From: Albertus Magnus Area: Mundane To: All 26 Apr 95 13:51:04 Subject: 1-Unabomb UpdReq 04/26:UNABOMB SUSPECT REVEALS MOTIVES IN LETTER TO THE TIMES By JAMES BARRON c.1995 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK - Federal officials said on Tuesday that the mysterious serial bomber in the Unabom case sent several letters that were delivered on Monday, shortly before a package-bomb explosion killed an executive of a California timber trade group. In one of the letters, to The New York Times, the writer said that he had spent considerable time perfecting ever-deadlier devices but that he would stop killing people if a newspaper or magazine with nationwide circulation published a lengthy article written by him. The letter offered the most detailed explanation yet of what the bomber says are his motives. It also taunted the FBI, which has led the manhunt since the attacks on college professors and corporate officials began in the late 1970s. The package bomb that exploded on Monday was the 16th in a string that the FBI says has killed 3 people and injured 22. "Clearly we are in a position to do a great deal of damage," the single-spaced, typed letter to The Times, said. "And it doesn't appear that the FBI is going to catch us any time soon. The FBI is a joke." Monday's explosion, shortly after 2 p.m. Pacific time, killed Gilbert B. Murray, the president of the California Forestry Association, an industry trade group in Sacramento. Jim R. Freeman, the special agent in charge of the FBI's office in San Francisco, said the package had been addressed to a colleague of Murray's, William Dennison. The Unabom suspect often appears to have operated out of northern California - a 1985 attack killed a computer-store employee in Sacramento - and like the letter to The Times, the package was postmarked from Oakland, Calif. Wrapped in brown paper and held together with "nylon filament tape," it weighed five to six pounds, Freeman said. It had an Oakland return address, he said, but he would not say whether the address was real. Freeman also said that three letters had been sent, including the one to The Times, but an official in Washington said there had been four. One went to David J. Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale University who was badly hurt by a mail bomb he opened in June 1993. Gelernter said on Tuesday that he had spoken to the FBI, but he declined to discuss what his letter from the bomber had said. Freeman refused to say who had received the other letters. Only once before has the bomber communicated, in a brief letter to The Times nearly two years ago. In that note, as in the one delivered on Monday, he described himself as an "anarchist" and said he was from a group called "FC." In both letters to The Times, the letter-writer used the first-person plural, though investigators who have spent years trying to break the case believe that the bomber is a single white man in his 40s. Federal officials said they did not believe there was a connection between the mail bomber and the explosion in Oklahoma City. But they speculated that the attack on Monday was the bomber's way of getting attention in the wake of the much deadlier explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The envelope containing the letter to The Times was postmarked last Thursday, the day after the explosion in Oklahoma City. It contained a nine-digit number intended as confirmation that it had been written by the same person who had sent the letter in 1993, when Gelernter of Yale and Charles J. Esptein, an authority on genetics, were injured by package bombs. In the letter delivered on Monday, parts of several sentences had been marked out with X's, a way of making revisions that would be difficult on a personal computer. The letter also contained at least one mistake that appeared to be more than a casual typographical error: it referred more than once to the Burson-Marsteller advertising agency as "Burston-Marsteller." The agency was mentioned in a paragraph that said the bomber had built the package bomb that killed Thomas Mosser, a longtime Burson-Marsteller executive, late last year at his home in North Caldwell, N.J. The letter complained that the agency's business "is the development of techniques for manipulating people's attitudes." The letter said that Burson-Marsteller's clients had included Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. "But we attacked Burston-Marsteller less for its specific misdeeds than on general principles," the letter said. Exxon has long been a Burson-Marsteller client, but Burson-Marsteller's records showed that neither Mosser, a specialist in crisis communications, nor the agency had worked on the Exxon Valdez incident. Over the years, college campuses appeared to be a target for Unabom attacks, starting with the first incident, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., on May 26, 1978. The second bomb was planted the following year at a Northwestern campus in Chicago. But the letter said the bomber had "nothing against universities or scholars as such." ... God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. - Nietzsche 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Albertus Magnus Area: Mundane To: All 26 Apr 95 13:52:12 Subject: 2-Unabomb UpdReq "All the university people whom we have attacked have been specialists in technical fields," the letter said, defining "certain areas of applied psychology, such as behavior modification," as a technical field. "We would not want anyone to think that we have any desire to hurt professors who study archaeology, history, literature or harmless stuff like that." It said that "the people we are out to get are the scientists and engineers, especially in critical fields like computers and genetics." The bomber conceded that his record had been uneven. The letter described a bomb planted at the business school at the