his hair is cut short.

You've been tracking this case for so long, staring at that FBI most-wanted poster. What are your thoughts as you see this new picture of him?

HARRIS: Well, I'm looking at his eyes, and they look almost eerie to me, very sunken deep, staring, gazing, as if, you know, someone has spent a lot of time either alone or perhaps hypnotized, someone who looks just, you know, obsessed with a mission that he apparently was on for all these years, and then certainly eluding the police, you know, in hiding in the mountains for five years, it's believed.

This picture is so in contrast to the exclusive home video you have been seeing on CNN and will see later and tonight at 8:00 p.m. in the CNN special of Eric Rudolph, a much portlier, more well-fed fellow, who grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, ate a lot of trout that his family raised in a pond outdoors, would hunt and fish, and survive on the land.

But someone who is much more closely cropped than the long- haired, easygoing Eric Rudolph we've seen in other pictures.

CHOI: All right. Art Harris, thank you so much. I heard your cell phone ringing. We'll let you get that call. I'm sure it's one of your sources calling. Thanks, Art.

Coming up right here, reaction from police in North Carolina, and from Eric Rudolph's former in-laws to the end of a five-year manhunt.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: As we've been reporting, Eric Robert Rudolph, a suspect in the Olympic Park blasts and several other bombings in the Southeast, was arrested early today in a small town in the North Carolina mountains. Authorities in Cherokee County, North Carolina, held a news conference on the details of Rudolph's arrest. Here's some of what they had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF MARK THIGPEN, MURPHY, NORTH CAROLINA, POLICE: This morning at approximately 3:27 a.m., Officer Jeffrey Scott Postell was on routine patrol and noticed a suspicious person behind the Save-a-Lot Grocery Store here in Murphy. Officer Postell investigated the person, detained him, called for assistance due to the suspicious nature of the activity. He thought he actually had someone who was possibly breaking into one of the businesses.

He detained him. The backup units arrived. After they arrived, which included a USTVA and the sheriff's department's personnel, along with other officers from our agency. They then transported him to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department, where a collaborative effort was made to identify him.

Mr. Rudolph had given a false name and date of birth, which we could not get any positive results back through our NCIC-DCI systems. And at that time, one of Sheriff Lovin's officers was familiar with Mr. Rudolph, thought he had made an ID of him.

And I'll let the sheriff address that part of the situation.

KEITH LOVIN, CHEROKEE COUNTY SHERIFF: After bringing Mr. Rudolph back to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, Deputy Matthews, who was the first deputy to assist Officer Postell, who had known Mr. Rudolph before all these other occurrences, told the officers that that's who it looked like.

They went back and advised him that the information he had given initially was inaccurate, and they asked him for his name, and he told the officers there that his name was Eric Robert Rudolph.

And at that point, our deputies and officers contacted Chief Dickey (ph) and myself. And after coming in and talking with Mr. Rudolph, he was able to give us other verifying information. We contacted the Fairview investigation and other agencies that had been working on this case for some period of time.

They come in, and through fingerprint records, we were able to verify that it was actually Eric Robert Rudolph.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHOI: Eric Robert Rudolph spend nearly five years as a fugitive, and during that time both law enforcement agents and the news media scoured everything from dense forest to mine shafts to court records, trying to piece together details of his life.

And joining us is senior producer Henry Schuster, who has covered the story for CNN.

And Henry, you reported just a little over a year ago that the search was once involved 200 law enforcement officers, dramatically scaled back, though. Were they giving up, or just changing tactics? HENRY SCHUSTER, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER: Well, I think we've heard some people throughout the day saying they weren't getting any fresh leads. The only way they were getting leads was when we would do a program, for instance, our "Hunt for Eric Rudolph," which is being repaired tonight. They would get leads then.

But instead, they had changed tactics, and they were finding that the best way of going about this was a small presence up in the Murphy-Andrews area of North Carolina. What they would do is they would occasionally visit Eric's friends, those people who had known him in high school, some of the people he had spent some time outdoors with.

