The Sacramento Bee from Sacramento, California • 22

t- t-a1 A22 The Sacramento Bee Sunday July 4 1993 FROM PAGE ONE Bomber: is where has he i V- At ij r'H i i 1r i'5 -'41 I I 1- I A n'i ZJfAK 4 VLP IfvV I y- -K lit tiir i Bob Fitzgibbon left helps AAA Muffler and Brake Assistant Manager Flood: Four have died in Associated Press Art Clark start a water pump Saturday in Davenport Iowa rain-related accidents Continued from page A1 ing will cost them millions of dollars while the loss of business will be in the hundreds of millions Four people have died in rain-related accidents including a 4-year-old boy who was fishing in a river in Minnesota and two adults whose car was swept away in a flash flood in western Ray County Health officials have advised residents in flooded areas to have tetanus shots and many communities are struggling to keep their sewer systems from backing up and causing a public health crisis Officials hope the worst of the flooding is over Denise Yale a spokesman for the US Army Corps of Engineers said the river would probably take two weeks or more to subside below flood levels because the Midwest is sopping wet In Davenport Iowa the worst-hit community the river was expected to crest on Saturday crest might mean water will reach some more houses and people have been out there sandbagging around the Yale said Davenport with a population of almost 100000 suffered the most extensive urban flooding of any community along the river The city unlike almost all its neighbors never built any flood control systems it missed the opportunity for full federal financing in the 1970s and the idea died in the 1980s because of rising construction costs and the reluctance to lose its view of the river Yale said looked at a levee several times but the cost is so great and there were an awful lot of people that want to have their view of the river said Ruth Reynolds mayor pro tempore But some residents were angry at the flood control efforts that were made put in a flood wall to save Mark house and all the stuff about that dead man so I know why they help the said Virginia Foiles 39 at this she said surveying the swamp around her house have any money to do said Marlena Leeders 32 whose house was hemmed in by water on three sides The basement of her two-story brick house is full of wa ter right up to the joists supporting the first floor a flood in April which put six feet of water in my house I applied for government assistance All I got was a $65 family grant to make home Leeders said She said she did not think any of her neighbors had flood insurance either The federal government has spent well over $10 billion trying to control the 2350-mile-long Mississippi River which drains 125 million square miles in 31 states and two Canadian provinces The river which originates in a placid creek in Minnesota normally passes up to 1 million cubic feet of water per second in floods like this one which began 15 days ago the current speeds 2 million to 3 million cubic feet of water down the river each second Geologists say the flow has been constricted in the last 20 years by a buildup of silt on the bottom and by the construction of many flood control systems which contribute to the increased frequency and potency of floods Since 1973 there have been four floods of a size that is expected to occur only once in a hundred years Rookies: First-term Demo Continued from page A1 The Unabomber was back is no question in my mind that this is the same said Lou Bertram a retired FBI agent in Salt Lake City who worked on the Unabom case in the late 1980s question is where has he The most recent attacks have reinvigorated a national manhunt for the Unabomber ft team of investigators from across the country including members of the original task force met in Washington DC last week to plot a strategy for following his bloody trail Investigators believe the explosions targeted most frequently at university professors airline personnel and computer experts are the work of a lone bomber who may have been imprisoned or institutionalized in recent years something has happened in the last month or so that has provoked him to get started said FBI spokesman Rick Smith in San Francisco concern is another Smith said want to solve this thing before he strikes The only known slaying victim is Hugh Scrutton who stepped out of his Sacramento computer store in late 1985 and inadvertently set off a bomb so powerful that it tore off his right hand and ripped through his chest Prior to last month the Unabomber was last tied to an explosion in 1987 in Salt Lake City when computer repairman Gary Wright picked up a canvas bag containing a bomb in a parking lot behind his workplace Wright was injured by shrapnel when the bag exploded That blast yielded the first major break in the case A woman who had been looking out a window a dozen feet away from the parking lot told investigators that she had seen a slight man wearing sunglasses and a hooded sweat shirt place the bag on the ground moments before the explosion Investigators issued a description of the bomber: 5 feet 10 inches tall 30 or older about 165 pounds with reddish hair and a thin mustache