| Theodore Kaczynski | |
|---|---|
| Theodore Kaczynski | |
| Born | May 22, 1942 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Penalty | life imprisonment |
| Status | in prison |
| Occupation | mathematician, professor |
| Parents | Theodore Richard Kaczynski, Wanda Theresa Dombek |
Theodore John Kaczynski (born May 22, 1942), known as the Unabomber, is an American mathematician who carried out a campaign of bombings and mail bombings which killed three people and wounded 23. He sent bombs to several universities, airlines, and other targets from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s.[1] Kaczynski sent a letter on April 24, 1995 to The New York Times, promising "to desist from terrorism" if the Times or a similarly respected news journal would publish his manifesto. In his Industrial Society and Its Future (commonly called the "Unabomber Manifesto," described below) he argued that his actions were a necessary (although extreme) tactic by which to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom necessitated by modern technologies requiring large-scale organization.[2]
The Unabomber was the target of one of the most expensive investigations in the FBI's history.[3] Kaczynski's moniker as the Unabomber was derived from his FBI codename. Before his real identity was known, the FBI used the handle "UNABOM" ("UNiversity and Airline BOMber") to refer to his case, which resulted in variants such as Unabomer, Unibomber, when the media started using the name. He was not caught as a result of this investigation, however. His brother recognized the manifesto and turned him in. To avoid the death penalty, Kaczynski entered into a plea agreement, under which he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
Early Life And Mathematical Career
Kaczynski was born in Chicago, Illinois to second-generation Polish Americans Theodore Richard Kaczynski and wife Wanda Theresa Kaczynski.[4] From grades one through four, Kaczynski attended Sherman Elementary School in Chicago. He attended fifth through eighth grade at Evergreen Park Central school. As a result of testing conducted in the fifth grade, it was determined that he could skip the sixth grade and enroll with the seventh grade class. According to various accounts, testing showed him to have an IQ of 167, and by his account, his parents were told he was a genius. Kaczynski described skipping this grade as a pivotal event in his life. He remembers not fitting in with the older children and being subjected to verbal abuse and teasing from them. His mother, Wanda Kaczynski, was so worried by his poor social development that she considered entering him in a study led by Bruno Bettelheim regarding autistic children; he had a fear of people and buildings, and he played beside other children rather than interacting with them. He did however manage to form a bond with one child: a mentally handicapped boy.[5]
He attended high school at Evergreen Park Community High School. He did well academically, but reported some difficulty with mathematics in his sophomore year. He was subsequently placed in a more advanced math class and mastered the material, and then skipped the 11th grade. As a result, he completed his high school education two years early, although this did necessitate a summer school course in English. He was encouraged to apply to Harvard, and was subsequently accepted as a student beginning in the fall of 1958. He was 16 years old. While at Harvard, Kaczynski was taught by the famous logician Willard Quine, scoring at the top of Quine's class with a 98.9% final grade. Also, he participated in a several-year personality study conducted by Dr. Henry A. Murray, an expert on stress interviews.[6]
According to an article by Alston Chase for the June 2000 Atlantic Monthly, students in Murray's study were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student.[7] Instead, they were subjected to the stress test: an extremely stressful and prolonged psychological attack by an anonymous attorney. During the test, students were strapped into a chair and connected to electrodes that monitored their physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a one-way mirror. The "debate" was filmed, and students' expressions of impotent rage were played back to them at various times later in the study. According to Chase, Kaczynski's records from that period suggest that he was emotionally stable at the start of the study. Lawyers for Kaczynski attributed some of his emotional instability and dislike of mind control to his participation in this study.
In 1962, Kaczynski graduated from Harvard. After graduation he attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, earning a master's degree and a Ph.D. in Mathematics. Kaczynski began a research career at Michigan but made few friends. One of his professors at Michigan, George Piranian, said: "It is not enough to say he was smart." He earned his Ph.D. by solving, in less than a year, a math problem that Piranian had been unable to solve. Kaczynski's specialty was a branch of complex analysis known as geometric function theory. "I would guess that maybe 10 or 12 people in the country understood or appreciated it," said Maxwell O. Reade, a retired math professor who served on Kaczynski's dissertation committee. In 1967 Kaczynski received a $100 prize recognizing his Dissertation, entitled 'Boundary Functions', as the school's best in math that year. At Michigan he held a National Science Foundation fellowship. While a graduate student at Michigan, he taught undergraduates for three years and published two articles related to his dissertation in mathematical journals. After he left Michigan, he published four more papers. None of his papers were coauthored.
