Unabomber: Ted Kaczynski (Part I)

Theodore John Kaczynski (/kəˈzɪnski/; born May 22, 1942), also known as the Unabomber (/ˈjuːnəbɒmər/), is an American domestic terrorist, anarchist, and former mathematics professor.  He was a mathematics prodigy, but he abandoned an academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive lifestyle. Between 1978 and 1995, he killed three people and injured 23 others in an attempt to start a revolution by conducting a nationwide bombing campaign targeting people involved with modern technology.

In 1971, Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills in an attempt to become self-sufficient. He witnessed the destruction of the wilderness surrounding his cabin and concluded that living in nature was untenable; he began his bombing campaign in 1978. In 1995, he sent a letter to The New York Times and promised to "desist from terrorism" if The Times or The Washington Post published his essay Industrial Society and Its Future, in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies that require large-scale organization.

Kaczynski was the subject of the longest and most expensive investigation in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Before his identity was known, the FBI used the acronym UNABOM (University and Airline Bomber) to refer to his case, which resulted in the media naming him the "Unabomber". The FBI and Attorney General Janet Reno pushed for the publication of Industrial Society and Its Future, which led to a tip from Kaczynski's brother David, who recognized the writing style.

After his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski tried unsuccessfully to dismiss his court-appointed lawyers because they wanted him to plead insanity in order to avoid the death penalty, as he did not believe that he was insane. In 1998, a plea bargain was reached under which he pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Early life

Childhood

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, a sausage maker.  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".  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.

From first to fourth grade, Kaczynski attended Sherman Elementary School in Chicago, where administrators described him as "healthy" and "well-adjusted".  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, 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.

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".  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", while another said that Ted was "strictly a loner" who "didn't play ... an old man before his time."  His mother recalled Ted as a shy child who would become unresponsive if pressured into a social situation.  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.

In 1990, Ted's father Theodore, suffering from terminal cancer, died by suicide with a .22 caliber rifle. Theodore spent his last days with his family members, showing them affection as an implicit farewell.

High school

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.  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."  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.  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."

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.  He entered Harvard on a scholarship in 1958 at the age of 16.  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."

Harvard College

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."

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

Psychological study

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.  The experiment lasted three years, with someone verbally abusing and humiliating Kaczynski each week.  Kaczynski spent 200 hours as part of the study.

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

Mathematics career

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.

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 on 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.  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."

In 1967, Kaczynski's dissertation Boundary Functions won the Sumner B. Myers Prize for Michigan's best mathematics dissertation of the year.  Allen Shields, his doctoral advisor, called it "the best I have ever directed", 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."  Kaczynski published two journal articles related to his dissertation and three more after leaving Michigan.

In late 1967, the 25-year-old Kaczynski became the youngest assistant professor of mathematics in the history of the University of California, Berkeley up to that time, where he taught undergraduate courses in geometry and calculus.  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. Without any explanation, Kaczynski resigned on June 30, 1969.  At the time, the chairman of the mathematics department, J. W. Addison, called this a "sudden and unexpected" resignation.

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."  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."

Life in Montana

After resigning from Berkeley, Kaczynski moved to his parents' home in Lombard, Illinois, then two years later, in 1971, to a remote cabin he had built outside Lincoln, Montana, where he could live a simple life with little money and without electricity or running water, working odd jobs and receiving some financial support from his family.

His original goal was to become self-sufficient so that he could live autonomously. He taught himself survival skills such as tracking game, edible plant identification, organic farming, bow drilling, and other primitive technologies.  He used an old bicycle to get to town, and a volunteer at the local library said he visited frequently to read classic works in their original languages. Other Lincoln residents said later that such a lifestyle was not unusual in the area.

Kaczynski decided it was impossible to live peacefully in nature because of the destruction of the wildland around his cabin by real estate development and industrial projects.  In response, he began performing acts of sabotage against nearby developments in 1975, and dedicated himself to reading about sociology and political philosophy, such as the works of Jacques Ellul.

In an interview after his arrest, he recalled being shocked on a hike to one of his favorite wild spots:

It's kind of rolling country, not flat, and when you get to the edge of it you find these ravines that cut very steeply into cliff-like drop-offs and there was even a waterfall there. It was about a two days' hike from my cabin. That was the best spot until the summer of 1983. That summer there were too many people around my cabin so I decided I needed some peace. I went back to the plateau and when I got there I found they had put a road right through the middle of it ... You just can't imagine how upset I was. It was from that point on I decided that, rather than trying to acquire further wilderness skills, I would work on getting back at the system. Revenge.

In that 1999 interview, he described his loss of faith in the potential for reform. He decided that the "human tendency ... to take the path of least resistance" meant that violent collapse was the only way to bring down the industrial-technological system:

They'll take the easy way out, and giving up your car, your television set, your electricity, is not the path of least resistance for most people. As I see it, I don't think there is any controlled or planned way in which we can dismantle the industrial system. I think that the only way we will get rid of it is if it breaks down and collapses ... The big problem is that people don't believe a revolution is possible, and it is not possible precisely because they do not believe it is possible. To a large extent, I think the eco-anarchist movement is accomplishing a great deal, but I think they could do it better ... The real revolutionaries should separate themselves from the reformers ... And I think that it would be good if a conscious effort was being made to get as many people as possible introduced to the wilderness. In a general way, I think what has to be done is not to try and convince or persuade the majority of people that we are right, as much as try to increase tensions in society to the point where things start to break down. To create a situation where people get uncomfortable enough that they're going to rebel. So the question is how do you increase those tensions?

Bombings

Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski mailed or hand-delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs that cumulatively killed three people and injured 23 others. In all, 16 bombs were attributed to Kaczynski. While the bombing devices varied widely through the years, all but the first few contained the initials "FC", which Kaczynski later said stood for "Freedom Club", inscribed on parts inside. He purposely left misleading clues in the devices and took extreme care in preparing them to avoid leaving fingerprints; latent fingerprints on some of the devices did not match those found on letters attributed to Kaczynski.

Initial bombings

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.

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.  The female supervisor later recalled Kaczynski as "intelligent, quiet," but remembered little of their acquaintance and firmly denied they had had any romantic relationship.

FBI involvement

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.  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.  Another clue included a note left in a bomb that did not detonate; it read "Wu—It works! I told you it would—RV".  Another clue was the Eugene O'Neill $1 stamps used to send his boxes.  He sent one bomb embedded in a copy of Sloan Wilson'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, and targets selected included Percy Wood and Professor Leroy Wood. Crime writer Robert Graysmith noted that his "obsession with wood" was "a large factor."

Later bombings

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.  The bomb, like others of Kaczynski's, was handcrafted and made with wooden parts.

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.

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."  Geneticist Phillip Sharp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received a threatening letter two years later.

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."  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 the previous president William Dennison, who had retired.

Industrial Society and Its Future

In 1995, Kaczynski mailed several letters to media outlets outlining his goals and demanding that his 35,000-word essay Industrial Society and Its Future (dubbed the Unabomber Manifesto by the FBI) be printed verbatim by a major newspaper. He stated that, if this demand was met, he would "desist from terrorism".

There was controversy as to whether the essay should be published, but Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh recommended its publication out of concern for public safety and in hope that a reader could identify the author. Bob Guccione of Penthouse volunteered to publish it, but Kaczynski replied that Penthouse was less "respectable" than the other publications. He said that he would "reserve the right to plant one (and only one) bomb intended to kill, after our manuscript has been published".  The New York Times and The Washington Post both published the essay on September 19, 1995.