10 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday,
April 9, 1996
'S
NATION/WORLD
UNABOMBER
Continued from Page 1.
January, read a statement that he said
was written by the family: "Our hearts
are with Ted. Our deep sympathies go
out to the victims and their families.
We will not be speaking with anyone
from the media now or in the future."
:Bisceglie, a corporate lawyer, de-
scribed the family's odyssey from con-
fidential discussions with a private in-
vestigatorto sensitive negotiations with
the FBI in which they realized they
Mould be turning over a loved one, pos-
sibly to face charges punishable by the
dIeath penalty.
Late last summer, an uneasy feel-
ing began to grip David Kaczynski.
Two letters he had received from re-
elusive Theodore, who was living in
an isolated Montana shack, included
names of places he had visited and
peculiar words and phrases that
seemed similar to the Unabomber's
strident declamations.
The uneasiness escalated soon after
the Unabomber's "manifesto" was pub-
lished in September in The Washington
Post and New York Times. "There were
similarities in ideology, phraseology
and the spelling of certain words,"
Bisceglie said. David Kaczynski had
been left with "considerable unease"
that his brother might be somehow con-
nected to the elusive killer, Bisceglie
said. So, in October, David Kaczynski
contacted Chicago private investigator
Susan Swanson of the Washington-
based Investigative Group International.
She was a childhood friend of David
Kaczynski's wife, Linda, from Ever-
green Park, Ill.
In December, Swanson took a collec-
tion of Theodore Kacyznski's letters
and writings -- including older works
he had told his brother he hoped to one
day publish - and sought the assis-
tance of Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI
behavioral science expert from
Fredericksburg, Va., who is currently a
security consultant.
Van Zandt had no idea who wrote
the letters or who made them avail-
able to Swanson. He developed two
independent teams, one with a psy-
chiatrist and a language expert, and
another with two communications
experts. The teams had two goals -
compare the letters with the
Unabomber's manifesto and develop
profiles of the writers.
"I wanted two separate opinions be-
cause of the magnitude of the case,"
Van Zandt said.
He and the first team felt there was
"at least a 60 percent chance that it was
the same author," said Van Zandt in an
interview. "We felt much stronger
about the probability, but I wanted
more letters to draw further conclu-
sions. The second team felt even stron-
ger, from the communication aspect,
that they were the product of the same
author. There were similarities as far
as grammar and sentence structure,
and theme."
The profiles each suggested a man in
his mid-40s to mid-50s, who likely had
adoctorate, but who had separated him-
self from society.
At first it was difficult to compre-
hend the significance of what his analy-
sis was concluding, said Van Zandt,
who had done cursory work on the
Unabomber case during a 25-year FBI
career. "I kept looking at the analysis
over and over.... It was just hard to
imagine, that after 18 years, it (the
Unabomber case) might be coming to-
gether right on my desk."
AP PH
Unabomber suspect Theodore
Kaczynski
FBI ane
with
advanced
technology0
Los Angeles Times
LINCOLN, Mont. - The cabin
where Theodore 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
OTO raised handlebars was just about the
highest technology item on the pre
mises.
Or so it was until federal investi m
tors arrived last Wednesday to sear P
his dark, tiny cabin with some of the
most sophisticated technology ever de
veloped to detect and defuse bombs.
Looking for evidence that 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.
And they came armed with new sci
entific techniques specifically designed
during the Unabomber investigation to
detect, analyze and defuse bombs made
in the unique hand-crafted style of the
elusive serial bomber.
"Technology was developed just for
this case because of the way he made
his bombs," said one federal source
who declined to be more specific.
With the FBI's detailed preparatio
new detection methods and painstaki
search, agents were able to discover
and preserve what may be one of the
most crucial pieces of evidence in the
case: a completed bomb that was appar-
ently ready for mailing.
Given that the huntforthe Unabomber
is one of the FBI's hjghest priorities,
former Bureau officials said the agency
would be certain to use every technique
at its command to carry out the sears
"They would invest their best tee
nology to protect their agents and at the
same time use a complex of technolo-
gies to find everything in the cabin,"
said Al Bayse, former chief scientist for
the FBI. "They'll have the best bomb
experts in the world out there."
In his 35,000-word manifesto pub-
lished last year, the Unabomber de-
clared, "The technophiles are taking all
of us on an untterly reckless ride in
the unknown."
But for now, the technology the
Unabomber railed against is providing
the best chance in 18 years of catching
him.
Much of the high-tech equipment
used by law enforcement in such
searches was developed during the drug
war for entering the booby-trapped lairs
of suspected drug dealers.
When suspicious material was 1
cated in Kaczynski's cabin last Frida
for example, the FBI used a robot to
enterthe structure and retrieveait. Agents
feared it could have been set to go off if
it was picked up.
"If it's a powerful device, the robot
doesn't have a chance," said retired
ATF director Steve Higgins. "But bet-
ter it (than a human)."
Such a robot, standing about 3 feet
tall, can be operated by remote control
and can do "practically anything in ter9
of lifting, moving and picking up,
Higgins added.
Once items were retrieved from the
cabin, they were moved to a work area
outside the house and X-rayed on a
portable machine much like those used
at airports.
And while federal officials would
not divulge details about the continuing
search of Kaczynski's remote moun-
tain cabin, former FBI and ATF o
cials offered insight into some of the
techniques that law enforcement per-
sonnel now have available.
Before entering Kaczynski's cabin,
for example, FBI agents most likely
bombarded the small structure with
electro-magnetic energy to create a pic-
ture of its entire contents much like an
X-ray.
"The FBI has that ability to acquire a
three-dimensional view of the conte
of a room," Bayse said. "It would give
you the landscape of the room."
Before entering, agents might also have
inserted highly sensitive acoustic devices
to sort out all the sounds in the cabin and
determine ifthere were any electronically
operated booby traps. "Devices maketheir
own noise," Bayse said.
But perhaps one of the most impor-
tant techniques in this search would be
to use highly sophisticated chemi*
sensors that can detect possible bomb
components.
Such"sniffers,"which cantest forsmal l
amounts ofa chemicalin the air, would be
preferable to bomb-sniffing dogs because
the Unabomber often used readily avail-
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