S.F. Newspaper Denies Getting Letter in ’85 From Unabomber

The Unabomber claims he sent his first letter about his anarchistic objectives and bombings to the San Francisco Examiner in 1985, much earlier than previously believed, the newspaper reported Saturday.

In a typed letter to Penthouse last week, which the FBI authenticated, the bomber said he wrote to the newspaper to take responsibility for at least five bombings, attacks not publicly linked to him at the time but later suspected of being his work.Examiner editors past and present, however, denied getting the letter.

"We have no record of ever receiving such a letter," editor and publisher Lee J. Guittar said.

In the letter to Penthouse, postmarked June 24 in San Francisco, the Unabomber said he wrote to the Examiner after the December 1985 bombing that killed the owner of a computer store near California State University, Sacramento - Unabomber's first slaying.

Wondering why the paper never published that letter, he said it was conceivable that it got lost in the mail, but that seemed unlikely because late in December 1985, the Examiner published the first article linking the explosions later credited to the Unabomber.

Jim Freeman, an FBI special agent in San Francisco, said Saturday that he cannot verify the 1985 letter but that the agency has asked the newspaper to look for it.

The bomber says he's part of an anarchist group trying to destroy modern industrial society. The FBI believes he's a single white male.

The Unabomber, so code-named by the FBI because many of his victims are connected to universities, has killed three people and wounded 23 since 1978.