LAX Remains on Alert as Travelers Stream Through

Security officials at Los Angeles International Airport remained on alert Saturday as crowds of holiday travelers prepared to fly in spite of the anonymous Unabomber’s on-and-off threat.

As the clock on the postal terrorist’s initial six-day threat ran down, airport officials continued to inspect unattended luggage and ask passengers to display photo identification before boarding planes. About 140,000 travelers passed through the airport, which on a typical day serves 110,000.

“We’re not relaxing at all,” the airport’s executive director, Jack Driscoll, said Saturday afternoon. “Traffic is moving well through the airport. The public really is doing very well. They’re very patient.”

The bomber warned last week that he would blow up a plane leaving the airport before July 4, but a day later called his threat a prank. It prompted concerns among vacationers and business travelers, and disrupted mail service.

Federal investigators hunting the serial mail bomber, who has eluded identification and capture for 17 years, reported receiving 500 tips per day on a hot line. Such tips will probably taper off, officials said.

Despite that, FBI spokesman George Grotz said, “we’re not scaling back, because we’re trying to analyze and respond to the leads coming from the 800 number.”

Agents said they were trying to prioritize potential leads and focused their manhunt in the Sacramento area because of the case’s “Northern California flavor.” Two of the bomber’s three lethal attacks were in Sacramento, at a computer store and the offices of a timber industry lobbying group. The return addresses on a number of letters from the bomber have been from Northern California as well.

The FBI said it would not pressure the New York Times or the Washington Post into printing the terrorist’s 35,000-word anti-industry manifesto. The bomber has promised to stop killing if one of the newspapers publishes it and three annual follow-up pieces.

Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse magazine, which was also sent a copy of the manuscript, offered the Unabomber a page a month indefinitely if he would stop his killing. In a new letter to the magazine, the Unabomber disclosed that the initials “FC,” a cryptic label used in earlier messages to describe a group he claims to represent, stands for Freedom Club.

The FBI believes that the killer it code-named Unabomber is a single male acting alone. The agency chose that name because his earliest attacks focused on universities and the airline industry. Since 1978, he has taken credit for 16 bombings that have killed three people and injured 22 others.

Times staff writer Mark Gladstone contributed to this story.