Unabomber

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!

Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, by Alston Chase. W.W. Norton. 352 pages. $26.95. Take America's fascination with sociopathic murder and pair it with the intellectual mystique surrounding Harvard, and you should have a great tale to be told. And Alston Chase, a Harvard graduate and a former civilization fleer to Montana himself, has told it -- but with a twist that carries his new book over the edge of reasonability and readability. Chase, often through wildly subjective interpretations of how the literature on Ted Kaczynski's cabin bookshelf influenced the Unabomber's antisocial mind and deeds, argues that Harvard subtly planted the seeds of discontent.

From prison, Theodore J. Kaczynski, who pleaded guilty to the Unabomber killings, has a message for his brother, who turned him in to the government.In a book to be published this spring, Kaczynski says he could forgive what he calls his brother's treason. But forgiveness will come only if the brother, David Kaczynski, leaves his wife and joins with groups fighting modern society or, as Theodore himself did, lives in rural isolation."In this way he would not only earn my personal forgiveness; what is more important, he would be cleansed and redeemed of his treason against the values that he once held in common with me and many other people," Kaczynski writes.

AMERICANS should react to the possibility of terrorism by anthrax spore as they have to such dangers as cancer from the sun and death on the highways - by proceeding with caution, even extreme caution, but not with panic. A handful of incidents, including one involving mail contaminated by anthrax spores delivered to the office of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, had by yesterday caused evacuations and precautions across Europe, Asia and North America. A dozen people have been exposed to infection, and Robert Stevens in Boca Raton, Fla., died, presumably murdered by the sender.

Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist, by Alston Chase. W.W. Norton. 352 pages. $26.95. Take America's fascination with sociopathic murder and pair it with the intellectual mystique surrounding Harvard, and you should have a great tale to be told. And Alston Chase, a Harvard graduate and a former civilization fleer to Montana himself, has told it -- but with a twist that carries his new book over the edge of reasonability and readability. Chase, often through wildly subjective interpretations of how the literature on Ted Kaczynski's cabin bookshelf influenced the Unabomber's antisocial mind and deeds, argues that Harvard subtly planted the seeds of discontent.

As cunning as the Unabomber has proved to be, he may long ago have inadvertently given the FBI identifying evidence, simply by licking stamps and envelopes he then mailed, criminalists said yesterday.Even scant cells in old, dried saliva can yield enough DNA to link a suspect to a crime or location, the forensic scientists said in commenting on reports that the FBI might have DNA samples from the Unabomber."I imagine one of the first things they did was collect hair and blood samples" from the Unabomber suspect, Theodore J. Kaczynski, after he was arrested Wednesday, said Thomas Wahl, a criminalist with the Las Vegas Police Crime Laboratory.

The Unabomber's letter is a "woodenly written term paper" and "it's a shame" because the point he's trying to make about "the industrial-technological system" is "absolutely crucial for the American public to understand and ought to be on the forefront of the nation's political agenda."So writes Kirkpatrick Sale in his deconstruction of the Unabomber and the homicidal correspondent's treatise in the Sept. 25 issue of The Nation.Mr. Sale was allowed by the FBI to read the Unabomber's letter in its entirety.

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 -- His bombs usually come in pairs, less than 30 days apart.That pattern has federal authorities bracing for another strike by the serial bomber agents have dubbed Unabomber, sources said Monday.Investigators who have spent more than 15 years tracking the elusive killer said they have isolated a pattern to the bomber's madness: He selects two people in geographically different locations and tries to blow up his second target within days of the first.It's a thin link, and one that FBI officials readily admit gets them no closer to identifying the bomber who sent the deadly package that killed Thomas Mosser, a Young & Rubicam executive, in his suburban New Jersey home Saturday.

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.