They also developed a personality profile based on the structure of his bombs his choice of targets and interviews with imprisoned serial bombers Members of a newly formed national task force are working to update the description and personality profile Meanwhile the crime laboratory is analyzing debris from the bombings to develop patterns and clues The Unabomber is believed to be intelligent and well-educated possibly with a military background investigators said Again and again they describe him as meticulous His bombs have become progressively more sophisticated and more powerful said Bell They are made of common materials such as fishing line string and nails but they are set off by handcrafted switches and have been encased in polished woods The motive is unknown but he appears to have an ax to grind with academics and people who work with computers said Bertram he was in the teaching field and got pushed out Maybe his job was eliminated by a Bertram said he applied for a grant or a scholarship and was Most of the Unabom devices have been pipe bombs One has been disguised as a novel another as a notebook and a third as a manuscript Six of the bombs were detonated on college campuses and one went off in an airliner flying from Chicago to Washington After the 1987 bombing investigators interviewed 200 or more suspects Bertram said but were never able to tie a single person to all of the incidents had some great great Bertram said got to think that we were very close to him and we scared him off Maybe we even talked to Investigators plan to reconsider many of those earlier suspects Smith said The Unabomber tipped off authorities to the most recent explosions with a letter to the New York Times The letter warned of newsworthy and identified its author as group calling ourselves Investigators have declined to speculate on what the initials stand for but said they were a key link because previous bombs carried them Later explosives experts concluded that the materials FBI drawing This composite drawing was compiled from a account in 1987 in Salt Lake City 4 is no question in my mind that this is the same Lou Bertram retired FBI agent used in the most recent explosions were similar to those in the earlier series of blasts -I The latest'victims are prominent professors researchers Dr Charles Epstein 59 is a pediatrics professor at the University of California San Francisco who is recognized for his genetic research into Down syndrome and disease He lost several fingers broke his arm and suffered abdominal injuries when he opened a padded envelope that was mailed to his Tiburon home Two days later David Gelern-ter 38 who is a computer science professor at Yale University suffered hand face and chest injuries when a similar envelope mailed to his office exploded when he opened it Although some investigators have speculated that the most re- cent attacks were the work of a criminal most are con- vinced that the Unabomber has resurfaced Bell said i The packages mailed to Epstein and Gelernter carried Sacramento postmarks and return addresses of prominent professors at the California State University Sacramento That may mean that the Unabomber has relocated from the East Coast to California investigators said Most of the earlier bombs carried East Coast return addresses A manager of RenTech the Sacramento computer store where Scrutton was killed said last week that he has warned employees to carefully scrutinize mail in light of the most recent bombings being more cautious about looking at the packages that come said the manager who did not want his name published not something really worried about This guy is obviously crazy but I think targeting Bertram pointed out that the techniques used to track serial criminals via computer have improved considerably in recent years and expressed confidence that the Unabomber will be caught is basically a computer said Bell of the task work guy seems to be fighting against computers But ironically computers that may lead to his Setting It Straight A letter to the editor on page B7 Friday listed the incorrect date for a special runoff election in the 5th Assembly District It is Tuesday July 27 A map of the Grant Joint Union High School District on page B4 Saturday incorrectly showed Natomas Union as a feeder district Natomas has its own unified school district A Go item in Scene page 5 Saturday gave the incorrect date for the Arden Park family Fourth of July celebration The event was Saturday over the top both privately and publicly from his no votes on the budget and implementation bills Even Assembly Speaker Willie Brown singled out Goldsmith as one of the outstanding examples of so-called touted freshmen who were going to be participating in trying to break gridlock played the old partisan political Brown said old game of saying no no no no Goldsmith said he acted on principle not politics effort needs to be made to find common ground to find a he said presenting something at the last minute and saying is wrong system needs to be changed so the process provides for input early on You throw a stack of documents a foot high on desks and expect them to make good decisions