The last time Theodore Kaczynski had a lengthy article published, his 35,000-word manifesto led his brother to identify him as the Unabomber, the man who had killed three people and injured 23 more during a 17-year mail-bomb spree that authorities could not solve.
Seven years later, locked behind the walls of a federal maximum security prison in Colorado, Kaczynski has apparently managed to get his controversial views in print again.
In an article published this spring by Green Anarchy, a radical environmental newsletter, Kaczynski calls on revolutionaries to "eliminate the entire techno-industrial system" by "hitting where it hurts" and disparages the activities of most radicals as "pointless."
The essay, which repeats Kaczynski's contention that modern society must be destroyed, has disturbed Unabomber survivors as well as prison officials, who are investigating whether the article violated rules that prohibit prisoners from publishing under their own names. Even the newsletter's editors objected to some of Kaczynski's views.
"I'm surprised that he's able to write these things," said Charles Epstein, a California physician and researcher who lost fingers from one hand when he opened a mail bomb sent by Kaczynski in 1993. "To the extent that his message potentially influences malleable people, it's a concern."
Authorities are still reviewing the case, but they said they believe the essay is authentic. U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials declined to say whether they have asked Kaczynski about the article or whether they may have come across it as they monitored his outgoing mail.
However, they noted that the article expresses views similar to Kaczynski's opinions in the 1995 manifesto -- which was jointly published by The Washington Post and the New York Times after the then-unidentified bomber threatened more attacks if it was not printed.
One of the newsletter's editors, John Zerzan of Eugene, Ore., said he corresponds regularly with Kaczynski and received the essay from him, written in longhand.
"It's right in keeping with his general take on things," said Zerzan, 58, a longtime radical author who previously attracted notoriety by visiting Kaczynski in prison and defending some of his actions. "There's not a total agreement with his point of view among the editors. But very often his views are worth publishing. . . . We definitely concur with his views on the dangers of technology."
The Green Anarchy article is not Kaczynski's first published piece from prison, but it is the longest and the one most similar to his 1995 manifesto. In 1999, OFF! Magazine, produced by students at the State University of New York at Binghamton, published a "parable" by Kaczynski entitled "Ship of Fools," in which Kaczynski ridiculed the advocates of animal rights, gay rights and other leftist causes.
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[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7705-2002Jul26.html[/url]