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FBI enlists high-tech tools in Unabomber case

HELENA, (Montana): FBI investigators were relying on old-fashioned shoe leather and sophisticated forensic techniques on Saturday as they worked to build a case against Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski.

Kaczynski, 53, a former mathematics professor who led a reclusive life in a tiny mountain cabin without electricity or running water, has not been charged with any of the 16 attacks carried out by the notorious Unabomber since 1978. Instead he is being held in Helena's county jail on a single felony count of possessing bomb-making equipment.

But FBI agents appeared confident as they enlisted everything from DNA analysis to spy satellites and sifted through mounds of evidence still being collected at the 10-by-12-foot (three-by-four-metre) cabin and surrounding woods 60 miles (100 km) northwest of Helena.

The Los Angeles Times and Washington Post reported in Saturday's editions that the lettering on one of two typewriters seized in the cabin appeared to match the print on letters and an anti-technology manifesto written by the Unabomber.

While the Unabomber rejected the industrial society of the late 20th-century in those letters to news organisations and in the rambling 35,000-word essay published at his demand last year, federal authorities have tackled the case on their own terms.

For example, evidence experts are using advanced DNA science in an effort to provide a genetic match between the suspect and dried saliva found on postage stamps used to mail the Unabomber's letters and deadly packages.

A stakeout of the tiny cabin that went on for several weeks used advanced monitoring equipment, possibly including spy satellites.

Legal experts said it could be weeks or even months before charges are brought in the Unabomber case itself, possibly in California, where Gov. Pete Wilson has declared he would like to see the suspect tried.

Prosecutors have time, with no further court hearings scheduled before April 17, when a grand jury will meet in Great Falls, Montana, to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to indict Kaczynski on the bomb charge.

It was unclear whether any evidence would be brought before the Montana grand jury in the Unabomber case itself, which so far has not been mentioned in court proceedings.

In the meantime Kaczynski has waived his right to bail and is being held in the Lewis & Clark County jail, where he has been described as a docile prisoner, although he is under a 24-hour suicide watch due to the high-profile nature of the case.

The Unabomber has been one of America's most-wanted criminals since his first devices blew up at Northwestern University in 1978 and 1979.

A federal task force built a huge database, but for years agents were frustrated by their inability to come up with anything more than a murky sketch of a man seen fleetingly by a witness in a parking lot.

They did draw up a psychological profile of the serial bomber, theorising he would have to be a highly educated but anti-social individual, possibly with connections to the Chicago or northern California areas where several of the attacks took place.

Kaczynski, who was raised in Chicago, educated at Harvard and taught at the University of California in Berkeley, closely fits the psychological profile circulated by the FBI.

But while Kaczynski's name turned up in FBI files as early as 1994 according to ABC News, he was not arrested until after a tip from a younger brother who noticed similarities between the Unabomber's writings and documents discovered in the family's suburban Chicago house.-Reuter