Terrorism by mailExtremist violence through the mail

Published 1 November 2018

Federal and state law enforcement agencies acted quickly and decisively to apprehend the Florida man who mailed letter bombs to prominent Democrats, to supporters of liberal causes, and to CNN. There is a long history of extremists and terrorists using the mail system to deliver bombs to targets, though it has not been a common tactic.  Others have placed bombs in mailboxes or put bombs in packages designed to look as if they had been delivered by mail or delivery service.

Federal and state law enforcement agencies acted quickly and decisively to apprehend the Florida man who mailed letter bombs to prominent Democrats, to supporters of liberal causes, and to CNN.

There is a long history of extremists and terrorists using the mail system to deliver bombs to targets, though it has not been a common tactic.  Others have placed bombs in mailboxes or put bombs in packages designed to look as if they had been delivered by mail or delivery service. 

ADL notes that nearly a century ago, anarchists in the U. S. mailed roughly thirty bombs to a variety of politicians, public officials and business leaders, including John D. Rockefeller. Most of the explosives never made it to their destinations, but one blew off the hands of a housekeeper who was attempting to open a package.

More recently, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula used mail bombs in an unsuccessful international terrorist attack.  In October 2010, members of the terrorist group used delivery services to send two package bombs with plastic explosives to addresses in Chicago, Illinois. The addresses were locations that had formerly been synagogues, but the real intent of the plotters appears to have been for the bombs to detonate in mid-air en route to their destination, blowing up the cargo planes carrying them. However, information obtained by Saudi Arabian intelligence officials allowed the bombs to be detected before detonation.

American extremists have also used mail bombs.  In 2004, for example, longtime white supremacist leader Dennis Mahon mailed a large pipe bomb to the Scottsdale (Arizona) Office of Diversity and Dialogue, whose director, Don Logan, was an outspoken advocate of civil rights. The bomb exploded in the office, injuring three people, including Logan, but caused no deaths. After a years-long investigation, Mahon was convicted of the attack and sentenced to 40 years in prison (his brother, who was also charged, was acquitted).

The most infamous U.S. mail bombs were sent by Theodore Kaczynski, the so-called “Unabomber,” who sent sixteen bombs to a variety of targets between 1978 and 1995, killing three people and injuring twenty-three more before he was apprehended in 1996. Kaczynski, who chose targets with connections to research, computers, or airlines, had an anti-technologically-oriented ideology that some have described as green anarchism or primitivist anarchism.