In the fall of 1967 Kaczynski was hired as an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. Kaczynski's aloofness and reserve made students rate him poorly. In 1969, Kaczynski resigned from his position without explanation, despite pleas from the department staff. Calvin Moore, vice chairman of the department in 1968, 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."
After resigning his position at Berkeley he held no permanent employment. In the summer of 1969, Kaczynski moved from Berkeley, California to the small residence of his parents in Lombard, Illinois. He then moved into a remote cabin he built himself in Lincoln, Montana, where he lived a simple life on very little money, with no electricity and no running water, feeding himself as a hunter-gatherer. Kaczynski also worked odd jobs and received financial support from his family (including purchasing his land and, without their knowledge, funding his bombing campaign). In 1978, he worked very briefly with his father and brother at a foam-rubber factory.
Bombings
)
The first mail bomb was sent in late May 1978 to materials engineering Professor Buckley Crist at Northwestern University. The package was found in a parking lot at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with Crist's return address. The package was 'returned' to Crist. However, when Crist received the package he noticed that it had not been addressed in his own handwriting. Suspicious of a package he had not sent, he contacted campus policeman Terry Marker. Marker opened the package and it exploded. Although the injury was slight, Marker's left hand was sufficiently damaged to send him to Evanston Hospital.
The bomb was made of bits and pieces of metal that could have come from a home workshop. It was based on a piece of metal pipe about an inch in diameter and nine inches long. The bomb contained smokeless explosive powders, and the box and the plugs that sealed the pipe ends were hand crafted of wood. In comparison, most pipe bombs usually use threaded metal ends that can be bought in any large hardware store. Wooden ends do not have the strength to allow a large amount of pressure to build within the pipe. This is partly why the bomb did not cause severe damage. The primitive trigger device 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 immediately 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, would be 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 444, a Boeing 727 flying from Chicago to Washington, D.C. The bomb began smoking and the pilot was forced to make an emergency landing. Many of the passengers were treated for smoke inhalation. Only a faulty timing mechanism prevented the bomb from exploding. Authorities said it had enough firepower to "obliterate the plane."
As bombing an airliner is a federal crime in the United States, the FBI became involved after this incident and came up with the code name UNABOM (UNiversity and Airline BOMber). They also called the suspect the Junkyard Bomber because of the material used to make the bombs. In 1980, chief agent John Douglas working with fellow agents in the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU) issued a psychological profile of the unidentified bomber which described the offender as a man with above-average intelligence with some connections to academics. This profile was later refined to characterize the offender as a neo-luddite holding an academic degree in the hard sciences, but this psychologically based profile was discarded by 1993 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.[8]
The first serious injury occurred in 1985, when John Hauser, a Berkeley graduate student and Captain in the Air Force, lost four fingers and vision in one eye.[9] The bombs were all hand-crafted and were made with some wooden parts.[10] Inside the bombs certain parts carried the inscription "FC" — at one point thought to stand for "Fuck Computers", but later the bomber asserted that it stood for "Freedom Club." A California computer store owner, Hugh Scrutton, 38, was killed by a nail and splinter-loaded bomb lying in his parking lot in 1985. A similar attack against a computer store occurred in Salt Lake City, Utah on February 20, 1987 injuring Gary Wright, whom Ted's brother later befriended. [11]
After a six-year break, Kaczynski struck again in 1993, mailing a bomb to David Gelernter, a computer-science professor at Yale University. Though critically injured, he eventually recovered. Another bomb mailed in the same weekend was sent to the home of geneticist Charles Epstein from UCSF, who lost multiple fingers upon opening it. Kaczynski then called Gelernter's brother, Joel Gelernter, a behavioral geneticist, and threatened "[y]ou are next". (Geneticist Phillip Sharp at MIT also received a threatening letter two years later.)[12] Kaczynski wrote a letter to The New York Times claiming that his "group," called FC, was responsible for the attacks. In 1994 Burson-Marsteller executive Thomas J. Mosser was killed by a mail bomb sent to his North Caldwell, New Jersey home. In another letter to the New York Times Kaczynski claimed that his group FC "blew up Thomas Mosser because [...] Burston-Marsteller [sic] helped Exxon clean up its public image after the Exxon Valdez incident" and, even more than this, because "its business is the development of techniques for manipulating people's attitudes."[13] This was followed by the 1995 murder of Gilbert Murray, president of the timber industry lobbying group California Forestry Association by a mail bomb actually 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". Latent fingerprints on some of the devices did not match the fingerprints found on letters attributed to Kaczynski. As stated in the FBI affidavit:
- "203. Latent fingerprints attributable to devices mailed and/or placed by the UNABOM subject were compared to those found on the letters attributed to Theodore Kaczynski. According to the FBI Laboratory no forensic correlation exists between those samples."[14]
One of Kaczynski's tactics was leaving false clues in every single bomb. He would make them hard to find so as to purposely mislead investigators into thinking they had a clue. First and foremost of the clues was a metal plate stamped with the initials "FC" hidden somewhere (usually in the pipe end cap) in every bomb.[14] Another clue was in a letter to the CIA 'accidentally' revealing that he lived in the Sierra Mountains. In actuality he lived near a mountain range in Montana. The police spent days scouring much of the Sierras. One false clue he left was a note in a bomb that failed to go off that said, "Wu—It works! I told you it would—RV". A more obvious clue was the Eugene O'Neill $1 stamps used to send his boxes. One of his bombs was sent embedded in a copy of Sloan Wilson's novel Ice Brothers.