And what the message to them was, Look, if you hear from him, we want to you to remember a couple things. Number one, there's a million-dollar reward. And they thought that was a pretty good incentive. But the other thing they were telling them is, In our eyes, he's a cop killer, and that was their message from the FBI to the -- to his friends, and that was a way of trying to keep the pressure on, should he be getting any support from anybody.

And again, that's a question which we still don't know the answer to. They alluded to that today, that they were going to investigate that, but that's something that we're only find out in a little while.

But that was their tactic. They really were not actively looking for him. The sort of days of flying radar over -- flying helicopters over the forest were gone, the days of a big presence, a big task force presence up in the area were gone. There was really two or three agents up there.

CHOI: Why? Because he was so good at hiding out, you think? And they just figured, OK, we're never going to get him unless someone turns in him in or we happen to stumble upon him?

SCHUSTER: I think that was part of it, yes. I mean, they reach a certain point in their investigation where, as a -- it's a fugitive search at that point, and they're not getting leads any other way. They're not going to go away, but then again they don't need 200 people to be working on that.

They need -- you know, frankly, they needed those people to do other things. There was still crime going on. The FBI had a use for its people, and so did the other agencies.

But they didn't give up. And in fact, what happened was that they were even more willing to deal with the media.

There was one other thing that they did do. At the beginning of every hunting season, they would hold -- they would put up signs, they would try to hold meetings with hunters and hunting guides. And they would try to deputize them and say, Look, if you're out in the woods, if you see anybody, if you see any evidence that somebody's been out there, let us know. We think it could be Eric Rudolph. We'd want to investigate. And again, they always mentioned that reward, because they thought that was good incentive. Now, as it turns out, if anybody's going to qualify for the reward, it might be Officer Postell, for his stop.

CHOI: All right. Henry, thank you so much. See you in a bit.

Tonight on "CNN PRESENTS," "The Hunt for Eric Rudolph," featuring exclusive home video of the suspected Olympic Park bomber that we've been showing you only here on CNN. That's at 8:00 p.m. Eastern for "CNN PRESENTS."

Coming up in the next half hour, much more on the Eric Rudolph capture, including an interview with an FBI agent who worked on one of the bombings that Eric Rudolph is charged with. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: I'm Sophia Choi at CNN Center in Atlanta. "NEXT@CNN" continues in just a moment, but first here's what's happening at this hour.

He's been charged in four terrorist attacks that killed two people and wounded 150, and he's finally been captured. Eric Rudolph was arrested early this morning in Murphy, North Carolina, by a rookie police officer on routine patrol. We'll have more on the capture in just a minute.

For the second time in a week, tornadoes have hit central and northern Illinois. Last night's storms destroyed about 15 homes and damaged dozens more. Several people were injured by broken glass and debris.

Riot police and protesters clashed today in France on the eve of the Group of Eight summit. Some demonstrators threw rocks and smashed windows to break up a meeting of France's Socialist Party. Police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd. A huge demonstration is expected tomorrow.

And beginning on Monday, a new U.S.-led team of international experts will intensify the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The Iraq Survey Group consists of more than 1,300 investigators from the U.S., Great Britain, and Australia.

And now to our top story on this Saturday. Eric Robert Rudolph is said to be a very proficient outdoorsman. He used those skills to elude authorities. Police launched a manhunt for Rudolph in 1998, and as investigative correspondent Art Harris reports, years of frustration would follow for his pursuers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS (voice-over): North Carolina's Nantahela National Forest, a half-million acres of wilderness, natural habitat for wild animals, poisonous snakes, and, the FBI says, at least one deadly human predator, accused serial bomber Eric Robert Rudolph. For five years, the FBI has fielded hundreds of agents, spent more than $20 million, and found evidence Rudolph Washington here, but no Rudolph.

Early on, the FBI enlisted two unique trackers to help, a cave expert...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: To hand mark.

HARRIS: ... and a folksy cop from Georgia.

CHARLES STONE, FMR. TASK FORCE MEMBER: It's just like when you're hunting, you're listening with your ears, you're seeing, you're sensing things. Eric has got that down to a fine art.

HARRIS: Charlie Stones, 25-year veteran of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. He feels he knows Rudolph. He's hunted the suspected bomber from day one.

STONE: How could one man elude all the law enforcement personnel that have been looking for him over the last three years?

