Theodore John "
Ted"
Kaczynski ( , or ;
PolishPolish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
:
Kaczyński, pronounced kaˈt͡ʂɨȷ̃skʲi; born May 22, 1942), also known as the "
Unabomber" (a portmanteau of
university and
airline bomber), is an American
mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
,
social criticThe term social criticism locates the reasons for malicious conditions of the society in flawed social structures. People adhering to a social critics aim at practical solutions by specific measures, often consensual reform but sometimes also by powerful revolution.- European roots :Religious...
,
anarcho-primitivistAnarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
, and
Neo-LudditeNeo-Luddism is a personal world view opposing any modern technology. Its name is based on the historical legacy of the British Luddites which were active between 1811 and 1816...
who engaged in a mail bombing campaign that spanned nearly 20 years, killing three people and injuring 23 others.
Kaczynski was born in Chicago, Illinois, where, as an intellectual
child prodigyA child prodigy is someone who, at an early age, masters one or more skills far beyond his or her level of maturity. One criterion for classifying prodigies is: a prodigy is a child, typically younger than 18 years old, who is performing at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding...
, he excelled academically from an early age. Kaczynski was accepted into
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
at the age of 16, where he earned an undergraduate degree, and later earned a
PhDDoctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in mathematics from the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
. He became an assistant professor at the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
at age 25, but resigned two years later.
In 1971, he moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water, in
Lincoln, MontanaLincoln is a census-designated place in Lewis and Clark County, Montana, United States. The population was 1,100 at the 2000 census. Its elevation is 4536 feet above sea level.Lincoln is part of the Helena Micropolitan Statistical Area....
, where he lived as a
recluseA recluse is a person who lives in voluntary seclusion from the public and society, often close to nature. The word is from the Latin recludere, which means "shut up" or "sequester." There are many potential reasons for becoming a recluse: a personal philosophy that rejects consumer society; a...
while learning
survival skillsSurvival skills are techniques a person may use in a dangerous situation to save themselves or others...
in an attempt to become self-sufficient. He decided to start a bombing campaign after watching the
wildernessWilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with...
around his home being destroyed by development. From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski sent 16 bombs to targets including universities and airlines, killing three people and injuring 23. Kaczynski sent a letter to
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
on April 24, 1995 and promised "to desist from
terrorismTerrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
" if the
Times or
The Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
published his
manifestoA manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...
. In his
Industrial Society and Its Future (also called the "Unabomber Manifesto"), he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human
freedomLiberty is a moral and political principle, or Right, that identifies the condition in which human beings are able to govern themselves, to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions...
necessitated by modern technologies requiring large-scale organization.
The Unabomber was the target of one of the
Federal Bureau of InvestigationThe Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
's (FBI) most costly investigations. Before Kaczynski's identity was known, the FBI used the title "UNABOM" ("
UNiversity and
Airline
BOMber") to refer to his case, which resulted in the media calling him the Unabomber. Despite the FBI's efforts, he was not caught as a result of this investigation. Instead, his brother's wife and his brother recognized Kaczynski's style of writing and beliefs from the manifesto, and tipped off the FBI. Kaczynski dismissed his court appointed lawyers because they wanted to plead insanity in order to avoid the death penalty, although Kaczynski did not believe he was insane. When it became clear that his pending trial would entail national television exposure for Kaczynski, the court entered a
plea agreementA plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case whereby the prosecutor offers the defendant the opportunity to plead guilty, usually to a lesser charge or to the original criminal charge with a recommendation of a lighter than the maximum sentence.A plea bargain allows criminal defendants to...
, under which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Theodore Kaczynski has been designated a "domestic terrorist" by the FBI. Some
anarchistAnarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
authors, such as
John ZerzanJohn Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
and
John MooreJohn Moore was a British anarchist author, teacher and organiser. He died of a heart attack after collapsing on his way to work as a creative writing lecturer at the University of Luton...
, have come to his defense, while holding some reservations about his actions and ideas.
Early life
Kaczynski was born on May 22, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, to second-generation
Polish AmericanA Polish American , is a citizen of the United States of Polish descent. There are an estimated 10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the population of the United States...
s Wanda (née Dombek) and Theodore Richard Kaczynski. At six months of age, Ted's body was covered in
hivesUrticaria is a kind of skin rash notable for pale red, raised, itchy bumps. Hives is frequently caused by allergic reactions; however, there are many non-allergic causes...
. He was placed in isolation in a hospital where visitors were not allowed, as doctors were unsure of the cause of the hives. He was treated several times at the hospital over an eight month period. His mother wrote in March 1943, "Baby home from hospital and is healthy but quite unresponsive after his experience."
From grades one through four, Kaczynski attended Sherman Elementary School in Chicago. He attended grades five through eight at Evergreen Park Central School. As a result of testing conducted in the fifth grade, which determined he had an
IQAn intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. When modern IQ tests are constructed, the mean score within an age group is set to 100 and the standard deviation to 15...
of 167, he was allowed to skip the sixth grade and enroll in the seventh grade. Kaczynski described this as a pivotal event in his life. He recalled not fitting in with the older children and being subjected to their bullying. As a child, Kaczynski had a fear of people and buildings, and played beside other children rather than interacting with them. His mother was so worried by his poor social development that she considered entering him in a study for
autisticAsperger's syndrome that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. It differs from other autism spectrum disorders by its relative preservation of linguistic and cognitive development...
children led by
Bruno BettelheimBruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation for his work on Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children.-Background:...
.
He attended high school at
Evergreen Park Community High SchoolThe Evergreen Park High School District 231, also called Evergreen Park High School, is a public high school located in Evergreen Park, Illinois southwest of Chicago. The high school has about 950 students in grades 9-12.-History:...
. Kaczynski excelled academically, but found the mathematics too simple during his sophomore year. During this period of his life, Kaczynski became obsessed with mathematics, spending prolonged hours locked in his room practicing differential equations. Throughout secondary schooling Kaczynski had far surpassed his classmates, able to solve advanced
Laplace Transforms before his senior year. He was subsequently placed in a more advanced mathematics class, yet still felt intellectually restricted. Kaczynski soon mastered the material and skipped the eleventh grade. With the help of a
summer schoolSummer school is a school, or a program generally sponsored by a school or a school district, that teaches students during the summer vacation....
course for English, he completed his high school education when he was 15 years old. He was encouraged to apply to
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, and was subsequently accepted as a student beginning in 1958 at the age of 16. While at Harvard, Kaczynski was taught by famed logician
Willard Van Orman QuineWillard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition...
, scoring at the top of Quine's class with a 98.9% final grade.
He also participated in a multiple-year personality study conducted by Dr.
Henry MurrayHenry Alexander Murray was an American psychologist who taught for over 30 years at Harvard University. He was Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in the School of Arts and Sciences after 1930 and colluded with Stanley Cobb, Bullard Professor of Neuropathology at the Medical School to...