A hot line -- 1-800-701-BOMB -- was set up by the UNABOM Task Force to take any calls related to the Unabomber investigation. Over a period of 2 years they reportedly answered over 50,000 calls.
| Date | Location | Victim(s) | Injuries |
|---|---|---|---|
| May 25-26, 1978 | Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois | campus police officer Terry Marker | minor |
| May 9, 1979 | Northwestern University | graduate student John Harris | slight |
| November 15, 1979 | Chicago, Illinois | 12 American Airlines passengers | smoke inhalation |
| June 10, 1980 | Chicago, Illinois | United Airlines President Percy Wood | cuts and burns |
| October 8, 1981 | University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah | none - bomb defused | |
| May 5, 1982 | Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee | university secretary Janet Smith | severe injury to hands requiring extensive rehabilitative treatement |
| July 2, 1982 | University of California, Berkeley, California | Professor Diogenes Angelakos | right hand and face; near-complete recovery |
| May 15, 1985 | University of California, Berkeley | graduate student John Hauser | partial loss of vision in left eye, loss of four fingers on right hand |
| June 13, 1985 | Auburn, Washington | none - bomb defused | |
| November 15, 1985 | Ann Arbor, Michigan | two injured | n/a |
| December 11, 1985 | Sacramento, California | computer rental store owner Hugh Scrutton | first fatality |
| February 20, 1987 | Salt Lake City, Utah | computer store owner Gary Wright | injured |
| June 22, 1993 | Tiburon, California | University of California geneticist Charles Epstein | severe injuries |
| June 24, 1993 | Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut | computer science Professor David Gelernter | right hand and right eye |
| December 10, 1994 | North Caldwell, New Jersey | advertising executive Thomas J. Mosser | second death |
| April 24, 1995 | Sacramento, California | timber industry lobbyist Gilbert P. Murray | third and final death |
Manifesto
In 1995, Kaczynski mailed several letters, some to his former victims, outlining his goals and demanding that his 35,000-word paper Industrial Society and Its Future (commonly called the "Unabomber Manifesto") be printed verbatim by a major newspaper or journal; he stated that he would then end his terrorism campaign. There was a great deal of controversy as to whether it should be done. A further letter threatening to kill more people was sent, and the United States Department of Justice recommended publication out of concern for public safety. The pamphlet was then published by the New York Times and the Washington Post on September 19, 1995, with the hope that someone would recognize the writing style. Prior to the Times' decision to publish the manifesto, Bob Guccione of Penthouse 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."[15]
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 he appears to have acted alone.
It has been noted that Kaczynski's writing, while having irregular hyphenations, is virtually free of any spelling or grammatical error, in spite of its production on a manual typewriter without the benefit of a word processor or spell-checker.[16][17]
Summary
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."[18] The first sections of the text are devoted to psychological analyses of various groups—primarily leftists and scientists—and of the psychological consequences for the individual of life within the "industrial-technological system." The later sections speculate about the future evolution of this system, argue 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.
