Frequently Asked Questions about Ted Kaczynski

What was Ted’s state of mind?

What were the main reasons Ted became a terrorist?

Quoting Ted's brother David:[1]

When something like what happened here happens, people all over the world question; how could any human being do this? And when somebody like my brother does this from our family, the question becomes extraordinarily, existentially intense, like how could my own brother do this.

I think it was likely a combination of these four main reasons:

• A socially alienating culture + a neurological diversity

• A desire to return to a more innocent time in his childhood

• An uncompromising idealism

• Human nature

A socially alienating culture + a neurological diversity

He used to worry about getting heart attacks from the anger at dirt bikes passing by his cabin and would write letters to his family that were read as manic:[2]

There's a fight or flight syndrome, he had gotten as far away from his stressors thinking that they were external.

He wanted to be a hermit. He wanted to read a lot of books undisturbed in a very small, one room cabin. He would take short breaks to bathe in the beauty of the forest. But, he had a perfectionist mindset about desiring to find mental well-being in the forest. This meant, never being disturbed by other people. So, it is interesting to note that, short of buying vast acres of wildlife habitat for him, guarding it so no one could get in and not letting planes fly overhead, we pretty much helped him achieve the next best thing in a prison cell as far as he is a manifestation of his traumas.

The same is true for violent people who get to extort and be violent with other prison inmates without much consequence.

Ted just presents a really interesting problem for conservatives who like to think prison is retribution, because sometimes prison can be what the traumatized person desires, so they don’t have to wrestle with as much choice. And although that may only be true of a minority of people, it can be reflective of emotional states of mind within the majority of us.

So, the only real solution I can see is not to be satisfied with giving traumatized people to an extent emotionally what they want, but to heal the trauma and learned patterns of behavior that lead them to that point in their life.

I don’t think all unjustified bombings are the result of mental illness, but I do think there is a probability of a neurological diversity such as autism, due to the nature of his lone bombings, where he was driven to murder through externalizing his pain and not simply swept up in some separatist terror campaign.

An FBI agent on his case I think suggested rightly that:[3]

One of the reasons that he gravitated towards math [is that] it's something he could do in isolation. It's not a team project.

As his brother neatly summarized:[4]

There were parts of him that were a little different. … Ted did not have many friends. There were periods of time when nobody ever came to the house to visit Ted.

So, potentially he was drawn to math as the most entertaining way to make the most out of the long amount of time kids must spend studying:[5][6]

I was identified with the "Briefcase Boys" (academically-oriented students).

Pure mathematics is useless from a practical point of view and that’s what I studied (laughs). I mean, a lot of people don’t understand what mathematicians really do, you know? They think they sit there adding up columns of figures or something like that. But that isn’t what it is. It’s more like puzzle solving. I just got a kick out of it. I enjoyed it.

It wasn’t until long after he’d felt alienated by the elite levels of academic society that he made a conscious effort to take an interest in subjects like anthropology, and even then it was with the goal of studying them in order to find answers to how societies change, so that he could know the best way to contribute towards bringing about a revolution that would, even if just by happenstance, destroy recent high-tech cultural evolution.

One potential reason for his personal anti-tech philosophy then is that he developed a kind of gaming addiction to mathematics and narrowed down what niche field within it he found entertaining further and further until it had hardly any value to him anymore. So, having been pressured to do well at school for ‘being good at schools sake’, he never learnt the internal value of the high-tech cultures he was studying.

In the book After Virtue, MacIntyre tries to explain this importance of perusing tasks for their internal value:[7]

The teaching process may begin with the teacher offering the child candy to play and enough additional candy if the child wins to motivate the child to play. It might be assumed that this is sufficient to motivate the child to learn to play chess well, but as MacIntyre notes, it is sufficient only to motivate the child to learn to win – which may mean cheating if the opportunity arises. However, over time, the child may come to appreciate the unique combination of skills and abilities that chess calls on, and may learn to enjoy exercising and developing those skills and abilities. At this point, the child will be interested in learning to play chess well for its own sake. Cheating to win will, from this point on, be a form of losing, not winning, because the child will be denying themselves the true rewards of chess playing, which are internal to the game. The child will also, it should be noted, enjoy playing chess; there is pleasure associated with developing one’s skills and abilities that cannot come if one cheats in order to win.

A desire to return to a more innocent time in his childhood

David:[8]

One thought is, it's connected to hatred, it's that hatred of the self and hatred of others really do go together. And so my biggest fear for many years actually after a friend's brother committed suicide was that Ted seemed so miserable I was afraid someday I’d hear that he had committed suicide and I think that was likely in his diaries he actually had some sort of scenario that involved murder-suicide, I think some of his aggression toward our family our parents which I really couldn't understand was emotionally violent, in some sense metaphorically it was killing mom and dad, but it had some of that flavor.

When I ultimately ended up reading my brother's diaries it was like opening a window on hell, I had no idea he was suffering to this extent, so part of his dynamic and maybe with other mass murderers there's this this incredible intense psychological isolation, so then I think well if only teddy had a friend a mentor and then of course I realized many people could have been but he pushed them away, but how do you reach that person that's really hard to reach? Certainly we see some correlation like with bullying in the school, so the kid is isolated, the kid feels absolutely powerless, this is not to excuse violent acting out, but it strikes me we have to create a different kind of communal consciousness as well, it's not just our individual minds it's the candle lighting the candle a thousand times, that somehow we have to make this idea of compassion, we have to find a way to spread it and not give up and not fail to spread it with people who seem resistant to it.

After being moved up a year in school, Ted was bullied and found an escape fantasy in books about Neanderthals living a primitive life.

I think his desire to kill scientists was a kind of murder-suicide fantasy, to kill in others that which he hated in himself. For instance because he didn't have the capability to actually escape into primitive life as a child, he said he developed a 'perverse pride' in being anti-social and dedicating himself to mathematics, which he later regretted.

You can also think about the contrast he makes in his mind between the 'normal' desire to return to primitive life and the 'abnormal' desire to pursue 'surrogate activities' like scientific research as him kind of glorifying ignorance as a character virtue and rejecting any divergence from that, because in ignorance we can find an authenticity matched to our environments, connected to a long period of our evolutionary history, which he thinks we have the ability to return to:[9]

Living in the woods, once you get adapted to that way of life, there’s almost no such thing as boredom. You can sit for a while, and just for hours, you can just sit and do nothing and be at peace.

Fundamentally the desire for a primitive way of life is often simply a desire for a more innocent time in one’s childhood:[10]

Where Zerzan’s argument becomes problematic is in the essentialist notion that there is a rationally intelligible presence, a social objectivity that is beyond language and discourse. To speak in Lacanian terms, the prelinguistic state of jouissance is precisely unattainable: it is always mediated by language that at the same time alienates and distorts it. It is an imaginary jouissance, an illusion created by the symbolic order itself, as the secret behind its veil. We live in a symbolic and linguistic universe, and to speculate about an original condition of authenticity and immediacy, or to imagine that an authentic presence is attainable behind the veils of the symbolic order or beyond the grasp of language, is futile. There is no getting outside language and the symbolic; nor can there be any return to the pre Oedipal real. To speak in terms of alienation, as Zerzan does, is to imagine a pure presence or fullness beyond alienation, which is an impossibility. While Zerzan’s attack on technology and domestication is no doubt important and valid, it is based on a highly problematic essentialism implicit in his notion of alienation.

To question this discourse of alienation is not a conservative gesture. It does not rob us of normative reasons for resisting domination, as Zerzan claims. It is to suggest that projects of resistance and emancipation do not need to be grounded in an immediate presence or positive fullness that exists beyond power and discourse. Rather, radical politics can be seen as being based on a moment of negativity: an emptiness or lack that is productive of new modes of political subjectivity and action. Instead of hearkening back to a primordial authenticity that has been alienated and yet which can be recaptured – a state of harmony which would be the very eclipse of politics – I believe it is more fruitful to think in terms of a constitutive rift that is at the base of any identity, a rift that produces radical openings for political articulation and action.”

An uncompromising idealism

What often goes along with a desire for ignorance is a cult-like desire to force others into your fundamentalist belief system or treat others rejection of your belief system as a personal insult to your revelation.

Consider for example this line from his manifesto: "In any case it is not normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work." It's a fairly clear admission that he simply intuitively values primitive life as holding more value, and therefore any value a person does derive from modern life is not even counted.

Throughout Ted's writings is often the hidden premise that he holds an evaluative asymmetry whereby anything that happens in wild habitat is automatically less bad than anything that happens in an industrialized society:[11]

When one reads ‘Industrial Society and its Future’ and Anti-Tech Revolution, it is hard not to notice that Kaczynski evaluates problems caused by technology very differently than how he evaluates problems that arise in technology’s absence. This is most apparent in the middle paragraphs of ‘Industrial Society and its Future,’ in which Kaczynski compares industrial and pre-industrial life. After he has given an elaborate account of human powerlessness in industrial societies, he makes a concession: ‘It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the things that threaten him; disease for example.’ Kaczynski does not, however, seem to think that this is a very significant problem. Instead he writes: ‘But he can accept the risk of disease stoically.’ This response invites a follow-up question: If the badness of the problems faced by ‘primitive man’ can be avoided if one accepts them stoically, then why can’t the badness of the problems faced by people in industrialized societies also be avoided through stoicism? The only explanation given by Kaczynski is that whereas a problem caused in the absence of technology ‘is part of the nature of things, it is no one’s fault,’ a problem caused by technology is ‘imposed.’ Of course, it makes sense to hold that while no-one is responsible for what nature does, someone might be responsible for what humans do. Kaczynski, however, does not seem to be concerned with assigning responsibility or blame; he is concerned with comparing the quality of human life in industrial versus pre-industrial societies. It seems, therefore, that Kaczynski holds that while a problem caused by technology is very bad indeed, a problem caused by nature, though it can be frustrating, is not nearly as bad, at least not in an ethically relevant way. It appears that on Kaczynski’s view, two equally hopeless situations can differ dramatically in how bad they are depending on whether the situation is caused by technology or caused by things in nature that count as non-technological.

This evaluative asymmetry can help explain several of Kaczynski’s priorities and areas of focus. It can explain why he is worried that our lives now depend on the operation of power plants that might fail, but not worried that pre-industrial lives depended on rain showers that might fail to come as expected; worried that people today are oppressed by bureaucracies, but not worried that people were previously oppressed by their tribes; worried that people now do tedious office work but not worried that work in pre-industrial societies could also be tedious. The picture that emerges is that in Kaczynski’s view, the harms that are averted by technology were not ethically relevant harms to begin, and that what we gain from technology today does not count as ethically relevant benefits. Given this picture, it makes sense why Kaczynski counts only the downsides of technology: There are few or no ethically relevant upsides to count.

David:[12]

I see the Kaczynski family as holding certain symmetries. For as far back as I can remember we were paired up based on certain similarities and differences in our looks and temperaments. Dad and I had lighter hair and brown eyes; Mom and Ted had dark hair and blue eyes. Dad and I were more social and easy going; Mom and Teddy tended to be anxious and somewhat withdrawn. On the other hand, Dad and Ted both expressed a strong commitment to reason over emotion, whereas Mom and I (increasingly as I grew older) tended to trust intuition over analysis. When upset, Mom and I reacted emotionally and then mostly got over it, whereas Dad and Ted (increasingly as he grew older) tended to withdraw. Dad, unless you count his suicide, never lashed out; Ted, after nursing his wounds through years of silence, lashed out in a big, big way, expressing his pent-up rage through angry, hyperbolic letters that marred his parents’ happiness, and finally through murderous bombs accompanied by elaborate (I want to say “tortured”) justifications.

When I was young, I tended to see Mom as the outlier. In contrast to Dad and Teddy (and me too, as a would-be member of a conventionally male club that prized rationality over feeling), Mom at times celebrated strong emotions.

My most vivid memory of this comes from a family vacation we took when I was in middle school. On a long drive to some forest camping spot in another state, Mom began to expound with enthusiasm on the classical Greek tragedies. She was fresh from reading Sophocles’s Antigone. Mom explained the drama’s plot, which entailed suicides, a sibling rivalry, an intense conflict between Antigone’s sense of justice and the law, and a blood bond stronger than life itself. I found the story inexplicable and troubling. Antigone’s irrational need to sacrifice her own life in defense of her dead brother’s honor seemed gratuitous, disproportional. It accomplished nothing; it only spread more misery. At every turn and twist of the story, I thought there surely could have been a way out of fate’s trap, if only the characters had had the foresight and sense to make rational choices.

I remember that Dad at some point lit a cigarette (one of the thousands that would eventually doom him) and Teddy rolled down his window and waved the smoke outside with exaggerated gestures. I wanted to do the same with Antigone.

How could Mom find nobility in such conflict and violence? Mom’s emotional exuberance clashed with my need for emotional stability, my grounding in what I regarded as reality.

How could following one’s principles lead to disaster? How could Antigone’s (or anyone’s) vital life force be converted into a death force?

I tried to be dismissive: Mom was a female given to emotional ex- cess; the story took place a long, long time ago; it was, after all, just a story. What could it possibly have to do with us?

FBI Report:[13]

Dave then discussed at length an on-going "discussion and debate -- a dialectic, in fact," which he and Ted began in approximately 1978 concerning the nature of reality in the universe. They debated around a "core argument" for years, the essence of which concerned Ted’s belief that scientists had a truer picture of the universe than artists did, because of their reliance on the "Verifiability Criterion." Ted defined this criterion as holding that a "fact" was valid only insofar as it could be proven "true or false." Dave, on the other hand, believes that reality is not necessarily "black and white," but includes many "mystical unknowables" which are a part of human experience not easily quantifiable, or even identifiable. Dave includes "Art" as part of this type of experience. Dave emphasized that Ted has long been committed to rationality as a guiding principle, and noted that a particular characteristic of Ted’s debating style was that he placed special emphasis on making his arguments compelling. In doing this, Ted characteristically stressed that since his ideas were based on a "rational ideal," any action in support of them was justifiable. Dave expressed sadness in commenting that this type of justification would enable Ted to feel fully justified and even visionary in killing people to accomplish his "rational objectives."

Ted:[14]

In a letter that I wrote my parents while I was at Harvard, I taped to the page a clipping … which read, in part: “… ‘I have been painfully forced to the belief,’ [Bertand Russell] once remarked, ‘that nine tenths of what is commonly regarded as philosophy is humbug. The only part that is at all definite is logic, and since it is logic, it is not philosophy.’ ” Below … I wrote: “I noted with triumph the above quotation of Bertand Russell in the Crimson. I have long maintained that philosophy is humbug and now I find that even a philosopher admits it.”

Ted:[15]

In the summer of 1982, Dave wrote me:

“I don’t remember finding it difficult as a youngster to admire you, and I don’t think my will was consciously frustrated by coming under the influence of your way of thinking, since I thought I came willingly, drawn by its intrinsic persuasion. I hope you will appreciate, in light of this, what a significant being you must have represented to me ... On a personal level, however, I felt a problem arose insofar as it appeared to me I could appear in your world ... [only] by assuming a shape appropriate to this world, but not wholly expressive of my own experience and consciousness. In other words, what I thought of as the openness on my part which made your thought-process accessible to me, was so little reciprocated that I could abide there only by forsaking a certain freedom of spirit.”

In brief, my brother was saying that he admired me but felt dominated by me. In 1986 he wrote:

“[Our parents] always encouraged me to look up to you, especially with regard to your intellect. ... One unhealthy side of this, as we’ve discussed before, is that I may have learned to look up to you too much, to take your criticisms too much to heart, and to feel a little over-shadowed intellectually. I think one reason I became ego-involved in our philosophical discussions a few years ago was because I was still trying to establish myself on a plane of intellectual equality with you.”

Ted:[16]

To answer my brother’s question, yes, I could forgive him—under certain conditions. Basically, he would have to undo his treason by detaching himself permanently from the consumer society, from the system and everything that it represents. In order to do this, he would have to break off all connection with Linda Patrik, because her dominance over him is such that he could never make a lasting change in himself as long as he maintained a relationship with her.

In taking David’s marriage to Linda so hard, and making his separation from her a requirement of his reconciliation, I think Ted was showing his desire to regiment people close to him into this cult-like uncompromising idealism which entailed seeing ignorance as a virtue.

Many conversations were treated as a fight where David had to stay away from subjects that would make Ted frustrated, and also run the risk of being deemed a coward for not expertly walking that line. All with the goal of scoring points against the other for simply scoring points sake:[17][18]

"I received your last letter and note that it shows your usual generosity of character. Instead of being sore over the negative parts of my attitude toward you, you were favorably impressed by the positive parts."

My brother does have a good deal of generosity in his character, but I now think that the nature of his reaction to my letter was less a result of generosity than of his tendency to retreat from conflict.

Well, obviously I resented it. There was another strain to my feelings there. I don’t know if I can explain it properly. But in a way I was almost glad because my own brother turning me in in a sense made me look good. I mean, if A screws B, then it tends to make B look good, even if otherwise he might not look so great. I don’t know. So maybe that’s — That was perhaps an ignoble thought on my part. But that thought was present, I have to admit.

Human nature

I think there is a naturally wide capacity in everyone to either be intensely cruel or radically compassionate, and so a person’s character is almost always going to be dependent on how we construct our environments and whether we receive an element of moral luck.

Quoting David Kaczynski:[19]

[I] think we're not being honest with ourselves if we don't look at human history and say there's something somewhat normal about violence in human beings, we have murders, we have genocides and we have wars.

I remember my father telling a story from his father who had been born in Poland and pressed into the polish army and he said ‘well, we went to fight this battle and I don't know what happened, but we started killing everybody in the town and then men started raping women’.

And these were normal family, how did this happen? We know that part of the training of soldiers is to desensitize to the humanity of the enemy so it's true we can be trained for compassion, we can be trained to shut down compassion, so I think the highest teachings of all religious traditions is to try to create an antidote to this nihilistic possibility that probably lives to some extent in all of us, to smaller or greater degrees.

How did Ted's violent desires evolve?

I've attempted to list out some of the possible answers below. Included in this list are some potentially missed opportunities to have set Ted up to be able to handle better the trials and tribulations life throws at people. Also, potential missed opportunities in which Ted maybe could have been influenced to stop his bombing campaign earlier. For example, we don't know what year he began regretting trying to bomb an airliner full of people out of the sky, but doubts about the reasonableness of his actions such as this could have been a turning point. There was even a point where he went to see a therapist and planned to go back, but one reason he didn't was the cost of each session.

The Timeline

• Separated from parents as a sick baby at a key time for attunement and attachment with parents. His mother felt this was key to the man he became. Ted felt his parents used this event to avoid responsibility for the impact their inadequate parenting had on his character.

• Moved forward a year at school whilst failing to make sure he maintained friendships, rather than for example seeing his advanced analytical learning capabilities as an opportunity to take a year off to travel with family and develop his emotional intelligence.

• After he skipped 6th grade he "began feeling a great deal of hostility toward many of my schoolmates, I developed a habit of trying to find ways of justifying my hatred in terms of my moral system ... One day when I was 13 years old, I was walking down the street and saw a girl. Something about her appearance antagonized me, and, from habit, I began looking for a way to justify hating her, within my logical system. But then I stopped and said to myself, 'This is getting ridiculous. I'll just chuck all this silly morality business and hate anybody I please' Since then I have never had any interest in or respect for morality, ethics, or anything of the sort"[20]

• Parents/teachers/counselors failing to talk through his desire for escape in primitive life as a desire to escape bullying, plus a lack of classes offered in politics and philosophy.

• Killed a small bird by crushing the bird in his hand because he felt embarrassed by the pity he felt for the bird. Ted felt this pity conflicted with his desire to live a primitive hunter-gatherer life. But, after killing the bird he instantly felt even more sick with pity.

