The 50 Worst Terrorist Attacks (39 page)

Incident:
On September 5, 1977, members of the RAF, successors to the Baader-Meinhof Group, kidnapped Schleyer, president of the West German employers' association, the Confederation of Industry; member of the board of directors of Mercedes-Benz; and West Germany's most famous industrialist. Between 10 and 15 terrorists firing submachine guns ambushed his two-car convoy at an intersection in Cologne during rush hour as he was driven to his apartment. The group pushed a baby carriage across a one-way street, halting his Mercedes sedan. The terrorists then fired over 200 rounds, killing two police escorts, a security agent, and a driver. They dragged Schleyer from his limousine into a minibus, which
was later found abandoned in a garage under a Cologne high-rise building. The minibus contained a letter with a demand for the release of several West German terrorists.

Various groups made demands, ultimately articulated by the Siegried Hausner Commando Group of the RAF, which called for freedom for 11 terrorists who were to be accompanied on a flight out of the country by Martin Niemoeller, an evangelical theologian. Each prisoner was to be given $43,000 and a flight to his or her choice of country. The government was further instructed to promise not to attempt to obtain extradition. Five of the 11 incarcerated Baader-Meinhof Group terrorists were women. The 11 were Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe, the most well-known surviving members of the original BaaderMeinhof Group; Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Hanna Elise Krabbe, and Bernd Roesner, who took part in the April 24, 1975, attack on the West German Embassy in Stockholm by the Socialist Patients' Collective; Guenter Sonnenberg and Verena Becker, two suspects in the assassination of prosecutor Siegfried Buback; and Ingrid Schubert, Irmgard Moeller, and Werner Hopper, who were in custody for robbery, suspicion of murder, and attempted murder, respectively.

The Schleyer kidnapping, following closely the assassinations of German attorney general Buback in April 1977 and banker Juergen Ponto in July 1977 and an aborted rocket attack in Karlsruhe, heightened public concern regarding terrorism. Business executives sought increased protection through the legal system, and sales of security services boomed. The government, remaining firm in the face of the kidnappers' threats, refused to release the prisoners and was supported by the public, according to various polls.

The hijacking of a Lufthansa jetliner on October 13, 1977, by terrorists apparently acting in concert with Schleyer's kidnappers greatly increased the pressure on the government to release the prisoners. The successful rescue operation at Mogadishu, Somalia, turned the advantage back to the government but put Schleyer's fate in doubt. Schleyer's well-being was further jeopardized by the suicides in prison of Baader, Raspe, and Ensslin, as well as the self-inflicted wounds of Moeller.

On October 19, 1977, the Siegfried Hausner Command announced that it had killed Schleyer. Ninety minutes after the news of Schleyer's death, the Federal Criminal Office released the names of 16 persons suspected of being involved in the crime. Among them were Susanne Albrecht, Silke Maier-Witt, Adelheid Schulz, Angelika Speitel, Siegrid Sternbeck, and Willy Peter Stoll, who were also on the wanted list in connection with the murder of Ponto, chairman of the Dresdner Bank board of directors. Christian Klar was wanted for the murder of Attorney General Buback. Police believed Brigitte Mohnhaupt accompanied Knut Folkerts, who was arrested in Holland in a shootout with police. Also named were Rolf Heissler, who had been released in exchange for Christian Democratic
Union candidate for mayor of West Berlin Peter Lorenz in March 1975, and Friederike Krabbe, believed to be related to one of the Stockholm terrorists, Hanna Elise Krabbe. Also named were Christoph Wackernagel and Rolf Clemens Wagner, who were wanted for bombing attacks. The Federal Criminal Office stated that Joerg Lang, the former partner of radical lawyer Klaus Croissant; Inge Viett, who escaped from the Berlin women's jail; Elisabeth van Dyck, wanted in connection with arms thefts; and Julianne Plambeck, a noted terrorist, were also suspected of involvement in the kidnapping.

Stefan Wisniewski was arrested in France in May 1978 and extradited to West Germany a year later. On November 5, 1979, he was charged in Karlsruhe with murdering Schleyer and his bodyguards, kidnapping, attempted extortion, coercion, and forging documents.

