In what was described as an important advance in the hunt for an elusive serial bomber, the FBI said Tuesday that it had traced a years-long pattern of academic involvement that took the self-described anarchist from the Chicago area to Salt Lake City to Berkeley, Calif.
By matching his 17-year record of carnage against an analysis of a densely argued 35,000-word tract he sent to The New York Times in June, government officials say they have concluded that the bomber is a student of the history of science who may have taken classes at or hovered around major university campuses from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s.These include Northwestern University, the Chicago Circle campus of the University of Illinois, the University of Utah, Brigham Young University and the University of California at Berkeley, the officials said.
Federal agents are particularly interested in his activities in the Chicago area, where they believe his intellectual passion first developed in the late 1970s, and how they relate to his current life of mystery and destruction, thought to be centered in northern California.
The FBI now believes that the man they call the Unabomber lives somewhere in the Sacramento or San Francisco Bay areas.
The bomber has killed three people and injured 23, many of them seriously, in 16 incidents going back to 1978. His last victim was Gilbert Murray, a timber-industry lobbyist who was killed when he opened a package bomb sent to the California Forestry Association in Sacramento.
"By sending out the manuscript, he's given us the greatest insight into his own personality and education that we've ever had," said Terry D. Turchie, the senior FBI official overseeing the bureau's wide-ranging investigation.
Turchie said the bureau, in a break from its normal practice, would make the single-spaced 62-page document available to scholars and professors in the hope that further leads would be discerned from its phrasing or its fierce arguments against a society evermore based on technological advances.
"We would hope the right people out there might see it and might call us and might be able to bring this entire thing together," he said, adding that agents were already showing the document to 50 to 60 academics who study the history of science and technology, psychology and sociology.
The manifesto shows that the writer is familiar with these academic disciplines. It sneers at scientists, conservatives and particularly liberals, broods about the meaning of freedom and the causes of anomie, and calls for a revolution against a complicated, bureaucratic, technological society that its author maintains robs people of their essence.
"The industrial revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race," the tract opens.
"They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in `advanced' countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation."
Two hundred numbered paragraphs later, he concludes, "Until the industrial system has been thoroughly wrecked, the destruction of that system must be the revolutionaries' ONLY goal."
In late June, the bomber sent to The New York Times and The Washington Post copies of the huge manuscript, titled "Industrial Society and its Future," and bearing the byline "FC," the name of the revolutionary group the bomber claims to be acting on behalf of. Although the bomber refers to the group, the authorities believe he is acting alone.
In accompanying letters, he wrote that if the full manuscript was printed by one of the papers within three months and if one of them agreed to print three annual follow-ups, he would stop trying to kill people. He left open the possibility that he would still direct bombs at property.
In a statement Tuesday, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said: "We have yet to make a decision on whether or not to meet the demands of the Unabomber. Tonight's story and the excerpts we're running represent the judgment of our editors as to what is newsworthy.
"The tough decision of whether we publish the entire document is still ahead. As I've said before, the demand that the Unabomber have access to our pages for three years is especially troubling. There's no easy way to open negotiations with this person, and for the moment we're stymied."
By overlaying his interests on the pattern of his bombings, the FBI developed a sense of where he lived and what circles he may have traveled in at different times: his first two bombs, in 1978 and 1979, injured two people at Northwestern University, including one in its Technological Institute. His next two in 1979 and 1980 were also sent from the Chicago area.
In 1981 and 1982, he sent bombs from Salt Lake City, including one at the University of Utah in which no one was injured.
From mid-1985, the bombs and a growing collection of letters were sent from northern California, with the exception of two package bombs postmarked from Salt Lake City.
Almost all of the universities of interest to the bureau have courses or programs in the history of science, Turchie said.
"Our efforts right now are concentrated on trying to tie in the Chicago and California aspects," he said.
"One of the predominant themes in the manuscript involves this entire idea of the negative impact of technology on society, and he discusses it in the context of the history of science. He's obviously spent a lot of time thinking it through. Those are probably the most important elements of that manuscript. They seem to echo this whole idea of the history of science."