• Attended Harvard a year early without taking the time to travel and explore the world.

• Unwittingly participated in psychological experiments at Harvard which were later used by the CIA to demonstrate the efficacy of torture. These experiments would be considered unethical today and could not take place.

• Angry with himself for being unable to move from social interaction with women, to romantic or sexual involvement, he projected his feelings of inadequacy onto all women, blaming them for his frustration.

• Inability to discuss his sexual fantasies of becoming a woman in order to get to be intimate with a woman to a councilor. Coming away with stronger suicidal ideation, and his feelings of desire to kill through a murder suicide. His shame at not being able to find a relationship turned into hatred at society for regimenting his life and making him this way.

• Kaczynski showed a letter to his brother, parents and romantic interest that he planned ‘violence of a serious nature’ against the romantic interest who had broken off their romance, but no steps were taken to either get him help or report him. His journal entries later revealed that he brought a knife with him in a paper bag, to disfigure her face.

• Kaczynski proposed founding an organization dedicated to stopping federal aid to scientific research, thereby preventing the “ceaseless extension of society’s powers. He sent this essay, similar to the manifesto he’d later write, to a few politicians. He would often write anti-technology essays to newspapers and favorite authors. If the FBI had put more focused callouts for information, then one of these people may have tipped off the FBI sooner.

• Initially felt remorse about having crippled the arm of a man who was an airline pilot.

• Felt remorseful a long time later about the innocent people he would have killed on an airliner he attempted to blow up, as well as the secretary of a computer scientist.

• Felt remorseful a long time later about his sadism towards animals.

When did Ted first decide to become a terrorist?

There are three different dates that could be argued over for which was the most defining moment in time when Ted expressed a will and plan to terrorize people:

1. Humiliation at a therapists office (1967 – Aged 24)

2. An aborted terror attack (1971 – Aged 28)

3. The first mailbomb (1978 – Aged 35)

I think the first date in the list above fairly meets this standard. But, some might argue for example that the third date is the most accurate because it was the first time in which he actually followed through with a plan to do a terrorist act.

1. Humiliation at a therapists office (1967 – Aged 24)

Eileen Pollack:[21]

Alone in his room, he was driven crazy by the sounds of the couple next door making love. Finally—and this is what broke my heart—Kaczynski decided to convince a psychiatrist to allow him to undergo the surgery and chemical treatments he thought would transform him into a woman, not because he was transgender, but because, as a woman, he might wrap his arms around himself and be held by someone female.

Kaczynski kept his appointment with the psychiatrist, only to realize he was going mad. Furious at a society that had pushed him to excel in academics at the cost of his ability to find love and connection to other human beings, he vowed to stop being such a good boy and learn to kill. Only later did he come up with an ideology that justified his murderous rage, lashing out at science and industrialization for destroying our environment, pressuring us to conform, depriving us of our privacy, and robbing us of our humanity.

Sally Johnson:[22]

While at the University of Michigan he sought psychiatric contact on one occasion at the start of his fifth year of study. As referenced above, he had been experiencing several weeks of intense and persistent sexual excitement involving fantasies of being a female. During that time period he became convinced that he should undergo sex change surgery. He recounts that he was aware that this would require a psychiatric referral, and he set up an appointment at the Health Center at the University to discuss this issue. He describes that while waiting in the waiting room, he became anxious and humiliated over the prospect of talking about this to the doctor. When he was actually seen, he did not discuss these concerns, but rather claimed he was feeling some depression and anxiety over the possibility that the deferment status would be dropped for students and teachers, and that he would face the possibility of being drafted into the military. He indicates that the psychiatrist viewed his anxiety and depression as not atypical. Mr. Kaczynski describes leaving the office and feeling rage, shame, and humiliation over this attempt to seek evaluation. He references this as a significant turning point in his life.

I think because he didn’t know how to have relationships with women, so he wanted to explore desires for women which he hadn’t had the space to learn to understand. I definitely don’t think it was out of any felt emergence that he was a woman. They’re called autoerotic fantasies, where you get turned on imagining how other people will view you in different situations, and it can be as common as when you’re imagining yourself in a situation where someone is admiring a specific item of clothing you’re wearing that makes you feel confident.

So anyway, he made an appointment to go see the university psychologist and at the last minute decided he didn’t want to talk about having a sex change or his sexual fantasies. And just said he was depressed instead.

Years later he would begin writing an autobiography as frustrations were reaching a pinnacle because he wanted to commit a murder-suicide and leave behind an explanation. Here’s how he explained the first desire to kill happened:[23]

As I walked away from the building afterwards, I felt disgusted about what my uncontrolled sexual cravings had almost led me to do and I felt humiliated, and I violently hated the psychiatrist. Just then there came a major turning point in my life. Like a Phoenix, I burst from the ashes of my despair to a glorious new hope. I thought I wanted to kill that psychiatrist because the future looked utterly empty to me.

I felt I wouldn’t care if I died. And so I said to myself “why not really kill that psychiatrist and anyone else whom I hate.” What is important is not the words that ran through my mind, but the way I felt about them. What was entirely new was the fact that I really felt I could kill someone. My very hopelessness had liberated me. Because I no longer cared about death. I no longer cared about consequences, and I suddenly felt that I really could break out of my rut in life and do things that were daring, “irresponsible,” or criminal.

My first thought was to kill somebody I hated and then kill myself before the cops could get me. (I’ve always considered death preferable to long imprisonment.) But, since I now had new hope, I was not ready to relinquish life so easily. So I thought “I will kill, but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection, so that I can kill again.” Then I thought, “Well, as long as I am going to throw everything up anyway, instead of having to shoot it out with the cops or something, I will go up to Canada, take off into the woods with a rifle, and try to live off the country. If that doesn’t work out, and if I can get back to civilization before I starve, then I will come back here and kill someone I hate.”

What was new here was the fact that I now felt I really had the courage to behave “irresponsibly.” All these thoughts passed through my head in the length of time it took me to walk a quarter of a mile. By the end of that time I had acquired bright new hope, an angry, vicious kind of determination and high morale.

It’s not a question of preserving my life and health; getting out of the power of civilization has long since become an end in itself for me. By now I have practically lost all hope of ever attaining this end. There my happiness in my Montana hills is spoiled every time an airplane passes over or anything else happens that reminds me of the inescapability of civilization. Life under the thumb of modern civilization seems worthless to measure and thus I more and more felt that life was coming to a dead end for me and death began at times to look attractive—it would mean peace. There was just one thing that really made me determined to cling to life for a while, and that was the desire for—revenge—I wanted to kill some people, preferably including at least one scientist, businessman, or other bigshot. This actually was my biggest reason for coming back to Illinois this spring. In Montana, if I went to the city to mail a bomb to some bigshot, [driver’s name] would doubtless remember I rode the bus that day. In the anonymity of the big city I figured it would be much safer to buy materials for a bomb and mail it. (Though the death-wish had appeared, it was still far from dominant, and therefore I preferred not to be suspected of crimes.) As mentioned in some of my notes, I did make an attempt with a bomb—whether successful or not I don’t know. In making a second bomb I have only barely made a start…

Ted:[24]

I often had fantasies of killing the kind of people I hated — i.e., government officials, police, computer scientists, the rowdy type of college students who left their beer cans in the arboretum, etc., etc., etc.,

2. An aborted terror attack (1971 – Aged 28)

In April, 1971 he planned to kill a scientist in person:[25]

My motive for doing what I am going to do is simply personal revenge. I do not expect to accomplish anything by it. Of course, if my crime (and my reasons for committing it) gets any public attention, it may help to stimulate public interest in the technology question and thereby improve the chances of stopping technology it is too late; but on the other hand most people will probably be repelled by my crime, and the opponents of freedom may use it as a weapon to support their arguments for control over human behavior. I have no way of knowing whether my action will do more good than harm. I certainly don't claim to be an altruist or to be acting for the 'good' (whatever that is) of the human race. I act merely from a desire for revenge. Of course, I would like to get revenge on the whole scientific and bureaucratic establishment, not to mention communists and others who threaten freedom, but, that being impossible, I have to content myself with just a little revenge.

These days it is fashionable to ascribe sick-sounding motivations (in many cases correctly, I admit) to persons who commit antisocial acts. Perhaps some people will deny that I am motivated by a hatred for what is happening to freedom. However, I think I know myself pretty well and I think they are wrong.

Ted left a note to his parents that felt like a suicide note:[26][27]

[D]uring the fall of 1970 my brother set himself up in an apartment in Great Falls, Montana. He knew that I was still looking for land, and that winter he mentioned in a letter to our parents that he would be interested in going fifty-fifty with me on a piece of property if I cared to locate in his part of the country. My mother passed this information on to me and, about June 1971, I drove out to Great Falls and dropped in at my brother’s apartment.

THE PROFESSOR'S MOTHER, a constant early riser, went downstairs one morning and caught him leaving.

"There's a note for you on the table," he said.

"Aren't you going to say goodbye?" she said.

"It's easier this way."

Lis:[28]

In his memoir, David recalled a frantic phone call from his parents, asking if he had been in contact with his brother.

Project Unabom:[29]

David: I didn't have a telephone, I was a little averse to technology myself perhaps, or maybe wanting to isolate, but my landlord came to me and said, your father is on the line, he wants to talk to you. He says it's urgent. So, I went to my landlord's apartment and got on the phone with Dad and dad said have you seen Ted to his left?

Eric: Ted hadn't let anyone know where he was going. But he had left a note that was vague reflective.

David: And in this note, he said don't feel bad, you've been good parents. Don't ever think you're to blame, but I need to go. And my father and mother were concerned that it sounded like a suicide note. So, they said “well please let us know if you hear anything from Ted. Let us know right away 'cause we're really worried. He didn't tell us he was going. He's just gone and there's this note.”

Ted’s Journal:[30]

CHRISTMAS DAY, 1972:

About a year and a half ago, I planned to murder a scientist—as a means of revenge against organized society in general and the technological establishment in particular. Unfortunately, I chickened out. I couldn’t work up the nerve to do it. The experience showed me that propaganda and indoctrination have a much stronger hold on me than I realized. My plan was such that there was very little chance of my getting caught. I had no qualms before I tried to do it, and thought I would have no difficulty. I had everything all prepared. But when I tried to take the final irrevocable step, I found myself overwhelmed by an irrational, superstitious fear—not a fear of anything specific, merely a vague but powerful fear of committing the act. I cannot attribute this to a rational fear of being caught. I made my preparations with extreme care, and I figured my chances of being caught were less than, say, my chances of being killed in an automobile accident within the next year. I am not in the least nervous when I get into my car. I can only attribute my fear to the constant flood of anticrime propaganda to which one is subjected. For example, murderers in TV dramas are always caught.

We know that part of his impulse to live in the wild was to slip into anonymity, to depend on as few people as possible day to day, who could then suspect what crimes he was engaged in. But now the wilds took on the further character of being proving grounds for him to attempt to rid himself of the impulse to cherish human life in all his actions.

Either way, another major reason was an attempt to escape stressful social experiences around people who he didn’t understand.

He planned a few more times to kill people in person, but as far as we know, never went through with it:[31][32]

Nov. 1 [1974]: I have dreamed about that Sandi girl a couple of times before, and I dreamed about her again last night ...

... After I awoke I felt for awhile very heavy and melancholy. That melancholy feeling was augmented from another source - as I mentioned before, things are pretty well ruined around here, and there are plenty of difficulties in the way of my getting that cabin in the far north - would still be plenty of difficulties even if I had lots of money. I am just sick of the burden of dealing with people and feel like taking to the woods and seeing how many people I can pick off with my rifle before the cops get me.

OCT. 23, 1979

I am about to stash these notes in a hiding-place, so I will record now some things that I didn’t like to write here when the notes were not hidden. Before I left on my hike this summer I put sugar in the gas tank of one of [name]’s snowmobiles. So hopefully [name] will have some trouble with it this winter. When I went out on my hike this summer I was planning to lie in ambush by some roadside (dirt by-road) a long way from home and shoot some trail-bikers or other mechanized desecrators of the forest, without too much regard for consequences. But once I was out in the woods I started to reconsider, for two reasons. One was that once I was out in the woods I felt so good that I started to care about the future again—I wanted to have more years to spend in the woods. The other reason is that I thought of an excellent scheme for revenge on a bigger scale and didn’t want to screw it up by getting caught for something else before I had a chance to carry it out. Considering technological civilization as a monstrous octopus, the motorcyclists, jeep-riders, and other intruders into the forest are only the tips of the tentacles.

I was not really satisfied with striking at these. My other plan would let me strike perhaps not at the head, but at least much further up along the tentacles.

3. The first mailbomb (1978 – Aged 35)

Fall 1977: Destroying another cabin

Ted:[33]

Fall ‘77 I went to some cabins along Dalton Mountain Road. There was one pretention ‒ looking cabin still not finished on the inside. There was a small house‒trailer parked on the lot, immaculately furnished inside. I stole a rusty animal trap I found outside the cabin. Overcoming my earlier inhibition, I smashed most of the windows in the trailer, then reached inside with my rifle and smashed a Coleman lantern and 2 gas lamp fixtures. I smashed 6 pains on the cabin. At the cabin next door I shot a hole in a new line on a trailer. Then I got the hell out pretty quick, because all this was noisy of course, and close to the road.

Prepared to start killing people

Following on from above in the Fall of 1977 he wrote:[34]

As a result of indoctrination since childhood I had a strong inhibition against doing these things, and it was only at the cost of great effort that I overcame the inhibition. I think that perhaps I could now kill someone (and I don’t mean just set a booby trap having only a fraction chance of success), under circumstances where there was very little chance of getting caught. But I’m not sure I could, because often one’s brainwashing turns out to be stronger than one thought.

As for motivation: I hate the technological society because it deprives me of personal autonomy. The technological society may be in some sense inevitable, but it is so only because of the way technological society may be in some sense inevitable, but it is so only because of the way people behave. Consequently I hate people. (I may have some other reasons for hating some people, but the main reason is that people are responsible for the technological society and its associated phenomena, from motorcycles to computers to psychological controls. Almost anyone who holds steady employment is contributing his part in maintaining the technological society.) Of course the people I hate most are those who consciously and willfully promote the technological society, such as scientists, big businessmen, union leaders, politicians, etc., etc. I emphasize that my motivation is personal revenge. I don’t pretend to have any kind of philosophical or moralistic justification. The concept of morality is simply one of the psychological tools by which society controls people's behavior. My ambition is to kill a scientist, big businessman, government official, or the like. I would also like to kill a communist.

Eric:[35]

… after years of escalating violence in Montana against property and one poor cow. He was ready.

May 1978: Northwestern Security Guard Opens Mailbomb

Don Foster:[36]

Ted Kaczynski chose his designated victims (those whose names he actually put on a parcel) by searching for them in academic reference works. … While Professor Smith of RPI was not widely published, nor well known in his field, nor known personally to Kaczynski, his name and field of expertise appear in a reference work called Dissertation Abstracts International (the DAI), a useful research tool containing a trove of information about newcomers to academic disciplines.

The DAI identifies “Edward John Smith (1966), RPI” as a computer and aerospace engineer with a pilot design for “Attitude Control” intended for guiding the pitch of large orbital spacecraft.

If there’s one phrase that Ted Kaczynski had hated since childhood more than any other (even “technological society”), it was “attitude control.” Edward John Smith, the “attitude control” engineer, was a perfect first target for Ted the Iceman, a.k.a. coolheaded logician Kaczynski.

So, despite attitude control not having the same meaning here, perhaps the term caught his eye whilst searching through the catalogue for scientists advancing high-tech research. As he would write later:[37]

All the university people whom we have attacked have been specialists in technical fields. (We consider certain areas of applied psychology, such as behavior modification, to be technical fields.) We would not want anyone to think that we have any desire to hurt professors who study archaeology, history, literature or harmless stuff like that. The people we are out to get are the scientists and engineers, especially in critical fields like computers and genetics.

Writing in August after having arrived back at his cabin, Ted explained:[38]

I came back to the Chicago area in May, mainly for one reason: So that I could more safely attempt to murder a scientist, businessman, or the like. Before leaving Montana I made a bomb in a kind of box, designed to explode when the box was opened. This was a long, narrow box. I picked the name of an electrical engineering professor out of the catalogue of the Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute and addressed the bomb -- a package to him.

I took the package to downtown Chicago, intending to mail it from there (this was in late May, I think around the 28th or 29th), but it didn’t fit in mail boxes and the post-office package-drops I checked did not look as if they would swallow such a long package except in one post-office (Merchandise Mart); but that was where I had bought stamps for the package a few days before, so I was afraid to go there again because, going there twice in a short time, my face might be remembered.

So I took the bomb over to the U. of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, and surreptitiously dropped it between two parked cars in the lot near the science and technology buildings.

I hoped that a student ‒ preferably one in a scientific field ‒ would pick it up, and would either be a good citizen and take the package to a post office to be sent to Renssalaer, or would open the package himself and blow his hands off, or get killed.

I checked the newspapers carefully afterward but could get no information about the outcome of what I did ‒ the papers seem to report only crimes of special importance.

I have not the least feelilng of guilt about this ‒ on the contrary I am proud of what I did. But I wish I had some assurance that I succeeded in killing or maiming someone.

I am now working, in odd moments on another bomb.

Desires to go out in a Murder-Suicide

After the first bombing failed to maim or kill anyone, Ted doubled down on his commitment to try and kill again:[39][40]

… my motives for writing these autobiographical notes.

1. I intend to start killing people. If I am successful at this, it is possible that, when I am caught (not alive, I fervently hope!) there will be some speculation in the news media as to my motives for killing (As in the case of Charles Whitman, who killed some 13 people in Texas in the 60's). If such speculation occurs, they are bound to make me out to be a sickie, and to ascribe to me motives of a sordid or "sick" type. Of course, the term "sick" in such a context represents a value-judgement. I am not very concerned about the negative value - judgements that will be made about me, but it does anger me that the facts of my psychology will be misrepresented. For that reason I have attempted to give here an account of my own personality and its development that will be as accurate as possible.

2. Desire for self-expression. From my early teens, I have never had any strong desire to communicate with another another human being on an intimate level, or to "unload" any of my troubles by talking about them, except in 2 cases. One was when I was so desperately in love with Carol Wolman. The other has been over the last few months, after my desire for women was strongly brought to life by Ellen Tarmichael. This so strongly roused my life-long frustration at not being able to get a girl, that I wished very much that there were someone I could talk to about it.

   So I partly relieved myself by writing about my past social life - or lack of social life, I should say. ...

One thing that our society demands is that you have a recognized place in the system. By quitting my job [at Prince Castle Spice Packing Plant], I’ve made myself again an outcast, a good-for-nothing, a bum—someone whom “respectable” people can’t view without a certain element of suspicion. I can’t feel comfortable in this respect until I get away into the hills again—away from society. Besides, in quitting I feel as if I have signed my own death-warrant. Drifting along indefinitely in that job would have been the path of least resistance—and that, in a way, was the only thing remaining between me and the finish of everything. Now the path of least resistance is simply to go back to Montana, and once I’m there, I’ll kill, because, as I decided before I left Montana, if I ever went back there I’d have to kill, because I had too much accumulated anger over the inroads of civilization. I’m not likely to change my mind and go looking for another job—job hunting, going to sleep, and getting up for work again the next morning. (Maybe there would still be something better I could still strive for, some corner of the world where there’s still some wilderness, or other things, but again, I’m so terribly—tired—of struggling.)

