A Loner REMEMBERED

As federal investigators continue a careful search of the isolated Montana cabin belonging to Theodore J. Kaczynski '62, one classmate says that he knew Kaczynski was a suspect in the Unabomber case last summer.

Gerald P. Burns '62, who says he was an acquaintance of Kaczynski at Harvard, says he learned of a connection between Kaczynski and the Unabom suspect nine months ago.

"Late last June, I got a call from a friend, who had been called several times by someone who was pitching evidence that Kaczynski was the Unabomber," Burn recalls. "He called me to ask me what to do."

Burns, who declined to reveal the identity of his friend, says he advised his friend to contact law enforcement authorities about Kaczynski's possible connection to the Unabom case.

"I was sworn to secrecy and kept my [own] mouth shut. But I told him to go to the FBI," Burns says.

"He's an acute person and I trusted his judgment," Burns says of his friend. "But I have no idea whether he took my advice."

Burns says he did not consider turning over the information to the FBI himself because it came to him indirectly.

"It was too inferential by the time it got to me," he says.

Burns says he believes his friend's contact once took a mathematics class taught by Kaczynski at the University of California at Berkeley.

Burns says he also believes Kaczynski had been approached law enforcement officials prior to being taken into custody on Wednesday.

"[My friend] said his informant had told him that the FBI had interviewed Ted about a year or two ago," Burns says.

"I was told they had at least interviewed him along with 100 or more other people," Burns says.

Careful Search

Federal agents yesterday found a manual typewriter in Kaczynski's cabin which appears to be the one the Unabomber used to type his letters and the manifesto against modern industry and technology published last year by The New York Times and The Washington Post.

The typewriter is being analyzed by the FBI in Washington, but "it looks like the manifesto and the letters from the Unabomber were typed on [it]," according to one official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity. "We'll know for sure after the detailed lab analysis."

The Unabomber's 35,000-word manifesto and letters to newspapers "were all typed on the same machine," the official said. "We believe he did that intentionally as a way for us to know the communications were authentic."

Experts can trace a document to a specific typewriter by studying minute variations in the positioning and shapes of letters, which change over time as typewriters wear.

Kaczynski is being held under constant surveillance in Helena, Mont. Yesterday, Kaczynski decided he did not want a preliminary hearing or a bail hearing.

California Gov. Pete Wilson, in whose state five of the bombs killed two people, said he wants any Unabomber trial in California.

On Thursday, Kaczynski was charged with possessing bomb components. The charges made no mention of the 18-year Unabom spree, which left three dead and 23 maimed.

Federal agents have found a bomb workshop in the cabin, including a partially assembled pipe bomb, chemicals and 10 three-ring notebooks filled with meticulous notes and sketches of explosives and electrical circuitry.

In addition to continuing searches of the cabin, which they fear may be booby-trapped, federal agents are also tracking Kaczynski's travels.

"Now that we've entered the overt phase where there is no longer any concern about tipping him off, we can go to all the locations of the bombings, the sites of the mailings and the places he lived and ask about him by name," the senior federal official said. "That means motels, hotels, airlines, buses, gas stations anything where his name or a known alias might have been used."

For example, the FBI requested dates that Kaczynski stayed at the Park Hotel in downtown Helena between 1982 and 1995, owner Jack McCabe said. Kaczynski stayed at the hotel 25 times during that period, McCabe said--and four of those stays were within three weeks before or after five of the nine bombings during the period.

Kaczynski Remembered

After receiving his degree from Harvard in 1962, Kaczynski earned a Ph.D. from University of Michigan and taught briefly at the University of California at Berkeley before retreating to Montana.

The few classmates who remember Kaczynski from their Harvard days describe him as a loner.

John V. Federico '62, now a physician, says his contact with Kaczynski was "just a passing acquaintance."

Federico says he sat with Kaczynski in the Eliot House Dining Hall on occasion. "He certainly seemed to be a quiet, introspective sort of person," says Federico.

Wayne B. Persons '62, who lived in the same Eliot House seven-man suite as Kaczynski recalls that "[Kaczynski] didn't interact socially with the rest of us in that suite at all."

