Unabomber

It's easier being green, Danner saysIt has become much easier in recent years to be conscientious about recycling. Just ask Blythe Danner, the actress who is starring in the Manhattan Theater Club production of "Sylvia."Wednesday night, she told guests at the Environmental Action Coalition's awards dinner in Manhattan what it had been like to recycle 25 years ago. "I used to get on a bus when I was doing 'Butterflies Are Free' and take the garbage downtown to a recycling center," she said.

LINCOLN, Mont. -- The cabin where Theodore J. Kaczynski lived on and off for 25 years was so primitive it did not even have an outhouse. His aging, red, one-speed bicycle with the raised handlebars was just about the highest technology item on the premises.Or so it was until federal investigators arrived last Wednesday to search his dark, tiny cabin with some of the most sophisticated technology ever developed to detect and defuse bombs.Looking for evidence that Mr. Kaczynski was the anti-technology Unabomber, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms brought in such devices as a remote-controlled robot and portable X-ray equipment to help search for bombs and booby traps.

BERKELEY, Calif. -- At first glance, Theodore J. Kaczynski might think not much has changed here since he left in 1969. Then, he was a young, short-haired and conservatively dressed professor. Berkeley was an epicenter of the political and social earthquakes rocking the country.Today students still march outside the administration building, waving signs and handing out leaflets. On bulletin boards, fliers announce a free speech rally.But the quiet professor and the fervent community have left much of themselves behind.

STRANGE as it may seem, America owes Theodore J. Kaczynski a debt of gratitude. By pleading guilty to murder charges, the Unabomber has spared us all the sorry spectacle of a murder trial in which the defendant is opined to be a paranoid schizophrenic and at the same time competent to face a jury.The Kaczynski trial was shaping up as yet another travesty of justice, no less a media circus than the criminal prosecution of O. J. Simpson and, even more to the point, the Long Island Rail Road shooter, Colin Ferguson.

HAVRE de GRACE -- So Theodore John Kaczynski, the suspected Unabomber, turns out to be one of my very own college classmates. I didn't know him then, and didn't even recognize his name the other day when the FBI released it. Why is it then that I'm only mildly surprised?Maybe, because the class has produced just about everything else, having its own bloody-minded Luddite monomaniac seems almost inevitable. Or maybe it's because of the legacy of the '60s, and the way that strange decade's incredible political poisons linger on.The extraordinary hostilities of the '60s to democratic government, to open-minded intellectual inquiry, to technology, and to commerce have proved to be as enduring as they were corrosive.

WASHINGTON -- David Gelernter, professor of computer science, fresh from vacation, sorting through mail in his Yale office, thought the package was someone's dissertation. When he pulled the wrapping cord, smoke billowed with a hiss and a strange smell. Then the package sent by the Unabomber emitted ''a terrific flash,'' and Mr. Gelernter was blown into a long -- it will never end -- journey of pain, involving many surgeries, a cornea transplant, therapy, diminished capacities, lost time.

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.

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.

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with a "brilliant" mathematician like the Unabomber suspect was stunningly memorable.I was in my second year at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh at the time, taking a course known as Linear Algebra. The course was taught in a semi-amphitheater classroom in a building that housed facilities for the school's ROTC program including a military amateur radio station.The class was taught by a purportedly brilliant, Harvard-trained mathematician with a doctorate degree. He had the physical appearance of a long, white string with a vacant face that failed to reveal anything to the rest of the world.

DAVID KACZYNSKI did the right thing when he turned in his brother Ted, the alleged Unabomber.Didn't he?You'd hand your brother over to the FBI, knowing he faced a possible death penalty, knowing that he would know you fingered him, and knowing, too, that if you didn't finger him, maybe nobody ever would.You'd do it. You'd have to. Wouldn't you?You'd put the lives of innocent people first. You'd chose justice over blood. You'd tell your mother: "Ma, I had no choice."It was a case of personal values over family values.