For those reasons, I want to get my revenge in one big blast. By accepting death as the price, I won’t have to fret and worry about how to plan things so I won’t get caught. More over, I want to release all my hatred and go out and kill. When I see a motorcyclist tearing up the mountain meadows, instead of fretting about how I can get revenge on him safely, I just want to watch the bullet rip through his flesh and I want to kick him in the face when he is dying. You mustn’t assume from this that I am currently being tormented by paroxysms of hatred. Actually, during the last few months (except at a few times) I have been troubled by frustrated hatred much less than usual. I think this is because, whenever I have experienced some outrage (such as a low flying jet or some official stupidity reported in the paper), as I felt myself growing angry, I calmed myself by thinking—just wait till this summer! Then I’ll kill! Thus, what I’ve been feeling in recent months is not hot rage, but a cold determination to get my revenge. But I want to be in my home or hills in Montana, not here in the city. Death in the city seems so sordid and depressing. Death in these hills—well, if you have to die, that’s the place to do it! However, it would have been very tempting to just hang onto my job at Prince Castle indefinitely, even though I have nothing to look forward to.

The truth is, I don’t want to die!

A short note on Ted's misleading answers to this question

In a June 1999 interview with Theresa Kintz, Ted talked about his political development in the following way:[41]

The honest truth is that I am not really politically oriented. I would have really rather just be living out in the woods. If nobody had started cutting roads through there and cutting the trees down and come buzzing around in helicopters and snowmobiles I would still just be living there and the rest of the world could just take care of itself. I got involved in political issues because I was driven to it, so to speak. I’m not really inclined in that direction.

And then in 2009 Ted answered the question; 'How/when did you decide to bomb?' like so:[42]

It would take too much time to give a complete answer to the last part of your ninth question, but I will give you a partial answer by quoting what I wrote for my journal on August 14, 1983:

The fifth of August I began a hike to the east. … [I]t had been a long time since I had seen the beautiful and isolated plateau where the various branches of Trout Creek originate. … What I found there broke my heart. The plateau was criss-crossed with new roads, broad and well-made for roads of that kind. The plateau is ruined forever. The only thing that could save it now would be the collapse of the technological society. I couldn’t bear it. That was the best and most beautiful and isolated place around here and I have wonderful memories of it.

The next day I started for my home cabin. My route took me past a beautiful spot, a favorite place of mine where there was a spring of pure water that could safely be drunk without boiling. I stopped and said a kind of prayer to the spirit of the spring. It was a prayer in which I swore that I would take revenge for what was being done to the forest.

My journal continues: “[...] and then I returned home as quickly as I could because I have something to do!”

You can guess what it was that I had to do.

However, Ted had already sent 7 bombs by this point, and as discussed earlier, had set off in his car with the plan to murder a scientist before he ever even moved to Montana. So, I think statements like these have contributed to a mythology around Ted that he was an 'academic savant who rejected society to live in the wild, and only struck back at technology because of its continued encroachment on his wilderness life'. But obviously, the timeframe for Ted feeling lost and first planning to kill started long before that.

Interestingly, I think this archetypal mythologising is a mirror image of Euro-American narratives of the 'last wild Indian and the noble savage'. The 'noble savage' is admired for starting out a Wildman fighting a justified war against his oppressors and who then becomes someone who could teach the white man his wisdom; whereas Ted is perceived by some as having gone in the opposite direction, of being someone who had all the capabilities and drive to become well accomplished academically early on in life in advanced society, but who chose to reject society to go into the wilds and fight a justified war.

Regardless of the truth or usefulness of these noble savage stories, when we see people who even vaguely resemble them, they are often very emotionally impactful because it's a striking reminder on such an intuitive level that this fight to preserve wildlife habitat and low-impact ways of living are being lost. How we have failed to organize well-thought-out and sufficient resistance to the powers that bring about this environmental destruction.

Did Ted ever regret his actions?

I think at the beginning of his bombing campaign he thought taking 'revenge' on people and animals who annoyed him was simply a right owed to him as a 'wild animal'. For example, he would lay traps to kill small animals like a flying squirrel keeping him up at night, then torture them slowly in order to 'get revenge' on these squirrels. So, I think targetting an airplane in the beggining of his bombing campaign reflected a personal desire to know that any time he would get annoyed at airplane noises where he lived, he could take some 'comfort' in the knowledge that he'd tried hard to take one down.

He later came to regret both these actions due to feeling it wasn't well directed anger and unjustifiably involved harming innocents:[43][44]

... we will say that we are not insensitive to the pain caused by our bombings.

A bomb package that we mailed to computer scientist Patrick Fischer injured his secretary when she opened it. We certainly regret that. And when we were young and comparatively reckless we were much less careful in selecting targets than we are now. For instance, in one case we attempted unsuccessfully to blow up an airliner. The idea was to kill a lot of business people who we assumed would constitute a majority of the passengers. But of course some of the passengers would have been innocent people-maybe kids, or some working stiff going to see his sick grandmother. We're glad now that the attempt failed.

But even though we would undo some of the things we did in earlier days, or do them differently, we are convinced that our enterprise is basically right. The industrial-technological system has got to be eliminated, and to us almost any means that may be necessary for that purpose are justified, even if they involve risk to innocent people. As for the people who willfully and knowingly promote economic growth and technical progress, in our eyes they are criminals, and if they get blown up they deserve it.

Of course, people don’t kill others and risk their own lives just from a detached conviction that a certain change should be made in society. They have to be motivated by some strong emotional force. What is the motivating force in our case? The answer is simple: Anger. You’ll as why we are so angry. You would would do better to ask why there is so much anger and frustration in modern society generally. We think that our manuscript gives the answer to that question, or at least an important part of the answer.

Series II, #5, p.130. I now (Feb, 1996) feel very sorry about the fact that, in a few cases, I tortured small wild animals (two mice, one flying squirrel, and one red squirrel, as far as I can remember offhand) that caused me frustration by stealing my meat, damaging my belongings, or keeping me awake. There are two reasons why I tortured them. (1) I was rebelling against the moral prescriptions of organized society. (2) I got excessively angry at these animals because I had a tremendous fund of anger built up from the frustrations and humiliations imposed on me throughout life by organized society and by individual persons. (As any psychologist will tell you, when you have no means of retaliating against whomever or whatever it is that has made you angry, you are likely to vent your anger on some other object.) When I came to realize that I had taken out on these little creatures the anger that I owed to organized society and to certain people, I very much regretted having tortured them. They are part of nature, which I love, and therefore they are in a way my friends even when they cause problems for me. I ought to reserve my anger for my real enemy, which is human society, or at least the present form of society. I have not tortured an animal for many years now. However I have no hesitation about trapping and killing animals that cause problems for me, at least if they are animals of the more common kinds.

Series II, #5, p.117. Here’s something that I remember pretty clearly about catching that rabbit alive; I don’t know why I didn’t mention it in my notes. In pulling the rabbit out, I tore loose a large patch of his skin (snowshoe hares! Skins are very fragile). I had wanted to let the rabbit go, from pity, but I was afraid that I might be doing it a disservice if I let it go, because the wound probably was very painful, and with so much of its body deprived of fur the rabbit might die of cold anyway.

In prison Ted felt that he had hardened and experienced even less regrets as a result of the prison situation he had ended up in:[45]

Probably the biggest reason why you find my actions incomprehensible is that you have never experienced sufficiently intense anger and frustration over a long enough period of time. You don’t know what it means to be under an immense burden of frustrated anger or how vicious it can make one.

Yet there is no inconsistency between viciousness toward those whom one feels are responsible for one’s anger, and gentleness toward other people. If anything, having enemies augments one’s kindly feelings toward those whom one regards as friends or as fellow victims.

Do I feel that my actions were justified? To that I can give you only a qualified yes. My feelings at a given time depend in part on whether I am winning or losing. When I am losing (for example now, when the system has me in jail) I have no doubts or regrets about the means that I’ve used to fight the system. But when I feel that I’m winning (for example, between the time when the manifesto was published and the time of my arrest), I start feeling sorry for my adversaries, and then I have mixed emotions about what I’ve done.

Thomas Mosser, for instance, was a practitioner of what I consider to be the slimy technique of public relations, which corporations and other large organizations use to manipulate public opinion, but it does not necessarily follow that he was ill-intentioned. He may simply have felt that the system as it exists today is inevitable, and that he could accomplish nothing by going into another line of work. And of course his death hurt his wife and children, too.

I suppose that to sympathize with my actions one has to hate the system as I hate it, or at least one has to have experienced the kind of prolonged, frustrated anger that I’ve experienced. I think you have the good fortune never to have gone through anything like that.

Later in a partially available letter, making a reasonable guess as to what the missing page contained, he wrote:[46]

[‘As for if I had the opportunity to kill Gilbert Murray again, I would have’] no more compunction than I would have in squashing a cockroach.* Yet Judy Clarke thinks the Murrays were just wonderful people. ...

* In contrast, I take very seriously the suffering that David Gelernter underwent. Gelernter is no cliche, but a highly intelligent, thoughtful, talented, and sensitive man whom no one could describe as a mere stereotype. I consider that he deserved what he got, but that is a judgement that I do not adopt lightly and it is one about which I have mixed feelings.

Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography:[47]

... One summer when I was 15 or 16, in one of the prairies that still remained then, I threw a clod of earth at a bird. (The bird was bigger than a robin but smaller than a Franklin Grouse.) ... it "froze", and I walked up to it and just picked it up. As soon as I had it in my hand it began struggling violently. I held it in my hand for some time, and I soon began to experience warm, affectionate, pitying feelings for it. When I first threw the clod at the bird, I had hoped to kill it as an act of hunting, in accord with my fantasies of primitive life. But now I was turning soft.

I thought, "How can I ever hope to experience a cave-man style life if I am too soft-hearted to kill game? For that kind of life I will have to be hard." So I forced myself to kill the bird by crushing it in my hand. I left the place feeling sick with pity for the unfortunate creature ...

In a letter to his lawyers, Ted wrote:[48]

As for winning the sympathy of a jury, bear in mind some of the things that my early (1970's writings indicate: indiscriminate, homicidal hostility toward society in general, not just toward the corporate-governmental technological elite; I hunted game illegally and in a few cases even wasted meat; in a few cases I tortured small animals that had made me angry.

I think that word ‘even’ referring to the severity of wasting meat, rather than the almost indiscriminate homicidal hostility toward people that he felt said it all about his value system.

Did the CIA turn Ted into a terrorist?

Wikipedia:[49]

In his second year at Harvard, 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 debate personal philosophy with a fellow student and were asked to write essays detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations. The essays were given to an anonymous individual who would confront and belittle the subject in what Murray himself called "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" attacks, using the content of the essays as ammunition. 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.

Some sources have suggested that Murray's experiments were part of Project MKUltra, the Central Intelligence Agency's research into mind control.

Glenn:[50]

I was a career operations officer in the CIA, who became involved, for a time, in the interrogation of one of the top members, we believed, of Al-Qaeda. And thereby was involved for that time, in the enhanced interrogation program, which is torture and is mind-altering procedures. My experiences, tragically, are directly relevant to the experience Kaczynski went through because the methods used by the CIA were directly derived from - not just inspired by - what Murray was trying to do in the '50s and early '60s. And that is that you can break somebody down and you can alter their mind. The theory was, you will be psychologically broken down and dislocated so that you can then be reformed as a cooperative source.

Michael Sperber:[51]

As a student, Kaczynski in 1959–62 participated in psychological research on the subject of stress devised by Professor Henry A. Murray of the Department of Social Relations. Murray, researching two-person interactions (the “dyad”), described the experimental procedure in American Psychologist (1963):

First, you are told you have a month in which to write a brief exposition of your personal philosophy of life, an affirmation of the major guiding principles in accord with which you live or hope to live your life. Second, when you return to the Annex [Murray’s workshop] with your finished composition, you are informed that in a day or two you and a talented young lawyer will be asked to debate the respective merits of your two philosophies.

Murray did not tell the research subjects that they would be debating an aggressive lawyer who was instructed to surprise, deceive, and ridicule them, disputing the respective merits of their philosophies. A biographer of Kaczynski at Harvard wrote:

As instructed, the unwitting subject attempted to represent and to defend his personal philosophy of life. Invariably, however, he was frustrated, and finally brought to expressions of real anger by the withering assault of his older, more sophisticated opponent while fluctuations in the subject’s pulse and respiration were measured on a cardiotachometer.

It is difficult to imagine a better way to humiliate, disrespect, and discredit another human being than by invalidating his or her philosophy of life, the major guiding principles by which that person lives. Kaczynski, however, denied that Murray’s experiments had any important effect on his psyche:

I experienced a lasting resentment of Murray and his co-workers. This resentment was not primarily due to the “dyadic disputation” that Chase makes so much of. What I mainly resented was the fact that I had been talked into participating in studies that involved extensive invasion of my privacy—and by people whom I disliked personally. I am quite confident that my experiences with Professor Murray had no significant effect on the course of my life.

Ted:[52]

Actually there was only one unpleasant experience in the Murray study; it lasted about half an hour and could not reasonably have been described as “traumatic.” Mostly the study consisted of interviews and filling out pencil-and-paper personality tests. The CIA was not involved.

About 15 or 20 years ago a TV journalist named Chris Vlasto … looked up some of the other participants in the study and found that nothing had happened that was worth reporting in the media…

Michael Sperber:[53]

Perhaps the impact of Murray’s deliberately disrespectful encounters had more of an effect on Kaczynski’s psyche than he realized. He told a court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Sally Johnson, who conducted competency hearings prior to his trial in 1998, that while he was at the University of Michigan, where he was studying for a doctoral degree in mathematics, he began having nightmares, which continued for several years:

At the age of 19 I began having nightmares (3 or 4 times a year?) that were accompanied by a strange aura of fear and disgust.

Ted’s Journal:[54]

In the dream I would feel either that organized society was hounding me with accusation in some way, or that organized society was trying in some way to capture my mind and tie me down psychologically or both. In the most typical form some psychologist or psychologists (often in association with parents or other minions of the system) would either be trying to convince me that I was “sick” or would be trying to control my mind through psychological techniques. … I would grow angrier and finally I would break out in physical violence against the psychologist and his allies. At the moment when I broke out into violence and killed the psychologist or other such figure, I experienced a great feeling of relief and liberation.

Ted writing from prison:[55][56]

During my sophomore year I was talked into becoming a participant (against my better judgment) in a psychological study directed by the late Professor Henry A. Murray. Along with a couple of dozen other Harvard students, over a period of almost three years I went through a series of interviews and filled out many questionnaires. My brief 1959 autobiography was written for Murray’s group. The assessment arrived at by the psychologists would be very useful in determining how people saw my personality, but up to the present (March 14, 1998) the Murray Center at Radcliffe College has refused to release any of the psychologists’ conclusions to my attorneys; and most of the individual psychologists involved have declined to cooperate with the investigators, who to my knowledge have obtained no information concerning any conclusions that were drawn about me. One wonders whether the Murray Center has something to hide. Anyway, all I know at the moment about the psychologists’ conclusions is that I was included in an “ideologically alienated” group that was discussed by Kenneth Keniston in his book The Uncommitted.

“One of the psychologists who participated in [the Murray] study, and who interviewed me a few times, was a youngish instructor who lived at Eliot House. He was a member of the house master’s inner clique. Two or three times when I met him at Eliot House I said ‘hello’. In each case this psychologist answered my greeting in a low tone, looking off in another direction and hurrying away as if he didn’t want to stop and talk to me. I’ve thought this over, and the only half-way plausible [explanation I can think of for this behavior] is that this man didn’t want to be seen socializing with someone who wasn’t dressed properly and wasn’t acceptable to the clique of which he was a member.”

Ab. Autobiog of TJK 1959. This is a brief autobiographical sketch that I wrote, probably in the fall of 1959, for Professor Henry A. Murray as part of a psychological study in which I participated. Its trustworthiness is impaired by the fact that I resented having been talked into participating in Murray's study and therefore tried to avoid revealing too much about my inner self. I tended to downplay problems rather than speaking about them frankly; specifically, I understated the problems I had during adolescence with my parents and my school mates.

Unabomber: In his own words:[57]

RECORDING: (Researcher #1:) Please begin your discussion when you hear the buzzer sound, alright? (Researcher #2 [Mr. C.]:) Just give me a second. Do you think we ought to decide how we’re going to go about it or… (Kaczynski:) I suppose it’s supposed to be a spontaneous discussion (laughs)

SASHA: This experiment basically was an experiment run by Henry Murray, At the Harvard psych department. But when it comes to these interviews with Ted, the files are sealed. You can't get access to them.

RECORDING: (Mr. C.:) I ought to warn you before I start this, that I was not… I do not have a very favorable impression of you as a result of reading your philosophy. But, let me just tick off a few preliminaries and then we’ll get into what I really didn’t like.

SASHA: What we do know for certain is that Henry Murray was looking into the effects of stress on human beings, specifically he was looking at interrogation strategies and techniques and how human beings are able to kind of be resilient to aggressive interrogative tactics.

RECORDING: (Mr. C.:) First, I mean, in spite of the fact that you’ve explained this subjective reality, I mean I think this is essentially an asinine point of view. (Kaczynski:) Yeah.

FORREST: Murray subjected them to harsh critiques of their ideas and he was very interested in seeing how they responded, how they performed when there was really a stressful situation.

ROY: Ted was told he was gonna be debating political philosophy with a fellow student. How tempting that would have been.

SASHA: It was not a debate. It was a full-on aggressive attack of Ted as a human being, as Ted as an intellect.

FORREST: You couldn't do those experiments today. But you certainly could in 1958 to 1962. There was nothing at the time of an objection to what Harry was doing. It was simply taken for granted that that was how you had conducted research of that kind.

DAVID: Ted was deceived. He didn't know that this person had a script and the person's objective was to humiliate and traumatize him.

Colin A. Ross M.D. - Author of 'The CIA Doctors'

COLIN: Henry Murray was a very high ranking academic, very successful career with well established expertise in interrogations. And he was very involved in developing interrogation techniques for the OSS, which is the Office of Strategic Services. The Second World War precursor of the CIA. So, interrogation, as we all know, is questioning somebody to try and find out, Did they commit a crime? Enhanced interrogation is when you add on all these mind control methods, drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, sensory isolation, good cop/bad cop techniques. Whatever you could dream up to try and get something out of somebody.

FORREST: Henry Murray was not an evil scientist. There are some plausible arguments to be made that he had some connections with the CIA. But he was very proud of his service to the country and took working with the CIA, if he did, as part of that responsibility, he was a responsible citizen. And the country needed good assessment of personnel. So, he could provide that better than anyone else could.

Glenn Carle - Former CIA Officer

GLENN: I was a career operations officer in the CIA, who became involved, for a time, in the interrogation of one of the top members, we believed, of Al-Qaeda. And thereby was involved for that time, in the enhanced interrogation program, which is torture and is mind-altering procedures. My experiences, tragically, are directly relevant to the experience Kaczynski went through because the methods used by the CIA were directly derived from - not just inspired by - what Murray was trying to do in the '50s and early '60s. And that is that you can break somebody down and you can alter their mind. The theory was, you will be psychologically broken down and dislocated so that you can then be reformed as a cooperative source.

RECORDING: (Mr. C.:) Go ahead. (Kaczynski:) Ah well, I mean, let me get some chance for some defense here. I mean, well you say… (Mr. C.:) If you’re defending yourself… if able...

FORREST: The idea that Harry Murray was the villain, a malignant character, and that Theodore Kaczynski was the victim, all of that is, is nonsense. It's simply without foundation.

RECORDING: (Mr. C.:) Don’t interrupt me, please. On this, avoiding of society, or of this society is a bad thing, is that why you’re trying to grow that beard? (Kaczynski:) No. (Mr. C.:) I mean, are you conforming with the non-conformists? (Kaczynski:) NO, I’m not conforming with the non-conformists. If I were conforming with the non-conformists… I mean, really, this isn’t really a beard yet… (Mr. C.:) You’re darn right it’s not.

