ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996 TAG: 9604050113
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: NATL/INTL EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HELENA, MONT.
SOURCE: Associated Press
Investigators found a partially assembled pipe bomb, chemicals and meticulous notes on making explosives in the mountain cabin of the former Berkeley math professor suspected of being the Unabomber, federal officials said Thursday.
Theodore John Kaczynski, 53, was charged Thursday with possessing the bomb components and was held without bail. Appearing before a judge, Kaczynski, bearded and thin, said he was mentally competent and couldn't afford his own lawyer.
The charge made no mention of the Unabomber's string of bombing attacks, which killed three people and injured 23 in 18 years. Federal officials said the charge was designed to hold Kaczynski while agents build a case.
The FBI again searched Kaczynski's hand-built, 10-by-12-foot cabin Thursday. Federal officials said the search could last several days.
``It's going very slowly because we're not sure if it's booby-trapped,'' said a federal agent speaking on condition of anonymity. ``We have an explosives ordnance team X-raying everything before we touch it.''
The cabin has no electricity or no running water, which would appear to match the Unabomber's aversion to modern society and technology.
FBI agents had been staking out Kaczynski's cabin near the Continental Divide for several weeks, ever since his own mother and brother in the Chicago area notified authorities that they had stumbled across some of his old writings while cleaning out the house they were putting up sale and found them similar to the Unabomber's anarchist manifestos.
Kaczynski was taken into custody by federal agents Wednesday so they could search his cabin in the wilderness 50 miles northwest of Helena.
A key question went unanswered: How could Kaczynski, described by neighbors as going everywhere on foot or on an old bicycle, have mailed bombs from locations including San Francisco, Oakland, Calif., Sacramento, Calif., and Chicago? Other bombs were left in cities around the country.
Dick Lundberg, a neighbor, said he sometimes gave Kaczynski rides into Helena. Plane connections were available there.
Asked about the possibility of accomplices, one federal agent said: ``This guy is a loner. He wouldn't work with someone else.''
FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents found a partially completed pipe bomb in the loft at Kaczynski's cabin, according to an affidavit by FBI agent Donald J. Sachtleben.
Ten three-ring binders were recovered filled with ``page after page of meticulous writings and sketches which I recognize to be diagrams of explosive devices,'' Sachtleben said. The diagrams show cross-sections of pipe bombs and electrical circuitry.
In addition, agents found galvanized metal, copper and plastic pipes, four of them with copper plates sealing one end, ``one of the first steps in the construction of a pipe bomb,'' Sachtleben said.
Also recovered were potassium chlorate, sodium chlorate, aluminum powder, lead powder and silver oxide powder, all of which can be used in bombs, he added. Three rolled-up pieces of paper appeared to contain ``logs of experiments to determine the optimum pipe dimension and combination of explosive materials in various weather conditions,'' Sachtleben said.
Federal officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said searchers also found two manual typewriters. The Unabomber has sent a sheaf of typed letters over the past few years, and investigators wanted to compare those with the typewriters.
A former assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley, Kaczynski graduated from Harvard at 20, and received a master's degree and doctorate from the University of Michigan several years later. Academic-oriented and obsessed with technology, he fits the FBI psychological profile of the suspect.
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Theodore John Kaczynski looks around as U.S.by CNBmarshals escort him into the Helena, Montana courthouse to be
charged with possessing bomb components. color.