Ted Kaczynski

Theodore John Kaczynski was born on May 22, 1942, in Chicago, Illinois, to working-class, second-generation Polish Americans, Wanda Theresa (née Dombek) and Theodore Richard Kaczynski,[6] a sausage maker.[7] His parents told his younger brother, David Kaczynski, that Ted had been a happy baby until severe hives forced him into hospital isolation with limited contact with others, after which he "showed little emotion for months".[8] Wanda recalled Ted recoiling from a picture of himself as an infant being held down by physicians examining his hives. She said he showed sympathy to animals who were in cages or otherwise helpless, which she speculated stemmed from his experience in hospital isolation.[9]

From first to fourth grade, Kaczynski attended Sherman Elementary School in Chicago, where administrators described him as "healthy" and "well-adjusted".[10] In 1952, three years after David was born, the family moved to southwest suburban Evergreen Park, Illinois; Ted transferred to Evergreen Park Central Junior High School. After testing scored his IQ at 167,[11] he skipped the sixth grade. Kaczynski later described this as a pivotal event: previously he had socialized with his peers and was even a leader, but after skipping ahead he felt he did not fit in with the older children and was bullied.[12]

Neighbors in Evergreen Park later described the Kaczynski family as "civic-minded folks", with one stating that the parents "sacrificed everything they had for their children".[8] Both Ted and David were intelligent, but Ted stood out in particular. One neighbor said she had "never known anyone who had a brain like he did",[13] while another said that Ted was "strictly a loner" who "didn't play ... an old man before his time."[8] His mother recalled Ted as a shy child who would become unresponsive if pressured into a social situation.[14] At one point she was so worried about Ted's social development that she considered entering him in a study for autistic children led by Bruno Bettelheim. She decided against it after observing Bettelheim's abrupt and cold manner.[15]

In 1990, Ted's father Theodore, suffering from terminal cancer, committed suicide.[16]

Kaczynski attended Evergreen Park Community High School where he excelled academically. He played the trombone in the marching band and was a member of the mathematics, biology, coin, and German clubs but was regarded as an outsider by his classmates.[17][18] In 1996, a former classmate said: "He was never really seen as a person, as an individual personality ... He was always regarded as a walking brain, so to speak."[8] During this period, Kaczynski became intensely interested in mathematics, spending hours studying and solving advanced problems. He became associated with a group of likeminded boys interested in science and mathematics, known as the "briefcase boys" for their penchant for carrying briefcases.[18] One member of this group recalled Kaczynski as "the smartest kid in the class ... just quiet and shy until you got to know him. Once he knew you, he could talk and talk."[8]

Throughout high school, Kaczynski was ahead of his classmates academically. Placed in a more advanced mathematics class, he soon mastered the material. He skipped the eleventh grade, and by attending summer school he graduated at age 15. He was one of his school's five National Merit finalists, and was encouraged to apply to Harvard College.[17] He entered Harvard on a scholarship in 1958 at the age of 16.[19] A classmate later said that Kaczynski was emotionally unprepared: "They packed him up and sent him to Harvard before he was ready ... He didn't even have a driver's license."[8]

During his first year at Harvard, Kaczynski lived at 8 Prescott Street, which was designed to accommodate the youngest, most precocious freshmen in a small, intimate living space. For the next three years he lived at Eliot House. One of his suitemates there recalled that he avoided contact with others and "would just rush through the suite, go into his room, and slam the door." Another said Kaczynski was reserved, but regarded him as a genius: "It's just an opinion – but Ted was brilliant." Other students stated Kaczynski was less socially averse than these descriptions imply; an Eliot House resident who dined with Kaczynski at times called him "very quiet, but personable ... He would enter into the discussions maybe a little less so than most [but] he was certainly friendly."[20]

Kaczynski earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics from Harvard in 1962.[21][22] He finished with a 3.12 GPA, but had been expected to perform better.[23]

As a sophomore, Kaczynski participated in a study described by author Alston Chase as a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment" led by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. Subjects were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student, and were asked to write essays detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations. The essays were turned over to an anonymous attorney, who in a later session would confront and belittle the subject – making "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" attacks – using the content of the essays as ammunition, while electrodes monitored the subject's physiological reactions. These encounters were filmed, and subjects' expressions of anger and rage were later played back to them repeatedly.[24] The experiment lasted three years, with someone verbally abusing and humiliating Kaczynski each week.[25][26] Kaczynski spent 200 hours as part of the study.[27]

Kaczynski's lawyers later attributed his hostility towards mind control techniques to his participation in Murray's study.[24] Some sources have suggested that Murray's experiments were part of Project MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency's research into mind control.[28][29][30] Chase[31][32] and others[33][34] have also suggested that this experience may have motivated Kaczynski's criminal activities.

