The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO Ÿ Maybe an English teacher will recognize the style, or someone who lived in a collective with him will remember his political rants.
One way or the other, the FBI hopes the Unabomber's distinctive prose will give him away.
The Washington Post circulated the elusive bomber's 35,000-word document nationwide Tuesday, and investigators are waiting for someone somewhere to get that glimmer of recognition that helps track him down.
Jim Freeman, head of the FBI in San Francisco and the 135-member Unabomber task force, said extreme cases require extreme measures.
''This case is really unparalleled in the course of law enforcement,'' he said of the Unabomber, who has killed three people and injured 23 since 1978. ''This is a very singular case stretching over 17 years.''
Freeman urged the public Ÿ especially in the Chicago, Salt Lake City and Northern California areas Ÿ to look for clues in the manuscript, which rails against the evils of industrialization.
''There has to be someone that relates to this philosophy,'' he said at a Tuesday news conference. ''And that has investigative value for us.''
The FBI previously circulated the Unabomber's manifesto to college professors in California, high school teachers in Chicago and anyone else who might recognize the serial bomber's ideas.
The FBI, which is offering a $1 million reward, has received 20,000 calls on its national hot line, and the value of the tips has improved since excerpts of the manuscript were first published, Freeman said.
In June, the Unabomber sent the manuscript to The New York Times and The Washington Post with a demand: If at least one of the newspapers would print his manifesto within three months, he would stop killing.
Five days short of the deadline, the Post published a special, eight-page section Tuesday containing the entire text of the Unabomber's treatise entitled ''Industrial Society and Its Future.''
Since 1993, all his bombs and letters have been mailed from the San Francisco Bay area, but he began by hitting university targets in Chicago and then moved on to Salt Lake City.
Along with poring over the typewritten manuscript, investigators from the FBI, Postal Inspection Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have interviewed machine shop operators, college instructors, postal workers and hundreds of others.
Laboratory tests of his letters and bomb parts have given few clues, apparently because the Unabomber uses gloves and evidently doesn't even lick the stamps or envelopes.
The Unabomber Ÿ so named because his initial targets were universities and airlines Ÿ mixes his own explosives out of easily obtainable material, making it difficult to trace.
''There is a sense of confidence in all the agencies,'' he said.
The FBI Unabomber hot line is (800) 701-2662.