Psychological Analysis
In his opening and closing sections, Kaczynski addresses leftism as a movement and analyzes the psychology of leftists, arguing that they are "True Believers in Eric Hoffer'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":
The moral code of our society is so demanding that no one can think, feel and act in a completely moral way. [...] Some people are so highly socialized that the attempt to think, feel and act morally imposes a severe burden on them. In order to avoid feelings of guilt, they continually have to deceive themselves about their own motives and find moral explanations for feelings and actions that in reality have a non-moral origin. We use the term "oversocialized" to describe such people.[19]
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 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 process," which he defines as having four elements:
The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort, and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone. We call it autonomy and will discuss it later.[20] [...] We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied but only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power process is the process of satisfying the drives of the second group.[21]
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."[22] 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."[23]
Historical Analysis And Call For Revolution
In the last sections of the manifesto, Kaczynski carefully defines what he means by freedom[24] 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."[25] 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 dystopian possibilities for the type of society which would evolve in the former case.[26] 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."[27] 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.[28]
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."[29]
Related Works
As a critique of technological society, the manifesto echoed contemporary critics of technology and industrialization, such as John Zerzan, Herbert Marcuse, Fredy Perlman, Jacques Ellul (whose book The Technological Society, which seems to have been heavily drawn upon in the manifesto, was referenced in an unnamed Kaczynski essay written in 1971, along with The Year 2,000 by Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Wiener),[30] Lewis Mumford, Neil Postman, and Derrick Jensen. 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 Goodman, Eric Hoffer (whom Kaczynski explicitly references),[31] and B. F. Skinner (whose concept of "strengthening processes" is similar).[32] The general theme was also addressed by Aldous Huxley in his dystopian novel Brave New World, which Kaczynski references.[33] The characterization of true power as held in the hands of those who control population technologies is similar to that of James Burnham and other elite theorists. The ideas of "oversocialization" and "surrogate activities" recall Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents and his theories of rationalization and sublimation (the latter term being used three times in the manifesto, twice in quotes, to describe surrogate activities). The possible futures predicted are similar to those predicted by Hugo de Garis.
In a Wired article on the dangers of technology, titled "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us," Bill Joy, cofounder of Sun Microsystems, 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."[34]
Arrest
Before the publication of the Manifesto, Theodore Kaczynski's brother, David Kaczynski, had been prodded by his wife to follow up on suspicions that Theodore was the Unabomber.[35] 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, when helping his mother move, had found letters written to her from Ted, as well as a 67-page essay Ted wrote in 1971 on the evils of technology which contained phrasing that was quite similar to that found in the Unabomber's 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 Area. This geographical information, as well as the wording in excerpts from the Manifesto that were published before the entire Manifesto was 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 was receiving over 1000 calls a day for months in response to the offer of $1 million reward for information leading to the uncovering of the identity of the Unabomber. There were also large numbers of writings mailed to the Unabom Task Force that purported to be from the Unabomber, and thousands of suspect leads had to be gone through. While the FBI sifted through this maelstrom of leads, David Kaczynski first hired a private investigator named Susan Swanson in Chicago to investigate Ted's activities discreetly. The Kaczynski brothers had become estranged in 1990, and David had not even seen Ted for ten years. David later hired a Washington, D.C. attorney, Tony Bisceglie, to organize the evidence and make contact with the FBI, given the likely difficulty in attracting the FBI's attention. David Kaczynski wanted to protect his brother from the danger of an FBI raid à la Ruby Ridge or Waco, since he knew Ted would not take kindly to being contacted by the FBI and would be likely to react irrationally, if not violently.
In early 1996, former FBI hostage negotiator and profiler Clinton R. Van Zandt was contacted by Tony Bisceglie, working for David Kaczynski. Bisceglie asked that Van Zandt make a comparison of the Manifesto to type-written copies of some of the hand-written letters David Kaczynski had received from his brother. Van Zandt's analysis determined that there was a "50/50 chance" that the same person had written the letters as well as the Manifesto, which had been in public circulation for just under half a year. He recommended that Bisceglie's client contact the FBI.
In February 1996, Bisceglie provided a copy of the 1971 essay written by Ted Kaczynski to the FBI. At Unabom Task Force headquarters in San Francisco, Supervisory Special Agent (SSA) Joel Moss immediately recognized similarities in the writings. 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 Unabom Task Force behavioral analyst, Special Agent Kathleen M. Puckett, with whom he met many times in Washington, D.C., Texas, Chicago and Schenectady, New York over the nearly two months before the behaviorally-based federal search warrant was served on Theodore Kaczynski's cabin.