Rolf Wagner was arrested on November 19, 1979, after a gun battle with Swiss police. He was suspected of being the driver of the van used in the getaway. He was one of the four terrorists arrested in Yugoslavia in May 1978 who were later released in a dispute over extradition of Croatian terrorists.

On April 29, 1991, the prosecution in the Stuttgart higher regional court charged RAF member Maier-Witt of having participated in the 1977 kidnapping and murder of Schleyer. Police said she participated in the attempted mortar attack on the Federal Prosecutor's Office that took place on August 25, 1977; the failed assassination attempt on NATO commanderin-chief Alexander Haig in Belgium on June 25, 1979; and in a bank robbery in Zurich, Switzerland, that took place on November 19, 1979. She was arrested in East Germany in August 1990. She was charged with five murders, several attempted murders, and robbery causing subsequent death. On October 7, 1991, a German court sentenced her to 10 years for her part in the three attacks. She was convicted of helping commit the Schleyer kidnapping and confessed to aiding in the Haig attack and the bank robbery in Zurich.

Overview:
Before the “lone wolf” became the template for homegrown violent extremists in the 2010s, Theodore Kaczynski, popularly known as the Unabomber, established that mass mailing package bombs to government officials was an effective terror technique. His 17-year U.S. private campaign of terror lasted from the 1970s into the 1990s. The Kaczynski case raises the question of how many incidents are needed to constitute a designation of an individual as a terrorist, and what constitutes a terrorist versus a disturbed individual cloaked in political rhetoric. The loner
Kaczynski showed most of the characteristics of classic terrorists of his era, including interest in publicity for his cause and willingness to use violence to influence a wider group than the immediate victims. His attacks presaged the October 2001 anthrax attacks attributed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to scientific researcher Bruce E. Ivins, whose motives remain unclear.

Incidents:
On October 7, 1993, the FBI put out a $1 million reward for Kaczynski's arrest. By that time, he was responsible for at least 14 parcel and emplaced bombings. His terrorist resume eventually included

• On May 25, 1978, one person was injured at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
  
• On May 9, 1979, one person was injured at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
  
• On November 15, 1979, a bomb exploded in the cargo hold of American Airlines flight 444 as it flew from Chicago to Washington, D.C. Twelve persons suffered smoke inhalation. The device was designed to explode at high altitude.
  
• On June 10, 1980, following receipt of a letter saying that he would receive a book he needed, Percy Wood, a former president of United Airlines, received a book-sized package containing a bomb at his Chicago home.
  
• On October 8, 1981, a bomb was disarmed in a business classroom at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
  
• On April 25, 1982, a pipe bomb attack was directed against Patrick C. Fischer in Nashville, Tennessee.
  
• On May 5, 1982, one person was injured at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, when a package addressed to a professor exploded.
  
• On July 2, 1982, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science was injured in a faculty lounge at the University of California at Berkeley.
  
• On May 8, 1985, police disarmed a bomb mailed to the Boeing Corporation in Auburn, Washington.
  
• On May 15, 1985, John Hauser, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, saw a black notebook inside a plastic container in the computer lab in which he was working alone. Upon opening the container, the bomb tore off part of his right hand, ending his career as an Air Force fighter pilot.
  
• On November 15, 1985, a secretary was injured by a package bomb mailed to Professor James V. McConnell at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
  
• On December 11, 1985, Hugh C. Scrutton, a Sacramento, California, businessman, was killed when he picked up a bomb disguised as a block of wood near an entrance to his computer rental store.
  
• On February 20, 1987, a bomb was placed in the parking lot behind CAAMS in Salt Lake City, Utah.
  
• On February 20, 1989, a man was injured by a bomb left behind a computer store in Salt Lake City.
  
• On June 22, 1993, a letter bomb exploded in the home office of Charles Epstein, a geneticist at the University of California at San Francisco, wounding him in the abdomen, chest, face, and hands. UNABOM had identified himself as FC in two earlier letters, claiming to be part of an anarchist group.
  
• On June 24, 1993, a package bomb exploded in the office of Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter, famed for developing the Linda computer language that had applications in publishing and animation. He lost use of a hand and his right eye was lacerated.
  
• On December 10, 1994, a mail bomb killed Thomas Mosser, 50, executive vice president and general manager of Young and Rubicam, Inc. Worldwide, one of the world's largest ad agencies.
  