Kaczynski as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley in 1967

In 1962, Kaczynski enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he earned his master's and doctoral degrees in mathematics in 1964 and 1967, respectively. Michigan was not his first choice for postgraduate education; he had also applied to the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago, both of which accepted him but offered him no teaching position or financial aid. Michigan offered him an annual grant of $2,310 (equivalent to $19,343 in 2018) and a teaching post.[23]

At the University of Michigan, Kaczynski specialized in complex analysis, specifically geometric function theory. His intellect and drive impressed his professors. "He was an unusual person. He was not like the other graduate students. He was much more focused about his work. He had a drive to discover mathematical truth," said professor Peter Duren. "It is not enough to say he was smart," said George Piranian, another of his Michigan mathematics professors.[35] At Michigan, Kaczynski earned 5 Bs and 12 As in his 18 courses. However, in 2006, he said his "memories of the University of Michigan are NOT pleasant ... the fact that I not only passed my courses (except one physics course) but got quite a few As, shows how wretchedly low the standards were at Michigan."[23]

In 1967, Kaczynski's dissertation Boundary Functions[36] won the Sumner B. Myers Prize for Michigan's best mathematics dissertation of the year.[8] Allen Shields, his doctoral advisor, called it "the best I have ever directed",[23] and Maxwell Reade, a member of his dissertation committee, said "I would guess that maybe 10 or 12 men in the country understood or appreciated it."[35][8] Kaczynski published two journal articles related to his dissertation, and three more after leaving Michigan.[36][37]

In late 1967, the 25-year-old Kaczynski became the youngest assistant professor of mathematics in the history of University of California, Berkeley up to that time, where he taught undergraduate courses in geometry and calculus.[38] His teaching evaluations suggest he was not well-liked by his students: he seemed uncomfortable teaching, taught straight from the textbook and refused to answer questions.[8] Without any explanation, Kaczynski resigned on June 30, 1969.[39] At the time, the chairman of the mathematics department, J. W. Addison, called this a "sudden and unexpected" resignation.[40][41]

In 1996, vice chairman at Berkeley, Calvin C. Moore said, given Kaczynski's "impressive" dissertation and publications, he "could have advanced up the ranks and been a senior member of the faculty today."[42] A 1996 Los Angeles Times article stated: "The field that Kaczynski worked in doesn't really exist today [according to mathematicians interviewed about his work]. Most of its theories were proven in the 1960s, when Kaczynski worked in it." According to mathematician Donald Rung, "[Kaczynski] probably would have gone on to some other area if he were to stay in mathematics."[39]

Kaczynski's first mail bomb was directed at Buckley Crist, a professor of materials engineering at Northwestern University. On May 25, 1978, a package bearing Crist's return address was found in a parking lot at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The package was "returned" to Crist who was suspicious because he had not sent the package, so he contacted campus police. Officer Terry Marker opened the package, which exploded and injured his left hand.[49]

Kaczynski had returned to Illinois for the May 1978 bombing, and stayed there for a time to work with his father and brother at a foam rubber factory. However, in August 1978 he was fired by his brother for writing insulting limericks about a female supervisor whom he had briefly courted.[50][51] The female supervisor later recalled Kaczynski as "intelligent, quiet," but remembered little of their acquaintance and firmly denied they had had any romantic relationship.[52]

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. A faulty timing mechanism prevented the bomb from exploding, but it released smoke, which forced an emergency landing. Authorities said it had enough power to "obliterate the plane" had it exploded.[49] As bombing an airliner is a federal crime, the Federal Bureau of Investigation became involved, designating the case UNABOM for University and Airline Bomber.