, an expert on stress interviews. Students in Murray's study were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student. Instead they were subjected to a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment" stress test, which was an extremely stressful, personal, and prolonged psychological attack. During the test, students were taken into a room, strapped into a chair and connected to electrodes that monitored their physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a
two-way mirrorA one-way mirror, also known as a two-way mirror, one-way glass, or two-way glass is a mirror which is partially reflective and partially transparent...
. Each student had previously written an essay detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations: the essays were turned over to an anonymous attorney, who would enter the room and individually belittle each strapped-down student based in part on the disclosures they had made. This was filmed, and students' expressions of impotent rage were played back to them several times later in the study. According to author Alston Chase, Kaczynski's records from that period suggest he was emotionally stable when the study began. Kaczynski's lawyers attributed some of his emotional instability and dislike of mind control to his participation in this study. Indeed, some have suggested that this experience may have been instrumental in Kaczynski's future actions.
Career
Kaczynski graduated from Harvard University in 1962 and subsequently enrolled at the
University of MichiganThe University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, where he earned a
PhDPHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in mathematics. Kaczynski's specialty was a branch of
complex analysisComplex analysis, traditionally known as the theory of functions of a complex variable, is the branch of mathematical analysis that investigates functions of complex numbers. It is useful in many branches of mathematics, including number theory and applied mathematics; as well as in physics,...
known as
geometric function theoryGeometric function theory is the study of geometric properties of analytic functions. A fundamental result in the theory is the Riemann mapping theorem.-Riemann mapping theorem:...
. His professors at Michigan were impressed with his intellect and drive. "He was an unusual person. He was not like the other graduate students", said Peter Duren, one of Kaczynski's math professors at Michigan. "He was much more focused about his work. He had a drive to discover mathematical truth." "It is not enough to say he was smart", said
George PiranianGeorge Piranian , born in Thalwil outside Zürich, Switzerland, was a Swiss-American mathematician of Swiss and Armenian descent...
, another of his Michigan math professors. Kaczynski earned his PhD with his thesis entitled "Boundary Functions" by solving a problem so difficult that Piranian could not figure it out. Maxwell Reade, a retired math professor who served on Kaczynski's dissertation committee, also commented on his thesis by noting, "I would guess that maybe 10 or 12 men in the country understood or appreciated it." In 1967, Kaczynski won the University of Michigan's $100 Sumner B. Myers Prize, which recognized his dissertation as the school's best in mathematics that year. While a graduate student at Michigan, he held a
National Science FoundationThe National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
fellowship and taught undergraduates for three years. He also published two articles related to his dissertation in mathematical journals, and four more after leaving Michigan.
In late 1967, Kaczynski became an assistant professor of mathematics at the
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, where he taught undergraduate courses in geometry and calculus. He was also noted as the youngest professor ever hired by the university. This position proved short-lived, as Kaczynski received numerous complaints and low ratings from the undergraduates he taught. Many students noted that he seemed quite uncomfortable in a teaching environment, often stuttering and mumbling during lectures, becoming excessively nervous in front of a class, and ignoring students during designated office hours. Without explanation, he resigned from his position in 1969, at age 26. The chairman of the mathematics department, J. W. Addison, called this a "sudden and unexpected" resignation, while vice chairman Calvin Moore said that given Kaczynski's "impressive" thesis and record of publications, "He could have advanced up the ranks and been a senior member of the faculty today."
Montana
In mid-1969, Kaczynski moved into his parents' small residence in
Lombard, IllinoisLombard, "The Lilac Village", is a suburb of Chicago in DuPage County, Illinois. The population was 42,322 at the 2000 census. The United States Census Bureau estimated the population in 2004 to be 42,975.-History:...
. Two years later, he moved into a remote cabin he built himself just outside
Lincoln, MontanaLincoln is a census-designated place in Lewis and Clark County, Montana, United States. The population was 1,100 at the 2000 census. Its elevation is 4536 feet above sea level.Lincoln is part of the Helena Micropolitan Statistical Area....
where he lived a
simple lifeSimple living encompasses a number of different voluntary practices to simplify one's lifestyle. These may include reducing one's possessions or increasing self-sufficiency, for example. Simple living may be characterized by individuals being satisfied with what they need rather than want...
on very little money, without electricity or running water. Kaczynski worked odd jobs and received financial support from his family, which he used to purchase his land and, without their knowledge, would later use to fund his bombing campaign. In 1978, he worked briefly with his father and brother at a foam-rubber factory, where he was fired by his brother, David, for harassing a female supervisor he had previously dated.
Kaczynski's original goal was to move out to a secluded place and become self-sufficient so that he could live autonomously. He began to teach himself
survival skillsSurvival skills are techniques a person may use in a dangerous situation to save themselves or others...
such as
trackingTracking in hunting and ecology is the science and art of observing animal tracks and other signs, with the goal of gaining understanding of the landscape and the animal being tracked...
, edible plant identification, and how to construct primitive technologies such as
bow drillThe bow drill is an ancient tool. While it was usually used to make fire, it was also used for primitive woodworking and dentistry. It consists of a bearing block or handhold, a spindle or drill, a hearth or fireboard, and a simple bow...
s. However, he quickly realized that it was not possible for him to live that way, as a result of watching the wild land around him get destroyed by
developmentReal estate development, or Property Development, is a multifaceted business, encompassing activities that range from the renovation and re-lease of existing buildings to the purchase of raw land and the sale of improved land or parcels to others...
and industry. He performed isolated acts of
sabotageSabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...
initially, targeted at the developments near his cabin. The ultimate catalyst which drove him to begin his campaign of bombings was when he went out for a walk to one of his favorite wild spots, only to find that it had been destroyed and replaced with a road. About this, he said:
He began dedicating himself to reading about
sociologySociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and books on
political philosophyPolitical philosophy is the study of such topics as liberty, justice, property, rights, law, and the enforcement of a legal code by authority: what they are, why they are needed, what, if anything, makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms it should protect and why, what form it...
, such as the works of
Jacques EllulJacques Ellul was a French philosopher, law professor, sociologist, lay theologian, and Christian anarchist. He wrote several books about the "technological society" and the interaction between Christianity and politics....
, and also stepped up his campaign of sabotage. He soon came to the conclusion that more violent methods would be the only solution to what he saw as the problem of industrial civilization. He says that he lost faith in the idea of
reformReform means to put or change into an improved form or condition; to amend or improve by change of color or removal of faults or abuses, beneficial change, more specifically, reversion to a pure original state, to repair, restore or to correct....
, and saw violent collapse as the only way to bring down the techno-industrial system. Regarding his switch from being a reformer of the system to developing a means of taking it down, he said:
Bombings
Initial bombings
Kaczynski's activities came to the attention of the FBI in 1978 with the explosion of his first, primitive homemade bomb. Over the next 17 years, he mailed or hand-delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated explosive devices that killed three people and injured 23 more.
