Serra Says Kaczynski Wanted Ideology Defense

Colorful San Francisco attorney Tony Serra, who was briefly considered last week to become Theodore Kaczynski’s new attorney, said yesterday that Kaczynski wanted to mount a defense based completely on the Unabomber suspect’s anti-technology ideas.

Speaking on Berkeley radio station KPFA, Serra told talk show host Larry Bensky that Kaczynski had contacted him shortly after the 55-year-old former UC Berkeley math professor was arrested at his Montana shack in April 1996.

“The contact was initiated by persons who share (Kaczynski’s) anti-technocracy views,” Serra said, adding that he had been “in contact with him by letter, fax and phone.”

Although Kaczynski has never admitted being the notorious Unabomber, who has allegedly killed three people and injured 23 others during a 17-year campaign of terror, a copy of the 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto sent by the Unabomber to newspapers in 1995 was found in his cabin.

Last week, Serra offered to represent Kaczynski without charge and said he would not use the “mental defect or disease” defense contemplated by Kaczynski’s current defense team. The judge would not allow Serra into the case, and Kaczynski has since said he wants to be his own attorney.

On the radio show, Serra said that when he broached to Kaczynski the idea of a “defense based on ideology, he said, ‘It must be my ideology, Mr. Serra,’ and we agreed on that.”