Kaczynski left false clues in every bomb, which he made hard to find to make them believable. The first clue was a metal plate stamped with the initials FC hidden somewhere (usually in the pipe end cap) in every bomb.[48] Another clue included a note left in a bomb that did not detonate; it read "Wu—It works! I told you it would—RV".[53] Another clue was the Eugene O'Neill $1 stamps used to send his boxes.[54] He sent one bomb embedded in a copy of Sloan Wilson's novel Ice Brothers.[49] 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, and targets selected included Percy Wood and Professor Leroy Wood. Crime writer Robert Graysmith noted that his "obsession with wood" was "a large factor."[55]

The first serious injury occurred in 1985, when John Hauser, a graduate student and captain in the United States Air Force, lost four fingers and vision in one eye.[56] The bomb, like others of Kaczynski's, was handcrafted and made with wooden parts.[57]

Hugh Scrutton, a 38-year-old Sacramento, 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, Utah, 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.[lower-alpha 2]

In 1993, after a six-year break, Kaczynski mailed a bomb to David Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale University. Though critically injured, Gelernter recovered. In the same weekend, Kaczynski mailed a bomb to the home of Charles Epstein from the University of California, San Francisco, who lost several fingers upon opening it. Kaczynski then called Gelernter's brother, Joel Gelernter, a behavioral geneticist, and told him, "You are next."[59] Geneticist Phillip Sharp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received a threatening letter two years later.[60]

In 1994, Burson-Marsteller executive Thomas J. Mosser was killed by a mail bomb sent to his home in North Caldwell, New Jersey. In another letter to The New York Times, Kaczynski said he "blew up Thomas Mosser because ... Burston-Marsteller helped Exxon clean up its public image after the Exxon Valdez incident" and, more importantly, because "Its business is the development of techniques for manipulating people's attitudes."[61] This was followed by the 1995 murder of Gilbert Brent Murray, president of the timber industry lobbying group California Forestry Association, by a mail bomb addressed to previous president William Dennison, who had retired.[60]

Kaczynski wrote the document on a typewriter (therefore without italics); he capitalized entire words to show emphasis. He always referred to himself as either "we" or "FC" ("Freedom Club"), though there is no evidence that he worked with others. Academic Donald Wayne Foster analyzed the writing at the request of Kaczynski's defense team, and he noted that it contains irregular spelling and hyphenation and other linguistic idiosyncrasies, which led him to conclude that Kaczynski was its author.[72]

Industrial Society and Its Future begins with Kaczynski's assertion: "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."[73][74] He writes that technology has had a destabilizing effect on society, has made life unfulfilling, and has caused widespread psychological suffering.[75] He argues that most people spend their time engaged in useless pursuits because of technological advances; he calls these "surrogate activities" wherein people strive toward artificial goals, including scientific work, consumption of entertainment, and following sports teams.[75] He predicts that further technological advances will lead to extensive human genetic engineering and that human beings will be adjusted to meet the needs of the social systems, rather than vice versa.[75] He believes that technological progress can be stopped, unlike people who understand technology's negative effects yet passively accept it as inevitable.[76] He calls for a return to "wild nature."[75]

Kaczynski argues that the erosion of human freedom is a natural product of an industrial society because "the system has to regulate human behavior closely in order to function", and that reform of the system is impossible because "changes large enough to make a lasting difference in favor of freedom would not be initiated because it would be realized that they would gravely disrupt the system".[77] However, he states that the system has not yet fully achieved "control over human behavior" and "is currently engaged in a desperate struggle to overcome certain problems that threaten its survival". He predicts that "if 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".[77] He states that the task of those who oppose industrial society is to promote "social stress and instability" and to propagate "an ideology that opposes technology", one that offers the "counter-ideal" of nature "in order to gain enthusiastic support". A "revolution against technology may be possible" when industrial society is sufficiently unstable.[78]

Throughout the document, Kaczynski addresses left-wing politics as a movement. He defines leftists as "mainly socialists, collectivists, 'politically correct' types, feminists, gay and disability activists, animal rights activists and the like",[79] states that leftism is driven primarily by "feelings of inferiority" and "oversocialization",[75] and derides leftism as "one of the most widespread manifestations of the craziness of our world".[79] He additionally states that "a movement that exalts nature and opposes technology must take a resolutely anti-leftist stance and must avoid all collaboration with leftists", as in his view "leftism is in the long run inconsistent with wild nature, with human freedom and with the elimination of modern technology".[73] He also criticizes conservatives, describing them as "fools" who "whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth."[79]

