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Apparently impressed with himself, the Unabomber delights in taunting his hapless adversaries. "It doesn't appear that the FBI is going to catch us any time soon," he writes in his letter to the Times. "The FBI is a joke." And to Gelernter, who lost pa
rt of a hand, the vision in one eye and the hearing in one ear when the mail bomb exploded, the bomber writes, "If you'd had any brains you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are
changing the world and you wouldn't have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source."
It may have been ego that triggered the Unabomber's latest attack. Says Michael Rostigan, professor of criminology at San Francisco State University: "I think all the publicity given to the Oklahoma City bombing has stirred him up. It would be reasonab
le to say he feels upstaged and a little bit jealous."
What set the Unabomber off in the first place? Experts suspect he had some sort of conflict early in his career, perhaps in college or on the job, and probably with someone involved in computer science. As a result, speculates Rostigan, "he probably di
sconnected himself and withdrew and started brooding," like most serial killers. His feelings about computers may have led the Unabomber to adopt the initials FC - they could stand for "f - - - computers," say investigators - which he has etched into p
arts of most of his bombs and which were scrawled on Sacramento State University buildings just before the 1993 attacks.
As time went on, he may have broadened his hatred to include not just computer scientists but all of industrial society, and embraced a pro-environment, back-to-the-woods philosophy. That could explain his obsession with using wood in his bombs and las
t week's targeting of the California Forestry Association, which represents logging companies. And in the Times letter, the Unabomber declares that last December's murder of Thomas Mosser, a former executive with the Burson-Marsteller public-relations fir
m, was in protest against the company's representing Exxon, whose oil tanker fouled Alaska's Prince William Sound in the great oil spill of 1989.
Unfortunately for investigators, none of this information necessarily brings them closer to catching the Unabomber. That may not happen, they say, until he makes some sort of mistake. He's already blundered in small ways - the bomb that killed the Cali
fornia Forestry Association's Murray was addressed to a predecessor who retired a year ago. And a couple of bomb attempts over the years have been unsuccessful.
Or it may be his newfound taste for publicity that will do the Unabomber in. The Times letter claims that the emergence from obscurity has come about because "we now have something serious to say." It may actually mean that the Unabomber can no longer
content himself with lingering in the shadows and wants more recognition for his cleverness. Says Fox: "He's feeling invincible, that he's superior to law enforcement and can forever outsmart the police. Hopefully that's what will be his downfall." The mo
re often he goes public, the more likely it is that he will unwittingly provide the joint task force with a crucial bit of information needed to track him down.
But the Unabomber could easily strike again, more than once, before this happens - and he suggests the attacks could become more devastating. "We expect," he writes, "we will be able to pack deadly bombs into ever smaller, lighter and more harmless loo
king 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."
That is an ominous statement coming after the destruction of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. The authorities' greatest fear is that the Unabomber may want to prove his prowess. If he felt inspired and challenged by the Oklahoma bombing, the searc
h for the serial killer has become all the more urgent.
--Reported by Jordan Bonfante/Sacramento, J. Howard Green/ San Francisco, Jenifer Mattos/New York and Elaine Shannon/Washington
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