)
Agents arrested Theodore Kaczynski on April 3, 1996, at his remote cabin outside Lincoln, Montana. He was found in a very unkempt state. A live bomb and originals of the Manifesto were found in the cabin, among other irrefutable evidence.
Paragraphs 204 and 205 of the FBI search and arrest warrant for Kaczynski stated that many "experts" - many of them academics consulted by the FBI - believed the Manifesto had been written by "another individual, not Theodore Kaczynski."[14] 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:
- "204. Your affiant is aware that other individuals have conducted analyses of the UNABOM Manuscript __ determined that the Manuscript was written by another individual, not Kaczynski, who had also been a suspect in the investigation.
- "205. Numerous other opinions from experts have been provided as to the identity of the unabomb subject. None of those opinions named Theodore Kaczynski as a possible author."[14]
David had once admired and emulated his elder brother, but had later decided to leave the survivalist lifestyle behind.[36] David had received assurances from the FBI that he would remain anonymous and that in particular his brother would not learn who had turned him in, but his identity was leaked to CBS News in early April 1996. CBS Anchorman Dan Rather called FBI Director Louis Freeh, 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.[36] David donated the reward money, less his expenses, to families of his brother's victims.[36]
In January 1995, Milt Jones, a graduate student in English at Brigham Young University working along with English professor Dallin D. Oaks, noticed that Joseph Conrad's 1907 novel The Secret Agent provided a rationale for the bombing of professors and scientists. After Kaczynski's arrest it was discovered that, like the character known simply as "The Professor" in the novel, Kaczynski had given up a teaching position at a university to pursue a lifestyle as a naturalist. Investigators further learned that Kaczynski grew up with a copy of the book somewhere in his home and had during interrogation admitted to have read it more than a dozen times. He also allegedly had used the pseudonyms "Conrad" or "Konrad" at times when he traveled to distribute his bomb-packages.[37]
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,[38] and declared him competent to stand trial. Kaczynski's family said he would psychologically "shut down" when pressured.[39] On January 7, 1998, Kaczynski attempted to hang himself. Initially the government prosecution team (headed by Robert Cleary of Proskauer Rose LLP, Stephen Freccero of Morrison and Forester LLP and assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Lapham) indicated that it would seek the death penalty for Kaczynski. 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 Burrell denied his request. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. To date, none of the evidence compiled against Kaczynski has been cross-examined in any American court of justice.
The early hunt for the Unabomber in America 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.[40] 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.[35]
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."[41] 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 amendment grounds, arguing that any alteration of his writings is an unconstitutional violation of his freedom of speech.[42]
Life In Prison
Kaczynski is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in ADX Florence, the Federal ADX Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. He is prisoner number 04475-046.[43]
The Labadie Collection, part of the University of Michigan's Special Collection Library, houses Kaczynski's correspondence from over 400 people since his arrest in April 1996, some of his carbon-copied replies, as well as some legal documents, publications, and clippings. The names of most correspondents will be kept sealed until 2049.[44]
He has been active as a writer in prison. A one-paragraph letter by Kaczynski on a book review by István Deák appeared in the New York Review of Books.[45]
In a letter dated October 7, 2005 Kaczynski offered to donate two rare books to the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University's Evanston Campus, which was 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 owns the volumes in English and did not desire duplicates.
As of this date, no recent public communication with Kaczynski has been noted. He has cut off all contact with his family.[35]
His 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.[46]
Popular Culture
Before the September 11, 2001 attacks, Ted Kaczynski stood as an unprecedented figure of terrorism in the United States. He has been portrayed with tones that vary from serious to satirical.
Film
- In the film Good Will Hunting, Sean Maguire (Robin Williams) meets Professor Gerard Lambeau (Stellan Skarsgard) in a bar, wherein they begin an argument about the academic future of Will Hunting (Matt Damon). Lambeau illustrates the insufficiency of his own mathematical prowess compared to Hunting's by first asking Tom the bartender if he's heard of Jonas Salk, then Albert Einstein, the implication being that Hunting's genius may in fact match theirs. When Tom answers yes to both inquiries, Lambeau asks, "What about Gerard Lambeau, ever heard of him?", to which Tom answers no. The argument then becomes heated when Lambeau insists on pushing Hunting towards a career in mathematics despite the ambivalence Hunting has expressed to Maguire. Maguire then says "Hey, Gerry, In the 1960s there was a young man that graduated from the University of Michigan. Did some brilliant work in mathematics. Specifically bounded harmonic functions. Then he went on to Berkeley. He was assistant professor. Showed amazing potential. Then he moved to Montana, and blew the competition away". Lambeau then says "Yeah, so who was he?" Maguire replies, "Ted Kaczynski," and Lambeau says, "Haven't heard of him." Maguire yells across the room to Timmy, "Timmy, who's Ted Kaczynski?" Without missing a beat Timmy answers, "The Unabomber."