SASHA: Ted was a child when he was exposed to these experiments. He was 16, 17. So it is absolutely possible that the study had a profound impact on Ted's neurobiological development.

RECORDING: (Kaczynski:) You haven’t really critized my views except that you’ve applied labels. You have not analyzed them in any way and attacked them logically. (Mr. C.:) Sure, well there isn’t too much to analyze, Mr. Kaczynski. It’s a lot of garbage.

SASHA: Ted had built his entire life and his entire sense of self and pride in himself on his intelligence, on his intellect, on his ability to think and critically reason and use logic. And this study, what it did is it slowly tore that away from him.

RECORDING: (Mr. C.:) You don’t seem to me to have the courage of your convictions. Where you do, then your convictions tend to be all wet, and I think you’ve taken your own shortcomings and attempted to compensate for them. (Kaczynski:) No, you’ve just been applying labels. (Researcher #1:) Thank you gentlemen, thank you very much.

DAVID: Ted had told his attorneys and they relayed it to me, they asked him, "Ted, why did you put up with this for three years? I mean, these people were just humiliating you, why did you put up with this?" And he basically said, well, I wanted to show that I could take it, that I couldn't be broken. And the thought that occurred to me was, well, maybe sometimes it's better to be broken than to be hardened.

ROY: He was rapidly withdrawing from... I mean, he was really becoming like might be called paranoid or whatever, but he was rejecting other people. And according to what I heard it was following the start of these psychology experiments.

ROY: One roommate said that, uh, if they went down to the dining hall and… saw him there and sat down with him, he'd just-they never saw anybody finish his food faster and without saying a word, would just leave. You know, so I felt hurt at first that, that he had just sort of ignored or, or obliterated our friendship, but I wasn't alone. I mean, he was… he was not just shy, now he was really antisocial.

DAVID: Ted had come home from school. You know, I was getting a little more intellectual, reading more serious books, and I had some ideas and I couldn't wait to tell my big brother about my ideas, but it seemed like, wow, he was very dismissive of my ideas. And he said, "You know, Dave, real smart people have a sadistic streak. Almost all of them do." I was a little surprised by that, but the behavior he showed to me in putting down, dismissing my ideas was what he had encountered at Harvard when people were demeaning toward him when he expressed his philosophy of life.

How did Ted attempt to justify building the unsent bomb under his bed?

There's a partially archived copy of a note that Ted wrote to his defence lawyers, where he alludes to the idea the bomb under his bed was made as a booby trap for if FBI agents ever raided his cabin, but that ‘he didn’t have the heart to go through with it, though now he wish he had’:[58]

The device in cabin was not “set” - I.e. it still had the safety pin in place, so it would not blow up FBI agents in case of an arrest. I sort of felt sorry for the FBI agents - before I was arrested. After I was arrested … [Not archived]

This appears to be the best lie he could think to come up with at the time, but obviously FBI agents would be the last people on earth to recklessly unwrap a package in a cabin they knew was a bomb making factory.

Likely Ted also hadn’t heard that they didn’t simply blow up the bomb in a safe location, but disarmed it and noticed that the package was earmarked for an airline-affiliated person. Written on the wrapping was a misleading note that inside was a “Newell Channel Reamer,”[59] a tool commonly used by aviation mechanics.

Obviously Ted’s bomb making came from a place of intense anger and frustration and couldn’t be given up so easily.

Two interesting unanswered questions remain though:

1. Would he actually have got on a bus and sent the bomb, breaking his deal with the newspapers?

2. If he had sent the bomb, what rationalisation would he have given?

Would he simply have played off a continued bombing spree as the media’s stupidity for trusting a terrorist whose end goal in revolution justifies the means of deceit?

Also, the deal Kaczynski proposed to the newspapers was that a fictional group would stop bombing, what reason do we have to believe Kaczynski would treat this promise as a duty relevant to himself. He could have simply continued bombings and shootings outside of his usual pattern, to avoid suspicion that he was the perpetrator, perhaps even in a new country.

Was Ted a compassionate person?

I think the answer is simply 'it's complicated'. From Ted's 1979 Autobiography:[60]

In recent years there has been an important change in my feelings toward people. But before explaining this, let me go back and review some of my feelings toward people from childhood. I have said that in childhood I was attracted to power and aggression. For instance, I found war stories and war games attractive and exciting…

... Toward someone for whom I had a definite resentment my feelings could be very hard. Also, I had a tendency to favor stern punishment of anyone who broke rules laid down by authority. Also, in some cases, I could sometunes be drawn by other kids into sadistic harassment of someone ...

... As I got into my teens, I think I became callous and uncompassionate. I speculate that this may have been in part due to biological changes associated with puberty in males. But certainly part of it must have been the result of the resentment I felt toward the whole human race on account of the way I was treated by my schoolfellows and parents. This in my early teens ... From the age of about 17, I tended to feel more and more compassionate and sympathetic as time went on toward people's hurt feelings ... I mean such things as the loss of some great life-long aspiration, or a mother's loss of her child). I had virtually no compassion for members of social in-groups, and I was most inclined to feel sympathetic toward people who were most rejected socially ...

... Despite all the foregoing remarks, toward physical suffering I have remained very callous, as judged by the standards of modern society. Also toward physical fear I am callous.

For example, once while out walking during my last year at Michigan I came on a small crowd of people standing around a college girl lying in the street who evidently had just been hit by a car ... So far as one could judge from appearances, this girl seemed like the very personification of stupid mediocrity, both physically and mentally. I did not feel the slightest pity for this girl. In fact, I was rather amused by her injury, and I had to restrain myself from smiling, so as to avoid shocking the other bystanders ...

... In three other cases I have seen people injured in automobile accidents (in one case some of the people evidently had been killed), and I felt no pity for them. In fact, I was usually pleased at their injuries, because they looked like the type of people whom I would dislike. But in a couple of these cases I was sobered by what I saw, thinking, "That could happen to me if I'm not careful". But that doesn't mean I felt any compassion ...

... I have mixed feelings toward my parents; I strongly resent them, and have no real affection for them, but nevertheless I have a kind of pity for them, and would feel sorry for them in any adversity ...

... One time in a supermarket market around 1969/1970(?) I saw a woman looking anxiously around and calling her child's name. A little further on I saw a small boy hurrying along an aisle looking extremely anxious ... but he kept himself under control, rather than bawling or running frantically. Thus I respected him. If he had just acted like a squalling brat, I probably would have thought it would be a pleasure to bash his head in…

... I have indicated before that I am attracted to power. This requires explanation. In personal relationships, I do not like to dominate other people. I absolutely cannot endure being dominated by anyone else ... and in doing anything with other people, I have a strong desire to make all the decisions, but I hate to dominate anyone, because I don't want to hurt their feelings - knowing well myself, from my high school days, how it feels to be dominated ...

What were Ted's politics & philosophy?

How low-technology did Ted wish everyone would live?

Ted's ideal was for everyone to live as nomadic hunter-gatherers. But he acknowledged that he didn't see any easy way of preventing people from farming post a revolution. He just believed the situation would be more advantageous to more people living as hunter-gatherers long-term:[61][62][63][64][65]

... it is possible I may even be wrong in assuming that a hunting society provides more physical freedom, because, not having lived in such a society, I can't be absolutely certain.

In any case, even the most primitive society carries in it the seeds of what I consider evil, since all societies have the potential for eventual "progress" toward civilization. Thus I am more inclined to wish that the human race would become extinct.

Now, considering hunting and gathering as an economic form -- this I do idealize. By this I mean that I would rather make my living by hunting, gathering plant foods, and making my own clothing, implements, etc., than in any other way I can think of. Here I do have some personal experience to go on.

I’m quite sure that it will be impossible to control post-revolution conditions, but I think you’re quite right in saying that a “positive social vision” is necessary. However, the social ideal I would put forward is that of the nomadic hunting-and-gathering society.

... The nomadic hunting-and-gathering society recommends itself as a social ideal because it is at the opposite extreme of human culture from the technological society.

... a hunting-and-gathering existence will appear much more attractive than that offered by preindustrial civilization. Even many modern people enjoy hunting, fishing, and gathering wild fruits and nuts. I think few would enjoy such tasks as ploughing, hoeing, or threshing. And in civilized societies the majority of the population commonly have been exploited in one way or another by the upper classes: If they were not slaves or serfs, then they often were hired laborers or tenant-farmers subject to the domination of landowners. Preindustrial civilized societies often suffered from disastrous epidemics or famines, and the common people in many cases had poor nutrition. In contrast, hunter-gatherers, except in the far north, generally had good nutrition. Famines among them were probably rare. They were relatively little troubled by infectious diseases until such diseases were introduced among them by more “advanced” peoples. Slavery and well-developed social hierarchies could exist among sedentary hunter-gatherers, but (apart from the tendency of women to be in some degree subordinate to men), nomadic hunter-gatherer societies typically (not always) were characterized by social equality, and normally did not practice slavery. (Though I know of one exception: Apparently some Cree Indians who were probably hunter-gatherers did take slaves.)

... nomadic hunter-gatherer societies seem a great deal more attractive than preindustrial civilized ones.

... my hope, is that certain inconvenient aspects of hunter-gatherer societies (e.g., male dominance, hard work) would turn off the leftists, the neurotics, and the lazies but that such societies, depicted realistically, would remain attractive to the kind of people who could be effective revolutionaries.

We call ourselves anarchists because we would like, ideally, to break down all society into very small, completely autonomous units. Regrettably, we don’t see any clear road to this goal, so we leave it to the indefinite future. Our more immediate goal, which we think may be attainable at some time during the next several decades, is the destruction of the worldwide industrial system. Through our bombings we hope to promote social instability in industrial society, propagate anti-industrial ideas and give encouragement to those who hate the industrial system. ...

Man is a social animal, meant to live in groups. But only in SMALL groups, say up to 100 people, in which all members know one another intimately. Man is not meant to live as an insignificant atom in a vast organization, which is the only way he can live in any form of industrialized society. ...

Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power.

The anarchist³⁴ too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes technology because it makes small groups dependent on large organizations. ...

183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideal as well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as well as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is Nature. That is, WILD nature: Those aspects of the functioning of the Earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature we include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the functioning of the human individual that are not subject to regulation by organized society but are products of chance, or free will, or God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions).

184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of the system). Most people will agree that nature is beautiful; certainly it has tremendous popular appeal The radical environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature and opposes technology. It is not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or any new kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before any human society, and for countless centuries many different kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an excessive amount of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even preindustrial societies can do significant damage to nature. Nevertheless, getting rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can begin to heal. It will remove the capacity of organized society to keep increasing its control over nature (including human nature). Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature, because in the absence of advanced technology there is no other way that people CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants, or herdsmen, or fishermen, or hunters, etc. And, generally speaking, local autonomy should tend to increase, because lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments or other large organizations to control local communities. ...

To the extent that the average modern INDIVIDUAL can wield the power of technology, he is permitted to do so only within narrow limits and only under the supervision and control of the system. (You need a license for everything and with the license come rules and regulations.) The individual has only those technological powers with which the system chooses to provide him. His PERSONAL power over nature is slight.

198. Primitive INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS actually had considerable power over nature; or maybe it would be better to say power WITHIN nature. When primitive man needed food he knew how to find and prepare edible roots, how to track game and take it with homemade weapons. He knew how to protect himself from heat, cold, rain, dangerous animals, etc. But primitive man did relatively little damage to nature because the COLLECTIVE power of primitive society was negligible compared to the COLLECTIVE power of industrial society.

199. Instead of arguing for powerlessness and passivity, one should argue that the power of the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM should be broken, and that this will greatly INCREASE the power and freedom of INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS. ...

"[A] return to undomesticated autonomous ways of living would not be achieved by the removal of industrialism alone. Such removal would still leave domination of nature, subjugation of women, war, religion, the state, and division of labour, to cite some basic social pathologies. It is civilization itself that must be undone to go where Unabomber wants to go."

I agree with much of this. ...

But the removal of civilization itself is a far more difficult proposition, because civilization in its pre-industrial forms does not require an elaborate and highly-organized technological structure. A pre-industrial civilization requires only a relatively simple technology, the most important element of which is agriculture.

How does one prevent people from practicing agriculture? And given that people practice agriculture, how does one prevent them from living in densely-populated communities and forming social hierarchies? It is a very difficult matter and I don’t see any way of accomplishing it.

I am not suggesting that the elimination of civilization should be abandoned as an ideal or as an eventual goal. I merely point out that no one knows of any plausible means of reaching that goal in the foreseeable future. In contrast, the elimination of the industrial system is a plausible goal for the next several decades, and, in a general way, we can see how to go about attaining it. Therefore, the goal on which we should set our sights for the present is the destruction of the industrial system. After that has been accomplished we can think about eliminating civilization. ...

After the techno-industrial system has been eliminated, people can and should fight injustice wherever they find it. ...

Was Ted a social Darwinist?

I think so, yes. He thought the social order of a dramatically reduced world population lead to a more tranquil meaningful life, in that for example adult males would often have the autonomy to travel far from the tribe they were born into and hardly ever even have to encounter another person if they didn't want to. And for that he was willing to pay the price of high infant mortality rates, etc.

Social Darwinism is descriptively tied to racism and pseudoscience because of the way many of it's adherence in history have claimed it to be an objectively good thing that no other philosophy can argue against. But, I don't think Ted necessarily embraced pseudoscience or racism. Only a social Darwinist ideal of men having more autonomy than women and a situation where a high infant mortality rate happens to sometimes kill off a greater number of 'genetically weak' people.

I think his ideals are not my ideals and would lead to outcomes that are against mine and a lot of people's interests, but I don't think they're necessarily pseudoscientific.

Quoting Wikipedia:[66]

Social Darwinism is the study and implementation of various pseudoscientific theories and societal practices that purport to apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology, economics and politics, and which were largely defined by scholars in Western Europe and North America in the 1870s. Social Darwinists believe that the strong should see their wealth and power increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease. Social Darwinist definitions of the strong and the weak vary, and also differ on the precise mechanisms that reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between individuals in laissez-faire capitalism, while others, emphasizing struggle between national or racial groups, support eugenics, racism, imperialism and/or fascism.

Was Ted an anarchist?

Did Ted ever really think of himself as an anarchist?

I think Ted did sincerely identify as an anarchist in the 1990s at least. His first letter to the media, in June 1993, began with the words: "We are an anarchist group calling ourselves FC." A later communiqué from April 1995 repeated: "We call ourselves anarchists." The Manifesto discusses "our particular brand of anarchism".

Also, for many years after his arrest his message remained fairly consistent: "the social ideal I would put forward is that of the nomadic hunting-and-gathering society."[67] Plus, that: "after the techno-industrial system has been eliminated, people can and should fight injustice wherever they find it."[68]

Quoting Ted:[69][70][71]

We call ourselves anarchists because we would like, ideally, to break down all society into very small, completely autonomous units. Regrettably, we don’t see any clear road to this goal, so we leave it to the indefinite future. Our more immediate goal, which we think may be attainable at some time during the next several decades, is the destruction of the worldwide industrial system. Through our bombings we hope to promote social instability in industrial society, propagate anti-industrial ideas and give encouragement to those who hate the industrial system. ...

Man is a social animal, meant to live in groups. But only in SMALL groups, say up to 100 people, in which all members know one another intimately. Man is not meant to live as an insignificant atom in a vast organization, which is the only way he can live in any form of industrialized society. ...

Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power.

The anarchist³⁴ too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes technology because it makes small groups dependent on large organizations. ...

34. This statement refers to our particular brand of anarchism. A wide variety of social attitudes have been called “anarchist,” and it may be that many who consider themselves anarchists would not accept our statement of paragraph 215. It should be noted, by the way, that there is a nonviolent anarchist movement whose members probably would not accept FC as anarchist and certainly would not approve of FC’s violent methods. ...

183. But an ideology, in order to gain enthusiastic support, must have a positive ideal as well as a negative one; it must be FOR something as well as AGAINST something. The positive ideal that we propose is Nature. That is, WILD nature: Those aspects of the functioning of the Earth and its living things that are independent of human management and free of human interference and control. And with wild nature we include human nature, by which we mean those aspects of the functioning of the human individual that are not subject to regulation by organized society but are products of chance, or free will, or God (depending on your religious or philosophical opinions).

184. Nature makes a perfect counter-ideal to technology for several reasons. Nature (that which is outside the power of the system) is the opposite of technology (which seeks to expand indefinitely the power of the system). Most people will agree that nature is beautiful; certainly it has tremendous popular appeal The radical environmentalists ALREADY hold an ideology that exalts nature and opposes technology. It is not necessary for the sake of nature to set up some chimerical utopia or any new kind of social order. Nature takes care of itself: It was a spontaneous creation that existed long before any human society, and for countless centuries many different kinds of human societies coexisted with nature without doing it an excessive amount of damage. Only with the Industrial Revolution did the effect of human society on nature become really devastating. To relieve the pressure on nature it is not necessary to create a special kind of social system, it is only necessary to get rid of industrial society. Granted, this will not solve all problems. Industrial society has already done tremendous damage to nature and it will take a very long time for the scars to heal. Besides, even preindustrial societies can do significant damage to nature. Nevertheless, getting rid of industrial society will accomplish a great deal. It will relieve the worst of the pressure on nature so that the scars can begin to heal. It will remove the capacity of organized society to keep increasing its control over nature (including human nature). Whatever kind of society may exist after the demise of the industrial system, it is certain that most people will live close to nature, because in the absence of advanced technology there is no other way that people CAN live. To feed themselves they must be peasants, or herdsmen, or fishermen, or hunters, etc. And, generally speaking, local autonomy should tend to increase, because lack of advanced technology and rapid communications will limit the capacity of governments or other large organizations to control local communities. ...

To the extent that the average modern INDIVIDUAL can wield the power of technology, he is permitted to do so only within narrow limits and only under the supervision and control of the system. (You need a license for everything and with the license come rules and regulations.) The individual has only those technological powers with which the system chooses to provide him. His PERSONAL power over nature is slight.

198. Primitive INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS actually had considerable power over nature; or maybe it would be better to say power WITHIN nature. When primitive man needed food he knew how to find and prepare edible roots, how to track game and take it with homemade weapons. He knew how to protect himself from heat, cold, rain, dangerous animals, etc. But primitive man did relatively little damage to nature because the COLLECTIVE power of primitive society was negligible compared to the COLLECTIVE power of industrial society.

199. Instead of arguing for powerlessness and passivity, one should argue that the power of the INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM should be broken, and that this will greatly INCREASE the power and freedom of INDIVIDUALS and SMALL GROUPS. ...

"[A] return to undomesticated autonomous ways of living would not be achieved by the removal of industrialism alone. Such removal would still leave domination of nature, subjugation of women, war, religion, the state, and division of labour, to cite some basic social pathologies. It is civilization itself that must be undone to go where Unabomber wants to go."

I agree with much of this. ...

But the removal of civilization itself is a far more difficult proposition, because civilization in its pre-industrial forms does not require an elaborate and highly-organized technological structure. A pre-industrial civilization requires only a relatively simple technology, the most important element of which is agriculture.

How does one prevent people from practicing agriculture? And given that people practice agriculture, how does one prevent them from living in densely-populated communities and forming social hierarchies? It is a very difficult matter and I don’t see any way of accomplishing it.

I am not suggesting that the elimination of civilization should be abandoned as an ideal or as an eventual goal. I merely point out that no one knows of any plausible means of reaching that goal in the foreseeable future. In contrast, the elimination of the industrial system is a plausible goal for the next several decades, and, in a general way, we can see how to go about attaining it. Therefore, the goal on which we should set our sights for the present is the destruction of the industrial system. After that has been accomplished we can think about eliminating civilization. ...

After the techno-industrial system has been eliminated, people can and should fight injustice wherever they find it. ...