University of Utah in October 1981 - the fifth known Unabom device - as "a botched operation." "We won't say how or why it was botched," the letter said, "because we don't want to give the FBI any clues." The letter-writer did indicate that he wanted to tell his story. He said he had been working on a manuscript of between 29,000 and 37,000 words "that we want to have published." But the letter-writer spelled out a series of conditions as precise as a literary agent's contract, including who would control the rights to the document and how profits from its publication would be distributed. The letter also stipulated that the manuscript must appear in The Times, Time or Newsweek, "or in some other widely read, nationally distributed periodical." "Because of its length," the letter said, "we suppose it will have to be serialized. Alternatively, it can be published as a small book, but the book must be well publicized and made available at a moderate price in bookstores nationwide and in at least some places abroad." The letter said that if the unfinished manuscript was published "according to our requirements," the bomber would "permanently desist from terrorist activities." If not, the letter said that he would "start building our next bomb." The publisher of The Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said: "While the pages of The Times can't be held hostage by those who threaten violence we're ready to receive the manuscript described in the letter. We'll take a careful look at it and make a journalistic decision about whether to publish it in our pages. But whether we publish it ourselves or not, we'll do all we responsibly can to make it public." The letter arrived in The Times' newsroom on Monday afternoon and was turned over to the FBI unopened. After conducting X-ray and fluoroscopic tests to see whether it contained explosives, the FBI asked The Times not to publish the nine-digit number so that any future letters could be authenticated using the same number. The agency also asked The Times to omit several sentences describing in detail how the bomber had refined the techniques of bomb-making and to omit the names of two scientists mentioned in a postscript. They had not previously been identified as targets. At one point in the letter, the writer noted that he is "getting tired of making bombs." "It's no fun having to spend all your evenings and weekends preparing dangerous mixtures, filing trigger mechanisms out of scraps of metal or searching the sierras for a place isolated enough to test a bomb," the letter said. ... Wagner is a transposed actor. - Nietzsche 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Albertus Magnus Area: Mundane To: All 26 Apr 95 13:52:48 Subject: 3-Unabomb UpdReq 04/26:TEXT OF UNABOMB CASE LETTER RECEIVED BY N.Y. TIMES c.1995 N.Y. Times News Service Following is the text of the letter received by The New York Times on Monday from the self-designated "terrorist group FC," claiming responsibility for the serial bombings that the FBI attributes to a single person or group in the case known as Unabom. The document is presented verbatim, with original spelling, emphasis and punctuation. Three passages have been deleted at the request of the FBI. (Passage deleted at the request of the FBI) This is a message from the terrorist group FC. We blew up Thomas Mosser last December because he was a Burston-Marsteller executive. Among other misdeeds, Burston-Marsteller helped Exxon clean up its public image after the Exxon Valdez incident. But we attacked Burston-Marsteller less for its specific misdeeds than on general principles. Burston-Marsteller is about the biggest organization in the public relations field. This means that its business is the development of techniques for manipulating people's attitudes. It was for this more than for its actions in specific cases that we sent a bomb to an executive of this company. Some news reports have made the misleading statement that we have been attacking universities or scholars. We have nothing against universities or scholars as such. All the university people whom we have attacked have been specialists in technical fields. (We consider certain areas of applied psychology, such as behavior modification, to be technical fields.) We would not want anyone to think that we have any desire to hurt professors who study archaeology, history, literature or harmless stuff like that. The people we are out to get are the scientists and engineers, especially in critical fields like computers and genetics. As for the bomb planted in the Business School at the U. of Utah, that was a botched operation. We won't say how or why it was botched because we don't want to give the FBI any clues. No one was hurt by that bomb. In our previous letter to you we called ourselves anarchists. Since "anarchist" is a vague word that has been applied to a variety of attitudes, further explanation is needed. We call ourselves anarchists because we would like, ideally, to break down all society into very small, completely autonomous units. Regrettably, we don't see any clear road to this goal, so we leave it to the indefinite future. Our more immediate goal, which we think may be attainable at some time during the next several decades, is the destruction of the worldwide industrial system. Through our bombings we hope to promote social instability in industrial society, propagate anti-industrial ideas and give encouragement to those who hate the industrial system. The FBI has tried to portray these bombings as the work of an isolated nut. We won't waste our time arguing about whether we are nuts, but we certainly are not isolated. For security reasons we won't reveal the number of members of our group, but anyone who will read the anarchist and radical environmentalist journals will see that opposition to the industrial-technological system is widespread and growing. Why do we announce