F.B.I. Listed Prize-Winning Author as a Unabomber Suspect

By DANIEL MCDERMON, NYT

William T. Vollmann probably expected to find something worth writing about in his F.B.I. file. But he did not expect to discover that he’d been listed as a suspect in the case of the Unabomber. The National Book Award winning author, known for his many works of fiction and reportage, wrote about the F.B.I.’s surveillance of him in this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine.

The file, portions of which Mr. Vollmann was able to view through a suit filed under the Freedom of Information Act, runs hundreds of pages, revealing that he was considered a suspect in the case partly because of the “anti-progress themes” in his work. The government gathered information on him for years and also considered him as a suspect in the anthrax investigations of 2001, partly because they had looked at him in connection with the Unabomber case.

“I guess I can’t blame them” for following leads, Mr. Vollmann said in an NPR interview on Thursday.

(More here.)