ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, August 27, 1996 TAG: 9608270144
SECTION: WELCOME STUDENTS PAGE: 16 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
At first, the Unabomber built the wooden boxes that carried his deadly cargo with wood from trees indigenous to the Midwest.
"Later, it was kind of curious, we started seeing species that grow in the Western U.S. begin to appear," said Virginia Tech wood sciences Professor Mark White.
White speaks from experience. When the FBI went looking for someone to help analyze the Unabomber's boxes, they called him.
Originally, investigators suspected the boxes may have been made from wood containers or pallets used by manufacturers to ship goods, White
said. He runs the only lab in the country that studies the performance of wood pallets and containers. "That's how they eventually came to me," he said in an interview June 25, the same day Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski pleaded not guilty in a California courtroom to federal charges in the case.
White first went to the FBI labs in Washington to examine bomb remnants in January 1995. Some months later, two FBI agents arrived at the Tech campus bearing a unique load: plastic bags containing bomb fragments.
White set up his microscope and went to work. What clues might the wood shavings reveal? Would it hint at the Unabomber's identity?
Investigators had suspected someone with ties to the Chicago area and to Northern California. White examined fragments ranging from Midwestern
cottonwood to West Coast redwood.
In addition to identifying the tree species, he saw hints about the Unabomber himself emerge.
"Someone makes a complicated structure, someone paints a painting, and you can begin to see the person's personality in that," he said.
These boxes were "meticulously made. The construction was chaotic. A lot of small pieces were put together, but some pieces didn't make sense. Meticulous, but also crude. However, unfortunately, they work."
The cutting seemed to be done with dull tools. The wood, rather than originating in pallets or containers, was simply scrap, White said.
"Clearly, somebody didn't run down to the local hardware store and buy pieces of wood cut to fit."
Fairly large pieces were left over from boxes built at the beginning of the Unabomber's nearly 20-year bombing spree. Later boxes were reduced to shards.
In all, White spent three days with the agents as well as talking with them by phone. "They were doing everything they could," he said.
And while White says he was not particularly worried for his own safety, secrecy was the watchword. White, a father of two, was concerned for his family, and the Unabomber had hit college campuses before.
That's why the campus police got involved when word that a Tech professor was involved in the case reached a reporter at WSLS (Channel 10) some months before Kaczynski's April arrest. Campus police around the country had been on alert for years. And Tech Police Chief Mike Jones had once detonated a suspicious package that turned out to be a box of videotapes.
"Not knowing who the Unabomber was and the fact there was some work being done at the university, we were concerned. We didn't want anyone to know about it," Jones said.
Jones and Tech spokesman David Nutter met with the station's news director and the reporter working on the story. News Director Bill Foy, who said the reporter didn't know the professor's identity, called their request that the story be held "absolutely the most legitimate request I felt like I'd ever heard."
It's only once every year or two that the station would agree to such a request, Foy said.
"We were very, very fearful of the implications if it got out," said Nutter.
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM Staff. Campus police feared for Mark White'sby CNBlife after a reporter learned of his part in the manhunt.