Persons says the room was N-43, which had "historically had been the maid's quarters." These seven person single rooms, one of which was occupied by Kaczynski, were selected by the students because they had lower boarding fees.

Burns says Kaczynski's self-imposed alienation was not atypical of the Class of 1962.

"It was about the first year that Harvard increased its enrollment" to include more students from less privileged socioeconomic backgrounds.

"Many of us were not culturally prepared for Harvard. We suffered a lot," Burns says. "The suicide rate [for our class] went right through the ceiling."

Another Eliot House classmate recalls that Kaczynski frequently seemed unhappy. "I don't think I ever saw him smile," says Frederick L. Boersma '62. "He was practically stony-faced all the time."

Boersma says his life and Kaczynski's followed "parallel paths" after their graduation from Harvard.

"We both left Cambridge and came to Ann Arbor to get our advanced degrees," Boersma says.

But in light of the similarities, Boersma says he finds it strange that he never got to know Kaczynski on a personal basis.

Other classmates recall that Kaczynski had a somewhat tenuous association with a loose group of fellow mathematics and philosophy enthusiasts.

David Fowler '62 teaches mathematics and technology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and was a Lowell House resident when he was briefly acquainted with Kaczynski. Fowler recalls having taken a class on Algebraic Topology with Kaczynski.

Living Habits

Long before holing himself up in the Montana cabin, suitemates say Kaczynski lived in isolated and squalid conditions in Eliot.

Patrick S. McIntosh '62, who is now retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Lab and is continuing to do solar physics research at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, says he was among those best acquainted with Kaczynski.

"We all occasionally got a little annoyed at him," McIntosh says. "I think he played a trumpet once in a while. He also had a habit of rocking back and forth in his Harvard chair, and he would bump against the wall and hard on the floor. I even think House Master [John H.] Finley, Jr. [who lived directly below Kaczynski] even got on him about it once."

McIntosh also attests to Kaczynski's anti-social habits. "I have a faint memory of trying to get to know him by sitting down with him at dinner. He would smile kind of furtively, then linger for a moment or two and excuse himself and leave," McIntosh says.

"I don't think I ever saw him walking with anybody. I don't think he was ever in any of my classes. I do think I remember seeing him in his cap and gown. But I'm not sure he had anyone there with him. I was not surprised at all that he had holed himself up in Montana," McIntosh continues.

McIntosh describes an occasion when he returned to the room to discover Kaczynski lounging on the sofa in the common room. "As soon as he noticed I had come back, he sneaked back to his room," McIntosh says.

McIntosh recalls that Kaczynski "had not contributed to the furnishings in the sitting room.... I went around asking for payments for the bills. He'd open the door part way, give me what was necessary and shut it."

McIntosh is careful, however, to emphasize that he never saw any suggestion of violent tendencies in Kaczynski's behavior. "I don't think he was at all grouchy or rude," McIntosh says.

"He was polite but as brief as he could manage it. Somehow, he didn't seem the angry threatening kind of person. If we ranked [all of the suitemates], he wasn't the one we dislike the most. He was neutral, just a big mystery," McIntosh says.

Kaczynski's former suitemate describes the suspected Unabomber's living habits as unkempt and disorderly. "He had a god-awful messy room," says McIntosh. "When he wadded up paper, he would toss it towards a corner. I think we finally may have asked Ted to clean up his room."

McIntosh says that he and his suitemates considered seeking some sort of counseling for Kaczynski but were distracted by their studies.

In the days since Kaczynski's arrest, his classmates have reflected on the diametrically different paths their lives have taken from that of the suspected Unabomber.

Former Eliot House resident G. Oliver Koppell '62 is now a prominent New York attorney, who has served as state Attorney General.

"It is not a particularly happy association," Koppell says of Kaczynski, his former classmate and fellow Eliot House resident.

But Koppell says he was not completely surprised upon learning that the suspect in the bombing spree is a Harvard graduate.

"Harvard attracts bright, capable, intelligent people of all kinds," Koppell says. "Unfortunately, some people use their intellect in negative ways."