• On April 25, 1995, a package bomb mailed to the lobbying offices of the private California Forestry Association in Sacramento, California, killed Gilbert B. Murray, 47, its chief lobbyist for the timber industry. The package was postmarked from Oakland, California, and addressed to a colleague, William Dennison, former president of the association.
  

On June 27, 1995, UNABOM sent a letter to the
San Francisco Chronicle
in which he threatened to blow up an airliner leaving Los Angeles International Airport in the next six days. The next day, he sent a lengthy manifesto to the
Washington Post
,
Penthouse
, and
New York Times
, demanding that one of the publications print the screed as a way to halt the killings.

On August 2, 1995, the
Washington Post
and the
New York Times
published excerpts from his manifesto
Industrial Society and Its Future
. On August 3, 1995,
Penthouse
publisher Bob Guccione published a full-page open letter in the
New York Times
to the Unabomber in which he offered “one or more unedited pages in
Penthouse
every single month” if the bomber stopped bombing.

The FBI arrested Kaczynski on April 3, 1996, in a one-room cabin in the hills near Lincoln, Montana. Bomb-making paraphernalia was found in the cabin, as was the typewriter that matched the fonts used in the Unabomber's manifesto. His brother David had contacted the FBI in February 1996 to say that he believed Ted was the Unabomber. Texts he found in his mother's Chicago house when she was going to sell it were similar to the Unabomber's tract. A bomb blew up in his cabin four days after his arrest.

Kaczynski had graduated from Harvard, earned a doctorate from the University of Michigan, and became a math professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

On June 18, 1996, he was indicted for the killings of Gilbert B. Murray in 1995 and Hugh C. Scrutton in 1985, and the injuries of David Gelernter and Charles Epstein in 1993. He was charged with transporting an explosive device with intent to kill or injure and mailing the device. Conviction carried a sentence of death or life in prison. On June 21, 1996, U.S. District Court judge Charles C. Lovell ordered his trial moved from
Helena, Montana, to Sacramento, California. On June 25, 1996, Quin Denvir, Kaczynski's public defender, pleaded not guilty to the charges. On June 28, 1996, Kaczynski was indicted for three more Unabomber attacks, specifically the April 25, 1982, pipe bomb attacks against Patrick C. Fischer in Nashville; the November 1985 pipe bomb attack against James V. McConnell in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and the February 20, 1987, placing of a bomb in the parking lot behind CAAMS in Salt Lake City, Utah. On October 1, 1996, a federal grand jury in New Jersey handed down a threecount indictment against him, charging him in the December 10, 1994, bombing death of Thomas J. Mosser. On December 10, 1996, he pleaded not guilty.

Jury selection began on November 12, 1997. Kaczynski sought to dismiss his lawyers because they planned to introduce the issue of his mental health. On January 20, 1998, prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that he was mentally competent to stand trial. On January 22, 1998, he pleaded guilty to all 13 federal charges as part of a plea bargain that spared him the death penalty. He was sentenced to serve life in prison without possibility of release. He also admitted that he placed or mailed another 11 bombs for which he was not yet charged. He agreed that he could not appeal any part of the sentence. The judge warned that he would be forced to pay restitution if he received money for his writings, mementos, or interviews. On May 4, 1998, he was sentenced to four life terms plus 30 years in prison and sent to a maximum security cell in Colorado. On October 23, 1999, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed to review his case, finding sufficient evidence to examine his contention that his guilty plea was coerced and that he was inappropriately denied the right to self-representation. However, on February 12, 2001, the court rejected his request for retrial. On August 17, 2001, he lost another appeal for a hearing. On March 18, 2002, in
Kaczynski v. U.S. 01–7251
, the Supreme Court rejected his attempt to withdraw his 1998 guilty plea and obtain a new trial.

On May 19, 2011, the FBI requested a DNA sample as part of its look into whether he was involved in the September 29, 1982, deaths of seven people who took potassium cyanide–laced Tylenol in the Chicago area, where he occasionally stayed at his parents' home. He refused to voluntarily give a sample. The Tylenol poisonings do not fit with his standard modus operandi. As of this writing, the Tylenol case remains officially unresolved.