SAN FRANCISCO — Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski wrote to a federal court complaining about an exhibit of the tiny cabin where he plotted an 18-year bombing spree.
Kaczynski, serving a life sentence with no chance of parole, says the display in Washington’s Newseum runs counter to his victims’ wish to limit publicity of the case.
The cabin, 10 feet by 12 feet, is among about 200 items in the “G-Men and Journalists: Top News Stories of the FBI’s First Century” exhibit. They include John Dillinger’s death mask, Patricia Hearst’s coat and the electric chair in which Lindbergh baby kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann was executed.
Kaczynski said in the three-page, handwritten letter to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that he learned from a June 19 newspaper ad in The Washington Post that his cabin was at the Newseum.
“Since the advertisement states that the cabin is ‘FROM FBI VAULT,’ it is clear that the government is responsible for the public exhibition of the cabin. This has obvious relevance to the victims’ objection to publicity connected with the Unabom case,” he wrote in the letter, dated July 15 and stamped as received by the court on July 28.
“I don’t think I need to say anything further,” he added. “The Court can draw its own conclusions.”
Susan Bennett, deputy director of the Newseum, said the exhibition is aimed at exploring “sometimes cooperative, sometimes combative” relationships between the news and law enforcement.
“I think what’s interesting is, after all these years, that Ted Kaczynski would be concerned about the exhibit’s impact on his victims,” Bennett said.
The FBI did not immediately comment. Two victims did not immediately respond to e-mail and phone messages.
The weather-beaten cabin was stored in an FBI facility after Kaczynski’s bombing spree from 1978 to 1995, which killed three people and injured 23 others. He was captured at the Lincoln, Mont., cabin in April 1996.
