The feds, it is now clear, never had any physical evidence linking Jewell to the bomb, though they turned his life inside out trying to find some. In their quest for potential clues, agents removed everything from firearms to dryer lint from the apartment in Atlanta that he shares with his mother, Barbara, 60. In its original request for a search warrant, the FBI cited evidence that Jewell "had no girlfriend...lives and breathes police stories," and "was exposed to explosives and bomb instruction and lectures on two separate occasions." In short, the onetime police officer and campus security officer fit what some agents felt was the profile of a law enforcement wannabe who might plant a bomb and then "discover" it to win acclaim. (In a later memorandum to a federal judge, the government stated Jewell's backpack was missing, that he had told coworkers two days before the bombing "to take a picture of me now because I'm going to be famous," and that a year or more earlier, a neighbor in north Georgia had heard an explosion in the woods and then had spotted Jewell "looking very nervous.")
Jewell denied being a wannabe, or even a hero, for that matter. "All I did was my job," he said. But he heaped scorn on the way the FBI and the media did theirs. He denounced the press for hounding him and his mother. His point was well-taken, as was his criticism of the way the feds had, until recently, placed him under round-the-clock surveillance. "I felt like a hunted animal, followed constantly, waiting to be killed," said Jewell.
His lawyers were especially galled by what they perceived to be the FBI's various efforts to trick Jewell into incriminating himself. Two days after the bombing, for instance, a friend of Jewell's from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation called him on the pretext of wanting to hear about the incident firsthand. Jewell invited him over for a lasagna dinner, unaware that the friend was wearing an FBI wire. Similarly, just as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, closely followed by CNN and NBC News, was breaking the news that he was a suspect, the feds were coaxing Jewell into helping make what they said was a training film about bomb detection. Only in the midst of taping his remarks did they ask him to waive his right to remain silent. "The FBI transformed itself from being masters of interrogation into being masters of deceit," said Jewell's civil attorney L. Lin Wood.
Jewell's lawyers have already announced their intention to file libel suits against The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and NBC News. (Last week the paper defended its coverage, noting, "In an open society, it is clear that an investigation of a hero is news.") But most legal experts believe that Jewell will have a hard time winning against either the press or the FBI, which did have a valid search warrant. "Unfortunately," G. Watson Bryant, one of Jewell's attorneys, conceded, "you may not have a civil action even if you've been screwed."
Remarkably, his experience has not soured Jewell on his dream of a career in law enforcement. But he acknowledged to The New York Times that, because of his notoriety, his chances of landing a police job are "slim and none." So far, neither Hollywood nor a book publisher has come calling. One job offer so far is for a position as a security guard at Harry's, a popular farmers' market chain in Atlanta, and Jewell doubts his vindication will ever be complete. "People will never forget my name," he told 60 Minutes two months ago. "It will never end."
BILL HEWITT
GAIL CAMERON WESCOTT in Atlanta
- Contributors:
- Gail Cameron Wescott.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