Alston Chase reported in The Atlantic that the text "was greeted in 1995 by many thoughtful people as a work of genius, or at least profundity, and as quite sane".[80] Chase argued, however, that it "is the work of neither a genius nor a maniac." "Its pessimism over the direction of civilization and its rejection of the modern world are shared especially with the country's most highly educated."[80] UCLA political science professor James Q. Wilson was mentioned in the manifesto; he wrote in The New Yorker that Industrial Society and Its Future was "a carefully reasoned, artfully written paper". "If it is the work of a madman, then the writings of many political philosophers… are scarcely more sane."[81]

David Skrbina, a philosophy professor at the University of Michigan and a former Green Party candidate for governor of Michigan, has written several essays in support of Kaczynski's ideas, one which is titled "A Revolutionary for Our Times".[82][83][84] Paul Kingsnorth, a former deputy-editor of The Ecologist and a co-founder of The Dark Mountain Project, wrote an essay for Orion Magazine in which he described Kaczynski's arguments as "worryingly convincing" and stated that they "may change my life".[85]

Psychiatrist Keith Ablow stated on Fox News that Kaczynski was "reprehensible for murdering and maiming people" but "precisely correct in many of his ideas", and he compared Industrial Society and Its Future to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.[86] Anarcho-primitivist authors such as John Zerzan and John Moore came to Kaczynski's defense while also holding reservations about his actions and ideas.[87][88]

The manifesto echoed contemporary critics of technology and industrialization such as John Zerzan, Jacques Ellul,[89] Rachel Carson, Lewis Mumford, and E. F. Schumacher.[90] 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, and Eric Hoffer.[90] Its general theme was also addressed by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, to which Kaczynski refers in the text.[91] Kaczynski's ideas of "oversocialization" and "surrogate activities" recall Sigmund Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents and its theories of rationalization and sublimation (a term which Kaczynski uses three times to describe "surrogate activities").[92]

Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, wrote that Kaczynski is "clearly a Luddite", but "simply saying this does not dismiss his argument".[93] Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks,[94] published a manifesto and copied large portions from Industrial Society and Its Future, with certain terms substituted (e.g., replacing "leftists" with "cultural Marxists" and "multiculturalists").[95][96][97]

Over twenty years after Kaczynski's imprisonment, his views have inspired online communities of primitivists and neo-Luddites. One explanation for the renewal of interest in his views is the television series Manhunt: Unabomber, which aired in 2017.[98] Kaczynski is also frequently referenced by ecofascists online.[99]

University of Michigan–Dearborn philosophy professor David Skrbina helped to compile Kaczynski's work into the 2010 anthology Technological Slavery, including the original manifesto, letters between Skrbina and Kaczynski, and other essays.[100] Kaczynski updated his 1995 manifesto as Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How to address advances in computers and the Internet. He advocates practicing other types of protest and makes no mention of violence.[101]

After the manifesto was published, the FBI received over a thousand calls a day for months in response to its offer of a $1 million reward for information leading to the identification of the Unabomber. Many letters claiming to be from the Unabomber were also sent to the UNABOM Task Force, and thousands of suspect leads were reviewed. While the FBI was occupied with new leads, Kaczynski's brother David hired private investigator Susan Swanson in Chicago to investigate Ted's activities discreetly.[110] David later hired Washington, D.C. attorney Tony Bisceglie to organize the evidence acquired by Swanson and make contact with the FBI, given the presumed difficulty of attracting the FBI's attention. David wanted to protect his brother from the danger of an FBI raid, such as the Ruby Ridge or the Waco Siege, since he feared a violent outcome from any attempt by the FBI to contact his brother.[111]

In early 1996, former FBI hostage negotiator and criminal profiler Clinton R. Van Zandt was contacted by an investigator working with 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 manifesto, which had been in public circulation for half a year. Van Zandt's second analytical team determined an even higher likelihood. He recommended that Bisceglie's client immediately contact the FBI.[111]

In February 1996, Bisceglie gave a copy of the 1971 essay written by Ted Kaczynski to Molly Flynn at the FBI.[103] She forwarded the essay to the San Francisco-based task force. FBI Profiler James R. Fitzgerald[112][113] recognized similarities in the writings using linguistic analysis and determined that the author of the essays and the manifesto were almost certainly the same. Combined with facts gleaned from the bombings and Kaczynski's life, the analysis provided the basis for a search warrant signed by Terry Turchie, the head of the entire investigation.[103]

