National Fellow  David Gelernter

An unrepentant terrorist named Theodore Kaczynski (the "Unabomber") used mail bombs to kill three people and injure 28--including me--between 1978 and 1995. He is now attempting to cash in on his brutal crimes, and a federal appeals court will soon decide his case.

Kaczynski, who is serving a life sentence, has used his (considerable) leisure time to try to convince the courts that his personal property, seized at his arrest 12 years ago, must be returned.

The most important item in this lot is his extensive handwritten manuscripts. In these pages he evidently doodled mail bomb designs, refined his target list, noted with satisfaction the suffering he had created, and set forth his ideas on the evils of modern society--which he had dedicated his life to increasing. He wants to donate his papers to the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, which specializes in anarchism and "other protest movements." His goal: personal fame and literary celebrity.

Meanwhile, four of the parties he injured had asked the courts for restitution. Their claims were granted but have yet to be paid. So the Justice Department countered the murderer's court filing with a plan to sell his manuscripts in an Internet auction instead, after the targets' names and other personal information had been deleted. Restitution claims would then be paid from the proceeds. In August 2006, a federal judge in Sacramento agreed to this plan. The murderer appealed.

Now an appeals court is about to decide among three competing arguments. The bomber still wants his papers back. In any event, he demands that the government not tamper with his prose by deleting proper names or any other personal data he saw fit to include. Such finagling would be hard for the author to bear. (I imagine it might almost be like having your right hand blown apart and your chest, right ear and right eye perforated--which happened to me in 1993.)

The government, meanwhile, still wants the auction to go ahead. But the majority of injured parties, who did not seek restitution, will now be heard for the first time. An amicus brief has been filed on their behalf. In addressing the appeals court, this group objects equally to the return of the papers and their sale at auction. It holds that the murderer's manuscripts should be locked up in an FBI crime lab, and made available to police and criminologists only.

I'm one of this majority. I filed no claim for restitution because my wife and I couldn't stomach the idea of a high-profile public sale of the terrorist's property; if one took place anyway, we wanted no part of it. Any attempt to turn the man's property into cash would give him lots more public attention, which he craves and has killed for. And it would almost certainly trade on the fame he has won as a violent criminal.

We strongly favor restitution, but not at the cost of forwarding the killer's master plan, or accepting money that some thrill-seeking collector has paid in homage to the author's success as a terrorist.

Kaczynski murdered for fame, not fortune. Thomas Mosser was blown apart in his own kitchen in 1995--his body torn, twisted and burnt, the room drenched in his blood--his wife widowed, his four children orphaned (one was a baby when it happened)--why? As a publicity stunt. To get people interested in the murderer's writings.

If the Justice Department cared for basic moral principles, it would support our group instead of forcing us to fight the government and its big-bucks auction plan. But my grievance is with the government lawyers, not the injured parties who seek restitution. Some of them agree with the views laid out here, and have endorsed the auction only as a less-bad alternative to handing the papers back to the killer himself. In any case, they have every right to call it as they see it, and are more than entitled to every cent they can get.

I believe the courts will do right and consign this man's property to some black hole forever. If they don't, it will be another triumph for a cowardly master terrorist.

David Gelernter is a national fellow at AEI.