You have the double canopy forest, you had the Appalachian trail. Yes, I believe he's staying on the trails and roads, so he with move from point "A" to "B" with relative ease and without any real danger of being discovered.

HARRIS: After teams of bloodhounds, high-tech helicopters, and an army of agents couldn't fine Rudolph above ground, the FBI went underground.

DARREN FREE, FBI: And this thick, as you can tell, 15 feet over there, it could be a mine, and we'd walk right by it.

HARRIS: Darren Free's part Cherokee Indian part Indiana Jones. He taught agents how to search caves and mine safely.

FREE: I can smell the sulfur and the copper.

HARRIS: Free's explored these minds since he was 12 years old, about the same age as Rudolph when he discovered the woods and caves here.

FREE: They may have went further down.

HARRIS: Is there a way to tell if Rudolph's been here?

FREE: Oh, yeah, you could have told, with the tracks and all that there was no tracks. Someone hadn't probably been in here in 60 years or so.

This is just one out of about 400.

Okay, fellows...

HARRIS: the same Rudolph seen in this exclusive video obtained by CNN who dug out this secret room beneath his house. Should be able to convert a cave into a home, says Free.

FREE: I feel that his, like I said, it's just a good as a Motel 6. Who knows, he may even have a Jacuzzi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHOI: Tracking Eric Rudolph was Charles Stone's life for the last several years. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation was one of several state agencies that joined the FBI in that search. Stone recently retired from the GBI, and he joins us, now.

Charles, thanks for joining us.

STONE: You're quite welcome, Sophia.

CHOI: So, you're one of the people who, you know, kind of a sense for how easy it might be for, you know, the invasion for Mr. Rudolph. But let me ask you this -- were you surprised he actually came into town, because he's such a loner, and we kept hearing he, you know, would just stay in the wilderness?

STONE: Sophia, he's a loner, but he had to come in to re-supply himself. He had tried it once before, of course, when he went to Mr. Nordmann and ultimately was able -- Mr. Nordmann went to the authorities and told us about it. When -- he still had to get foodstuffs and things like this. I've been told, today that he was probably rummaging for food -- looking for food that had been discarded in the dumpster. Plus, I would think he would need to satisfy his needs for human contact by actually watching people.

CHOI: Well, you know, we've heard time and time again it is so hard to catch these "lone wolf"-type terrorists, tell us about the difficulty you found as you were walking through the wilderness, there, in search for him.

STONE: Well, in the western North Carolina Mountains where he was hiding, you run into a lot of problems as far as fugitive apprehension. The first is the terrain. It's wilderness area, it's mountainous terrain, you're going up and down hills all the time. You have a double canopy forest, you have deciduous trees -- oaks, maples, poplars, things like that, and then underneath them you have the mountain laurel. So, that helps defeat forward-looking infrared radar and things of that nature. Plus the Nantahala National Forest, where he was hiding, is crisscrossed with miles and miles of gravel roads and hiking trails, so Eric could move about a great deal without worrying about leaving any signs for trackers or witnesses to find.

CHOI: Tell us about the caves, because we keep hearing about these caves that investigators are looking for, possibly one or two caves in particular, where he might have been actually making these bombs and...

STONE: Right. We found some material that indicated Eric at least had an interest, if he was not in fact living underground. We found manuals dealing with underground living, stories of how the Viet Cong had underground cities. In all probably, I would think Eric utilized old mines. There are a few caves in that area, they were checked relatively easily and everybody knows about, but there are a lot of old mines that nobody had been into for years, and we used both maps and stories from the local population about mines, and we would go to them and clear the mines, and they have just mines, literally, anything that could be taken from the earth, they mined, and some of them were small holes and some were vast complexes in the area. And, if they aren't on a map, you have to depend upon anecdotal evidence to get them located in the clear. I mean, I doubt very seriously we ever came close to clearing half the mines that we knew about.

CHOI: You think if he doesn't fess up, will you ever find that one cave or mine that you're looking for?

STONE: Hopefully since he was apprehended last night, they will be able to backtrack either hopefully with his cooperation or by using dogs, backtrack to his hiding places. I believe -- my personal belief he had multiple camps, he probably one base camp and several spiked camps.