In 2016 however, Ted renounced any identification as an anarchist. In an extra paragraph to a footnote Ted added to his manifesto in 2016, that was published in the 2019 update of his book Technological Slavery, Ted wrote the following (shown here in it's full context, starting with the paragraph from the main body of the manifesto):[72]

... Above all, leftism is driven by the need for power, and the leftist seeks power on a collective basis, through identification with a mass movement or an organization. Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power.

[Paragraph] 215. The anarchist³⁴ too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes technology because it makes small groups dependent on large organizations.

[Footnote] 34. This statement refers to our particular brand of anarchism. A wide variety of social attitudes have been called “anarchist,” and it may be that many who consider themselves anarchists would not accept our statement of paragraph 215. It should be noted, by the way, that there is a nonviolent anarchist movement whose members probably would not accept FC as anarchist and certainly would not approve of FC’s violent methods.

(Added 2016) In 1995 I described FC as “anarchist” because I thought it would be advantageous to have some recognized political identity. At that time I knew very little about anarchism. Since then I've learned that anarchists, at least those of the U.S. and the U.K., are nothing but a lot of hopelessly ineffectual bunglers and dreamers, useless for any purpose. Needless to say, I now disavow any identification as an anarchist.

Was Ted ever actually an anarchist though?

I think Wayne Price said it best when he answered this question in the following way:[73]

First, I answer “No.” His views have nothing in common with my views on anarchism. And even the most misguided anarchist bomb-throwers and assassins of the past would not have killed professors and students.

But I also say “Maybe.” His views are similar to those of many anarchists: the lack of interest in developing a strategy for popular revolution; the belief that the enemy is industrial technology; not building an organization; not participating in popular struggles, but acting as an elite above the people; the worship of violence, abstracted from popular struggle; a willingness to impose their views on the people, even while denouncing as vanguardist those who try to persuade people. Perhaps I could add: an ambiguity about democracy, seeing anarchism as for freedom versus democracy, rather than as the most extreme form of democracy. All these concepts are reflected in the Unabomber’s letters and actions and are also held by various trends within the anti-authoritarian movements. No doubt the Unabomber will be used as an excuse for denouncing anarchism. The movement would be wise to prepare by having open discussion about him and his methods.

For further reading on this subject click here.

What were his politics at the end of his life?

He cycled through a bunch of reactionary dispositions starting with fascism and ending on a kind of anti-tech vanguardism. He advocated an organizational strategy similar to Maoism and suggested seeing if alliances could be made with jihadists like Bin Laden:[74][75][76][77][78][79]

(ii) If a member of the anti-tech organization can find a place on the editorial board of a radical environmentalist periodical (for instance, the Earth First! journal), he will be able to influence the content of the periodical. If a majority of anti-tech people can be placed on the editorial board, they will be able in effect to take the periodical over, minimize its leftist content, and use it systematically for the propagation of anti-tech ideas. ...

How can anti-tech revolutionaries get themselves into positions of power and infuence in radical environmentalist groups? The most important way will be through the moral authority of hard work. In every organization which they seek to capture, the communists are the readiest volunteers, the most devoted committee workers, the most alert and active participants. In many groups, this is in itself sufficient to gain the leadership; it is almost always enough to justify candidacy [for leadership].

The [Communists] in penetrating an organization... become the 'best workers' for whatever goals the organization seeks to attain.

Prior to that final struggle, the revolutionaries should not expect to have a majority of people on their side. History is made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wants. ...

When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern would be similar to that of the French and Russian Revolutions. French society and Russian society, for several decades prior to their respective revolutions, showed increasing signs of stress and weakness. Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a new world-view that was quite different from the old one. In the Russian case revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old order. Then, when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress (by financial crisis in France, by military defeat in Russia) it was swept away by revolution. What we propose is something along the same lines.

It seems to me, that there are discontented groups that could be very useful if we could, so to speak, recruit them.

Then when the right moment comes, they will be in a position to strike. The thing is that people will tend to be attracted to a movement not only on the basis of agreeing with its ideas, but if they see it as effective, having a clear-cut agenda, cohesive, purposeful and active.

In certain quarters, there is a rejection of modernity, among muslim militants, and I’m wondering what extent it might be useful to our movement to carry on discussions with the Muslim militants and see whether there is sufficient common ground there for any sort of alliance.

If he were simply that, I might be inclined to support him, but my guess is that his motive is less an opposition to modernity than a desire to create an Islamic ‘great power’ that would be able to compete on equal terms with other great powers of the world. If that is true, then he is just another ruthless and power-hungry politician, and I have no use for him.

Concerning the recent terrorist action in Britain: Quite apart from any humanitarian considerations, the radical Islamics' approach seems senseless. They take a hostile stance toward whole nations, such as the US. or Britain, and they indiscriminately kill ordinary citizens of those countries. In doing so they only strengthen the countries in question, because they provide the politicians with what they most need: a feared external enemy to unite the people behind their leaders. The Islamics seem to have forgotten the principle of "divide and conquer": Their best policy would have been to profess friendship for the American, British, etc. people and limit their expressed hostility to the elite groups of those countries, while portraying the ordinary people as victims or dupes of their leaders. (Notice that this is the position that the US. usually adopts toward hostile countries.)

So the terrorists' acts of mass slaughter seem stupid. But there may be an explanation other than stupidity for their actions: The radical Islamic leaders may be less interested in the effect that the bombings have on the US. or the UK. than in their effect within the Islamic world. The leaders' main goal may be to build a strong and fanatical Islamic movement, and for this purpose they may feel that spectacular acts of mass destruction arc more effective than assassinations of single individuals, however important the latter may be. I've found some support for this hypothesis:

“[A] radical remake of the faith is indeed the underlying intention of bin Laden and his followers. Attacking America and its allies is merely a tactic, intended to provoke a backlash strong enough to alert Muslims to the supposed truth of their predicament, and so rally them to purge their faith of all that is alien to its essence. Promoting a clash of civilizations is merely stage one. The more difficult part, as the radicals see it, is convincing fellow Muslims to reject the modern world absolutely (including such aberrations as democracy), topple their own insidiously secularizing quisling governments, and return to the pure path.”

It’s certainly an oversimplification to say that the struggle between left & right in America today is a struggle between the neurotics and the sociopaths (left = neurotics, right = sociopaths = criminal types),” he said, “but there is nevertheless a good deal of truth in that statement.

The current political turmoil provides an environment in which a revolutionary movement should be able to gain a foothold.” He returned to the point later with more enthusiasm: “Present situation looks a lot like situation (19th century) leading up to Russian Revolution, or (pre-1911) to Chinese Revolution. You have all these different factions, mostly goofy and unrealistic, and in disagreement if not in conflict with one another, but all agreeing that the situation is intolerable and that change of the most radical kind is necessary and inevitable. To this mix add one leader of genius.

It is clear that in Ted's view some types of racism and ethnic conflict should be encouraged, so long as they are stresses useful in breaking down the industrial system:[80]

134. For all of the foregoing reasons, technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. But this statement requires an important qualification. It appears that during the next several decades the industrial-technological system will be undergoing severe stresses due to economic and environmental problems, and especially due to problems of human behavior (alienation, rebellion, hostility, a variety of social and psychological difficulties). We hope that the stresses through which the system is likely to pass will cause it to break down, or at least weaken it sufficiently so that a revolution occurs and is successful, then at that particular moment the aspiration for freedom will have proved more powerful than technology.

He further defines some of the stresses that he hopes to originate from race hatred and ethnic rivalry, politcal extremism, anti-government groups, and hate groups:[81]

150. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And a considerable proportion of the system's economic and environmental problems result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self-esteem, depression, hostility, rebellion; children who won't study, youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse , other crimes, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict (i.e., pro-choice vs. pro-life), political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti-government groups, hate groups. All these threaten the very survival of the system. The system will be FORCED to use every practical means of controlling human behavior.

Was Ted religious?

Apart from briefly being suckered in by some some scientific sounding evidence for a spoon bending magician's paranormal beliefs, he was a hard materialist who simply took comfort in the idea that there was tranquillity to be found in the wild and that death was the end.[82]

BVD: ... I remember reading that your parents were atheists, that you were raised in an atheistic home.

TJK: True.

BVD: Do you remember your parents ever talking about God? Did they ever say anything like “This is what some people believe…”?

TJK: Oh, they did a little bit. For example, if my mother were reading a book to me and something about God were in there, she would explain “Well, some people believe so-and-so, but we don’t believe it.” That sort of thing.

1959 Autobiography:[83]

My parents, though of Catholic backgrounds, are atheists, and, fortunately, never taught me to believe in God.

1979 Journal:[84]

A couple of months ago I came across a book in the Library titled "The Gellar Papers". It is about certain people, notably one Geller, who can supposedly bend metal, read people's thoughts, and stuff like that, under conditions that would seem to preclude any obvious explanation in terms of the known laws of physics. Of course, there is always a lot of that junk in the popular press, but what is remarkable about this book is that the papers in it are written by people who are represented as having prior backgrounds and excellent credentials in the hard sciences. Moreover, the papers are written in very temperate terms, and the authors give no obvious evidence of having an emotional attachment to "far-out" beliefs. I had always assumed that all this telepathy stuff was a lot of crap, and the undisciplined character of most of the stuff that is printed about "psychic" phenomena, flying saucers, astrology, Atlantis, etc., etc., certainly gives ample justification for the opinion that most of this is only believed by certain people because it satisfies their emotional needs.

However, since the physicists and other hard scientists responsible for the papers in this particular book seem to have no prior commitment to telepathy or other crackpot beliefs, I am forced to think again. Naturally, this is uncomfortable for me, since no one likes to change his habitual assumptions.

The book strongly suggests that, by application of will, certain individuals are able to mobilize some force not comprehended within the present knowledge of physics and chemistry. Such a suggestion must be viewed with great caution. Such a large part of human mental functioning can be explained in terms of physiology and neurology that there are strong grounds for the supposition that all human mental functioning is based on physics and chemistry. (See, for example, The Nervous System by Peter Nathan.) Thus, one thinks of the following explanations for the book, which would not require anything outside the realm of physics as we now conceive it: (1) The book is a very cunning hoax (I have not gotten around to checking up to see whether the scientists really exist.) (2) The scientists writing the book fabricated the whole thing for reasons of their own such as money. (Fanley Mowat, formerly Canadian Government biologist, wrote book called "Never cry Wolf", which he represented as an account of his personal experiences in studying wolves, but according to wolf expert L. David Mech, Mowat's book is largely a fabrication, and gives a false picture of the wolf.) (3) The scientists writing these papers were not consciously dishonest, but their emotional needs caused them to give a highly distorted presentation. (4) The observed phenomena resulted from known physical forces combining or operating unknown ways to produce very remarkable effects.

However, none of these explanations seem likely. Of course, there is always the possibility of some explanation I haven't thought of. Still, this book has caused me to reluctantly accept the probability that there is some force operating of a kind that is not currently known to physics.

But experiments of the kind described in the book will probably lead some people to jump to unwarranted conclusions enough associations established by popular literature. It should be remembered that we know only what has been established by careful experiment, unverified reports being usually worthless. For instance,

(1) The careful experiments reported in the book provide no evidence for the existence of flying saucers, lost continents, precognition, re-incarnation, ghosts, or gods, or for the validity of the predictions of popular "psychics" reported in the newspapers. (Twice I wrote down predictions of astrologers in physics for the coming year, as reported in the newspapers; then I checked them again a year later. The rate of success of the predictions was so poor that I probably could have done better myself on the basis of common sense. On the other hand, if these "Geller papers" are on the level, it ought to make us give closer attention to other putative "psychic"-type phenomena, so as to see which ones actually have something to them.)

(2) These Geller papers do not provide evidence for a life after death. According to Peter Nathan's "The Nervous System" and other books on brain research, practically all the sensations, emotions, thoughts, memories, perceptions, etc. -- in short, practically everything we experience, has been shown to be dependent on the functioning of certain parts of the brain. For instance, if one part of the brain is destroyed, certain memories are lost. If another part of the brain is destroyed, the patient permanently ceases to show any evidence of ever feeling angry. If still another part of the brain is destroyed, then the patient ceases to show any evidence of ever feeling any emotion whatever. And so forth.

The obvious conclusion is, that if my whole brain were destroyed, I would thereafter experience nothing whatever.

Still, it is true that, if the human mind is capable of mobilizing some force not currently known to physics, then this raises the possibility that some aspect or attribute of the mind might persist after destruction of the physical brain, since the physical brain (so far as we know) operates according to the laws of physics. However, the experiments reported in the "Geller papers" do not provide any evidence that such a thing actually happens.

The rather tenuous possibility raised by the Gellar papers that I might experience something after death makes me a little hopeful and a little uneasy. On the one hand, it would be nice if life in some form did not have to end, but on the other hand I am displeased by any possibility of being plunged into some experience that I can't predict, control, or rationally prepare for. On the whole, I would prefer to be absolutely certain that I would experience nothing after death. Of course, this feeling is somewhat colored by religious propaganda about heaven and hell, since I'm amoral and impenitent and would surely go to hell according to Christianity. Of course, I don't believe in that stuff, and "the Geller papers" gives no evidence or even suggestion in favor of it, but naturally (having read so much literature from earlier times which accepted traditional Christianity) I can't help being slightly affected emotionally by the fable of hell.

Well, in regard to any possibility of experience after death, the word is... courage! I am attracted to William Henley's famous poem, "Invictus," though I consider it a little too vainglorious. ...

(3) Probably one of the things that attracts many people to the belief in so-called "psychic" phenomena is this: They imagine that these things provide some kind of escape from the mechanistic view of the human mind that is indicated by scientific results, and they may also imagine that these phonomena promise some kind of free will, - ability to avoid control by "the system."

There is no reason to suppose that the "Geller papers" provide any evidence in favor of free will or a non-mechanistic view of human nature; nor do they indicate any limitations of the scientific method.

Science never claims to know everything. The business of science is, by useful, disciplined observation and experimentation, to construct formal, educative models of various aspects of human experience, that will enable human organization to predict and/or control certain aspects of human experiences.

Since past observation and experimentation is limited, scientific models must be continually revised and/or extended as our information comes to light. This does not mean older models are proven worthless. What it does mean is that older models are replaced by newer models that are either more accurate, or applicable over a wider range of conditions than the older models.

Thus, scientific models continually provide wider, more detailed, and more accurate pictures of reality. The classic example is the replacement of Newtonian mechanics with relativistic mechanics.

If the "Geller Papers" are on the level, then they seem to indicate that science is about to come to trips with some new force or some new class of phenomena. The probable outcome I think is this: science will eventually bring under control these new phenomena, just as it has brought under control such formerly mysterious phenomena as electricity, radiation, etc. "Psychic" phenomena, if they exist, probably have their own laws, which science will come to understand. "Psychic"" phenomena will then be "harnessed", and turned into tools of "the system", which tools will be used to control individuals, and also the physical world; just as science has turned other classes of phenomena into tools of the system.

Even if science is for any reason unable to analyse psychic phenomena, it still is probable that these phenomena will be turned tools of the system. Note that Geller is essentially a conformist and (apparently) uses his powers only for purposes approved by the system. If Geller-type powers turn out to have practical utility (as they probably will), then it is safe to assume that The System will organize programs for the following purposes: A. To deterrmine the most efficient ways of utilizing psychic powers for the purposes of the system; B. To identify persons having psychic powers at the earliest possible age; C. To devise special programs for the training and socialization of persons having unusual psychic talents, so as to guaranty that they will use their powers "for the good of society" (i.e., for the purposes of the system) rather than for "irresponsible" (i.e., individualistic) purposes.

If the "Geller papers" are on the level, then it is quite possible that, thirty years from now, we may have government-employed psychics wandering around checking up on our thoughts to make sure we aren't planning to do anything illegal.

Letter to David:[85]

By the way, I remember a few years ago you spoke to me about some woman psychologist whom you saw on television who claimed to have impressive evidence in favor of re-incarnation. You said she cited all kinds of impressive-sounding (alleged) facts. Well, a few years ago when I was back in Lombard there I found a book called The Geller Papers edited by some guy named Parati or something like that.

It was difficult not to take the book seriously because the papers (those I read, anyway) were by people in the "hard" sciences who claimed to have done experiments under controlled conditions with this guy Uri Geller, and they found he exhibited powers not explainable on the basis of known scientific principles. What was impressive was the fact that there was nothing sensationalistic about the papers and the authors seemed to take a very conservative attitude and made no flat assertions that Geller had any supernormal powers. So I was forced to take the book seriously, though I didn't like to do so. On the other hand, the thing just didn't seem right to me -- it all just didn't seem to fit with things that are definitely known, are obvious and simple experiments that I thought ought to have been done. So I always meant to try to do some checking up to see if the book was on the level. But I didn't get around to it.

However, a few months ago I learned of an organization that goes by the initials CSICOP and publishes a periodical called "the Skeptical Inquirer" (formerly the Zelectic) devoted to exposing fraudulent occult and psychic - type stuff. So I wrote them asking about this Geller book. They wrote back referring me to some articles in back issues of their journal. So I ordered the 3 back issues in question ($2000 altogether, ugh!) It seems that, investigated carefully, these Geller claims look much less impressive. In fact, at one point it was flatly asserted that Geller was a fraud. A very clever trickster. Their investigation of Geller and other psychic-type stuff generally seemed to be very careful and reasonable. On the other hand that pro-Geller book (so far as I read it) had also seemed reasonably and moreover I have learned that people sometimes publish gross distortions if not outright lies, or sound quite reasonable while doing it. Furthermore, some (not all) of the Skeptical Inquirer writers seemed to have an emotional bias against this psychic stuff just as strong as the emotional bias that some people have for it.

Of course, in a case like this where it is impractical to do one's own investigating, so that one has to take the word of one side or another as to the facts on which to base a judgement---how can one be sure who is distorting things and who is not? However, I opined that the antipsychic school is right. Naturally, my preferences may be influencing me here, but it does seem to me that all the psychic and occult stuff just doesn't fit in with the general pattern of definitely established facts, so that, in the absence of very solid evidence for psychic phenomena one would have to reject this. And since the evidence produced by the anti's is at any rate sufficient to deprive the evidence of the pros of a solidly convincing character, one would have to conclude that the antis are most likely right. Also, some of the statements about Geller, notably the statement that he has been "exposed as a fraud," would lay the writers open to a libel suit if Geller were on the level.

If you find all this occult bullshit disturbing and would like to read those 3 issues of the Skeptical Inquirer that I have, let me know and I will send them to you.

1999 Interview:[86]

“This is kind of personal,” he begins by saying, and I ask if he wants me to turn off the tape. He says “no, I can tell you about it. While I was living in the woods I sort of invented some gods for myself” and he laughs. “Not that I believed in these things intellectually, but they were ideas that sort of corresponded with some of the feelings I had. I think the first one I invented was Grandfather Rabbit. You know the snowshoe rabbits were my main source of meat during the winters. I had spent a lot of time learning what they do and following their tracks all around before I could get close enough to shoot them. Sometimes you would track a rabbit around and around and then the tracks disappear. You can’t figure out where that rabbit went and lose the trail. I invented a myth for myself, that this was the Grandfather Rabbit, the grandfather who was responsible for the existence of all other rabbits. He was able to disappear, that is why you couldn’t catch him and why you would never see him... Every time I shot a snowshoe rabbit, I would always say ‘thank you Grandfather Rabbit.’ After a while I acquired an urge to draw snowshoe rabbits. I sort of got involved with them to the extent that they would occupy a great deal of my thought. I actually did have a wooden object that, among other things, I carved a snowshoe rabbit in. I planned to do a better one, just for the snowshoe rabbits, but I never did get it done. There was another one that I sometimes called the Will ‘o the Wisp, or the wings of the morning. That’s when you go out in to the hills in the morning and you just feel drawn to go on and on and on and on, then you are following the wisp. That was another god that I invented for myself.”

