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To construct a psychological profile of the terrorist, investigators have tried to figure out his motives and how he thinks. In particular, they have studied his choice of targets and bomb-making style, which has always been quirky and meticulous. The Unabomber's devices are generally handcrafted, with many parts, including tiny levers, carved from wood. fbi forensics experts have found everything from scrap wood to pieces of mahogany and other hardwoods used in furniture. One bomb contained a twig from a cherry tree. The bomber makes some of his own metal parts too, including pins and even screws. Then the whole thing is generally placed in a homemade wooden box before being mailed or delivered.
According to former fbi bomb expert James Ronay, who worked on the case for years, the Unabomber's extraordinary attention to detail points to an obsessive personality. Says Ronay: "If the bomber were only interested in producing a bomb that worked efficiently, he could do it a lot more easily. It's more of an uncontrollable urge to fool with this thing as much as possible." It also suggests a loner: nobody could easily keep up much of a social life while building and testing such intricate contraptions. And because his first devices were relatively unsophisticated, the fbi and other agencies believe he has no formal training with high explosives. Says Ronay: "These bombs are in a lot of ways Neanderthal, but every one of them worked."
No one disputes the Unabomber's intelligence. The Times letter was "better written than those of some of my students," says James Hill, head of the Sacramento State chemistry department, whose name was in the return address on the 1993 mail bomb. And the steady progress in making his devices more sophisticated points to a remarkable self- education in pyrotechnics.
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 part 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 Rustigan, 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 reasonable 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 Rustigan, "he probably disconnected 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 parts of most of his bombs and which were scrawled on Sacramento State University buildings just before the 1993 attacks.