Unabomber Package Sent to UC : Terror: A psychology professor receives and opens manuscript despite security precautions. The Unabomber struck the Berkeley campus in 1982 and 1985.

On the 13th anniversary of the notorious Unabomber’s first bombing at the University of California, police here revealed Sunday that the serial terrorist last week sent a package of documents to the campus office of a psychology professor.

University police Capt. Bill Foley said that the professor opened a flat package that he thought looked like a thesis but quickly “realized it had some connection with the Unabomber case” and called police.

“There were telltale signs on that package that we would have hoped would have raised concern,” said Foley, describing it as carrying excessive postage and heavily taped. The address, too, raised concern but Foley would not spell out those details. Still, the professor opened it.

The package included a letter and manuscript similar to one mailed to the New York Times, Washington Post and Penthouse magazine, outlining the Unabomber’s anti-technology views.

It was on the Friday before the Fourth of July weekend in 1982 that the Unabomber first hit at UC Berkeley. Prof. Diogenes Angelakos spotted a package on the floor of the coffee lounge in the UC Berkeley engineering building. When he picked it up, it exploded and he was injured.

Three years after that bombing, a graduate student was hurt after triggering a bomb found in a computer room.

The new developments at Berkeley capped a busy period for the Unabomber. It began with a letter delivered Tuesday to the San Francisco Chronicle. In it, the Unabomber threatened to blow up an airliner at Los Angeles International Airport, prompting tightened security. In a packet of material sent to the New York Times, he later said the threat was a ruse.

But the threat of violence at LAX was enough to put law enforcement at the airport on high alert, and security there remained tight Sunday, a spokeswoman said.

All passengers are being asked to show photo identification before being allowed to board fights, and security officers are using bomb-sniffing dogs as an extra precaution.

Airport officials estimated that about 130,000 passengers a day will move through LAX terminals during this heavy holiday travel period. Travelers understood the necessity for delays caused by the heightened security and were cooperative on Sunday, said spokeswoman Nancy Niles.

The academician’s identity was not disclosed but one source familiar with the investigation described him as a social psychologist in the university’s psychology department.

“For him, it [the package] didn’t set off the bells,” Foley said in an interview on campus, where security has been heightened in recent months as the Unabomber has stepped up his activity. Asked to describe the professor’s reaction, Foley would only say: “He expressed concern.”

Criminologists following the case said the Unabomber is on a high. “He’s where he wants to be now. That is, he’s in control. He dictates and everyone jumps now,” said former Sacramento County Sheriff’s Lt. Ray Biondi, who investigated a fatal 1985 bombing until his retirement in 1993.

By the same token, the stepped-up activity--especially tying up airports--has surely irritated so many people in this country, Biondi said, “he’s got to be very paranoid. There’s a good chance someone will snitch on him.”

Criminologist Michael Rustigan of San Francisco State University agreed that it is both a giddy period and a dangerous one for the Unabomber.

“He’s gushing now more than any time in his career. Over a period of 17 years he’s been a very reclusive, very elusive, inscrutable, crafty, sly man,” Rustigan said. “Now it seems he’s at the peak of his career. . . . He’s intoxicated with his own power.”

But he said, “It’s dangerous for him” too, “in the sense that his vanity is leading to his vulnerability. As he spits out information . . . he gives us more information about him as a person, his mission, his motives. That’s great for law enforcement.”

Despite 16 bombings that date to 1978, the Unabomber remains unidentified. Two of the three fatal bombings have occurred in Sacramento, in 1985 and again last April when a timber industry executive was killed by a bomb sent to his office at the California Forestry Assn. The third fatal attack was last year when a bomb killed an advertising executive in North Caldwell, N.J.

Although authorities believe the bombings are the work of a single man living in Northern California, the Unabomber has referred to a group, with initials “FC.” On Saturday, the San Francisco Examiner reported that the bomber claimed in a letter to Penthouse magazine that the initials in each of his communications stand for “Freedom Club.”