CHOI: All right, Charles, thank you so much for joining us. Charles Stone, formerly with the GBI.

STONE: Thank you.

CHOI: The capture of Eric Rudolph and the long and frustrating journey for federal laws enforcement authorities. Rudolph dodged a federal dragnet for years, dating back to the '96 Olympics.

Former FBI special agent, Michael Rising was among those tracking Rudolph over the years. He joins our Martin Savidge at Centennial Park in Atlanta, and we'll talk with Marty and with Rising when we come back. We'll also talk to someone who studies terrorist groups, as well as the "lone wolf"-types and get his thoughts on what drove Eric Rudolph. Back in two minutes, stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: Many terrorists are a part of a vast global networks with sophisticated communications and planning, but suspect Eric Rudolph fits a different profile what some experts call the "lone wolf," the political and social aims are often the same as those who are joiners, only the tactics are different. Joining us, now, with more on what makes this kind of person tick is Daniel Levitas. He's the author of "The Terrorist Next Door" and an expert on the militia movement, as well as racists and radical organizations.

DANIEL LEVITAS, "THE TERRORIST NEXT DOOR": Good afternoon.

CHOI: Thanks so much for joining us.

So, what makes this kind of person tick from your research?

LEVITAS: Well, Rudolph was clearly politically motivated in the crimes he was alleged to have committed. He was opposed to abortion, he hated lesbian and gay people, his views on race were filled with venom. And so, he was motivated from a political framework to attack those political symbols that he opposed. The abortion clinic in Birmingham and allegedly the abortion clinics, also, in Sandy Springs; the gay lounge here -- gay-lesbian nightclub here in Atlanta.

CHOI: And we can kind of track this kind of profile to some other high-profile cases like the Unabomber.

LEVITAS: Well, clearly from a "lone wolf" point of view, what you have there is an individual who's going out and committing these highly charged political crimes, but very intentionally not involving a group so as to limit the possibility of infiltration or surveillance, that's where the terminology, "lone wolf," comes in. We've also had other cases of individuals linked to white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups going out on their own committing murders, shooting sprees, in the past several years across the country.

CHOI: Timothy McVeigh come to mind?

LEVITAS: McVeigh and Nichols, again, there were two involved and perhaps, we don't know if there were others involved in Oklahoma City, but clearly Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, and similar crime, but again not technically a "lone wolf," in that there were certainly two people involved.

CHOI: What's similar about this case and another case I'm going to talk about right here is the targeting abortion clinic. James Kopp, recently convicted of killing abortion Dr. Barnett Slepian, any similarities you see there?

LEVITAS: Well, absolutely. There has been growing, in the United States, for the past 20 years, a political underground network of people who publicly declared their commitment to murder abortion providers and unfortunately, the justice department has not kept this particular wing of the antiabortion movement under the kind of aggressive surveillance that's been needed and it's one of the reasons why it took so long for find James Kopp. He fled the United States successfully. And another point about the "lone wolf" approach, which relates to the Rudolph situation, is that they may commit these crimes as individuals, but afterwards, they often receive support from a network of people who help hide them or shelter them. We saw this with James Kopp, who was assisted in his flight from the United States by supporters of the movement, and I suspect we'll see more evidence coming out in the Rudolph case that he got support from people in that community, in North Carolina where he was hiding.

CHOI: Yes, because it's hard to believe five years as a fugitive, and he's totally alone, working totally alone? That would be quite surprising. So, who do you think in that community would kind of look at Rudolph as a hero and try and help him?

LEVITAS: Well, a couple things. One, clearly people whose views were aligned with Rudolph on the abortion question might well have assisted him. And then there's another kind of longstanding tradition in that part of the country of opposition to federal authorities, whether it's derived from the old moonshiner's tradition or what have you. I mean, there were bumper stickers that were seen in that community that said "Run, Eric, Run," which were endorsing Rudolph's flight from justice. So, I think it'd be a mixture of people who just dislike the federal government in a particularly aggressive way or who sided with Rudolph on the abortion question.

CHOI: It's one thing to kind of taunt the authorities by putting up a poster, and it's another to really go out and help a fugitive. So, you really think that these people would go out and help someone like Rudolph?