- In the 2007 film Shoot 'Em Up, the protagonist Mr. Smith (Clive Owen) states that the reason he can never go to the police for assistance is that he is the Unabomber. When his sidekick Donna (Monica Bellucci) argues that "they caught the Unabomber," Mr. Smith replies with "That's what they think."
- The German film Das Netz explores the actions of the Unabomber in relation to art, technology, and LSD. The film states that Kaczynski was used in the CIA Project MKULTRA and given large doses of LSD.
- In the film Let's go to Prison, John Lyshitski (Dax Shepard) refers to the Unabomber when he is speaking about when Nelson Biederman IV (Will Arnett) will be paroled.
- In the film You've Got Mail, Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) was dismissing the idea that her Internet friend didn't appear because he was the Rooftop Killer, her friend replied "Well, you once suspected Frank as the Unabomber!" To which she says, "Yes, but that was different."
- In the film 2005 remake of Fun with Dick and Jane, Jane Harper (Tea Leoni) tells her husband Dick (Jim Carrey), when asked whether a pair of sunglasses suits his face, replied, "Now you look like the Unabomber".
- In the film America's Sweethearts, the director of the film within the film is said to have purchased the Unabomber's shed from the government and now uses it as his 'weird, twisted, sicko office'.
- In the 2008 film "27 Dresses," James Marsden's character comments on Katherine Heigl's character's handwriting, calling it "very Unabomber."
Television
- In Season 21, Episode 17 of Saturday Night Live, a skit is performed in which Ted Kaczynski (Will Ferrell) is allowed to attend his class reunion escorted by two FBI agents. His classmates seem unaware of the fact that he is the Unabomber.
- In Season 1, Episode 1 of The Upright Citizens Brigade, Ted Kaczynski (Matt Besser) develops a meaningful friendship with a Girl Scout and learns many valuable life lessons.
- Phil Laak, a well known professional poker player, is often referred to as "The Unabomber" because of the clothing he used in some of the earlier poker shows he appeared in.
- Joe from NewsRadio on several occasions makes mention of the Unabomber and on a few occasions claims to be the Unabomber.
- In an episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Don Cragen (Dann Florek) comments how a sketch description of an alleged rapist looks like "The Unabomber". Later in the episode a woman in a nail salon makes a similar comment ("Isn't that the Unabomber?").
- In a Season 1 episode of Veronica Mars, "Weapons of Class Destruction", Veronica refers to a suspected bomb threat as "teen Kaczynski".
- In a Season 7 episode of King of the Hill, Peggy holds a book club meeting at her house, where one guest's appearance is clearly reminiscent of the Unabomber forensic sketch.
- The episode Empty Planet of Criminal Minds features a killer similar to the Unabomber. He is also referred to a few times in the show.
- In an episode of Cowboy Bebop, the antagonist is a terrorist who is referred to as the "Teddy Bomber", who protests the materialism of modern culture by placing bombs shaped like teddy bears in large buildings.
- The Season 8 episode of Law & Order entitled "Disappeared" is based on the Ted Kaczynski case.
- In the television show Heroes, there is a character with explosive powers named Ted Sprague who was named for the Unabomber.
- in an episode of the fbi files on discovery channel
- Before he wrestled as Kane in the WWE. Glenn Jacobs at one time early in his career wrestled as the "Unabomb"
- Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon includes a character who was maimed by a criminal known as the "Digibomber" and another character who was briefly a suspect in the case.
- In the 2008 novel A Person of Interest by Susan Choi, an aging Asian-American mathematics professor is caught up in the investigation into the identify of the "Brain Bomber", who turns out to be almost exactly like Ted Kaczynski.[47]
- Kaczynski appears in Stephen Colbert's satirical book, I Am America (And So Can You!) as a lesson that presents intelligence as the root of all evil.
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