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Letter to the editor

Jewell, hero and media target, dies

The Olympic guard came under false suspicion.

ATLANTA - Richard Jewell, the former security guard who was wrongly linked to the 1996 Olympic bombing and then waged a decadelong battle with news organizations to defend his reputation, died Wednesday (Aug. 29, 2007). He was 44.

Mr. Jewell was found dead in his west Georgia home. An autopsy was scheduled for today.

"There's no suspicion whatsoever of any type of foul play. He had been at home sick since the end of February with kidney problems," said Meriwether County coroner Johnny Worley.

Mr. Jewell was diagnosed with diabetes earlier this year and later had a few toes amputated. He had recently been on dialysis, the coroner said.

Mr. Jewell was a security guard at the Olympics in Atlanta. He was initially hailed as a hero for spotting a suspicious backpack in a park and moving people out of harm's way just before a bomb exploded during a concert on July 27, 1996.

His actions were credited with reducing casualties; the blast killed one and injured 111 others.

But three days after the bombing, an unattributed report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described him as "the focus" of the investigation.

Other media, including the Associated Press, also linked Mr. Jewell in varying degrees to the investigation. The media portrayed him as a loser and law-enforcement wanna-be who may have planted the bomb so he would look like a hero when he discovered it later.

Suspicions remain

The real bomber turned out to be antigovernment extremist Eric Rudolph, who was charged in 1998 and who pleaded guilty in 2005 to the Olympics bombing and others. He is serving life in prison.

Mr. Jewell told the Associated Press last year that Rudolph's conviction helped clear his name, but he believed some people still remember him as a suspect rather than for the two days in which he was praised as a hero.

"For that two days, my mother had a great deal of pride in me - that I had done something good and that she was my mother, and that was taken away from her," Mr. Jewell said. "She'll never get that back, and there's no way I can give that back to her."

A year ago, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue commended Mr. Jewell at a bombing anniversary event.

Mr. Jewell said: "I never expected this day to ever happen. I'm just glad that it did."

To many, Mr. Jewell became a symbol of a life injured by FBI leaks and news coverage laced with innuendo.

The episode led to soul-searching among news organizations about the use of unattributed or anonymously sourced information. His name became shorthand for a person accused of wrongdoing in the media based on scanty information.

The FBI neither arrested nor formally charged Mr. Jewell, but the media scrutiny that descended on him was extraordinarily invasive and crude.

In October 1996, the FBI cleared Mr. Jewell, and in 1997, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno expressed regret over the leak regarding Mr. Jewell. "I'm very sorry it happened," she told reporters. "I think we owe him an apology."

Suit unsettled

Mr. Jewell sued several media companies, including NBC, CNN and the New York Post, and settled for undisclosed amounts, reportedly in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to Lin Wood, Mr. Jewell's longtime attorney, Mr. Jewell also settled a lawsuit against Piedmont College, a former employer. That amount was also confidential.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution never settled a lawsuit Mr. Jewell filed against it. Wood said Wednesday that the case is set for trial in January.

"I expect to pursue it for Richard and his estate," Wood said.

A lawyer for the newspaper, Peter Canfield, has said that the newspaper stands by its coverage of Mr. Jewell.

Mr. Jewell, in an interview with AP last year around the 10th anniversary of the Olympic bombing, insisted the lawsuits were not about money. He bought his mother a place to live and gave 73 percent of the settlement money to his attorneys and to the government in taxes. He said the cases were about ensuring the truth was told.

"I'm not rich by any means monetarily," he said at the time. "I'm rich because of my family. If I never get there, I don't care. I'm going to get my say in court."

After the Olympics, Mr. Jewell found law enforcement work in small Georgia towns. As recently as last year, Mr. Jewell was working as a sheriff's deputy in west Georgia. He also gave speeches to college journalism classes.

He married in recent years, and his wife is among his survivors.

Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.

[Last modified August 30, 2007, 01:48:20]