Radio Identification of Unabomber Suspect Probed

Lawyers are looking into whether a radio station broke any communications laws when it aired a report that a Siskiyou County environmentalist was being investigated in connection with the Unabomber case.

Radio station KWHO in Mt. Shasta aired a story Dec. 15 saying that Felice Pace, executive director of the Klamath Forest Alliance, was a suspect. It noted a resemblance between sketches of the Unabomber and a photo of Pace that appeared in a newspaper profile in 1994.

In the photo, Pace has a mustache and is wearing sunglasses, much like the subject in the widely distributed drawing of the Unabomber suspect.

Pace admitted that he looked like the drawing. “I agree--there are superficial resemblances between that sketch and my picture,” he told the Redding Record Searchlight newspaper.

But he is angry about the report in which KWHO reporter Dick Bailey refers to Pace as “the man the FBI and local law enforcement authorities have had under investigation for some time in the Unabomber case.”

Sheriff Charlie Byrd said his office is not investigating any connection between Pace and the Unabomber, and he has not heard of any law enforcement agency that is.

FBI Special Agent Dale Miskell in the agency’s Sacramento office would not say if Pace was a suspect. The FBI normally does not confirm whether individuals are under investigation.

“I imagine they would have talked to me if they were investigating me,” Pace told the Record Searchlight. “I don’t think there has been [an investigation]. If there was, it wouldn’t bother me.”