The first mail bomb was sent in late May 1978 to
materials engineeringMaterials science is an interdisciplinary field applying the properties of matter to various areas of science and engineering. This scientific field investigates the relationship between the structure of materials at atomic or molecular scales and their macroscopic properties. It incorporates...
professor Buckley Crist at
Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
. The package was found in a parking lot at the
University of Illinois at ChicagoThe University of Illinois at Chicago, or UIC, is a state-funded public research university located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, near the Chicago Loop...
, with Crist's return address. The package was "returned" to Crist, but when Crist received the package, he noticed that it was not addressed in his own handwriting. Suspicious of a package he had not sent, he contacted campus policeman Terry Marker, who opened the package, which exploded immediately. Marker required medical assistance at Evanston Hospital for his left hand.
The bomb was made of metal that could have come from a home workshop. The primary component was a piece of metal pipe, about 1 inches (2.5 cm) in diameter and 9 inches (22.9 cm) long. The bomb contained smokeless explosive powders, and the box and the plugs that sealed the pipe ends were handcrafted from wood. In comparison, most
pipe bombA pipe bomb is an improvised explosive device, a tightly sealed section of pipe filled with an explosive material. The containment provided by the pipe means that simple low explosives can be used to produce a relatively large explosion, and the fragmentation of the pipe itself creates potentially...
s usually use threaded metal ends sold in many hardware stores. Wooden ends lack the strength to allow significant pressure to build within the pipe, explaining why the bomb did not cause severe damage. The primitive trigger device that the bomb employed was a nail, tensioned by rubber bands designed to slam into six common match heads when the box was opened. The match heads would burst into flame and ignite the explosive powders. When the trigger hit the match heads, only three ignited. A more efficient technique, later employed by Kaczynski, was to use batteries and heat filament wire to ignite the explosives faster and more effectively.
The initial 1978 bombing was followed by bombs sent to airline officials, and in 1979 a bomb was placed in the cargo hold of
American Airlines Flight 444American Airlines Flight 444 was a Boeing 727 flying from Chicago to Washington DC, which on November 15, 1979 was attacked by the Unabomber. The bomb planted in the cargo hold failed to detonate, but gave off large quantities of smoke, and twelve passengers had to be treated afterwards for smoke...
, a
Boeing 727The Boeing 727 is a mid-size, narrow-body, three-engine, T-tailed commercial jet airliner, manufactured by Boeing. The Boeing 727 first flew in 1963, and for over a decade more were built per year than any other jet airliner. When production ended in 1984 a total of 1,832 aircraft had been produced...
flying from Chicago to Washington, D.C. The bomb began smoking, forcing the pilot to make an
emergency landingAn emergency landing is a landing made by an aircraft in response to a crisis which either interferes with the operation of the aircraft or involves sudden medical emergencies necessitating diversion to the nearest airport.-Types of emergency landings:...
. Some passengers were treated for
smoke inhalationSmoke inhalation is the primary cause of death in victims of indoor fires.Smoke inhalation injury refers to injury due to inhalation or exposure to hot gaseous products of combustion. This can cause serious respiratory complications....
. Only a faulty timing mechanism prevented the bomb from exploding. Authorities said it had enough power to "obliterate the plane."
As bombing an airliner is a
federal crimeIn the United States, a federal crime or federal offense is a crime that is made illegal by U.S. federal legislation. In the United States, criminal law and prosecution happen at both the federal and the state levels; thus a “federal crime” is one that is prosecuted under federal criminal law, and...
in the United States, the FBI became involved after this incident and derived the code name UNABOM (UNiversity and Airline BOMber).
U.S. Postal InspectorsThe United States Postal Inspection Service is the law enforcement arm of the United States Postal Service. Its jurisdiction is defined as "crimes that may adversely affect or fraudulently use the U.S...
, who initially had the case, called the suspect the Junkyard Bomber because of the material used to make the mail bombs. In 1979, an FBI-led task force that included the ATF and U.S. Postal Inspection Service was formed to investigate the case. The task force grew to more than 150 full-time investigators, analysts, and others. This team made every possible
forensicForensic science is the application of a broad spectrum of sciences to answer questions of interest to a legal system. This may be in relation to a crime or a civil action...
examination of recovered components of the explosives and studied the lives of victims in minute detail. These efforts proved of little use in identifying the suspect, who built his bombs essentially from "scrap" materials available almost anywhere. The victims, investigators later learned, were chosen irregularly from library research.
In 1980, chief agent
John DouglasJohn Edward Douglas , is a former special agent with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation , one of the first criminal profilers, and criminal psychology author.-Early life:...
, working with agents in the FBI's
Behavioral Sciences UnitThe Behavioral Analysis Unit is a component of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime that uses behavioral sciences to assist in criminal investigations...
, issued a psychological profile of the unidentified bomber which described the offender as a man with above-average intelligence with connections to academia. This profile was later refined to characterize the offender as a
neo-LudditeNeo-Luddism is a personal world view opposing any modern technology. Its name is based on the historical legacy of the British Luddites which were active between 1811 and 1816...
holding an academic degree in the hard sciences, but this psychologically based profile was discarded in 1983 in favor of an alternative theory developed by FBI analysts concentrating on the physical evidence in recovered bomb fragments. In this rival profile, the bomber suspect was characterized as a blue-collar airplane mechanic. A 1-800
hotlineIn telecommunication, a hotline is a point-to-point communications link in which a call is automatically directed to the preselected destination without any additional action by the user when the end instrument goes off-hook...
was set up by the UNABOM Task Force to take any calls related to the Unabomber investigation, with a $1 million reward for anyone who could provide information leading to the Unabomber's capture.
Casualties
The first serious injury occurred in 1985, when John Hauser, a graduate student and Captain in the
United States Air ForceThe United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
, lost four fingers and vision in one eye. The bomb, like others of Kaczynski's, was handcrafted and made with wooden parts.
Hugh Scrutton, a 38-year-old California computer store owner, was killed in 1985 by a nail-and-splinter-loaded bomb placed in the parking lot of his store. A similar attack against a computer store occurred in
Salt Lake City, UtahSalt Lake City is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Utah. The name of the city is often shortened to Salt Lake or SLC. With a population of 186,440 as of the 2010 Census, the city lies in the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a total population of 1,124,197...
on February 20, 1987. The bomb, which was disguised as a piece of lumber, injured Gary Wright when he attempted to remove it from the store's parking lot. The explosion severed nerves in Wright's left arm and propelled more than 200 pieces of shrapnel into his body. Kaczynski's brother, David—who would play a vital role in Ted's looming capture by alerting federal authorities to the prospect of his brother's being involved in the Unabomber cases— sought out and became friends with Wright after Ted was detained in 1996. David Kaczynski and Wright have remained friends and occasionally speak together publicly about their relationship.
After a six-year hiatus, Kaczynski struck again in 1993, mailing a bomb to
David GelernterDavid Hillel Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale University. In the 1980s, he made seminal contributions to the field of parallel computation, specifically the tuple space coordination model, as embodied by the Linda programming system...