when they make decisions based on politics the way everything is done up here at the last minute with a focus on In fact complaints with the budget-writing process were echoed by a number of first-year and veteran members They said those final last-minute decisions are indeed based on pressure and politics not reason and compromise and that they are inevitably stop-gap creating new problems and new reasons for gridlock dynamics of this place are always to avoid moderate risk put off tough votes and adopt shortterm Isenberg said works here at the end because it forces us to get things done But the danger is you ride over people and you make Rookies across the spectrum said they want the budget bargaining to start sooner to include more points of view to reach more compromises They also said they are learning just how tough it will be to unplug the gridlock given all the pressures of the Capitol still want to believe it can be said Valerie Brown do you do that? I know only been here six puts budget i BeeJohn Trotter left talks with colleagues Jackie break in the budget debate do you do when faced with a budget that is everything spoken against? You have to decide what is most important not just a knee-jerk Goldsmith and other rookie Republicans said they campaigned on a pledge of no new taxes They said voting for the extension of a higher sales tax would violate that pledge or at least be seen by voters as violating it For first-year Assemblyman Larry Bowler R-Elk Grove the choice was easy vote for it It was something I believe he said not going to let them jam it down my throat in the interest of time be willing to put a Christmas tree in my office before I vote for a raise in But Assemblyman Tom Connolly D-Lemon Grove another rookie said timeliness was as major an issue as taxes or spending cuts was one who ran saying I would come here and avoid the delay and the he said of the things here to do is re-establish credibility with the people The first step to get them to trust us is to meet our constitutional Some rookies found their credibility around the Capitol was also tied to their budget votes Goldsmith in particular drew criticism Continued from page A1 2 tsenberg spoke shortly after 1 1 pm on the Sunday night the final $521 billion budget deal reached the Assembly floor Nearly six hours later the Assembly was still struggling to squeeze out the 54 votes needed to move the budget bill Eleven rookies were voting no Same old story some members mumbled Same old gridlock A few minutes before 5 am Debra Bowen the lone Democrat rookie holdout after long talks with Isenberg and others walked across the floor and cast the vote that passed the budget is said Bowen who Complained that the transfer of property tax money from local to state coffers would hurt her Marina Del Rey district have a right to expect us to make our decisions even bad decisions in a timely manner felt like I was being given the choice between ax-murdering my mother or torturing the rest of my she said at some point deeply held philosophical beliefs have a train wreck with 7 Bowen described at their best 2 the nature of budget fights and Capitol politics Principles crash into principles political interests collide with political interests Throw in all the fund raising personal rivalries ambition committee systems and special-interest influence mix in 900 hundred or so lobbyists then stir well with an at least every two years and you have the recipe for gridlock That is the way a number of veteran lawmakers described it And they said: celebrate too 4 readily just because the Legisla-- Cure and governor for once got a 1 budget enacted by the start of the fiscal year is impossible to disagree with the notion that gridlock said Assemblyman Ross Johnson R-La Habra public only gets a simplistic view of it but there are real serious disagreements and there are all kinds of reasons for gridlock built into the For the first-year members the budget vote was their best and most disturbing view of that gridlock But the part most saw was the iceberg above the water the Assemblywoman Valerie Brown Speier and John Burton during a choice at the end between punctuality as Isenberg said and holding out against either policies they like or a vote that might hurt politically Two of those rookie members Assemblyman Jan Goldsmith R-Poway and Assemblywoman Valerie Brown D-Sonoma whose experiences are being followed by The Bee were in the middle of the budget brawl Brown like some other first-year Democrats voted no in the early rounds on the budget bill but eventually switched to a yes One of the reasons she said was a poll that showed one of the biggest concerns in her district was just getting a budget on time only choices were Brown said of us could have said like it voting But what were we going to gain? I see dragging the people of the state all the way through it again if we were only going to lose Goldsmith was one of the 10 first-year members all Republicans who voted no His biggest complaint was that the budget deal was done as deadlines approached and put members in no-win positions 4:30 am not convincing people or working a he said breaking arms i.