1978 Journal:[87]

Today I had a most joyous morning. I went up the gulch just to get nettles, at dawn; but the Wisp called me, so that I ended by going up on the ridge, in the mostly snow-free areas, by way of the old Gold Dollar mine. (Many times in the morning I just like to wander at random, following the “will of the wisp”. When I get the urge to wander like that, I say to myself that “the wisp is calling me.” Only a few days ago, it occurred to make a kind of spirit or demigod out of the wisp, as I did a few years ago out of the Grandfather Rabbit who I invented. Grandfather Rabbit, though he can appear and disappear at will, nevertheless has a definite form, being that of an unusually large snowshoe rabbit. The Wisp, on the other hand, has no form at all, being invisible; unless, just possibly, it might be glimpsed for a moment now and then out of the corner of the eye as a bit of thistledown or some such thing floating on the breeze. The Wisp is the that which makes you want to get out and move and wander and look listen, when you see the first pink clouds at dawn or when the early morning sunlight strikes the mountainsides or when the southwest wind starts blowing. I can’t express how intensely I love these things. And the better I get to know these hills the better I love them. I never get tired of them.).

1980 Journal:[88]

...after getting 4 rabbits, I tracked down another one, took aim at its head, with my finger on the trigger just as if I were really going to kill it, then lowered the rifle and said to the rabbit: “Rabbit, I spare thy life. Give my regards to Grandfather Rabbit.” This was not just the impulse of a moment. I tracked that rabbit with the definite intention of sparing it when I found it. It was a sort of way of expressing my feelings about snowshoe hares; these animals having a special significance for me; also it is nice to think that I know the rabbits not only as a predator, but also as…is it too ridiculous to say, as a friend? I felt a kind of childish delight after performing this action - i.e., after sparing the rabbit. Later I shot a 5th...

2001 Interview:[89]

TJK: ... The rabbit is clipped through the head. Such a shot ordinarily kills the rabbit instantly, but the animal’s hind legs usually kick violently for a few seconds so that it bounces around in the snow. When the rabbit stops kicking I walk up to it and see that it’s quite dead. I say aloud “Thank you, Grandfather Rabbit”–Grandfather Rabbit is a kind of demigod I’ve invented who is the tutelary spirit of all the snowshoe rabbits. I stand for a few minutes looking around at the pure-white snow and the sunlight filtering through the pine trees. I take in the silence and the solitude. It’s good to be here. ...

BVD: I respect and appreciate your thanking Grandfather Rabbit. I’m reminded of the real origins of the ritual or custom of saying grace before a meal: A solemn awareness of sacrifice, that all life gives itself so that other life may live…Do you believe in fate?

TJK: No.

BVD: Do you believe in God?

TJK: No. ...

Was Ted repressed?

Transexual?

Ted was having sexual fantasies of being female from the age of 8 years old:[90]

I might have been about 8 when I had my first orgasm. ... This happened when I was holding my dick between my legs, pretending to be a girl ...

I rather frequently practiced my own private perversions, including transvestism ...

... in 7th grade, I began to think about physical sex rather frequently. I used to have fantasies of having intercourse with the girls. Occasionally I would also have a fantasy of being a girl myself ...

The gynephilia reached a peak during a period when he was incredibly lonely, horny and suicidal. He slept next door to a couple who had loud sex and so, having so much trouble talking to women he believed having a sex change was the closest way to him being able to understand what sex would be like with a woman:[91]

During my 4th year at Michigan I stayed in a rooming house...supposedly a men's rooming house ... [a couple] had the room next to mine. I didn't realize the situation until one evening I heard them screwing. They certainly made plenty of noise about it. I suppose the bitch was squealing so loud because she found it sexually exciting to advertise to everyone what she was doing. Anyhow, it made me very angry, for these reasons: It roused my sexual feelings, which was unpleasant because I had no means of gratifying them in a satisfactory way, and this sexual frustration distracted me from my thesis work. Moreover, it roused my jealousy, especially since this couple seemed to be vaunting their sexual activities by being so unabashedly noisy ...

... I had long since lost interest in romantic ideas. But my desire for a wilderness life independent of civilization grew stronger than ever ... I had made no progress against the social and psychological obstacles; I felt trapped in my pattern of life; I felt I lacked the social courage to break away...

... The Vietnam war was on, and, while I approved of exterminating gooks, I preferred to have someone other than myself get his legs blown off by a land mine. If I quit my mathematical career, I could expect to get drafted. Actually, I wasn't all that much afraid of being sent to Vietnam. While I abhored the idea of getting crippled, I was somewhat attracted by the idea of shooting it out with the Commies (I have always hated Communism and Socialism).

... During the summer following my 4th year at Michigan... I had become thoroughly discouraged with mathematics. Music, reading, and other hedonistic pursuits bored me if indulged in to more than a limited extent. Thus, my life began to seem completely empty. I felt that I had nothing to look forward to or to live for...There was much talk in the news media about eliminating draft deferments for teachers. I felt there was a serious risk that I might be drafted...I was full of hatred for organized society and for many of the people around me, and the fact that I could not get revenge on those I hated was an additional depressing factor. Thus my morale sank to the zero point. It was lower than at any other period before or since ...

... I have noticed that when my morale is very low, I tend to become a slave to such trivial pleasures as I can get. For instance, I may eat an excessive amount of junk food ... Another similar symptom of very low morale that I have experienced is a tendency to get excessively involved with sexual fantasies, masturbation, and perversion. I mean much beyond the normal periodic release of sexual tension through orgasm. With good morale, I would from time to time become excited, masturbate, and then forget about it...With low morale, I had a tendency to avoid orgasm for sometimes hours, so as to prolong the sexual fantasies and the perversions that I practiced; and after orgasm I was apt to get excited again.

... the extreme low morale that I experienced in the latter part of the summer after my 4th year at Michigan led to the second of the 2 episodes in my life that I am really ashamed of. I got into a state where, for I guess about the last 2 or 3 weeks of the summer, I was more or less sexually excited nearly all the time, with fantasies of myself as a woman. It makes me squirm to think of it, but I actually decided to make an effort to have a sex-change operation. It was not that I imagined I would be happy as a woman, or that I had a favorable view of womanhood, or any such thing as that. It was simply that the idea of being a woman, and having intercourse as such, was extremely titillating sexually. This was because, to me, femininity has always been extremely exciting sexually, whether the femininity was present in myself (as in my fantasies of being a woman) or in someone else; and because fantasies of taking a feminine role in sex provided ego-negation or self-surrender, if you prefer to call it that. (For my opinions concerning the sexual excitement provided by self-surrender, or what I have called ego-negation, see my recent journal notes. [Early 1979 journal notes.] I have since learned that a far more satisfactory sense of self-surrender in sex fantasies is obtained by loving a woman than by imagining myself in a physically feminine role, but I cannot feel a sufficiently unreserved and open-hearted kind of love for women when I feel rejected by them ...

... Anyhow, during the stated period, I was constantly having sexual fantasies of myself as a woman. When the excitement got too intense, I would masturbate, but within a few minutes after orgasm I would get excited again. During those few minutes after orgasm I would feel intense revulsion. I would feel that death would be a better fate than having a sex-change operation.

But death was all I had to look forward to. As explained above, I had no hope for anything. Aside from the unwholesome pleasure of constant sexual excitement, everything seemed like a black, dismal dead-end. Thus it is not surprising that I would promptly get sexually excited again ...

... When I got back to the U. of Michigan, I made an appointment to see one of their psychiatric counselors. You may be sure that my purpose in doing this was emphatically NOT to be 'cured' or 'treated' or have my mind altered or meddled with in any way ... I knew that you can't just purchase a sex-change operation by walking into the surgeon's office and plunking down your money. You first have to be examined by psychiatrists who decide such an operation would be "good" for you. Anyhow, I didn't know where to go for such an operation. I knew that if I frankly revealed myself to the psychiatrist, he would not decide that such an operation would be good for me, because certainly I was not suited to a feminine role in life - my motive was exclusively erotic. But I hoped that, by putting on an act, I could con the psychiatrists into thinking me able for a feminine role, so that they would help me to obtain a sex-change operation. I seem to be pretty good at concealing my feelings and playing a role before other people, so it's possible I might have been able to fool the psychiatrists ...

... However, as the time approached for the appointment, I felt a certain revulsion setting in. While I was sitting in the waiting room I turned completely against the idea of the operation. So when I went in to see the doctor, I just gave him a bullshit story about being depressed about the possibility of being drafted ...

In summary:[92]

Alone in his room, he was driven crazy by the sounds of the couple next door making love. Finally—and this is what broke my heart—Kaczynski decided to convince a psychiatrist to allow him to undergo the surgery and chemical treatments he thought would transform him into a woman, not because he was transgender, but because, as a woman, he might wrap his arms around himself and be held by someone female.

Kaczynski kept his appointment with the psychiatrist, only to realize he was going mad. Furious at a society that had pushed him to excel in academics at the cost of his ability to find love and connection to other human beings, he vowed to stop being such a good boy and learn to kill. Only later did he come up with an ideology that justified his murderous rage, lashing out at science and industrialization for destroying our environment, pressuring us to conform, depriving us of our privacy, and robbing us of our humanity.

I think because he didn’t know how to have relationships with women, so he wanted to explore desires for women which he hadn’t had the space to learn to understand. I definitely don’t think it was out of any felt emergence that he was a woman. They’re called autoerotic fantasies, where you get turned on imaging how other people will view you in different situations, and it can be as common as when you’re imagining yourself in a situation where someone is admiring a specific item of clothing you’re wearing that makes you feel confident.

So anyway, he made an appointment to go see the university psychologist and at the last minute decided he didn’t want to talk about having a sex change or his sexual fantasies. And just said he was depressed instead.

Years later he would begin writing an autobiography as frustrations were reaching a pinnacle because he wanted to commit a murder-suicide and leave behind an explanation. Here’s how he explained the first desire to kill happened:[93]

As I walked away from the building afterwards, I felt disgusted about what my uncontrolled sexual cravings had almost led me to do and I felt humiliated, and I violently hated the psychiatrist. Just then there came a major turning point in my life. Like a Phoenix, I burst from the ashes of my despair to a glorious new hope. I thought I wanted to kill that psychiatrist because the future looked utterly empty to me.

I felt I wouldn’t care if I died. And so I said to myself “why not really kill that psychiatrist and anyone else whom I hate.” What is important is not the words that ran through my mind, but the way I felt about them. What was entirely new was the fact that I really felt I could kill someone. My very hopelessness had liberated me. Because I no longer cared about death. I no longer cared about consequences, and I suddenly felt that I really could break out of my rut in life and do things that were daring, “irresponsible,” or criminal.

My first thought was to kill somebody I hated and then kill myself before the cops could get me. (I’ve always considered death preferable to long imprisonment.) But, since I now had new hope, I was not ready to relinquish life so easily. So I thought “I will kill, but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection, so that I can kill again.” Then I thought, “Well, as long as I am going to throw everything up anyway, instead of having to shoot it out with the cops or something, I will go up to Canada, take off into the woods with a rifle, and try to live off the country. If that doesn’t work out, and if I can get back to civilization before I starve, then I will come back here and kill someone I hate.”

What was new here was the fact that I now felt I really had the courage to behave “irresponsibly.” All these thoughts passed through my head in the length of time it took me to walk a quarter of a mile. By the end of that time I had acquired bright new hope, an angry, vicious kind of determination and high morale.

It’s not a question of preserving my life and health; getting out of the power of civilization has long since become an end in itself for me. By now I have practically lost all hope of ever attaining this end. There my happiness in my Montana hills is spoiled every time an airplane passes over or anything else happens that reminds me of the inescapability of civilization. Life under the thumb of modern civilization seems worthless to measure and thus I more and more felt that life was coming to a dead end for me and death began at times to look attractive—it would mean peace. There was just one thing that really made me determined to cling to life for a while, and that was the desire for—revenge—I wanted to kill some people, preferably including at least one scientist, businessman, or other bigshot. This actually was my biggest reason for coming back to Illinois this spring. In Montana, if I went to the city to mail a bomb to some bigshot, [driver’s name] would doubtless remember I rode the bus that day. In the anonymity of the big city I figured it would be much safer to buy materials for a bomb and mail it. (Though the death-wish had appeared, it was still far from dominant, and therefore I preferred not to be suspected of crimes.) As mentioned in some of my notes, I did make an attempt with a bomb—whether successful or not I don’t know. In making a second bomb I have only barely made a start…

There are rumors online that he was coaxed into gender identity issues by his teachers at Harvard, but the consistent through line to his writing about his teachers is just him finding everything other than mathematics and ancient human history boring e.g. he would write letters home dismissing philosophy:[94]

In a letter that I wrote my parents while I was at Harvard, I taped to the page a clipping … which read, in part: “… ‘I have been painfully forced to the belief,’ [Bertrand Russell] once remarked, ‘that nine tenths of what is commonly regarded as philosophy is humbug. The only part that is at all definite is logic, and since it is logic, it is not philosophy.’ ” Below … I wrote: “I noted with triumph the above quotation of Bertrand Russell in the Crimson. I have long maintained that philosophy is humbug and now I find that even a philosopher admits it.”

He was also strong-willed about simply following his own ideological curiosities at the library:[95]

From age, say, 15 - 18 I went through a certain phase. ... This was what I may call a romantic phase. ... During this period I was attracted to German Romanticism. I also read Alan Bullock's biography of Hitler and became interested in Nazism. I used to fantasy myself as an agitator rousing mobs to frenzies of revolutionary violence. Thereby I would become a dictator, and I would send my Gestapo out to round up all the people I hated - and there were plenty of those ...

Bisexual?

Social ineptness and sexual frustration played a large part in pushing Ted over the edge into desiring to start killing people. So, his childhood friend Dale Eickelman being the first person he experimented with sexually, and the person who played a recurring role in his sexual fantasies is I think worth deciphering.

Content warning for the graphic recounting of his childhood sexual development:[96]

When we first moved to Evergreen Park, there was a boy ... who lived nearby. A couple of times this kid persuaded me to go out in the prairie and strip with him ... in the end I did strip, and found it sexually exciting, as he did. Apparently this kind of stripping was a common practice among the boys around there ... There was a kid named Dale ... I suppose we were about 13 when this kid first persuaded me to strip with him. At first I wasn't interested, but by and by I got excited and went along. This kind of thing was repeated several times. At that age I was already suffering from acute sexual starvation, and having been seduced into stripping by Dale, I decided I wanted to go further than he did. At first he didn't want to go into cock sucking - he was just as lecherous as I was, but he was too chicken to try something so highly forbidden. However, I persuaded him. We also tried anal perversion, but didn't have much success with it, because we found that an asshole is too small to readily admit a penis. We tried cock sucking and other perversions several times between the ages of 13 and 16, but we only did this kind of thing occasionally, not habitually.

This kid often seemed to have difficulty in getting an erection, even when he was very excited. He had a very weak, flabby, body, was very awkward. I dominated him physically (I don't mean sexually) whenever I pleased ...

... I found this kid repulsive, because he developed a marked tendency to gloat over slimy, repulsive things - I don't mean primarily sexual things. Of course, another reason I was repelled by him was the fact that I had a marked sense of shame over our sexual activities, and his association with those activities made him unpleasant to me. I don't think Dale was homosexual (by choice) any more than I was - like me, he would rather have had a girl if he could have gotten one ...

... Besides the activities with Dale, I rather frequently practiced my own private perversions, including transvestism, inserting various objects in my anus, and sucking my own penis (which was not easy to do, but I had a remarkably flexible body in those days)...Simple masturbation I practiced almost every day ...

Still, what excited me sexually was girls. Males never excited me sexually. (If I had a fantasy of (for example) sucking a cock, almost the only thing that appeared in my mind was the cock itself - the rest of the boy practically nonexistent in my fantasy. Nor was I excited by the sight of other boys' penises ...

I never got any real satisfaction out of my sexual activities-lust drove me to go further and further into perversion in an attempt to get pleasure, but the pleasure I got was far too small to make up for the feeling of frustration and dissatisfaction. And then after orgasm there was only disgust. ...

... At home in my room, when I got sexually excited, I would either fantasy a variety of oral and anal sexual perversions with either a male or female partner or an animal, or I would fantasy normal intercourse. In imagining normal intercourse, I might put myself either in the male role or in the female role. In imagining myself in the male role, I usually imagined myself as having a greater or lesser amount of affection for the girl. (But still my desires toward girls were mostly just physical ...

... I might imagine myself living a stone-age life all alone in some far wilderness; then I find a beautiful girl off in the woods, injured or in some other danger or difficulty; I rescue her, nurse her back to health, and make her my mate. Fantasies of myself as female had a completely different character. Usually I imagined myself as a sexually hot but unloving female, using her sexual power to seduce males. In many cases I imagined my sex partner as being Dale Eikelman (see p. 50 of these notes), and except when provisionally submitting to him intercourse, I imagined myself as dominating him physically ...

... in fantasies of myself as a female, the emphasis was always on myself as a girl - the man in the fantasy only served to provide a prick. I have never been sexually attracted to men ...

Ted Kaczynski's 1959 Autobiography:[97]

b. Sexual Practices

(i) Masturbation. When did you begin to masturbate? Who taught you? How frequent has it been? How much guilt have you felt about it?

Frequency of masturbation varies. It might be two or three times in two or three days and then not at all for a number of days. I used to feel rather guilty about it. but I no longer do.

(ii) Homosexual,. Have you over indulged in mutual masturbation or in any other form of sexual activity with one of your own sex? Are you sexually excited by members of your own sex? Do you feel guilty about it?

I am not sexually excited by members of own sex. I used to be, but no longer do. Feel guilty about the activities mentioned above.

Ted:[98]

... The perversions I occasionally practiced consisted of transvestism (with crudely improvised imitations of female clothing) and inserting my finger or other objects in my anus. But mostly my sexual activities consisted of ordinary masturbation accompanied by erotic fantasies. These fantasies were either of normal sex with a woman., or of myself as a woman, or of oral or anal perversions. However, as I became more and more completely hopeless about ever getting a girlfriend, the fantasies of normal sex with a woman declined and were more and more replaced by fantasies of sexual perversions or of myself as a woman ...

... By my third year at Michigan, though I still could hardly keep my eyes off good-looking girls, I had closed my heart against them. Since I felt sure I would never have any kind of sexual relationship with any of them, it was less painful, frustrating, and humiliating to simply close off all hope and hate all goodlooking women ...

... finally I got disgusted with the whole thing, and angry, and said to myself, "What am I doing here working up a sweat trying to phone some stupid broad. It's an indignity. To hell with it. I don't need any damn women." This incident was a major step in making me completely hopeless about ever getting a girlfriend. I tended to close my heart against women. (Against people erally, for that matter ...

During my U. of Michigan period I no longer felt ashamed of my perverted sexual fantasies in the same way that I did at the age of, say 15. That is, I still felt more or less revulsion after orgasm associated with a perverted fantasy; and I felt thoroughly and strongly disgusted after orgasm whenever I had spent a long period playing with perversions, especially when I feared I might be damaging my health through prolonged accelerated heartbeat and prolonged erection, or when I wasted, on perversion, time that I should have spent on some task. But, on the other hand, when I looked back on my sexual fantasies and activities from a little distance of time, I no longer felt any particular shame about them. Though of course I was very careful to keep these activities concealed, since I knew how other people would react to them ...

Ted:[99]

... As for sex, at Berkeley, I rarely practiced perversions or had prolonged sex-fantasies, because I would usually masturbate promptly whenever I got excited, so that sex didn't get much grip on me.