, a
computer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
professor at
Yale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. Though critically injured, Gelernter eventually recovered. Another bomb mailed in the same weekend was sent to the home of
Charles EpsteinCharles Joseph Epstein of Tiburon, California, was a geneticist who was severely injured in 1993 when he became a victim of a mail bomb attack by the Unabomber.He died of pancreatic cancer.-References:...
from the
University of California, San FranciscoThe University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world...
, who lost multiple fingers upon opening it. Kaczynski then called Gelernter's brother, Joel Gelernter, a behavioral geneticist, and told him, "You are next." Geneticist Phillip Sharp at the
Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyThe Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
also received a threatening letter two years later. Kaczynski wrote a letter to
The New York Times claiming that his "group", called FC, was responsible for the attacks.
In 1994,
Burson-MarstellerBurson-Marsteller is a global public relations and communications firm headquartered in the United States. Burson-Marsteller operates 67 wholly owned offices and 71 affiliate offices in 98 countries across six continents...
executive Thomas J. Mosser was killed by a mail bomb sent to his
North Caldwell, New Jersey-Local government:North Caldwell is governed under the Borough form of New Jersey municipal government. The government consists of a Mayor and a Borough Council comprising six council members, with all positions elected at large. A Mayor is elected directly by the voters to a four-year term of office...
home. In another letter to
The New York Times Kaczynski claimed that FC "blew up Thomas Mosser because [...] Burston-Marsteller helped
ExxonExxon is a chain of gas stations as well as a brand of motor fuel and related products by ExxonMobil. From 1972 to 1999, Exxon was the corporate name of the company previously known as Standard Oil Company of New Jersey or Jersey Standard....
clean up its public image after the
Exxon Valdez incidentThe Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef and spilled of crude oil. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused...
" and, more importantly, because "its business is the development of techniques for manipulating people's attitudes." This was followed by the 1995 murder of
Gilbert MurrayGilbert Brent Murray was president of the California Forestry Association, a timber industry lobbying group. He was killed via a mailed bomb by "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski in 1995. The bomb was addressed to the CFA's previous president, Bill Dennison.-External links:...
, president of the timber industry lobbying group California Forestry Association, by a mail bomb addressed to previous president William Dennison, who had retired.
In all, 16 bombs—which injured 23 people and killed three—were attributed to Kaczynski. While the devices varied widely through the years, all but the first few contained the initials "FC". Inside his bombs, certain parts carried the inscription "FC", which Kaczynski later asserted stood for "Freedom Club". Latent fingerprints on some of the devices did not match the fingerprints found on letters attributed to Kaczynski. As stated in the FBI affidavit:
One of Kaczynski's tactics was leaving false clues in every bomb. He would make them hard to find so as to purposely mislead investigators into thinking they had a clue. The first clue was a metal plate stamped with the initials "FC" hidden somewhere (usually in the pipe end cap) in every bomb. One false clue he left was a note in a bomb that did not detonate which reads "Wu—It works! I told you it would—RV". A more obvious clue was the
Eugene O'NeillEugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
$1 stamps used to send his boxes. One of his bombs was sent embedded in a copy of
Sloan WilsonSloan Wilson was an American author.-Reporter:Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, Wilson graduated from Harvard University in 1942. He served in World War II, serving in the United States Coast Guard, commanding a naval trawler on the Greenland patrol and an army supply ship in the Pacific Ocean.After...
’s novel
Ice Brothers.
The FBI theorized that Kaczynski had a theme of nature, trees and wood in his crimes. He often included bits of tree branch and bark in his bombs. Targets selected included Percy Wood, Professor Leroy Wood Bearson and Thomas Mosser. Crime writer Robert Graysmith noted "In the Unabomber's case a large factor was his obsession with wood."
List of bombings
| Year |
Date |
Location |
Victims |
Injuries |
| 1978 |
May 25–26 |
Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
, Evanston, Illinois |
Terry Marker, campus police officer |
minor |
| 1979 |
May 9 |
Northwestern University |
John Harris, graduate student |
slight |
| November 15 |
Chicago, Illinois |
12 American AirlinesAmerican Airlines, Inc. is the world's fourth-largest airline in passenger miles transported and operating revenues. American Airlines is a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas adjacent to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...
passengers |
smoke inhalation Smoke inhalation is the primary cause of death in victims of indoor fires.Smoke inhalation injury refers to injury due to inhalation or exposure to hot gaseous products of combustion. This can cause serious respiratory complications....
|
| 1980 |
June 10 |
Chicago |
Percy Wood, United AirlinesUnited Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees (which includes the entire holding company United Continental...
President |
cuts and burns |
| 1981 |
October 8 |
University of UtahThe University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
, Salt Lake City, Utah |
none—bomb defused |
|
| 1982 |
May 5 |
Vanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
, Nashville, Tennessee |
Janet Smith, university secretary |
severe injury to hands requiring extensive rehabilitative treatment |
| July 2 |
University of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, California |
Diogenes Angelakos Diogenes James Angelakos was the director for 20 years of the Electronics Research Laboratory and a professor emeritus of electronic engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He is credited with building up the research group into one the university's biggest research labs...
, professor |
right hand and face; near complete recovery |
| 1985 |
May 15 |
University of California, Berkeley |
John Hauser, graduate student |
partial loss of vision in left eye, loss of four fingers on right hand, severed artery in arm requiring life saving surgery. |
| June 13 |
Auburn, Washington |
none—bomb defused |
|
| November 15 |
Ann Arbor, Michigan |
James V. McConnell James V. McConnell was an American biologist and animal psychologist. He is most known for his research on learning and memory transfer in planarians conducted in the 1950s and 1960s....
and Nicklaus Suino |
McConnell: hearing loss; Suino: shrapnel wounds |
| December 11 |
Sacramento, California |
Hugh Scrutton, computer rental store owner |
first fatality |
| 1987 |
February 20 |
Salt Lake City, Utah |
Gary Wright, computer store owner |
Severe nerve damage to left arm, reconstructive surgery required. |
| 1993 |
June 22 |
Tiburon, California |
Charles Epstein Charles Joseph Epstein of Tiburon, California, was a geneticist who was severely injured in 1993 when he became a victim of a mail bomb attack by the Unabomber.He died of pancreatic cancer.-References:...
, University of California geneticist |
destroyed both eardrums, lost parts of three fingers |
| June 24 |
Yale UniversityYale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, New Haven, Connecticut |
David Gelernter David Hillel Gelernter is a professor of computer science at Yale University. In the 1980s, he made seminal contributions to the field of parallel computation, specifically the tuple space coordination model, as embodied by the Linda programming system...
, computer science professor |
right hand and right eye |
| 1994 |
December 10 |
North Caldwell, New Jersey |
Thomas J. Mosser, advertising executive |
second fatality |
| 1995 |
April 24 |
Sacramento, California |
Gilbert P. Murray Gilbert Brent Murray was president of the California Forestry Association, a timber industry lobbying group. He was killed via a mailed bomb by "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski in 1995. The bomb was addressed to the CFA's previous president, Bill Dennison.-External links:...