David Kaczynski had tried to remain anonymous, but he was soon 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, David provided letters written by his brother in their original envelopes, allowing the FBI task force to use the postmark dates to add more detail to their timeline of Ted's activities. David developed a respectful relationship with behavioral analysis Special Agent Kathleen M. Puckett, whom he met many times in Washington, D.C., Texas, Chicago, and Schenectady, New York, over the nearly two months before the federal search warrant was served on Kaczynski's cabin.[114]

David had once admired and emulated his older brother but later decided to leave the survivalist lifestyle behind.[115] 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 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.[115]

FBI officials were not unanimous in identifying Ted as the author of the manifesto. The search warrant noted that numerous experts believed the manifesto had been written by another individual.[48]

FBI agents arrested Kaczynski on April 3, 1996, at his cabin, where he was found in an unkempt state. A search of his cabin revealed a cache of bomb components, 40,000 hand-written journal pages that included bomb-making experiments, descriptions of the Unabomber crimes and one live bomb, ready for mailing. They also found what appeared to be the original typed manuscript of Industrial Society and Its Future.[116] By this point, the Unabomber had been the target of the most expensive investigation in FBI history.[117][118]

After his capture, theories emerged naming Kaczynski as the Zodiac Killer. Among the links that raised suspicion was the fact that Kaczynski lived in the San Francisco Bay Area from 1967 to 1969 (the same period that most of the Zodiac's confirmed killings occurred in California), that both individuals were highly intelligent with an interest in bombs and codes, and that both wrote letters to newspapers demanding the publication of their works with the threat of continued violence if the demand was not met. However, Kaczynski's whereabouts could not be verified for all of the killings, and the gun and knife murders committed by the Zodiac Killer differ from Kaczynski's bombings, so he was not further pursued as a suspect. Robert Graysmith, author of the 1986 book Zodiac, said the similarities are "fascinating" but purely coincidental.[119]

The early hunt for the Unabomber portrayed a perpetrator far different from the eventual suspect. Industrial Society and Its Future consistently uses "we" and "our" throughout, and at one point in 1993 investigators sought an individual whose first name was "Nathan" because the name was imprinted on the envelope of a letter sent to the media.[53] When the case was presented to the public, authorities denied that there was ever anyone other than Kaczynski involved in the crimes.[106]

A federal grand jury indicted Kaczynski in April 1996 on ten counts of illegally transporting, mailing, and using bombs, and three counts of murder.[120]

Kaczynski's lawyers, headed by Montana federal public defenders Michael Donahoe and Judy Clarke, attempted to enter an insanity defense to avoid the death penalty, but Kaczynski rejected this strategy. On January 8, 1998, he requested to dismiss his lawyers and hire Tony Serra as his counsel; Serra had agreed not to use an insanity defense and instead base a defense on Kaczynski's anti-technology views.[121][122][123] This request was unsuccessful and Kaczynski subsequently tried to commit suicide by hanging on January 9.[124] Several, though not all, forensic psychiatrists and psychologists who examined Kaczynski diagnosed him as having paranoid schizophrenia. Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz said Kaczynski was not psychotic but had a schizoid or schizotypal personality disorder.[125] In his 2010 book Technological Slavery, Kaczynski said that two prison psychologists who visited him frequently for four years told him they saw no indication that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and the diagnosis was "ridiculous" and a "political diagnosis".[126]

On January 21, 1998, Kaczynski was declared competent to stand trial "despite the psychiatric diagnoses".[127][128] As he was fit to stand trial, prosecutors sought the death penalty but Kaczynski avoided that by pleading guilty to all charges on January 22, 1998, and accepting life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He later tried to withdraw this plea, arguing it was involuntary. Judge Garland Ellis Burrell Jr. denied his request, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld that decision.[129]

In 2006, Burrell ordered that items from Kaczynski's cabin be sold at a "reasonably advertised Internet auction." Items considered to be bomb-making materials, such as diagrams and "recipes" for bombs, were excluded. The net proceeds went towards the $15 million in restitution Burrell had awarded Kaczynski's victims.[130] Kaczynski's correspondence and other personal papers were also auctioned.[131][132][133] Burrell ordered the removal, before sale, of references in those documents to Kaczynski's victims; Kaczynski unsuccessfully challenged those redactions as a violation of his freedom of speech.[134][135][136] The auction raised $232,000.[137]