Monica Almeida/The New York Times William T. Vollmann in 2009.William T. Vollman 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.
The file, portions of which Mr. Vollman was able to view through a suit filed under the Freedom of Information Act, runs hundreds of pages, revealing that the government gathered information on him for years, and also considered him as a suspect in the anthrax investigations of 2001, in part because they had looked at him in connection with the Unabomber case.
“I guess I can’t blame them†for following leads, Mr. Vollman said in an NPR interview on Thursday.
“Everybody is probably guilty of something,†he told the radio host David Greene. But, he added, “The main thing that I have to hide is that I don’t have anything to hide.â€
Mr. Vollman said the F.B.I. ought to have cleared him and ceased surveillance when the Unabomber was caught, in 1996.
“If we’re not allowed to know what they’re doing with this information,†he said, “I can’t help but think that we are headed for really serious trouble.â€