, timber industry lobbyist |
third fatality |
| References: |
Manifesto
In 1995, Kaczynski mailed several letters, including some to his former victims and others to major media outlets, outlining his goals and demanding that his 50-plus page, 35,000-word essay
Industrial Society and Its Future, abbreviated to "Unabomber Manifesto" by the FBI, be printed verbatim by a major newspaper or journal. He stated that if this demand was met, he would then end his bombing campaign. The document was a densely written manifesto that called for a worldwide revolution against the effects of modern society's "industrial-technological system." There was a great deal of controversy as to whether the document should be published. A further letter threatening to kill more people was sent, and the
United States Department of JusticeThe United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
, along with FBI Director
Louis FreehLouis Joseph Freeh was the 5th Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, serving from September 1993 to June 2001....
and Attorney General
Janet RenoJanet Wood Reno is a former Attorney General of the United States . She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11...
, recommended publication out of concern for public safety and in hopes that a reader could identify the author.
Bob GuccioneBob Guccione was the founder and publisher of the adult magazine Penthouse. He resigned from his publisher position in November 2003.-Early life:...
of
PenthousePenthouse, a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione, combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore. Penthouse is owned by FriendFinder Network. formerly known as General Media, Inc. whose parent company was Penthouse International...
volunteered to publish it, but Kaczynski replied that, since
Penthouse was less "respectable" than the other publications, he would in that case "reserve the right to plant one (and only one) bomb intended to kill, after our manuscript has been published." The pamphlet was finally published by
The New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and
The Washington PostThe Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
on September 19, 1995.
Penthouse never published it.
Throughout the manuscript, produced on a typewriter without the capacity for italics, Kaczynski capitalizes entire words in order to show emphasis. He always refers to himself as either "we" or "FC" (Freedom Club), though there is no evidence that he worked with others. Donald Foster, who analyzed the writing at the request of Kaczynski's defense, notes that the manuscript contains instances of irregular spelling and hyphenation, as well as other consistent linguistic idiosyncrasies (which led him to conclude that it was indeed Kaczynski who wrote it).
Industrial Society and Its Future begins with Kaczynski's assertion that "the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." The first sections of the text are devoted to discussion of the psychology of various groups—primarily leftists and
scientistA scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
s (groups that he criticizes strongly)—and of the psychological consequences for individual life within the "industrial-technological system", which has robbed contemporary humans of their autonomy, diminished their rapport with nature, and forced them "to behave in ways that are increasingly remote from the natural pattern of human behavior." The later sections speculate about the future evolution of this system, arguing that it will inevitably lead to the end of human freedom, call for a "revolution against technology", and attempt to indicate how that might be accomplished.
Political and social views
In his opening and closing sections, Kaczynski addresses
LeftismIn politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
as a movement and analyzes the psychology of leftists, arguing that they are "
True BelieversThe True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements is a 1951 social psychology book by Eric Hoffer which discusses the psychological causes of fanaticism.-Thesis and background:...
in
Eric HofferEric Hoffer was an American social writer. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983...
's sense" who participate in a powerful social movement to compensate for their lack of personal power. He further claims that leftism as a movement is led by a particular minority of leftists whom he calls "oversocialized":
He goes on to explain how the nature of leftism is determined by the psychological consequences of "oversocialization." Kaczynski "attribute[s] the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier conditions." He further specifies the primary cause of a long list of social and psychological problems in modern society as the disruption of the "
power processThe power process is a theoretical process necessary to fulfil one's psychological need to exert power to fulfil goals, discussed in Theodore Kaczynski's manifesto, Industrial Society and Its Future...
", which he defines as having four elements:
Kaczynski goes on to claim that "[i]n modern industrial society natural human drives tend to be pushed into the first and third groups, and the second group tends to consist increasingly of artificially created drives." Among these drives are "surrogate activities", activities "directed toward an artificial goal that people set up for themselves merely in order to have some goal to work toward, or let us say, merely for the sake of the 'fulfillment' that they get from pursuing the goal". He argues that these surrogate activities are not as satisfactory as the attainment of "real goals" for "many, if not most people".
He claims that scientific research is a surrogate activity for scientists, and that for this reason "science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research."
Perceived control methods
As mentioned above, the result of the "disruption of the power process" is the primary cause of various maladies in society (e.g. crime, depression, etc.). Kaczynski maintains that rather than recognizing that humans currently live in "conditions that make them terribly unhappy," "the system" (i.e. industrial society) develops ways of controlling human responses to the overly stressful environment in which they find themselves.
The following are current examples (according to Kaczynski) of this trend:
Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy, then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction? It is already happening to some extent in our own society. It is well known that the rate of clinical depression had been greatly increasing in recent decades. We believe that this is due to disruption of the power process...
The entertainment industry serves as an important psychological tool of the system, possibly even when it is dishing out large amounts of sex and violence. Entertainment provides modern man
with an essential means of escape. While absorbed in television, videos, etc., he can forget stress, anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction.
Sylvan Learning CentersSylvan Learning consists of franchised and corporate supplemental learning centers which provide personalized instruction in reading, writing, mathematics, study skills, homework support, and test preparation for college entrance and state exams...
, for example, have had great success in motivating children to study, and psychological techniques are also used with more or less success in many conventional schools. "Parenting" techniques that are taught to parents are designed to make children accept fundamental values of the system and behave in ways that the system finds desirable.
Historical views and predictions
In the last sections of the manifesto, Kaczynski carefully defines what he means by freedom and provides an argument that it would "be hopelessly difficult [...] to reform the industrial system in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing our sphere of freedom". He says that "in spite of all its technical advances relating to human behavior the system to date has not been impressively successful in controlling human beings" and predicts that "[i]f the system succeeds in acquiring sufficient control over human behavior quickly enough, it will probably survive. Otherwise it will break down" and that "the issue will most likely be resolved within the next several decades, say 40 to 100 years." He gives various
dystopianA dystopia is the idea of a society in a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian, as characterized in books like Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four...
possibilities for the type of society which would evolve in the former case. He claims that revolution, unlike reform, is possible, and calls on sympathetic readers to initiate such revolution using two strategies: to "heighten the social stresses within the system so as to increase the likelihood that it will break down" and to "develop and propagate an ideology that opposes technology". He gives various tactical recommendations, including avoiding the assumption of political power, avoiding all collaboration with leftists, and supporting free trade agreements in order to bind the world economy into a more fragile, unified whole.
He concludes by noting that his manifesto has "portrayed leftism in its modern form as a phenomenon peculiar to our time and as a symptom of the disruption of the power process" but that he is "not in a position to assert confidently that no such movements have existed prior to modern leftism" and says that "[t]his is a significant question to which historians ought to give their attention."
Related works and influences
As a critique of technological society, the manifesto echoed contemporary critics of technology and industrialization, such as
John ZerzanJohn Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
,
Herbert MarcuseHerbert Marcuse was a German Jewish philosopher, sociologist and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory...
