A tale of two crooks

8 June 2004

Philip Greenspun reminds us that “Ahmad Chalabi, formerly Our Man in Iraq, is an MIT graduate.” He neglects to mention that Theodore “Unabomber” Kaczynski went to Harvard.

Both Chalabi and Kaczynski were mathematicians before they turned to crime. Kaczynski received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and worked as an assistant professor at UC-Berkeley. His mail bombs killed two people and injured several others. Chalabi received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and taught at the American University in Beirut. A Jordanian court sentenced him to 22 years of hard labor for embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank that he created. Kaczynski is now serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. Chalabi remains at large, and living large, in Iraq.

For high school students who aspire to become criminal geniuses, the choice is clear.

• Later: You like me! You really like me!
• Earlier: Next time, we will seek alternative accommodations, such as a cardboard box under a bridge