INSTINCTS AND experience tell me that the person who wrote the note was a man -- a real guy, I'd say. I'll further speculate -- and, in a moment, you'll see this isn't much of a leap -- that he's a guy with strong opinions, the particular type who gets almost daily validation on AM talk-radio shows all across the fruited plain. Those are assumptions, of course, but I'd put money on them. I did some time on talk radio a few years ago; I have some familiarity with this species. Apparently, the man wrote the note while visiting -- or shortly after leaving -- a doctor's office.

When FBI agents raided Theodore J. Kaczynski's remote Montana cabin in April 1996, they found thousands of handwritten pages that eventually unmasked the reclusive, Harvard-trained mathematician as the Unabomber. But there was a problem: Hundreds of the documents were written in Spanish or in a meticulous numerical code that even when broken translated to Spanish instead of English. In time, the cryptic journals formed the cornerstone of the government's case against Kaczynski. But at the Montana cabin that spring, where agents also had found an assembled bomb, investigators feared the pages contained plans for targeting victims beyond the three people already killed and 23 injured.

Four years ago, a man known only as the Unabomber demanded that two major newspapers print his 35,000-word manifesto -- or he'd strike again. After much agonizing over ethics and journalistic responsibility, both papers acquiesced.Today, Ted Kaczynski is locked away for life. But he hasn't stopped writing.Next month, another publication -- an obscure student-run magazine at the State University of New York at Binghamton -- will serve up Kaczynski's latest creative ramblings, penned in his Colorado prison cell.

From prison, Theodore J. Kaczynski, who pleaded guilty to the Unabomber killings, has a message for his brother, who turned him in to the government.In a book to be published this spring, Kaczynski says he could forgive what he calls his brother's treason. But forgiveness will come only if the brother, David Kaczynski, leaves his wife and joins with groups fighting modern society or, as Theodore himself did, lives in rural isolation."In this way he would not only earn my personal forgiveness; what is more important, he would be cleansed and redeemed of his treason against the values that he once held in common with me and many other people," Kaczynski writes.

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.

The similarities are striking: Two smart, one-time Midwesterners with an affinity for mathematics, a love of the wilderness and academic careers that took them to Berkeley.They never met but their paths crossed horribly. Today, Theodore J. Kaczynski is expected to receive a life sentence for a series of bombings that killed three and injured 23, including John Hauser.Kaczynski, the confessed Unabomber, will be sentenced in federal court in Sacramento, Calif., formalizing the plea bargain that abruptly ended his trial in January.

Sylvan Learning Systems Inc. earned brief mention in a prominent newspaper this week, but it was not an endorsement company officials needed or wanted.The references to the Columbia-based tutoring firm are in the unsettling words of a killer -- buried deep in the rambling, 35,000-word manifesto of the man known as Unabomber.The mysterious writer who rails against technology's effect on modern society says Sylvan's work as well as other educational methods are related to "the assertion of control over the human mind."

SAN FRANCISCO -- In a previously undisclosed letter received this week by one of his victims, the "Unabomber" ridiculed the man as a "techno-nerd" and blamed him for promoting a "computer-dominated world.""People with advanced degrees aren't as smart as they think they are," the serial bomber told computer science professor David Gelernter, who was maimed in June 1993 when he opened a letter bomb at his Yale University office. "If you'd had any brains you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world and you wouldn't have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source."

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- In a chilling compendium of journal entries disclosed yesterday, confessed Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski pronounced that a fatal attack on one victim was "excellent," mused on killing a "scientist" or "big businessman," and in workmanlike lab notes recorded how he had taped razor blades and nails to a pipe bomb to increase its destructiveness.Overall, more than 100 new excerpts from Kaczynski's diaries and journals were detailed in a government court filing yesterday.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Despite her Christian ministry, her lawyers' appeals, the entreaties of international celebrities, Karla Faye Tucker, perhaps the loveliest inmate on death row, is scheduled to die Tuesday.Her champions -- including prison guards, the brother of one of her victims, the sister of the other, and television evangelist Pat Robertson -- say that Texas will be killing a woman who has begged forgiveness for two gruesome murders and is genuinely rehabilitated."What is the point of executing her?"