LEVITAS: Well, I think he received help from some members of that community. I think, obviously, the vast majority of people in that community would have been eager to collect the $1 million reward and eager to turn Rudolph in. But, the point being that when an individual goes out as a "lone wolf" and commits a crime of political violence, racist violence, hate motivated violence, or like Rudolph, they are acting alone, but they often are then able to draw on the support of people in their movement to assist them afterwards.

CHOI: All right. Daniel Levitas, thank you so much for joins us. Your book is called "The Terrorist Next Door."

LEVITAS: Thank you.

CHOI: Thank you.

Well, as we mentioned, the capture of Eric Rudolph ends a long frustrating journey for federal law enforcement authorities. Rudolph dodged a federal dragnet for years dating back to the '96 Olympics, and former FBI special agent, Michael Rising was among those tracking Rudolph over the years, and he joins our Martin Savidge at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, and Marty, he's got a special interest in this case, he was actually a victim.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Right, he has a fascinating story to tell, Sophia, as we stand here on a very wind- blown Olympic Centennial Park. Mike Rising, retired FBI agent now joins us.

And Mike, you were here or -- not at this particular park, but part of the initial aftermath, right?

MIKE RISING, FMR. FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Right, Martin, when the bomb went off at Centennial Park, I was actually at home, and the entire office had predetermined jobs, functions that they would enact in an incident occurred and I was called about 2:00 in the morning and my role was to act as an investigative agent in the command center for the park bombing case.

SAVIDGE: Then we fast-forward about six months, I believe, now January of 1997.

RISING: Right.

SAVIDGE: And we have the bomb -- initial bomb that goes off outside the abortion clinic.

RISING: That's correct. I was in the FBI Atlanta field office that morning and was assigned to the Atlanta Public Corruption and Civil Rights Squad. A call came in from the U.S. Attorney's Office that a bomb had gone off at the abortion clinic in Sandy Springs. I was a civil rights coordinator for the field office at that time, and was directed to go out to the site, make a determination as to what had gone on, and call the first assistant at the U.S. Attorney's Office and kind of give them a lay of the land as to what was going on.

SAVIDGE: And Eric Rudolph is suspected in both of these incidences, but it's what happened next after you got on the scene that really affected you, obviously.

RISING: Right. I got there in about 30 minutes; I hooked up with another FBI agent. We conducted an initial walk-through, through the original crime scene area. The first bombing location, we had walked to the opposite side of the building where all of the federal law enforcement, ATF, FBI, local firefighters had arrived, and we were in a crowd of about 30 to 50 people, and I had been directed to call the U.S. Attorney's Office, so I walked away from the crowd so that I could operate the cell phone. Unbeknownst to me, I walked over to where two vehicles had just been moved, and I was leaning against one of the cars, and on the opposite side of the vehicles, about 13 steps away, was where the second device was, and it was about an hour later in total that bomb went off while I was on the cell phone to a speaker into the U.S. Attorney's Office.

SAVIDGE: And what happens next?

RISING: Well, it was -- as I've told you before, it was like deja vu. I had been wounded in by a rocket propelled grenade in Vietnam in 1969, and when that explosion went off, it was almost exactly the same type of a force. It -- I had the -- my cell phone in my left hand, all the full force of the blast came over the top of the car and under it and I was immediately struck on the side of the head with about a shotgun blast load of pet (ph) nails and wires, and I got three puncture wounds in the back and two in the foot and had a hunk of meat cut off of my right ankle, and it knocked me about three or four feet to the right. And I remember letting out a few choice words over the phone and here the four prosecutors that all knew me, there, they're hearing this horrendous explosion and my let out with a yell and I said basically, I said another bomb's gone off. I've got to get off the phone.

And I was bleeding pretty extensively from the head, and I felt I was probably OK, but I wanted to sit down, and did not want to take the chance of going into shock and passing out someplace, and so I backed up and sat down on a retaining wall and if you remember the big black cloud of smoke, two of my buddies, a GBI agent and another follow ran right back into that smoke about the time I sat down, they grabbed me and drug me out of there and plopped me down under a Crepe Myrtle Bush and that was my -- the end of my investigative role at the bombing.

