Unabomber

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- In a handwritten journal found in his Montana cabin, Unabomber suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski tied himself directly to a deadly, coast-to-coast trail of 16 bombings and expressed "his desire to kill," a federal prosecutor said yesterday.In a number of instances, the daily journal entries simply note " 'I mailed that bomb.' 'I sent that bomb,' " Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary said in a federal court hearing on the status of the case.He described a stack of documents seized at the tiny cabin as "the backbone of the government's case" against Kaczynski, a one-time math professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

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.

HELENA, Mont. -- Theodore J. Kaczynski, the one-time university professor taken into custody Wednesday as a suspect in the Unabomber case, was arraigned in Helena yesterday on a single felony charge of possessing bomb components. He was held without bail.The arraignment followed a search in which, federal authorities said, they found evidence that Mr. Kaczynski had turned his one-room mountain shack into a virtual bomb laboratory.When the 53-year-old suspect was brought into the Lewis and Clark County jail in Helena on Wednesday evening, his hair was matted and his stained jeans were badly torn, as if from a scuffle.

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. -- Clint Van Zandt has a particular skill and partly because of it Theodore J. Kaczynski, the suspected Unabomber, is in custody today.It all began for Mr. Van Zandt with a call in December to his home in Fredericksburg. A woman investigator from Chicago wanted to know if what she had heard about him was true:Could he compare separate documents and determine if they had been written by the same person? Not by the handwriting, but by the vocabulary, sentence structure, the punctuation?

LINCOLN, Mont. -- Lincoln's most famous resident goes on trial for murder in Sacramento, Calif., next week -- raising fears here that this remote town might be in for 15 more annoying minutes of fame as the nation watches the case of Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski."

Theodore J. Kaczynski doesn't like his lawyers. And because of that, the Unabomber suspect's murder trial, one of the highest-profile federal trials of the year, was stopped as it was poised to begin in Sacramento, Calif., Monday.Kaczynski -- brilliant, perhaps mentally ill and accused in a 17-year-long string of bombings -- spoke out in court just as Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. took the bench. For three days, the trial was stalled as his dispute with his attorneys over defense tactics commanded the court's attention in closed-door hearings.

Unabomber demands our attention. He resents the distraction of John Doe No. 2. Humor him (or her, or them).Republicans are rethinking their passion for assault rifles. About time.Big-mouthed, ignorant, bigoted, abusive, rabble-rousing, hate-mongering know-nothings don't bomb public places. Bombers do.A special corner of ballroom dance heaven was reserved just for Ginger Rogers.

I GOT a letter and article in the mail. "My name is Gerald Davenport," it begins, "and I am currently looking into running for President, as well as forming a new political party."Well, why not? Everybody else is.My problem with Gerald's candidacy is that he needs a good speech writer. "I am faxing to all the different newspapers around the country in hopes of getting an article I've wrote printed." So I would say to Gerald that the first thing he'd better do is hire a speech writer who knows the difference between "wrote" and "written."

BOSTON -- I can't bring myself to hate the Unabomber. Quite the opposite; I find his story curiously affecting.The original Unabomber -- the anonymous, hooded fellow, hiding behind aviator glasses -- was uninteresting, a freak, a nobody. But Theodore Kaczynski is someone very interesting indeed.Like his brother David, I am horrified by the three murders attributed to the bomber. And I realize that his death count was artificially low. If Mr. Kaczynski is the Unabomber, he probably intended for dozens more men and women to die, and he deserves a heavy penalty for his crimes.

That famous but unidentified assassin, the Unabomber, has received an incredibly good job opportunity.Bob Guccione, the flamboyant publisher of Penthouse magazine, has offered him a chance to write a regular monthly column.In an open letter to the bomb-maker, Guccione wrote: "I propose to offer you one or more unedited pages in Penthouse every single month for an indefinite period. Consider it a regular column in which you may continue to proffer your revolutionary ++ philosophy, answer critics and generally interact with the public."