our goals only now, through we made our first bomb some seventeen years ago? Our early bombs were too ineffectual to attract much public attention or give encouragement to those who hate the system. We found by experience that gunpowder bombs, if small enough to be carried inconspicuously, were too feeble to do much damage, so we took a couple of years off to do some experimenting. We learned how to make pipe bombs that were powerful enough, and we used these in a couple of successful bombings as well as in some unsuccessful ones. (Passage deleted at the request of the FBI) Since we no longer have to confine the explosive in a pipe, we are now free of limitations on the size and shape of our bombs. We are pretty sure we know how to increase the power of our explosives and reduce the number of batteries needed to set them off. And, as we've just indicated, we think we now have more effective fragmentation material. So we expect to be able to pack deadly bombs into ever smaller, lighter and more harmless looking packages. On the other hand, we believe we will be able to make bombs much bigger than any we've made before. With a briefcase-full or a suitcase-full of explosives we should be able to blow out the walls of substantial buildings. Clearly we are in a position to do a great deal of damage. And it doesn't appear that the FBI is going to catch us any time soon. The FBI is a joke. The people who are pushing all this growth and progress garbage deserve to be severely punished. But our goal is less to punish them than to propagate ideas. Anyhow we are getting tired of making bombs. It's no fun having to spend all your evenings and weekends preparing dangerous mixures, filing trigger mechanisms out of scraps of metal or searching the sierras for a place isolated enough to test a bomb. So we offer a bargain. ... If alms were given from pity, beggars would have starved. - Nietzsche 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718 From: Albertus Magnus Area: Mundane To: All 26 Apr 95 13:53:24 Subject: 4-Unabomb UpdReq We have a long article, between 29,000 and 37,000 words, that we want to have published. If you can get it published according to our requirements we will permanently desist from terrorist activities. It must be published in the New York Times, Time or Newsweek, or in some other widely read, nationally distributed periodical. Because of its length we suppose it will have to be serialized. Alternatively, it can be published as a small book, but the book must be well publicized and made available at a moderate price in bookstores nationwide and in at least some places abroad. Whoever agrees to publish the material will have exclusive rights to reproduce it for a period of six months and will be welcome to any profits they may make from it. After six months from the first appearance of the article or book it must become public property, so that anyone can reproduce or publish it. (If material is serialized, first instalment becomes public property six months after appearance of first instalment, second instalment, etc.) We must have the right to publish in the New York Times, Time or Newsweek, each year for three years after the appearance of our article or book, three thousand words expanding or clarifying our material or rebutting criticisms of it. The article will not explicitly advocate violence. There will be an unavoidable implication that we favor violence to the extent that it may be necessary, since we advocate eliminating industrial society and we ourselves have been using violence to that end. But the article will not advocate violence explicitly, nor will it propose the overthrow of the United States Government, nor will it contain obscenity or anything else that you would be likely to regard as unacceptable for publication. How do you know that we will keep our promise to desist from terrorism if our conditions are met? It will be to our advantage to keep our promise. We want to win acceptance for certain ideas. If we break our promise people will lose respect for us and so will be less likely to accept the ideas. Our offer to desist from terrorism is subject to three qualifications. First: Our promise to desist will not take effect until all parts of our article or book have appeared in print. Second: If the authorities should succeed in tracking us down and an attempt is made to arrest any of us, or even to question us in connection with the bombings, we reserve the right to use violence. Third: We distinguish between terrorism and sabotage. By terrorism we mean actions motivated by a desire to influence the development of a society and intended to cause injury or death to human beings. By sabotage we mean similarly motivated actions intended to destroy property without injuring human beings. The promise we offer is to desist from terrorism. We reserve the right to engage in sabotage. It may be just as well that failure of our early bombs discouraged us from making any public statements at that time. We were very young then and our thinking was crude. Over the years we have given as much attention to the development of our ideas as to the development of bombs, and we now have something serious to say. And we feel that just now the time is ripe for the presentation of anti-industrial ideas. Please see to it that the answer to our offer is well publicized in the media so that we won't miss it. Be sure to tell us where and how our material will be published and how long it will take to appear in print once we have sent in the manuscript. If the answer is satisfactory, we will finish typing the manuscript and send it to you. If the answer is unsatisfactory, we will start building our next bomb. We encourage you to print this letter. FC (Passage deleted at the request of the FBI) ... The sight of the ugly makes men bad and gloomy. - Nietzsche 201434369420143436942014343694201434369420143436942014343694718