SAVIDGE: You were off the case because, now, you changed as going from law enforcement to a victim. RISING: Absolutely, I'd become a victim witness in the case, even though I was an active special agent. So from that point forward, I was out -- I was at home for three weeks recovering and from that point forward, had no other involvement in the hunt and the investigation which led to his Rudolph's arrest, here.

SAVIDGE: And now today, your feelings?

RISING: I feel great. When I initially -- I heard the news from my brother-in-law in Oklahoma, he called me, and I thought he'd been caught in Oklahoma, he said no, it was up in North Carolina. I had some good personal feelings about the fact he had been caught, but actually I feel a lot better towards the -- there were just hundreds and hundreds of federal and local agents and law enforcement officers involved from that day forward in trying to put this case together, and the manhunt for Rudolph and those guys, they just, you know, non- stop dogged determination, and I really feel good for them that this part of the case is over, and now we can get on to the trial portion of the case.

SAVIDGE: Mike Rising, thank you very much.

RISING: Thank you, good talking to you.

SAVIDGE: Retired FBI agent. Good to see you back here, healthy.

Olympic Centennial Park is where it all began, Sophia. And there's still a lot of feelings, even though it was a long time ago -- Sophia.

CHOI: You're right about that. Marty, thanks.

And, if you were listening closely to Marty's interview, there, you probably heard some dogs barking in the background. When we come back, we'll take you back to Martin Savidge, and we'll talk with a police dog handler about what search dogs can do to find fugitives. Stay with us, back in two minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHOI: The search for Eric Robert Rudolph involved a massive manhunt in the mountains of western North Carolina, Bloodhounds were on the front line. Let's go back, now, to Martin Savidge at Centennial National Park where he's joined by two special guests to tell us more about what it takes to sniff out a suspect -- Marty.

SAVIDGE: Sophia, say hello to "Elvis." He is in the Park, as a matter of fact. Elvis is a full Bloodhound in the capable hands, right now of Scotty Abercrombie (ph). But, we are going to talk to Duke Blackburn who is the owner of Elvis and a number of other search dogs and talking about -- how do you train a dog to search for people? And, I imagine you've searched for a lot of folks.

DUKE BLACKBURN, GEORGIA DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS: Well, we have. A dog -- a Bloodhound has a natural ability or, you know, instinct to follow a human scent or a scent, and we have to fine-tune that to make them find either a scent specific -- be scent-specific a certain person, but most of our dogs are hot trackers, so they follow the last -- the man's scent that goes through, so it's usually the hottest track that's gone through.

SAVIDGE: How good are they, in other words, how keen is his sense of smell?

BLACKBURN: They say it's, you know, 100 or 200 times ours. I think it's even more, but, you know, they've been documented times they find people -- the ones that I really believed, you know, two days old tracks, and things like that, you hear about month-old track, but I don't really believe that, and but, you know, a good six hours, eight hours, would be right on them.

SAVIDGE: And that is the familiar call we hear from a Bloodhound?

BLACKBURN: That's pretty much it. They don't bark, contrary to all the movies, they don't bark when they're on the trail, most of them don't. They're real silent, and all they're doing is looking for -- to be petted or the affection when they find somebody.

SAVIDGE: And, what will Elvis do when he has found somebody? How do you know? What does he tell you?

BLACKBURN: Well, he'll start -- he'll start running in a circle or he'll start pulling his head up off the ground, instead of trailing, he'll start winding the person and looking around. But, that's usually the way they do.

SAVIDGE: All right, thank you. We appreciate it. Duck Blackburn, Scotty Abercrombie (ph), and Elvis, and at one time the dogs that Duke owns were all looking for Eric Rudolph, and of course that search has come to an end -- Sophia.

CHOI: All right, Marty, thanks for that. And, that's all the time we have now. NEXT@CNN will be back tomorrow at 5:00 eastern time, with a look at the big news stories of the day as seen through the lens of science and technology.

Tonight at 8:00 eastern time, CNN presents a special one-hour show, the hunt for Eric Robert Rudolph. Stay with CNN for the latest on the Rudolph capture and all the days top stories.

I'm Sophia Choi.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com