YESTERDAY'S newspaper pictures of Richard Jewell, the security guard under suspicion in the Olympic bombing investigation, showed him peering out from behind what appeared to be prison bars.
In fact the bars were the balusters of a staircase outside his mother's Atlanta apartment. But the image was fitting enough, for the portly 33 year old had already been all but convicted by the media of planting the device that killed one woman and injured more than 100 people at Centennial Park last Saturday.
A photograph of Mr Jewell posing in military fatigues with an M-16 rifle was reproduced in several newspapers. Criminologists held forth on TV about a "hero syndrome" in which law enforcement officers and oilier emergency service workers committed crimes to draw attention to themselves.
As agents carted away crates of evidence from his apartment on Wednesday, there were TV reports that concrete nails "consistent" with those packed into the Olympic bomb had been recovered. Asked by his anchorman about the significance of a roll of masking tape removed from the scene, one reporter blithely replied that it may have been used to bind together the three pipes used in the crude explosive device.
Yesterday the FBI Director, Mr Louis Freeh, dampened the frenzied speculation about Mr Jewell when he told a senate committee that his agents were looking at "a number of suspects" and "nobody's about to be charged with a crime". Mr Freeh stressed "the fact that somebody's name has surfaced does not mean that the person is guilty of anything. It certainly does not mean that people should speculate as to their guilt".
But he was attempting to shut the stable door long after the horse had bolted. Americans are quite used to seeing men and women led handcuffed from their homes in the glare of TV lights long before they have been charged with any crime.
Yesterday, meanwhile, federal agents continued to analyse items removed from Mr Jewell's mother's home and from a cabin he occupied in northern Georgia.
. The FBI Director said yesterday that the United States and its worldwide interests were under attack from terrorists and the country may face "a very difficult time".
In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr Freeh referred to a series of arrests and convictions of foreigners since the bombing of New York's World Trade Centre in 1993. He also referred to recent bombings in Saudi Arabia, at Atlanta's Centennial Park and the still unexplained crash of TEA Flight 800.
"The United States and its interests both here and around the world are clearly under attack," Mr Freeh said.
He said the Bureau has no "credible evidence" that TWA Flight 800 was downed by a criminal act on July 17th. But the FBI director told the hearing a mechanical failure as the cause would be surprising.