Manifesto

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Patrick Webb cautiously entered Theodore J. Kaczynski's Montana shack, leading a team of bomb experts. In the gloom, he examined shelves crammed with baby food jars and baking soda cans that were carefully marked with the chemical names of explosives.Then, in a Quaker Oats box, agents found what they had hoped for: 23 bomb igniters, each made from a piece of appliance cord pulled through a wooden plug. A Unabomber signature.For Webb, who saw his first Unabomber crime scene in 1982, fresh out of bomb school, and his last in 1995, when he examined the shredded body of Gilbert B. Murray in a Sacramento office, it was the instant of realization that, after 17 years, the FBI's quest for the serial terrorist had ended.

It was a 23-page ticking bomb of a document, penned by an odd couple of European exiles, virtually unnoticed upon its publication, that would inspire some of the bloodiest dictatorships of the 20th century. It would also motivate some of the century's notable social achievements."A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of Communism," "The Communist Manifesto" famously begins. On this 150th May Day since its writing, the spectre has pretty much lost its power to spook.Yet much of this dense little essay, written by Karl Marx with a little help from Friedrich Engels, sounds strikingly contemporary.

DENVER -- Until recently it was true, as a wit said, that British socialists looked upon the mess they had made of things and called it the crisis of capitalism. Now they look upon Margaret Thatcher's success in cleaning up that mess and call it a mandate for lecturing Europe's less right-thinking socialists, as Tony Blair recently did, on the need to emancipate themselves from the statism of "more spending or regulation."Mr. Blair, Britain's 44-year-old prime minister since May, came here representing the second-freest and second-strongest economy among those of the eight summiteers.

"A New Time For Mexico," by Carlos Fuentes. 215 pages. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. $23.The cry for true democratic reform in Mexico has grown fierce and strong, but never has it been more eloquent and provocative than in Carlos Fuentes' new book, "A New Time For Mexico."In the style that has made him Mexico's leading literary figure, Fuentes weaves prose with political commentary to bring alive and demand support for the struggle of his country's poor and powerless to win not only the most basic of rights, but political clout.

NEW ORLEANS -- One of the cruelest assignments I ever gave my students was to read the entire Unabomber Manifesto from the Washington Post. In addition, they were to write an essay on it.It is a testimony to their toughness that they got through the whole text without dropping the class.To tell you the truth, and this confession will get me in big trouble, I couldn't get past the middle of it. My eyes glazed over, the pencil fell from my hand and I fell into an agitated sleep wherein I stood before my class, which had somehow grown to millions of people, and they were all shouting at me: ''You Are Trying to Bore Us To Death!

WASHINGTON -- Seven weeks after a manuscript by the serial bomber known as the Unabomber was published, investigators say they have been deluged with thousands of leads from the public, but are no closer to solving the baffling 17-year-long string of bombings.But the authorities are revising important assumptions about the background and motives of the criminal whose 16 bombs have killed three people and injured 22 others.Interviews with investigators and academics who are closely following the case suggest that the 35,000-word manuscript is the work of a man whose profile more closely fits that of a serial killer than a domestic terrorist with a political agenda.

NEW YORK -- At the request of Attorney General Janet Reno and the FBI, and with the concurrence of the New York Times, the Washington Post today is publishing the unaltered 35,000-word manifesto of the serial killer known as the Unabomber in the hope of ending his 17-year campaign of murder through the mails.The bomber offered last June to stop the killing, though not necessarily the property damage, if the text of the manifesto, calling for a revolution against the industrial-technological underpinnings of society, was published by one of the two newspapers within three months, and if three annual follow-up messages were printed.

WASHINGTON -- For any editor, the choices are terrible: Cave in to a terrorist, publish a lengthy diatribe and set a dangerous precedent. Refuse, and run the risk that the terrorist will kill more people.That is exactly what editors at the New York Times and the Washington Post face as they consider whether to run a 62-page, single-spaced manifesto from a terrorist dubbed the Unabomber, whose 17 years of random bomb attacks have killed three people and wounded 23."I can well understand an editor or publisher wanting to head off the possibility of a calamity by bending journalistic rules a bit," said Marvin Kalb, a former CBS News correspondent and now a media analyst.

NEW YORK -- Unveiling an apparent motive and a possible way out of his murderous ways, a serial mail bomber has delivered to the New York Times and the Washington Post a 35,000-word manifesto calling for revolution against what he says is a corrupt industrial-technological society controlled by a shadowy international elite of government and corporate figures seeking to subvert human freedom.The self-described anarchist, in a series of accompanying letters, said that if the full text of his manuscript is published by one of the newspapers within three months, and if that paper prints three annual follow-up messages, he would stop trying to kill people.

HELENA, Mont. -- Federal agents are investigating whether Unabomber suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski ever sought or received psychiatric treatment for depression, a source familiar with the investigation said yesterday.Based on the discovery of a bottle of an anti-depressant medication in his cabin, the FBI is attempting to locate any doctors who might have prescribed drugs or provided therapy to the former math professor, the source said.The Unabomber, in the rambling 35,000-word manifesto that was published last year, frequently cited depression as a symptom of society's illness in the technological age. "Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed, modern society gives them anti-depressant drugs," the serial bomber complained.