My sex fantasies were either of having normal intercourse with a woman, or of being a woman myself and having intercourse that way.

Ted's 1978-79 Journal:[100]

… there are two distinct kinds of sexual feeling. Let's call them S-feeling (for soul-feeling) and B-feeling (for body-feeling). By B-feeling I mean simple physical sexual lust. By S-feeling I mean something like sexual love, that is, in connection with the S-feeling one, desires to look long into the woman's eyes, to communicate with her on an intimate level, to have an intimate psychological communion, to feel that your souls touch, that sort of thing.

... But one must not confuse S-feeling with ordinary friendship or companionship or sympathy such as occur between persons of the same sex. There is a special titillation and intensity about S-feeling that does not appear in ordinary friendship; S-feeling is of a different character from ordinary friendship, and usually occurs between persons of opposite sex.*

* When I was a small boy my feeling for Adam Krokos (see my autobiographical notes) was probably an S-feeling, but not too intense. On very rare occasions since then, I have experienced flickers of S-feeling toward other males. Other than that, I have experienced S-feeling only toward females. ...

Ted's first public disclosure of having had any gay experiences was revealed curtly, simply in order to refute the charge of homophobia:[101]

In the interest of complete honesty and disclosure I will state two facts: (1) During my early teens I had a few homosexual experiences with another kid my age. (2) I mildly dislike homosexuality. This is a matter of personal taste. My emotional involvement in it is slight, and it has no effect on my “political” viewpoint. In other words, I basically just don’t care. What people do in the bed is their own business and not mine.

Was Ted a hypocrite?

How much technology did Ted use?

Radio

Ted wrote in his journal in 1992:[102]

... By the way, several years ago I bought a radio (a very beat-up second-hand one, for $3). What I bought it for originally was so that I could get the date and time from it when I needed to go to town. For reasons which should be apparent from my grey loose-leaf notebooks, I by that time I had occasion to go to town much more frequently than I once used to ...

But after I started having a problem insomnia, I began doing something that is almost against my principles. I began listening to the radio recreationally. By providing distraction - and occasionally pleasure, as when I heard some music that I liked - the radio seemed to help somewhat with the insomnia and the mild depression ...

TV

In letter to his book publisher Ted wrote:[103]

... Timothy McVeigh, who has the cell two doors down the hall from mine, called out to me that there was going to be something about me on Channel 6. I don’t watch TV for entertainment, but I’m willing to turn the damn thing on if there’s a practical need for it. So I turned on Channel 6 ...

How much did Ted rely on others for money?

His parents

Ted:[104]

By the time I was about 22 years old … I was earning enough as a teaching fellow at the University of Michigan so that I didn’t need any help from them. In any case I spent only the summers, and sometimes Christmas vacations, at my parents’ home.

But my mother was still abnormally irritable toward me; much less so toward my father and brother. When I came home to spend a summer with the family my mother would at first be all sweetness toward me, but as the summer wore on she would have increasingly frequent and severe outbursts of irritation against me, until by the end of the summer her behavior was simply intolerable and I was glad to get away from her.

As far as I can remember, the main reason why I spent the summers with my parents was so that I could use their car to visit nature areas. Of course, staying with them also enabled me to save money.

Phillip J. Resnick, the prosecution’s forensic psychiatrist:[105]

When he resigned, his department chair said, "Gee, you know, I want you to stay." And Ted Kaczynski wrote in his diary, "This fool thinks I want to remain at the university, when all I wanted was a job to save enough money so that I could buy a piece of land to live in the wild."

Ted wrote that after exploring plots of land in Canada[106]

my brother and I drove to Lombard, Illinois, where our parents now lived. The summer was pretty well exhausted, I didn’t expect to do anything on the land I hoped to lease until the next summer, and, at my parents’ invitation, - I planned to spend the winter living with them. I wasn’t particularly anxious to stay with them, but I needed to conserve my supply of money.

David:[107]

At one point he wrote to me great deal of pride and said this is in the 70s but still it's amazing that he had kept accounts for an entire year and been able to live on an average of 12 cents a day so you know he brought but he and I both bought the property kind of outright and it was fairly cheap back then he had a garden, he hunted he knew wild foods in the forest he was extraordinarily disciplined it was amazing that he was able to do this but at some point whatever his savings ran out and our parents just I mean they just sent actually both of us every birthday every Christmas they'd send us $500 I was like at birth then and for Ted was able to save money and $1,000 a year was the way he lived completely.

Ted:[108]

My parents had a lot of… They were frugal people and they had a lot of money accumulated in savings and loan associations, and they were getting quite a bit of money from the interest. So, from about 1980 to 1991, they used to send a yearly stipend to me and my brother.

Phillip J. Resnick, the prosecution’s forensic psychiatrist:[109]

Ted's mother would send him money. He would say, "I've got some chest pain and they say I should have some tests, but I don't have the money," and would, in a sense, scam her into sending money, which he would then use to make bombs.

Ted:[110]

I did take a job at Foam Cutting Engineers. I worked there for a couple of months and then left because of certain relations between me and the foreman (foreperson?), Ellen Tarmichael, of which I will speak later. Within a few days after leaving Foam Cutting Engineers I got a job with a firm that manufactured restaurant equipment, Prince Castle, Inc., and I worked there until the spring of 1979, after which I returned to Montana with, I think, something like three thousand dollars that I’d saved. The Canadian wilderness trip never came off.

At about this time my parents gave my brother and me each several gifts of money totalling (if I remember correctly) some three thousand dollars apiece. Thereafter they gave each of us a yearly stipend of a thousand dollars, which they gradually increased until by 1989 it was fifteen hundred dollars. My mother always took scrupulous care that every money gift to me should be precisely equalled by a similar gift to my brother, and vice versa.

It certainly was generous of my parents to give my brother and me these gifts, which saved me the annoyance of having to look for work at intervals, but, lest the reader conceive an exaggerated impression of my parents’ generosity, I point out that they were not inconveniencing themselves. Every member of my immediate family is instinctively parsimonious; we spend money cautiously; we don’t like to spend it Consequently my parents had accumulated considerable sums distributed among several accounts in savings and loan associations, from which they received a substantial income in interest. I don’t know how much they had, but I’d guess that by the time of my father’s death their assets would have amounted to at least three hundred thousand dollars. My brother, who was much more familiar with our parents’ financial situation than I was, wrote me: "[T]he parents ... have more than they can spend” 42 (early 1986); and: “When our inheritance comes due we’ll both be fairly rich anyway, so a few thousand dollars now wouldn’t make much difference ... ” 43 (late 1985 or early 1986). So the fact that my parents were pretty free-handed with their money during the 1980's does not prevent me from feeling that they both were essentially selfish people.

My mother had provided me with a large sum of money from which I paid my dental bills among other things, but she never paid any of my dental bills directly. I deposited her money in a bank and paid Dr. L.Hz. either in cash or with checks on my own account. I was embarrassed about the fact I received money from her, and I was careful to conceal it from everyone.

After my father’s death in 1990 there was a brief reconciliation between my mother and me, but it was not a very successful one. There was too much tension between us because of old resentments. ... At that time I received from her about seven thousand dollars in a lump sum, and thereafter I refused to accept any money, or even any communication, from her.

Ted:[111]

I certainly can’t claim that my own role in the life of my family has been a noble one. I had good justification for resenting my parents, but instead of making a clean break with them in early adulthood, as I should have done, I maintained relations with them: sometimes was kind to them, sometimes used them, sometimes squabbled with them over relatively minor matters, sometimes hurt their feelings intentionally, occasionally wrote them emotional letters expressing my bitterness over the way they had treated me and the way they had exploited my talents to satisfy their own needs. With my brother too I should have broken off early in life.

His only sibling

Lis:[112]

In May 1994, Kaczynski started simultaneously on what would become bombs number fifteen and sixteen that would kill Thomas Mosser and Gilbert Murray. And by October, both were complete. But he was out of cash. Once again, he was forced to ask his family for money.

In November he wrote to David requesting a $1,000 loan. After his faithful brother sent him a cashier's check for this amount, he was off again, this time to San Francisco, where he mailed the bomb that killed Burson-Marsteller vice president Thomas J. Mosser on December 10.

By now, his need to kill was out of control. After returning from San Francisco, Kaczynski wrote David, this time asking for $2,000. His brother responded with a cashier's check for that amount in January 1995. Then, on March 27, Ted sold David's original half interest in the Lincoln lot back to his brother, either as collateral for the earlier loans or for yet further sums. By that time, according to the FBI, Kaczynski had received over $16,000 from his family since 1985.

Supplied with the necessary funds, in April, Kaczynski journeyed to Oakland, where on the 20th—the day after McVeigh and Nichols blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City—he mailed the bomb that would kill Gil Murray four days later. It didn't matter that Murray was not his intended target. He was pleased anyway He was proud of what he had done and wanted to boast about it.

60 Minutes:[113]

Mike: Then David and Linda spotted a potentially devastating possibility, twice after they had sent money to Ted, supposedly for medical bills, the Unabomber had struck killing two people.

David: We realized that our first loan to Ted had preceded a bombing by 6 weeks to 2 months and that our second loan to him had preceded a bombing by about the same amount of time.

Linda felt extremely angry, even a sense of responsibility that we had, we were somehow responsible for these acts.

Ted:[114]

I never asked for nor accepted any “handouts” from my brother. In Chapter 9, pp. 260–262, I described how he offered me money for medical treatment in case I needed it and how I declined his offer. In 1985 my brother offered to give me $200 for bus fare so that I could visit him in Texas. (Ca) FL #302, letter from David Kaczynski to me, April or May, 1985, p. 4. I answered, “Your offer to give me $200.00 for bus fare is very generous—but I couldn’t accept it.” (Ca) FL #304, letter from me to David Kaczynski, late spring or summer of 1985, p. 2. In late 1994 I asked my brother for two loans totalling $3,000. My brother did lend me this money, but a loan is not a “handout.” It is true that I was unable to repay my brother at the time when I had told him I hoped to do so, but it is also true that the loan was well secured, so that he was in no danger of losing his money. I changed the deed to my land so that it was held by my brother and me in joint tenancy, and if I had died it would automatically have become his sole property. I also sent my brother notes in which I stated that the land was to become his property if I did not repay the loans by a specified date. According to a local realtor, the land could have been sold for about twelve or fifteen thousand dollars. All this is confirmed by my correspondence with my brother, (Ca) FL #473 through FL #483, and by (Ga) Deed #6.

The government

Ted wrote in his journal in 1992:[115]

... Regarding the fact that I paid a visit to the welfare Dept. in Helena to find out what benefits were available ... If it were merely a matter of preserving life, I'd very likely die of starvation or disease before I'd go to the welfare dept ... But what worried me in connection with my health was the possibility that I might die or be disabled before I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish with the projects described in my grey loose-leaf notebooks. Those goals are literally more important to me than life itself, and to accomplish them I'd even go crawling to the welfare dept. for medical-expense money. As for money to help study at the U. of M., that was during a period when I was suffering from an outbreak of desire for women. Studying at U of M would have provided a way to get out of Lincoln, hence to have opportunity to meet women, and also might have provided qualifications for steady employment, which most women ...

Did Ted take anti-depressants?

Robert:[116]

Of course drugs to alter the mind were hardly a brand new invention. The Hermit took some himself, daily usually with meals. He occasionally increased the dose, giving himself an extra 50 milligrams once every three days. Sometimes he went even further, but the maximum he could take was 400 milligrams in daily doses. A bottle of this medication was later found in his cabin. It did serve temporarily to combat his depression and anxiety. But there were side effects. Vivid images and dreams haunted and shook him, enough to cause him to describe one to his brother. ...

A tricyclic antidepressant, trazodone inhibits the re-uptake of serotonin to the brain. Doctors had been warned against prescribing trazodone (aka Desyrel or triazolopyridine) to anyone suffering from epilepsy, psychosis, or suicidal tendencies. Trazodone interacted badly with alcohol and other CNS depressants. It has been known to cause heart problems such as the Hermit later came to suffer or claimed to suffer, problems that prevented trips to see his friend, Sanchez. In addition, a trazodone-induced mania has been documented. Trazodone HC1 causes provocative behavior and a considerable loss of impulse control all actions that the Recluse’s family was well aware he demonstrated.

The Hermit’s anger, threats, and hostility, his palpable dreams and vivid nightmares, nightmares so real that he actually felt he was experiencing real life, could be explained by a reaction to this drug. Hallucinations, the flight of ideas, and psychosis walked hand in hand with trazodone, which exacerbates any tendencies already present and perpetuates any mania. One odd side effect was priapism, a permanent or prolonged and sometimes painful erection, that must have been disconcerting to the shy woodsman.

Ted:[117]

Dear Dave:

Explanations: I wanted to get that last letter off promptly, so didn't have time for explanations. By the way, I'd like you to keep this private; would prefer not to have you telling your friends about it, OK? Well, I think my heart is going bad. Question of mental stress. Used to be that I suffered from hardly any tension at all around here. But the area is so fucked up now that my old way of life is all shot to hell. I used to have bad dreams of 3 types. In one type of dream, loggers or earthmoving machinery or things of that kind would move in here and cut down all the trees and tear up the ground all around the cabin. In another type of dream, my cabin would be all surrounded and closed in by summer cottages or cabins that people had built. In a 3rd type of dream, things would get so built up around here that I would find my cabin and myself isolated in the middle of a huge shopping center. Ugh.

Well this 3rd type of dream hasn't come true - yet - but the 2nd type of dream has almost come true since so may people have now moved in around here, and it looks as if the 1st type of dream will soon come true, since those Gehring jerks are planning to log off the woods all around my cabin here.

So, you'll understand that with the way things are around here now I often suffer from tension, anger, frustration, etc., and at the same time am deprived of most of the consolation of woodland life. Well, for over ten years, during those periods when I was subject to stress, as when living in a city, I've experienced an occasional irregularity of heartbeat. According to what I've read, this isn't considered serious if it doesn't happen too often. But in the last few years, it's gotten a lot worse. Exercise, unless somewhat excessive, doesn't bother it, but under the influence of any sort of worry, anger, frustration, etc., sometimes my heart really goes wild. So I wouldn't be surprised if I just drop dead one of these days.

Actually I'm not really all that concerned about it. We all gotta go some time anyway, so what the hell. On the other hand, I'm not anxious to die any sooner than I have to. My heart was acting funny, and I was looking forward with increasing reluctance to all the headaches associated with making a trip down there - getting my stuff together, hiding my valuables, going to Lincoln to make a long-distance phone call to find out about bus schedules, and then a godawful 2-day trip on a probably crowded bus with little sleep. Just the kind of anxieties to make my heart act funny. So I thought I'd better call it off and just spend what I hoped would be a nice peaceful winter here.

Ted:[118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125]

Sept. 1993

[To] Dr. Wielenga

I’ve been suffering from insomnia intermittently for several years. Last summer (1992) I was sleeping adequately. Over the winter the insomnia started getting worse again. This summer the insomnia is worse than it has ever been, and is causing me serious hardship. I am probably averaging less than 6 hours sleep a night ...

... The insomnia first started while I was going through a period of stress. But for the last couple of years I’ve had very little stress, yet the insomnia is no better ...

... I can think of two possible causes for the insomnia.

Deficiency of melotinin. I don’t know if I have spelled “melotinin” correctly ...

Clinical depression. I suspect that the most likely cause of my insomnia is clinical depression. I usually do not feel subjectively depressed, but, as you probably know, clinical depression is not always accompanied by a subjective feeling of depression ...

The reasons for suspecting mild clinical depression are as follows. (1) Insomnia is a common symptom of clinical depression. At present, for highly personal reasons that I prefer not to discuss, my objective situation is very unsatisfactory, and I can see very little prospect of improving it in the future. Consequently I sometimes have feelingss of hopelessness. But most of the time I do not have such feelings. At present I have insufficient sources of pleasure in life, my existence is rather barren and austere, and I imagine this would be conducive to depression ...

... If you decide that clinical depression is the likely cause of my insomnia, you may want to treat it yourself, perhaps by prescribing an antidepressant...If you do refer me to a psychiatrist I’d like to be referred to one whose orientation is primarily physiological and neurological. I think talk therapy is a lot of crap, and I wouldn’t take that kind of treatment even if I had the money for it, which I don’t ...

October 6, 1993

Mental Health Services Inc.

512 Logan Helena, Montana

Dear Sir:

I am suffering from insomnia, which is causing me serious hardship and which I suspect is due to some form of depression. I am seeking referral to a psychiatrist or other doctor who could diagnose and treat this problem...I have consulted the general practitioner who has an office her in Lincoln, Dr. Wielenga...he decided that I was not suffering from depression. For the insomnia he prescribed a low, non-anti-depressant dose of the antidepressant trazodone (50 mg, one tablet daily an hour before bedtime), saying that in low doses antidepressants act as sedatives. I took the trazodone four or five times and found that it had no effect whatever on the insomnia. Then I stopped taking it because it had a sideeffect that worried me.

It may be that Dr. Wielenga was right in concluding that I am not suffering from depression. but I have my doubts... I suspect that Dr. Wielenga’s view of depression is oversimplified.according to what I have read, clinical depression can range from mild to severe and from the purely logical (endogenous) kind, through mixed types, to the purely ational (exogenous) type. So I am not certain that Dr. Wielenga is qualified to diagnose depression, and I would like to be diagnosed by a specialist ...

... for reasons of privacy, I don’t feel I can discuss this problem full with Dr. Wielenga. Lincoln is a small town ...

... In order to explain fully to Dr. Wielenga why I suspect my insomnia is due to depression I would have to discuss extremely personal and embarrassing matters, and all this would presumably be recorded in my folder, where the nurse and receptionist would be likely to see it. I don’t even like to tell Dr. Wielenga about the negative side-effect that the trazodone has on me, since it has to do with sex ...

... I don’t want to pick a psychiatrist at random out of the yellow pages, because I might pay a hundred dollars or more for a visit to him only to find that he is, for example, a freudian who tries to tell me that I have insomnia because I am unconsciously punishing myself for oedipal feelings or some such nonsense ...

... I would strongly prefer to see a psychiatrist who is orirented more toward physiology and neurology than toward talk therapy...My hope is that in one or at most two visits to a psychiatrist I could have my insomnia diagnosed and get a prescription for some medication that would enable me sleep, perhaps by relieving depression, if that in the cause of the insomnia ...

[Text unreadable] 20, 1994. In a fairly recent entry in another notebook I mentioned that for the last few years I have had a great deal of trouble with insomnia, and I suggested that the cause was mild depression that resulted from frustrated desire for women, and for certain things that are associated with women, such as children and family life. I have some fairly definite evidence to support this diagnosis ...

... the insomnia is greatly alleviated whenever anything happens that gives me some kind of hope (however remote) of finding a woman for myself ... For example, whenever any of the women around Lincoln seems particularly friendly toward me, I sleep much better for a while afterward ...

Dec. 21, 1994. Since last spring I have not been nagged by frustrated desire for women. Nor have I had the feelings of hopelessness that I had been having often in the evenings. I continued sleeping badly, but somehow I seemed to have adjusted to the insomnia, so that the lack of sleep didn’t bother me as much as it had done formerly. And now, during the last .f.ew several weeks, e been having very le trouble with insomnia. nights I get my 8 s of sleep, sometimes 9, which is what I like. It’s true, though that my sleeping schedule is still screwy. My 8 hours of sleep is broken into 2 or 3 periods of 2 to 4 hours each ...

Sept. 1993

[To] Dr. Wielenga

I’ve been suffering from insomnia intermittently for several years. Last summer (1992) I was sleeping adequately. Over the winter the insomnia started getting worse again. This summer the insomnia is worse than it has ever been, and is causing me serious hardship. I am probably averaging less than 6 hours sleep a night ...