,
Fredy PerlmanFredy Perlman was an author, publisher and activist. His most popular work, the book Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, details the rise of state domination with a retelling of history through the Hobbesian metaphor of the Leviathan. The book remains a major source of inspiration for...
,
Jacques EllulJacques Ellul was a French philosopher, law professor, sociologist, lay theologian, and Christian anarchist. He wrote several books about the "technological society" and the interaction between Christianity and politics....
(whose book
The Technological Society was referenced in an unnamed Kaczynski essay, written in 1971),
Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...
, and
Neil PostmanNeil Postman was an American author, media theorist and cultural critic, who is best known by the general public for his 1985 book about television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. For more than forty years, he was associated with New York University...
. Its idea of the "disruption of the power process" similarly echoed social critics emphasizing the lack of meaningful work as a primary cause of social problems, including Mumford,
Paul GoodmanPaul Goodman was an American sociologist, poet, writer, anarchist, and public intellectual. Goodman is now mainly remembered as the author of Growing Up Absurd and an activist on the pacifist Left in the 1960s and an inspiration to that era's student movement...
, and
Eric HofferEric Hoffer was an American social writer. He was the author of ten books and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983...
(whom Kaczynski explicitly references). The general theme was also addressed by
Aldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
in his dystopian novel
Brave New WorldBrave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
, which Kaczynski references. The ideas of "oversocialization" and "surrogate activities" recall Freud's
Civilization and Its DiscontentsCivilization and Its Discontents is a book by Sigmund Freud. Written in 1929, and first published in German in 1930 as Das Unbehagen in der Kultur , it is considered one of Freud's most important and widely read works....
and his theories of
rationalizationIn psychology and logic, rationalization is an unconscious defense mechanism in which perceived controversial behaviors or feelings are logically justified and explained in a rational or logical manner in order to avoid any true explanation and made consciously tolerable by plausible means...
and
sublimationIn psychology, sublimation is a mature type of defence mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are consciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behaviour, possibly converting the initial impulse in the long term...
(the latter term being used three times in the manifesto, twice in quotes, to describe surrogate activities).
In a
Wired article on the dangers of technology, titled "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us,"
Bill JoyWilliam Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003...
, cofounder of
Sun MicrosystemsSun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...
, quoted Ray Kurzweil's
The Age of Spiritual Machines, which quoted a passage by Kaczynski on types of society that might develop if human labor were entirely replaced by artificial intelligence. Joy wrote that, although Kaczynski's actions were "murderous, and, in my view, criminally insane", that "as difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in this single passage. I felt compelled to confront it."
Anders Behring BreivikAnders Behring Breivik is a Norwegian terrorist, paranoid schizophrenic and the confessed perpetrator of the Norway attacks on 22 July 2011: the bombing of government buildings in Oslo that resulted in eight deaths, and the mass shooting at a camp of the Workers' Youth League of the Labour Party...
, the
NorwegianNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
self-admitted perpetrator of the
July 22, 2011 bombing and massacre in NorwayThe 2011 Norway attacks were two sequential terrorist attacks against the government, the civilian population and a summer camp in Norway on 22 July 2011....
, wrote a manifesto in which large chunks of text were copied and pasted from the manifesto of Kaczynski, with certain terms substituted (e.g. replacing "leftists" with "cultural Marxists" and "
multiculturalistMulticulturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
s").
Search
Before the publication of the manifesto, Theodore Kaczynski's brother,
David KaczynskiDavid Kaczynski is the Executive Director of New Yorkers For Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and the younger brother of the "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski.-Biography:...
, was encouraged by his wife Linda to follow up on suspicions that Ted was the Unabomber. David Kaczynski was at first dismissive, but progressively began to take the likelihood more seriously after reading the manifesto a week after it was published in September 1995. David Kaczynski browsed through old family papers and found letters dating back to the 1970s written by Ted and sent to newspapers protesting the abuses of technology and which contained phrasing similar to what was found in the Unabomber Manifesto.
Prior to the publishing of the manifesto, the FBI held numerous press conferences enlisting the help of the public in identifying the Unabomber. They were convinced that the bomber was from the Chicago area (where he began his bombings), had worked or had some connection in Salt Lake City, and by the 1990s was associated with the
San Francisco Bay AreaThe San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
. This geographical information, as well as the wording in excerpts from the manifesto that were released prior to the entire manifesto being published, was what had persuaded David Kaczynski's wife, Linda, to urge her husband to read the manifesto.
After the manifesto was published, the FBI received over a thousand calls a day for months in response to the offer of a $1 million reward for information leading to the identity of the Unabomber. There were also large numbers of letters mailed to the UNABOM Task Force that purported to be from the Unabomber, and thousands of suspect leads were sifted through. While the FBI was occupied with new leads, David Kaczynski first hired private investigator Susan Swanson in Chicago to investigate Ted's activities discreetly. The Kaczynski brothers had become estranged in 1990, and David had not seen Ted for ten years. David later hired Washington, D.C. attorney Tony Bisceglie to organize evidence acquired by Swanson and make contact with the FBI, given the likely difficulty in attracting the FBI's attention. He wanted to protect his brother from the danger of an FBI raid, like
Ruby RidgeRuby Ridge was the site of a violent confrontation and siege in northern Idaho in 1992. It involved Randy Weaver, his family, Weaver's friend Kevin Harris, and agents of the United States Marshals Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation...
or the
Waco SiegeThe Waco siege began on February 28, 1993, and ended violently 50 days later on April 19. The siege began when the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted to execute a search warrant at the Branch Davidian ranch at Mount Carmel, a property located east-northeast of Waco,...
, since he knew Ted would not take kindly to being contacted by the FBI and would likely react irrationally or violently.
In early 1996, former FBI hostage negotiator and criminal profiler Clinton R. Van Zandt was contacted by an investigator working with Tony Bisceglie. Bisceglie asked Van Zandt to compare the manifesto to typewritten copies of handwritten letters David had received from his brother. Van Zandt's initial analysis determined that there was better than a 60 percent chance that the same person had written the letters as well as the manifesto, which had been in public circulation for half a year. Van Zandt's second analytical team determined an even higher likelihood that the letters and the manifesto were the product of the same author. He recommended that Bisceglie's client immediately contact the FBI.
In February 1996, Bisceglie provided a copy of the 1971 essay written by Ted Kaczynski to the FBI. At the UNABOM Task Force headquarters in San Francisco, Supervisory Special Agent Joel Moss immediately recognized similarities in the writings. Linguistic analysis determined that the author of the essay papers and the manifesto were almost certainly the same. When combined with facts gleaned from the bombings and Kaczynski’s life, that analysis provided the basis for a
search warrantA search warrant is a court order issued by a Magistrate, judge or Supreme Court Official that authorizes law enforcement officers to conduct a search of a person or location for evidence of a crime and to confiscate evidence if it is found....
.
