Ted Kaczynski: Get My Cabin Out of the Newseum

[WSJ_law_blog]

The Unabomber predates the Law Blog, so Ted Kaczynski has yet to make his LB debut. Let’s change that.

The Smoking Gun Web posted a letter today that Kaczynski is believed to have written to a three-judge appeals panel of the Ninth Circuit. He’s apparently upset that his former Montana cabin is on display at a Washington, D.C. museum, contending that the FBI’s decision to allow its “public exhibition” runs counter to his victims’ desire to limit further publicity about the deadly terror spree.

Kaczynski writes:



Ted Kaczynski in a 1962 Harvard yearbook. (AP/Harvard)

I recently received a page from the Washington Post, June 19, 2008, page A9. This comprises a full-page, full-color advertisement that features my cabin, which is being exhibited publicly at something called a “Newseum” . . . Since the advertisement states that the cabin is “FROM FBI VAULT,” it is clear that the government is responsible for the public exhibition of the cabin. This has obvious relevance to the victims’ objection to publicity connected with the Unabom case.

Opened in April, the Newseum, notes the Smoking Gun, bills itself as a “museum of news…that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology and hands-on exhibits.” Kaczynski’s 10×12-foot cabin is the central artifact in an exhibit chronicling the FBI’s first 100 years.