Unabomber Suspect Held Without Bail

HELENA, Mont. — Theodore J. Kaczynski, the onetime university professor taken into custody Wednesday as a suspect in the Unabom case, was arraigned Thursday on a single felony charge of possessing bomb components and was held without bail.

The arraignment followed a search in which, federal authorities said, they found evidence that Kaczynski had turned his one-room mountain shack into a virtual bomb laboratory.

When the 53-year-old suspect was brought into the Lewis and Clark County Jail in Helena on Wednesday evening, his hair was matted and his stained jeans were badly torn, as if from a scuffle.

By Thursday morning, at his arraignment, he was dressed in orange jailhouse overalls, and he seemed confident, a bit of a smirk on his face as he glanced around the courtroom.

As Kaczynski was taken into the federal courthouse, he ignored shouted questions on whether he was the Unabomber, the mail-bomb terrorist who has killed three people and injured 23 others in the past 18 years.

If, as some federal officials have asserted, Kaczynski closely matches the criminal profile of one of the most elusive fugitives from justice in modern times, they made no mention of it in court or in the FBI affidavit that was the basis of the charge brought against him Thursday.

But the affidavit did list an extensive array of bomb parts, manuals and weapons that federal agents said had been found in his the 10- by 12-foot cabin, which is 50 miles northwest of Helena.

And officials said in interviews Thursday night that the bomb materials recovered from the cabin matched fragments from the Unabomber’s explosions almost precisely in terms of chemicals and techniques.

Government officials also said Thursday night that they had discovered the manual typewriter they think was used to type the Unabomber’s 35,000-word manifesto — published last year in The Washington Post — a rambling tract that called for the destruction of the nation’s post-industrial system.

Officials said that Kaczynski would probably be transferred soon to California — either to San Francisco, where the task force that has tracked him for years is based, or to Sacramento, where the latest fatal Unabomber attack occurred. They said it could be weeks before a grand jury charged him with the actual explosions.

In Washington, Attorney General Janet Reno said that Kaczynski “was charged as a result of the search,” but she would not be drawn into further comments on the underlying facts. “Nothing more can be said,” she added, and she declined to put any time limit on the length of the investigation.

Federal agents scrambled around the country as probable answers began to emerge to the many mysteries remaining in the case. One official said investigators now believe that Kaczynski had traveled by bus to California, where a number of the Unabomber’s packages were postmarked, to mail some bombs.

Other agents searched homeless shelters in Salt Lake City, where a man was injured by a bomb in 1987, hoping to determine whether the bomber had used the relative anonymity of the shelters to keep a low profile on such trips.

During his 15-minute court appearance Thursday, the pale, thin Kaczynski did not enter a plea. Answering a series of questions in a clear, matter-of-fact tone, he said that he was mentally competent and that he was indigent.

“Quite correct,” Kaczynski said in response to the judge’s assumption that he was without enough money to hire a lawyer. He was assigned as counsel Michael Donahoe, a federal public defender.

Through Thursday night, members of the national Unabom task force continued to search the one-room, plywood cabin in the shadow of the Continental Divide that has been Kaczynski’s home for more than 20 years.

Neighbors said Kaczynski was a polite hermit, who pedaled his dilapidated bicycle into the town of Lincoln for groceries, mail and books at the community library. He grew vegetables at the cabin site, on land which he bought with his brother in 1971, according to a county record.

But in the search Wednesday and Thursday, agents said the little home site was full of the raw material of lethal bombs.

Inside the cabin, agents found chemicals, wiring and aluminum that could that could be used to construct a pipe bomb, and they found what appeared to be a partly completed pipe bomb, said Special Agent Donald J. Sachtleben. in the affidavit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Helena.

The cabin, about four miles up a dirt road from the tiny Montana town of Lincoln, is without electricity or running water. When federal agents knocked on the door Wednesday, Kaczynski was at home. Some agents said there was a scuffle, and then he was taken away, though he did not arrive at the jail in Helena until Wednesday evening.

In court, Kaczynski held out the possibility that he might ask for a preliminary hearing in which the federal prosecutors would have to prove that they have probable cause to charge him.

U.S. District Judge Charles C. Lovell, who conducted the arraignment, said he will decide by noon today if there will be a probable-cause hearing next week.

When the judge asked him about the charge, Kaczynski said he would need a few minutes to read the complaint. He was arrested, Lovell told him, on a felony that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and $10,000.