David Kaczynski had attempted to remain anonymous at the outset but he was swiftly identified, and within a few days, an FBI agent team was dispatched to interview David and his wife with their attorney in Washington, D.C. At this and subsequent meetings with the team, David provided letters written by his brother in their original envelopes, so the use of postmark dates enabled the enhancement of the timeline of Ted Kaczynski's activities being developed by the Task Force. David developed a respectful relationship with the primary Task Force behavioral analyst, Special Agent Kathleen M. Puckett, with whom he met many times in Washington, D.C., Texas, Chicago, and
Schenectady, New YorkSchenectady is a city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 66,135...
, over the nearly two months before the federal search warrant was served on Theodore Kaczynski's cabin.
David Kaczynski had once admired and emulated his older brother, but had later decided to leave the
survivalistSurvivalism is a movement of individuals or groups who are actively preparing for future possible disruptions in local, regional, national, or international social or political order...
lifestyle behind. He had received assurances from the FBI that he would remain anonymous and that his brother would not learn who had turned him in, but his identity was leaked to
CBS NewsCBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
in early April 1996. CBS anchorman
Dan RatherDaniel Irvin "Dan" Rather, Jr. is an American journalist and the former news anchor for the CBS Evening News. He is now managing editor and anchor of the television news magazine Dan Rather Reports on the cable channel HDNet. Rather was anchor of the CBS Evening News for 24 years, from March 9,...
called FBI director
Louis FreehLouis Joseph Freeh was the 5th Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, serving from September 1993 to June 2001....
, who requested 24 hours before CBS broke the story on the evening news. The FBI scrambled to finish the search warrant and have it issued by a federal judge in Montana; afterwards, an internal leak investigation was conducted by the FBI, but the source of the leak was never identified.
Paragraphs 204 and 205 of the FBI search and arrest warrant for Ted Kaczynski stated that "experts"—many of them academics consulted by the FBI—believed the manifesto had been written by "another individual, not Theodore Kaczynski". As stated in the affidavit, only a handful of people believed Theodore Kaczynski was the Unabomber before the search warrant revealed the cornucopia of evidence in Kaczynski's isolated cabin. The search warrant affidavit written by FBI Inspector Terry D. Turchie reflects this conflict, and is striking evidence of the opposition to Turchie and his small cadre of FBI agents that included Moss and Puckett—who were convinced Theodore Kaczynski was the Unabomber—from the rest of the UNABOM Task Force and the FBI in general:
Arrest
Agents arrested Theodore Kaczynski on April 3, 1996, at his remote cabin outside
Lincoln, MontanaLincoln is a census-designated place in Lewis and Clark County, Montana, United States. The population was 1,100 at the 2000 census. Its elevation is 4536 feet above sea level.Lincoln is part of the Helena Micropolitan Statistical Area....
, where he was found in an unkempt state. Combing his cabin, the investigators found a wealth of bomb components, 40,000 handwritten journal pages that included bomb-making experiments and descriptions of the Unabomber crimes; and one live bomb, ready for mailing. They also found what appeared to be the original typed manuscript of the manifesto. By this point, the Unabomber had been the target of one of the most expensive investigations in the FBI's history.
David donated the reward money, less his expenses, to families of his brother's victims.
After his arrest, Kaczynski was briefly among the several individuals who had been suspected of being the unidentified
Zodiac KillerThe Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer's identity remains unknown. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women...
. Among the links that raised suspicion were the fact that Kaczynski lived in the
San Francisco Bay AreaThe San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...
from 1967 to 1969, the same period that most of the Zodiac's confirmed killings occurred in California, and both being highly intelligent with an interest in bombs and codes. However, he lived in Illinois during most of the killings, and was eliminated as a suspect.
Robert GraysmithRobert Graysmith is an American true crime author. He was working as a political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1969 when the Zodiac Killer case came to light. Graysmith attempted to decode letters written by the killer...
of San Francisco, author of the book
Zodiac in 1986, said the similarities are "fascinating" but undoubtedly purely coincidental.
In 1996, a
docudramaIn film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....
was produced titled "Unabomber: The True Story", featuring actors
Dean StockwellDean Stockwell is an American actor of film and television, with a career spanning over 65 years. As a child actor under contract to MGM he first came to the public's attention in films such as Anchors Aweigh and The Green Years; as a young adult he played a lead role in the 1957 Broadway and...
as Ben Jeffries,
Robert HaysRobert Hays is an American actor and is arguably most well known for his role in the movie Airplane!-Life and career:...
as David Kaczynski and
Tobin BellTobin Bell is an American film and television character actor. After years of work doing stand-ins and background work on films, he got his first major acting job in Mississippi Burning and went on to star in made-for-television films and guest star in television shows throughout the 1990s.Bell...
as Theodore Kaczynski. In this film a determined postal inspector was followed as he tracked down the suspect and also centered on Kaczynski's brother, who played a key role in the investigation.
Court proceedings
Kaczynski's lawyers, headed by Montana federal defender Michael Donahoe, attempted to enter an insanity defense to save Kaczynski's life, but Kaczynski rejected this plea. A court-appointed psychiatrist diagnosed Kaczynski as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, but declared him competent to stand trial. Kaczynski's family said he would psychologically "shut down" when pressured. In the book,
Technological Slavery, Kaczynski recalls two prison psychologists, Dr. James Watterson and Dr. Michael Morrison, who visited him almost every day for a period of four years, who told him that they saw no indication that he suffered from any such serious mental illness, and that the diagnosis of his being paranoid schizophrenic was "ridiculous" and a "political diagnosis." Dr. Morrison made remarks to him about psychologists and psychiatrists providing any desired diagnosis if they are well paid for doing so.
A federal grand jury indicted Kaczynski in April 1996 on 10 counts of illegally transporting, mailing, and using bombs. He was also charged with killing Scrutton, Mosser, and Murray. On January 7, 1998, Kaczynski attempted to hang himself. Initially, the government prosecution team indicated that it would seek the death penalty for Kaczynski after it was authorized by United States Attorney General
Janet RenoJanet Wood Reno is a former Attorney General of the United States . She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11...
. David Kaczynski's attorney asked the former FBI agent who made the match between the Unabomber's manifesto and Kaczynski to ask for leniency—he was horrified to think that turning his brother in might result in his brother's death. Eventually, Kaczynski was able to avoid the death penalty by pleading guilty to all the government's charges, on January 22, 1998. Later, Kaczynski attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing it was involuntary. Judge
Garland Ellis Burrell Jr.Garland Ellis Burrell Jr. is a United States federal judge.Born in Los Angeles, California, Burrell was in the U.S. Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, from 1966 to 1968. He received a B.A. from California State University, Los Angeles in 1972, an M.S.W. from Washington University in St. Louis in...
denied his request. The
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth CircuitThe United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
upheld that decision.
The early hunt for the Unabomber in the United States portrayed a perpetrator far different from the eventual suspect. The Unabomber Manifesto consistently uses "we" and "our" throughout, and at one point in 1993 investigators sought an individual whose first name was "Nathan", due to a fragment of a note found in one of the bombs. However, when the case was finally presented to the public, authorities denied that there was ever anyone other than Kaczynski involved in the crimes. Explanations were later presented as to why Kaczynski targeted some of the victims he selected.
