---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 9 Sep 1998 05:42:20 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu Subject: The Arrest of the Nutly Bomber http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/0,2326,201980909-14593,00.html TIME Digital Daily September 9, 1998 The Arrest of the Nutly Bomber By Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) [Part I of a Series For two years a pair of anonymous Net crackpots have been posting angry tirades to a cryptography discussion list under a takeoff of Netly called "Nutly News." Now the FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police say that a digital signature connects them to a bomb discovered last June in a Canadian courthouse.] It was about 5 p.m. on August 18. Carl Johnson, 49, was beating the heat inside the Rialto Theater in what passes for downtown Tuscon, Ariz. That morning a friend had tipped off Johnson that the police were trying to find him, but for now he had something else on his mind: his music. The itinerant musician and writer had spent the last month furiously scribbling lyrics, friends say, and he wanted a loan from someone he knew who worked at the theater. It was for some recording work, Johnson explained. This was going be his third album, after "My Way or the Highway" and "Please! Stop Me Before I Sing Again." But when Johnson left the Rialto, his musical career was cut short by two federal agents from the IRS's internal security division. They arrested him on charges of Internet threats against federal judges and police. The Canadians wanted Johnson, too, on charges of planting a bomb in a Saskatchewan courthouse.