Journal Ties Kaczynski To 16 Bombings Prosecutor Describes Diary Found In Cabin As Backbone Of Unabomber Case

In a handwritten journal found in his Montana cabin, Unabomber suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski tied himself directly to a deadly, coast-to-coast trail of 16 bombings and expressed “his desire to kill,” a federal prosecutor said Friday.

In a number of instances, the daily journal entries simply note ” ‘I mailed that bomb.’ ‘I sent that bomb,’ ” Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary said during a federal court hearing on the status of the case.

He described a stack of documents seized at the tiny cabin as “the backbone of the government’s case” against Kaczynski, a onetime University of California, Berkeley math professor. If corroborated, the journal entries could provide prosecutors with a valuable weapon to use against Kaczynski - his own words.

Cleary said many of the entries in the “day-to-day journal” simply chart Kaczynski’s regular routine, noting that he walked into the woods or that he ate dinner.

But more important, he said, was Kaczynski’s “detailed admission to each of the 16 Unabomber devices.”

Bits of forensic evidence picked up at the secluded cabin near Lincoln, Mont., Cleary said, also allegedly connect Kaczynski to the bombings. “The typewriter we found in the cabin ties into a lot of Unabom documents and mailing labels,” Cleary said.

At the hearing, prosecutors for the first time also said they expect Attorney General Janet Reno to decide by the end of the year whether Kaczynski should face the death penalty.

In June, Kaczynski, 54, was indicted on charges that he engineered four separate attacks that killed two Sacramento men and maimed a University of California, San Francisco geneticist and a Yale University computer scientist. Kaczynski, who was not in court Friday and remained in his Sacramento jail cell, has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Cleary, brought in from New Jersey to head up the federal prosecution team, did not hint at whether Kaczynski’s journal suggested any motives for his alleged attacks.

After Kaczynski’s arrest last April, the government released a list of evidence removed by FBI agents from his cabin, including bomb components, notebooks and typewriters that allegedly tied him to a string of 16 bombings starting in 1978 that killed three and injured 23. The final attack was in 1995 in Sacramento.

Cleary’s revelations marked the strongest preview yet of the prosecution’s case against Kaczysnki.