On August 10, 2006, Judge Garland Burrell Jr. ordered that personal items seized in 1996 from Kaczynski's Montana cabin should be sold at a "reasonably advertised Internet auction." Items the government considers to be bomb-making materials, such as writings that contain diagrams and "recipes" for bombs, are excluded from the sale. The auctioneer will pay the cost and will keep up to 10% of the sale price, and the rest of the proceeds must be applied to the $15 million in restitution that Burrell ordered Kaczynski to pay his victims.
Included among Kaczynski's holdings to be auctioned are his original writings, journals, correspondences, and other documents allegedly found in his cabin. The judge ordered that all references in those documents that allude to any of his victims must be removed before they are sold. Kaczynski has challenged those ordered redactions in court on
first amendmentThe First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
grounds, arguing that any alteration of his writings is an
unconstitutionalConstitutionality is the condition of acting in accordance with an applicable constitution. Acts that are not in accordance with the rules laid down in the constitution are deemed to be ultra vires.-See also:*ultra vires*Company law*Constitutional law...
violation of his
freedom of speechFreedom of speech in the United States is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and by many state constitutions and state and federal laws, with the exception of obscenity, defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words, as well as harassment, privileged...
.
Prison
Kaczynski is serving a life sentence without the possibility of
paroleParole may have different meanings depending on the field and judiciary system. All of the meanings originated from the French parole . Following its use in late-resurrected Anglo-French chivalric practice, the term became associated with the release of prisoners based on prisoners giving their...
as
Federal Bureau of PrisonsThe Federal Bureau of Prisons is a federal law enforcement agency subdivision of the United States Department of Justice and is responsible for the administration of the federal prison system. The system also handles prisoners who committed acts considered felonies under the District of Columbia's...
register number 04475-046 in
ADX FlorenceThe United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility is a supermax prison for men that is located in unincorporated Fremont County, Colorado, United States, south of Florence. It is unofficially known as ADX Florence, Florence ADMAX, Supermax, or The Alcatraz of the Rockies...
, the federal Administrative Maximum Facility
supermaxSupermax is the name used to describe "control-unit" prisons, or units within prisons, which represent the most secure levels of custody in the prison systems of certain countries...
near Florence, Colorado. When asked if he was afraid of losing his mind in prison, Kaczynski replied:
Kaczynski has been an active writer in prison. The
Labadie CollectionThe Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan is recognized as one of the world’s most complete collections of materials documenting the history of anarchism and other radical movements from the 19th century to the present....
, part of the
University of Michigan's Special Collections LibraryThe University of Michigan University Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is one of the largest university library systems in the United States. The system, consisting of 19 separate libraries in 11 buildings, altogether holds over 9.55 million volumes, with the collection growing at the rate of...
, houses Kaczynski's correspondence from over 400 people since his arrest in April 1996, including carbon copy replies, legal documents, publications, and clippings. The names of most correspondents will be kept sealed until 2049. Kaczynski has also been battling in federal court in northern California over the auction of his journals and other correspondence. On January 10, 2009, the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth CircuitThe United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
in San Francisco rejected Kaczynski's arguments that the government's sale of his writings violates his freedom of expression. His writings, books, and other possessions will be sold online, and the money raised will be sent to several of his victims.
Kaczynski's cabin was removed and stored in a warehouse in an undisclosed location. It was to be destroyed, but was eventually given to Scharlette Holdman, an investigator on Kaczynski's defense team. It is on display at the
NewseumThe Newseum is an interactive museum of news and journalism located at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. The seven-level, museum features 15 theaters and 14 galleries. The Newseum's Berlin Wall Gallery includes the largest display of sections of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany...
in Washington, D.C. as of July 2008. In a three-page handwritten letter to the
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth CircuitThe United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...
, Kaczynski objected to the public exhibition of the cabin, claiming it violated the victim's objection to be publicly connected with the UNABOM case.
In a letter dated October 7, 2005, Kaczynski offered to donate two rare books to the
Melville J. HerskovitsMelville Jean Herskovits was an American anthropologist who firmly established African and African American studies in American academia. The son of Jewish immigrants, he obtained a Bachelor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago in 1923 and obtained his Master's and Ph.D...
Library of African Studies at
Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
's campus in Evanston, Illinois, the location of the first two attacks. The recipient, David Easterbrook, turned the letter over to the university's archives. Northwestern rejected the offer, noting that the library already owned the volumes in English and did not desire duplicates.
David KaczynskiDavid Kaczynski is the Executive Director of New Yorkers For Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and the younger brother of the "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski.-Biography:...
, Theodore's brother, who turned him in to the FBI, has never received a response to the monthly letters he sends to Theodore in prison, as of 2007.
Kaczynski has continued to write while in prison. In 2010, a collection of his essays and a corrected version of the Manifesto were published by
Feral HouseFeral House is a book publisher owned and operated by Adam Parfrey. The publisher itself describes the books it sells as "pure information", and says the topics of the books are "forbidden"....
, under the title
Technological Slavery.
See also
- Anarcho-primitivism
Anarcho-primitivism is an anarchist critique of the origins and progress of civilization. According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence gave rise to social stratification, coercion, and alienation...
, an anarchist movement encompassing many of Kaczynski's views
- CLODO
Committee for Liquidation and Subversion of Computers was a neo-Luddite French anarchist organization, active during the 1980s, that targeted computer companies...
, a 1980s group of neo-Luddite saboteurs from France
- Das Netz
Das Netz is an independent film directed by Lutz Dammbeck and subtitled "The Unabomber, LSD and the Internet". Das Netz premiered in 2003....
, a film about Kaczynski
- Green Anarchy
Green Anarchy was a magazine published by a collective located in Eugene, Oregon. The magazine's focus was primitivism, post-left anarchy, radical environmentalism, African American struggles, anarchist resistance, indigenous resistance, earth and animal liberation, anti-capitalism and supporting...
, an anarchist magazine that published some of Kaczynski's writings, including the Ship of Fools"Ship of Fools" is a short story written by Ted Kaczynski in which various people, representing oppressed groups in American society, squabble about living conditions aboard a ship, in spite of the fact that its course towards the North Pole presents ever-increasing danger. The cabin boy warns of...
short story
- Propaganda by the deed
Propaganda of the deed is a concept that refers to specific political actions meant to be exemplary to others...
, anarchist concept that sees action as being a form of propaganda
- Unabomber for President
Unabomber for President was a political campaign with the overt aim of electing "The Unabomber" as a write-in candidate in the United States presidential election, 1996...
, a political campaign which aimed to elect the Unabomber in the 1996 United States presidential election
- John Zerzan
John Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocate drawing upon the ways of life of prehistoric humans as an inspiration for what a free society should look like...
, an anarcho-primitivist philosopher who defended Kaczynski's writings and was a confidant to him during his trial
External links