BAXLEY REOPENS PROBE OF BIRMINGHAM BOMBING Montgomery Advertiser 2-19-76

"We know who did it," Alabama Atty. Gen. Bill Baxley said Wednesday as he confirmed that he has reopened the investigation of a church bombing that killed four young black girls in Birmingham in 1963. Baxley said in an interview with Birmingham radio station hat the list of suspects had been narrowed down, but he declined to predict if or when arrests would be made.He said premature published reports about the investigation might have hurt. "There are some people in Jefferson County who ought to be pretty nervous right now," Baxley said in an earlier telephone interview.

The Sunday, Sept. 15, 1963, dynamite blast at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church occurred during the time of racial demonstrations led by the late Martin Luther King. Twenty-three other people in the church were hurt and debris was scattered for blocks.Baxley later confirmed that he had talked to Rowe, and he was cooperative, "But we were working on this thing long before that. We had a lot of stuff already. Rowe was just another person we interviewed."He said Rowe didn't give him a list of names as such, "but nine is too many."

Baxley repeated that he had no timetable for possible arrests. Meanwhile, Gov. George Wallace, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination in Massachusetts, told a Boston radio station, "They ought to knock the bottom out of hell for anyone convicted of the bombing."Baxley said Birmingham police were aiding the new investigation. Published reports said Baxley had obtained report on FBI probes of the bombing incident.

A Birmingham newspaper said Baxley had a list of nine persons allegedly connected with the bombing, but the attorney general would not confirm it.The newspaper said one-time FBI informer Gary Thomas Rowe gave the names to Baxley before Rowe appeared before a U.S. Senate committee in December.

The newspaper said Rowe's lawyer, Frank Gerdes of San Diego, Calif.; confirmed that Rowe met with Baxley, but refused to say what the men discussed.Rowe told the Senate committee that he was an FBI informer in Birmingham during the racial strife of the early 1970s.

He alleged that law officers gave a group of Ku Klux Klan members 15 minutes to assault "freedom rider" at a bus station before officers intervened. After that testimony, City Councilman Richard Arrington asked the Council to reopen the investigation of the church bombing. Vann asked the FBI for its files on the incident. A city spokesman said the files have never been received.