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American Morning

Former FBI Profiler Discusses Midwest Pipe Bombings

Aired May 07, 2002 - 09:08   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The FBI says two mailbox pipe bombs that turned up yesterday, one in Salida, Colorado, another in Hastings, Nebraska, are actually similar to more than a dozen other explosive devices found in Nebraska, Illinois and Iowa in recent days.

Authorities have many clues, so far no suspects. CNN's Rusty Dornin joins us now from Omaha, Nebraska with more on how people in America's heartland are reacting to this apparent homegrown threat -- good morning, Rusty.

RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula.

Well, there are hundreds of FBI, ATF and postal inspectors from across the country working this case, but much of it is being centered here at the FBI regional office in Omaha, Nebraska, where they're working 24/7. The big concern now is that this person may be leapfrogging and going west much faster than they had anticipated.

Now the bomb that was found in Nebraska yesterday -- in Hastings, Nebraska -- was actually found after the resident had come home after the weekend. So it's likely that the bomb was put in their mailbox sometime over the weekend. But then 400 miles from Hastings in Salida, Colorado, another device was discovered in a mailbox there. Both of those -- neither of those devices exploded.

Both of them were very similar to the other devices that have been discovered here in Nebraska. Now the difference between the bombs discovered here in Nebraska and in Illinois and Iowa are that their detonators are different. They're not as likely to explode, which is a little bit different. But they do believe that it's all coming from the same person.

Now FBI sources tell CNN that profilers have a pretty good picture of what this guy is like from these letters that he has been writing. They think that he's an English speaker because of the style of grammar and the idioms that he is using. He's a white male, he is working alone, and probably traveling across country in a car by himself, you know, planting these bombs.

Now they have interviewed a few people, but the interviews that they've ended up getting have been, you know, likening to somebody calls and says I've got somebody -- a neighbor down the street who is very anti-government, who is talking a lot of stuff about how much he hates the government. And it's been those kinds of interviews they've turned into absolutely nothing.

So they've gotten a lot of tips through their hot line, but it just hasn't panned out into anything -- Paula.

ZAHN: OK. Rusty Dornin, thanks so much for that report.

So who could be responsible for sending these explosive messages? Joining us now from San Francisco, to offer her profile of the mailbox bomber, Candice DeLong, a former FBI profiler and author of the book, "Special Agent: My Life on the Front Lines as a Woman in the FBI" -- good to see you again, Candice.

CANDICE DELONG, FORMER FBI PROFILER: Good morning, Paula.

ZAHN: I know that you have had the opportunity to compile your own profile based on the information you've been given about who might be responsible for this. Let's quickly go through who you think this person might be.

You think the bomber is a man over the age of 30. That he is not a member of a militia group. That he is, in fact, working alone. He appears to be paranoid and he will share his world view with anyone who will listen.

How did you figure this out?

DELONG: Well, only based on what's been published. I don't have any inside information, and I certainly don't know everything that the FBI has. But just in reading what he's done and reading the rather lengthy note that he left.

He talks about the government being able to control our desires and our minds. There's a paranoid quality to his thinking. He seems to be obsessed with death and that the government is able to cause death.

ZAHN: Let's for our audience's sake put up just a small section of a letter that was found in one of these bombs to familiarize them with what he has said. And he says, "As long as you are uninformed about death, you will continue to say, 'How high,' when the government tells you to 'jump.' As long as the government is uninformed about death, they will continue to tell you to 'jump.' Is the government uninformed about death, or are they pretending?"

Now this guy clearly has an anti-government message here. Why are you so convinced he's working alone?

DELONG: Well, if you just take that one sentence, it sounds very anti-government, but in the entire context of the letter, he jumps around quite a bit. His association from one concept or idea to the next is extremely loose. He repeatedly goes back to this concept of death, and not simply that it's the government causing it.

I found it very difficult to follow the letter reading it numerous times. And he seems like the kind of person -- I was in the field of psychiatry for almost 10 years before I became an FBI agent, and he seems like the kind of person who probably, if he tried to join a militia group, might not be welcome.

ZAHN: What does he want?

DELONG: That's a good question. He certainly wants attention, and he talks about the only way that he's able to get the attention that he wants is through these pipe bombs. I wonder if reading the letter if he was hoping or that he thought when he left this letter that one of his bombs might have been fatal.

He seems to use the word dismiss or dismissing in exchange for killing. That's my interpretation of it anyway. And he makes what could be interpreted a (UNINTELLIGIBLE) threat to dismissing or killing someone important and that he chose not to do that because he could do just as well getting attention by dismissing unimportant people. Which makes me think perhaps he thought his bombs would be fatal.

So there is a lot going on there in this person's head. And he certainly wants to share it and probably has shared these thoughts with anyone that would listen.

ZAHN: So he's basically a sicko?

DELONG: Well, not my word. But he's definitely disturbed.

ZAHN: Well, what would be a better word to describe? I mean is there a more generous word to describe this guy?

DELONG: Well, disturbed, for sure. I mean, generally people that commit these kinds of crimes are off center.

ZAHN: Well, let's talk a little bit about the details we know about these bombs and what clues they may give us about his modus operandi. Rusty Dornin just caught up with a resident named Greg Nun (ph) in Nebraska, and his bomb he described as a 6-inch pipe with wires and a battery attached to it.

What does that signify to you, anything?

DELONG: Well, I'm not a bomb expert by any means. It's my understanding it's rather primitive. Early on in the Unabomber's career his bombs were also very primitive, leading investigators to make the natural assumption that perhaps the person leaving the bombs was very young.

But one of the things we learned from the Unabomber investigations is that when you start out making bombs they're going to be primitive. Probably just getting some instructions from booklets, possibly in this case off the Internet, working alone, not having official training in that kind of thing or military training in that kind of thing. And it's going to turn out to be a very primitive device.

It doesn't mean the individual is a teenager, though.

ZAHN: Sure. DELONG: If he starts doing this in his late 30s or early 30s, then it's still going to look like a kiddy bomb.

ZAHN: Candice, we've got just about 10 seconds left. The path seems to be this guy is moving westward. Do these guys end up usually tripping themselves up?

DELONG: Well, it certainly took the Unabomber a long time to trip himself up. About 15 years before he demanded the manifesto be signed -- or be read. This individual has sent this note. He seems to be very active. I have a suspicion he's probably going to be identified probably fairly soon.

ZAHN: All right. Candice DeLong, author and former FBI profiler, thank you for joining us on AMERICAN MORNING.

DELONG: You're welcome, Paula.

ZAHN: Appreciate your time.

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