The 17-year run of package bombings is code named Unabom because early bombings targeted universities and airlines.

Biondi said that postal inspectors initially had named him “the junkyard bomber” because he makes bombs out of scrap metal, wood and other products available at junkyards.

On Saturday, The Times reported that FBI agents had been scouring scrap yards from Sacramento to Oakland and asking owners about their customers, employees and sales of used magnesium and other metals. They were shown a composite drawing of the Unabomber, made from a 1987 sighting in Salt Lake City.

But a San Leandro scrap metal dealer said the FBI agents also showed him a grainy black and white likeness of a man in an Army-type field jacket. On Sunday, FBI spokesman George Grotz said he could not confirm or deny that such a picture existed, adding: “If we had a photo or a revised composite we would release it.”

In a statement released Sunday on the Berkeley situation, the FBI said only that the package sent to the professor was “authenticated to be from the Unabomber.” Investigators also said “the documents within that package are similar to the Unabomber documents received last week by the New York Times and the Washington Post.”

Police Capt. Foley said the package was delivered by the university mail system Friday. It was postmarked five or six days earlier, likely to have been mailed at the same time as the packages to the Chronicle, the East Coast papers and Penthouse. Inside, there was a letter to the professor that directed questions to him about statements the academician had made regarding the Unabomber in a published article. “It did not appear to be threatening,” Foley said.

“It is my understanding he [the professor] has made public statements to the media about the Unabomber,” said Foley, who acknowledged that the package slipped through the university’s screening procedures.

A UC professor was quoted in a San Francisco Chronicle story May 1 that sought to compare bombers like the one in Oklahoma City and the Unabomber. While operating at different extremes, the article said, they seem to share a fundamental fear: that a monolithic world order is robbing individuals of control.

The story quoted Tom Tyler, head of the social psychology group at Berkeley, as saying, “Whether it’s the technological elite or the government, it’s the same basic idea. . . . It’s an exaggerated idea of a kind of secret, all-powerful group that’s controlling people’s lives.”

In an interview Sunday, Tyler declined to confirm whether it was he who had received the package, referring all questions to a university spokeswoman.

The spokeswoman, Marie Felde, said she too could not confirm or deny that Tyler received the package. But she provided details about the contents and the reaction of the professor who received it.

Felde said that besides documents similar to the manuscript that the Unabomber sent to the New York Times, Washington Post and Penthouse magazine, the package included a cover letter to the professor. It said, “Please take a look at this information and hopefully it will change your mind,” Felde said. The Unabomber was apparently referring to comments the professor made in a newspaper article, she said, declining to elaborate.

Felde, however, did say that the professor read the entire manuscript before turning it over to campus police. The professor, she said, “was intrigued by it and happy to receive the information.”

Capt. Foley has more than a passing interest in the case since he was part of the original campus investigation of the bomber. Thirteen years ago, he was a lieutenant heading for work when he heard that a bomb had gone off, injuring professor Angelakos, who had walked into a coffee room.

He said that after that bombing and the 1985 campus explosion, he thought the terrorist would be caught. “Each time he does something the hope is it will bring us a step closer to his identity,” Foley said.

Foley said that in the two earlier incidents the explosive devices were placed in areas of the campus, not seemingly targeted at specific individuals. Since those bombings, he said, the Unabomber has become more sophisticated, using the mail to send more compact and lethal devices with intended victims in mind.

Also on Sunday, Newsweek magazine quoted a letter sent to Scientific American magazine last week from Freedom Club, the terrorist organization the Unabomber claims to belong to. Newsweek reported it as a diatribe against the “arrogance” of modern science.

“Scientists and engineers constantly gamble with human welfare,” the writer says, “and we see today the effect of some of their lost gambles--ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, cancer-causing chemicals . . . overcrowding, noise and pollution [and the] massive extinction of species.”

Gladstone reported from Sacramento; Paddock reported from Berkeley. Times staff writers Edward J. Boyer and Hugo Martin and editorial research librarians William Holmes and Maloy Moore contributed to this story from Los Angeles.