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"Some professor, if he had this guy, will recognize him," says John Douglas, a recently retired FBI agent who has been tracking the Unabomber since the late 1970s. "The ideas that this person has would not have changed over the years." But James Alan Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston, is less optimistic. "His thoughts have probably developed and changed from the time he could have been in school in the '70s," Fox says. "And how accurate are the memories going to be of those in the academic community who have encountered thousands of graduate students over the past 20 years?" Yet Fox does not fault the FBI's strategy. "They're doing the right thing by trying this, he says, "but from where I sit they don't look all that close to catching him."
In fact, notes Douglas, the FBI's efforts to draw the Unabomber further into a written dialogue may provoke him to send another bomb. "The thrill for the serial killer,'' he says, "is manipulating and controlling the victim.'' Nevertheless, the killer's prose does seem to be the most promising clue in the case. Already, in ways not disclosed, the manuscript has helped the FBI refocus its search on universities in Chicago; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Berkeley, California. Many of the Unabomber manuscripts were sent to professors in those cities, as well as to academics whose work or ideas are identifiable in his screed. Hope is keen, particularly at the Times and the Post, that one of the academics will make a connection.
The newspapers have until late September to decide whether to publish the bomber's text in full or let others possibly perish. The Post has reportedly prepared type and graphics to run the document on seven broadsheet pages, but says executive editor Leonard Downie Jr., "We don't really know what to do. We're doing a lot of thinking and a lot of talking. It's obviously agonizing.''
--Reported by Wendy Cole/Chicago, Jenifer Mattos/New York and Elaine Shannon/Washington