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That proposal created an immediate dilemma for the publications: Should they publish the material and possibly save lives or refuse to surrender their pages to a terrorist? Both Newsweek and TIME declined to say what they might do, and Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. released a noncommittal statement. "We'll take a careful look at it," he said, "and make a journalistic decision about whether to publish it in our pages." Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse, OMNI and other magazines, had no such hesitation. "I would do it in an instant," he said, offering not only to print the manuscript, but also to put the full weight of his company's public-relations machinery into making sure it is widely read. "This is the philosophical ramblings of a tortured mind. We'll print it exactly the way he wants it.''
That might make interesting reading and sell plenty of magazines, but crime experts doubt that publishing the treatise would stop the bombings. Asks James Alan Fox, dean of the criminal-justice college at Northeastern University: "Since when did serial killers start telling the truth?" Even if the Unabomber's demand is met, the letter says, he reserves the right to commit "sabotage" against property as opposed to "terror" against human beings.
If nothing else, the letter to the Times and three more letters -- one to victim David Gelernter, a Yale computer scientist seriously injured in a 1993 blast, and the other two to potential targets whose names are being kept secret -- have given investigators their best clues yet. An additional 100 agents were quickly added to the 30-person, San Francisco-based Unabom task force run jointly by the fbi, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the post office.
Set up in 1993 after the explosion at Yale and one that had taken place in California two days earlier, the task force has had only the tiniest scraps of evidence to go on. In 1987 a witness spotted someone leaving what proved to be a bomb outside a computer store in Salt Lake City, Utah, and helped police produce a composite sketch of a white man, now in his 40s, about 6 ft. tall, with light hair, a moustache and glasses. Nearly two years ago, the bomber sent a brief, cryptic note to the Times in which he described himself only as an "anarchist." Besides the sketch of the Unabomber and his letters, just about the only clues are the locations of his attacks, the identities of his targets and the fragments of his trademark bombs.
That evidence leads investigators to suspect that the Unabomber may be based in Northern California: he has placed bombs in Sacramento and Berkeley; last week's letters and bomb were all mailed from Oakland; and he used a Sacramento State University faculty member's name on a 1993 bomb's return address. Moreover, the Times letter refers to "searching the sierras" for bomb-testing sites. But while he's clearly familiar with the territory, says fbi special agent Jim Freeman, who heads the joint task force, that "doesn't necessarily mean he lives or works in this area."