... The insomnia first started while I was going through a period of stress. But for the last couple of years I’ve had very little stress, yet the insomnia is no better ...

... I can think of two possible causes for the insomnia.

Deficiency of melotinin. I don’t know if I have spelled “melotinin” correctly ...

Clinical depression. I suspect that the most likely cause of my insomnia is clinical depression. I usually do not feel subjectively depressed, but, as you probably know, clinical depression is not always accompanied by a subjective feeling of depression ...

The reasons for suspecting mild clinical depression are as follows. (1) Insomnia is a common symptom of clinical depression. At present, for highly personal reasons that I prefer not to discuss, my objective situation is very unsatisfactory, and I can see very little prospect of improving it in the future. Consequently I sometimes have feelingss of hopelessness. But most of the time I do not have such feelings. At present I have insufficient sources of pleasure in life, my existence is rather barren and austere, and I imagine this would be conducive to depression ...

... If you decide that clinical depression is the likely cause of my insomnia, you may want to treat it yourself, perhaps by prescribing an antidepressant...If you do refer me to a psychiatrist I’d like to be referred to one whose orientation is primarily physiological and neurological. I think talk therapy is a lot of crap, and I wouldn’t take that kind of treatment even if I had the money for it, which I don’t ...

October 6, 1993

Mental Health Services Inc.

512 Logan Helena, Montana

Dear Sir:

I am suffering from insomnia, which is causing me serious hardship and which I suspect is due to some form of depression. I am seeking referral to a psychiatrist or other doctor who could diagnose and treat this problem...I have consulted the general practitioner who has an office her in Lincoln, Dr. Wielenga...he decided that I was not suffering from depression. For the insomnia he prescribed a low, non-anti-depressant dose of the antidepressant trazodone (50 mg, one tablet daily an hour before bedtime), saying that in low doses antidepressants act as sedatives. I took the trazodone four or five times and found that it had no effect whatever on the insomnia. Then I stopped taking it because it had a sideeffect that worried me.

It may be that Dr. Wielenga was right in concluding that I am not suffering from depression. but I have my doubts... I suspect that Dr. Wielenga’s view of depression is oversimplified.according to what I have read, clinical depression can range from mild to severe and from the purely logical (endogenous) kind, through mixed types, to the purely ational (exogenous) type. So I am not certain that Dr. Wielenga is qualified to diagnose depression, and I would like to be diagnosed by a specialist ...

... for reasons of privacy, I don’t feel I can discuss this problem full with Dr. Wielenga. Lincoln is a small town ...

... In order to explain fully to Dr. Wielenga why I suspect my insomnia is due to depression I would have to discuss extremely personal and embarrassing matters, and all this would presumably be recorded in my folder, where the nurse and receptionist would be likely to see it. I don’t even like to tell Dr. Wielenga about the negative side-effect that the trazodone has on me, since it has to do with sex ...

... I don’t want to pick a psychiatrist at random out of the yellow pages, because I might pay a hundred dollars or more for a visit to him only to find that he is, for example, a freudian who tries to tell me that I have insomnia because I am unconsciously punishing myself for oedipal feelings or some such nonsense ...

... I would strongly prefer to see a psychiatrist who is orirented more toward physiology and neurology than toward talk therapy...My hope is that in one or at most two visits to a psychiatrist I could have my insomnia diagnosed and get a prescription for some medication that would enable me sleep, perhaps by relieving depression, if that in the cause of the insomnia ...

[Text unreadable] 20, 1994. In a fairly recent entry in another notebook I mentioned that for the last few years I have had a great deal of trouble with insomnia, and I suggested that the cause was mild depression that resulted from frustrated desire for women, and for certain things that are associated with women, such as children and family life. I have some fairly definite evidence to support this diagnosis ...

... the insomnia is greatly alleviated whenever anything happens that gives me some kind of hope (however remote) of finding a woman for myself ... For example, whenever any of the women around Lincoln seems particularly friendly toward me, I sleep much better for a while afterward ...

Dec. 21, 1994. Since last spring I have not been nagged by frustrated desire for women. Nor have I had the feelings of hopelessness that I had been having often in the evenings. I continued sleeping badly, but somehow I seemed to have adjusted to the insomnia, so that the lack of sleep didn’t bother me as much as it had done formerly. And now, during the last .f.ew several weeks, e been having very le trouble with insomnia. nights I get my 8 s of sleep, sometimes 9, which is what I like. It’s true, though that my sleeping schedule is still screwy. My 8 hours of sleep is broken into 2 or 3 periods of 2 to 4 hours each ...

Did Ted carry on playing around with math?

From his cabin?

Ted did briefly go back to playing around with pure math equations in his cabin in Montana. He even submitted one paper to a journal in 1976 called Four-Digit Numbers that Reverse Their Digits When Multiplied which he claimed proved an earlier posited solution:[126]

... Some time ago - (Last Nov. or Dec.) I submitted a mathematical paper for publication, and I am rather ashamed of this. Not because of any idea that the paper will advance technical progress — I feel confident that it will never have any practical applications, direct or indirect — but because it represents, to a certain degree, a personal surrender to one of the escape mechanisms which keep people distracted so that they can forget the purposelessness, subordination, and indignity of life in a technological society ...

Here's how Ted explained the paper in relation to his other work:[127]

(Ca) FL #80, letter from me to my parents, Spring, 1964, p. 1: “It’s a good thing I didn't follow Piranian’s suggestions about how to attack the problem, or I never would have solved it!”

Piranian urged me to prove (a) that every continuous function in the disk admits a family of disjoint arcs, and to deduce from this (b) that every boundary function for a continuous function can be made into a function of the first Baire class by changing its values on at most a countable set. (The terminology is explained in F. Bagemihl and G. Piranian, “Boundary Functions for Functions Defined in a Disk,” Michigan Mathematical Journal, 8 (1961), pp. 201–207.)

I maintained that it would be much easier to prove (b) by examining inverse–image sets, and I even suggested that (b) might then be used to prove (a). And that’s how it turned out. I did prove (b) within three months or so by using inverse–image sets. The proof of (a) was vastly more difficult. I didn’t succeed in proving (a) until two decades later, and I had to use (b) in order to do it. The proof of (a) has not been published.

SPV Laboratories:[128]

His perspective of intellectual tension with Piranian is interesting and I maybe sensed it reading their papers. Piranian and collaborators were in the complex analysis space, it seemed like they were developing language for talking about boundary functions from their work on cluster sets, and all of it seemed geared toward complex analysis applications. Ted's papers treated boundary functions like its own distinct discipline and I don't think he mentions cluster sets once. So it's funny that George seemed to urge him to prove this statement (a) about "functions admitting disjoint arcs", a concept originating from cluster sets, while Ted proved this statement (b) first which is primarily a boundary function concept:

Statement (b) that continuous half plane functions admit honorary Baire class 2 functions (functions differing from baire class 1 on at most a countable subset) shows up in his thesis and it seems like he proved a version of that fairly early in 1964 based on that letter.

As far as statement (a) I was not too far in the weeds of cluster sets but tbh it sounds like something that should have been proved already. Wouldn't take my word for it over his though.

Finally, here's a glimpse into Ted's headspace when writing it, from a journal entry at the time:[129]

Ever since seeing how the Trout Creek area has been ruined I feel so much grief whenever I am sitting quietly, or when I am walking slowly through the woods just looking and listening, that I have to keep occupied almost all the time in order to escape this grief. That was my favorite spot. Whoever has read my notes knows very well what the other causes have been. Where can I go not to enjoy in peace nature and the wilderness life? — which are the best things I have ever known. Even in the officially designated “wilderness” there must be the continued noise of airplanes, especially the jets, since I know that planes are permitted to fly over the Bob Marshal and Scapegoat wildernesses. Are there fewer planes there than here. Maybe, maybe. Perhaps one of these days I’ll go and find out. But so many times I’ve gone looking for a place where I can escape completely from industrial society, and always . . . [three dots in the original] well, I’m very discouraged. So, I’ve been playing around with mathematics a good deal lately. It’s a rather contemptible game, but while I’m involved in it, it enables me to escape from my grief.

From prison?

He would sometimes write hard questions for the teachers of kids who would write to him in prison:[130]

Now I'm going to play a really nasty trick on your teacher. I'm going to give you a problem to give her, and if she doesn't get it right, you be sure to give her an F.

SPV Laboratories:[131]

One of these letters had some conjectures based on a question he posed in his thesis. He claims to have had proofs for three of these. I am able to prove two; I plan on publishing my results soon.

Never published new ground?

Would the paper he wrote in his cabin get published today? Or would all the formulas and explanations have already been well covered by other papers?

SPV Laboratories:[132]

Can't speak to whether or not his stuff would get published today... if my paper gets published then that would be in his favor. The things complex analysts were interested in during the mid 20th century are not so much in vogue anymore, in fact it seems like they fell out of style quite fast based on what I've seen in the literature. So most things Ted would have been working on post-Berkeley would have been non-trivial but also probably not discovered sooner by anyone due to a lack of interest. Not implying anything negative about his work, just that certain inquiries in math come and go.

Misc. questions

Did Ted enjoy his hermit life?

I think it simply varied from day to day:[133]

April 8 [1976] ... Lately, to tell the truth, I’ve been getting a little sick of killing things. Neither the death struggles of the animal nor the blood bother me in the least; in fact, I rather enjoy the sight of blood; blood is appetizing because it makes rich soups. I enjoy the instant of the kill because it represents a success. But a moment afterward I often feel saddened that a thing so beautiful and full of life has suddenly been converted into just a piece of meat. Still, this is outweighed by the satisfaction of getting my food from the forest and mountain. Rabbits and grouse have beautiful eye; in both cases the whites don’t show and the iris’s are a lovely brown. And this grouse today I noticed that the pupil, black at first glance, is actually a deep blue, like clear, translucent blue glass. ...

Dec. 25 [1977]; Christmas Day: Celebrated by going up on the ridge--not to hunt, but just for fun. Went out on a side ridge where there’s no rabbits, but a good view. However, on the way back I angled off into a rabbit area, to see if I could get one. Had bad luck.

Spent hours trailing 2 separate rabbits, but could get neither one. But no matter; I’m still cheerful and still felt it was a good day, just cause it’s Christmas. I have plenty of rabbit meat for today and some for tomorrow, and a brick of cheese from a Christmas package my mommy sent me, so I’m set up well enough food-wise.

What kind of education did Ted value?

Ted:[134][135]

If I started college again, what would I major in? If I had to do it all over again, I don't think I would go to college at all. I would just go to live in the mountains rather than wasting time on formal education. If I did go to college I wouldn't major in mathematics, but I'd probably take several math courses because they are good training in clear thinking. Say, three semesters of calculus, a semester of number theory, two semesters of modern algebra, a course in (mathematically rigorous) real analysis, a course in mathematical logic and one in axiomatic set theory. What I would major in, I don't know. Maybe computer science, but I would major in that only so that I could become a computer saboteur, i.e., one of those guys who invent destructive viruses and that sort of thing. Apart from that I'd probably take a lot of courses in the social "sciences" (note the quotation marks), especially history and cultural anthropology. The reason is that I'd like to know more about how and why societies function and develop as they do. ...

Listen, my friend, I wasted eleven years of my life on mathematics and I regret every minute of it. My advice to you is: Drop this silly mathematics racket and prepare yourself instead to become a professional revolutionary. Take courses in foreign languages -- Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, German, russian -- especially Russian -- take history and other social sciences such as organizational behavior and the theory of propaganda, as well as chemistry, martial arts, cryptology, etc., etc.

A professional revolutionary is not absolutely required to do anything illegal. (It is especially advisable to avoid doing anything illegal if you have a jealous little brother who is just itching for a chance to turn you in to the FBI.) And as a professional revolutionary you will enjoy certain special advantages. Inter alia, you will gain the honorable title of "comrade". Just imagine how impressed girls will be when you are introduced to them as "Comrade McBurnett". You should read Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent, wherein Comrade Ossipon's success with the ladies will open your eyes to certain possibilities in this direction.

What reading did Ted recommend?

On the subject of nature:[136]

... As for Thoreau, he’s okay, but I’ve never had any particular admiration for him. You’ll find much better nature writing (in my opinion) in Joseph Wood Krutch, The Desert Year (top-notch!). I can also recommend highly a book by Tom Neale, Alone on My Island (the title is not a figure of speech). Of great interest is Alexander Selkirk, who was the inspiration for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. An account of Selkirk’s adventures was published back in the 18th century, and it exists in a modern (like, mid-twentieth century) reprint. You’ll also find some eloquent passages about wilderness and solitude in Calvin Rutstrum, Paradise Below Zero and in Horace Kephart’s Book of Camping and Woodcraft. Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders is of considerable interest too ...

In short:

• The Desert Year by Joseph Wood Krutch

• An Island To Oneself by Tom Neale

• Selkirk's Island: The True and Strange Adventures of the Real Robinson Crusoe by Diana Souhami

• The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

• A Cruising Voyage Round the World by Woodes Rogers

• Paradise Below Zero by Calvin Rutstrum

• The Book Of Camping And Woodcraft by Horace Kephart

• Our Southern Highlanders by Horace Kephart

On the subject of revolution:[137]

This writer has had no opportunity to study more than a few of the works of history, political science, sociology, and revolutionary theory that may be relevant to the anti-tech enterprise. Worthy of careful attention are the works of Alinsky, Selznick, Smelser, and Trotsky that appear in our List of Works Cited. But there is a vast amount of other relevant literature that deserves to be explored; for example, the literature of the academic field known as “Organizational Behavior,” and the works of Lenin to the extent that they deal with revolutionary strategy and tactics (his ideological hokum is merely of historical interest). Thorough library research will reveal an unending series of other relevant works. It is worth repeating that this literature will provide no recipes for action that can be applied mechanically. It will provide ideas, some of which can be applied, with suitable modifications, to the purposes of an anti-tech organization. ...

List of Works Cited ...

Alinsky, Saul D., Rules far Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals ...

Selznick, Philip, The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics ...

Smelser, Neill., Theory of Collective Behavior ...

Trotsky, Leon, History of the Russian Revolution ...

Bowditch, James L., Anthony F. Buono, and Marcus M. Stewart, A Primer on Organizational Behavior ...

Christman, Henry M. (ed.), Essential Works of Lenin ...

Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, Lenin on Organization ...

Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, Collected Works ...

Historical Materialism (Marx, Engels, Lenin) ...

Stalin, J., Foundations of Leninism ...

In short:

• Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky

• The Organizational Weapon by Philip Selznick

• Theory of Collective Behavior by Neil Smelser

• History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky

• A Primer on Organizational Behavior by James L. Bowditch

• Essential Works of Lenin

• Lenin on Organization

• Collected Works of Lenin

• Marx, Engels Lenin: Historical Materialism

• Foundations of Leninism by Stalin

What music did Ted like?

Ted wrote his own musical compositions. The only one I've heard sounded almost medieval:

• Fantasia for Unaccompanied Nose Flute (Midi)

• March #4

• March #5

Here is the story of Ted writing music for his lady love from prison:[138]

But soon she became much more than that to Kaczynski, who began to refer to her in letters as his “angel” and “Lady Love,” a title he sometimes accentuated with a tiny hand-drawn heart. He drew her cards using colored pencils from the prison commissary and wrote her original pieces of classical music. With help from other pen pals, he sent her books he thought she might like. ...

Though she had never known him in the outside world, Kaczynski was as present in her life as anything. In her tiny apartment she had his books — including a bound copy of the Unabomber manifesto — and some of his belongings that had been left behind in his Montana cabin. On the walls was art he had drawn for her, while scattered around the apartment were copies of musical compositions he had written for her — though it’s not clear she knew how to read music. ...

The day she died, one of Kaczynski’s pen pals from Los Angeles drove out to visit her at the bomber’s behest. When he arrived, Richards was in pain and barely conscious, but the pen pal had one final message from Kaczynski for his Lady Love. The man, a musician, put headphones on Richards and played a piece of music — “a trombone duet” — that Kaczynski had written for her and the man had performed on his synthesizer.

He also wrote about having played hobo songs on the guitar:[139]

Among the songs that I sang in the hearing of my brother (and I mean that I sang the lyrics, I didn’t just hum the tunes) were “The Wabash Cannonball,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” an obscene variant of “Billy Boy,” various Christmas carols, etc., etc.

Here are two quotes on some of what he enjoyed listening to:[140][141]

What kind of music do I like? Classical. Mainly from Giovanni Gabrieli (ca. 1597) through Mozart and Haydn. My favorite composer is probably Vivaldi.

You’re right about Ray Charles. He was a great musical genius.

Finally, Ted copyed down Romanian ballroom music to pass the time in court:[142]

"Danube Waves" waltz, by ... I forget who. I wrote it down in courtroom just to pass the time.

In Summary:

• Ted's own musical compositions

  • Fantasia for Unaccompanied Nose Flute (Midi)

  • March #4

  • March #5

• Classical

  • The Four Seasons

  • Waves of the Danube

• Jazz

  • I've Got A Woman

• Folk

  • Wabash Cannonball

How did Ted's arrest go down?

Plans to arrest

Project Unabom:[143]

Eric: Ted was the most wanted man in America, but there on the ground in Montana. In real life. He wasn't a seemingly all powerful terrorist. He was destitute. He'd recently sold back half his property to David after saying he wanted nothing to do with him ever again because he needed the cash. That winter in early 1996 he was subsisting on snowshoe hares. He'd shot with his rifle, carefully tracking the rations until the snow melted. Weeks went by and had never even left the cabin, which in a way was good Max and the other agents knew he must be running low on supplies. He'd have to go to town soon.

Max: He would do that the way he'd always had. He would put on his heavy coat. It was still cold up there. He would jump on his rickety bicycle and he would ride to town down Stemple Pass Rd. And when that occurred, we would swoop in and stop him and detain him if he had a bomb with him or a weapon with him, it wouldn't be easily available to him and quickly take him into custody so we could serve the warrant.

Media leak

Project Unabom:[144]

Eric: The FBI kept its presence in Lincoln small. But an hour away in the city of Helena. The Bureau was ramping up as the early spring arrived. Terry Turci, the head of the UNABOM task force, then his boss. Jim Freeman were flying in and out of Helena. Bringing more and more agents from San Francisco. Which had a downside.

Max: There was a leak somewhere.

Eric: Among the hundreds of people who were now in the loop about Ted Kaczynski, someone had talked to a reporter.

Max: By the 1st of April it became very apparent that they knew that we were investigating a prime suspect. They believed his name was krusinski somewhere around Lincoln, Mt.

Jim: Any time that a major case such as this one is assigned at the Washington Field Office or is run out of headquarters, so it becomes one of your priority targets because your competitors are going. To see it that way.

Eric: Jim Stewart was covering the Justice Department for CBS News at the time. And he'd already done several stories about the Unabomber throughout 1995, in early 96, whenever Jim talked with his sources and federal law enforcement, he'd float the question, this Unabomber thing. What are you hearing?

Jim: And one day I received information that. Was very specific. So specific that it the first thing I you know I felt I had to do was run it by the FBI. This information gave me the phonetic spelling of Ted Kaczynski's name. It gave me his location and a remote cabin near Lincoln, Montana, and the fact that it was under surveillance by the FBI.

Eric: So, Jim calls the FBI field office in Washington.

Jim: And I repeated virtually verbatim what I've been told and waited for a reaction. And after some pause. The person said hold on a minute, went and talked to somebody else. The two of them got back on the phone. And the response was, well, you're on the right highway and you've taken the right exit ramp.

Eric: But the FBI. Wasn't just going to confirm Jim Stewart’s info and leave it at that. If CBS ran a story, that could easily jeopardize the operation and tip off Ted Kaczynski. The FBI still didn't even have a search warrant. So, the FBI gets on the phone with the President of CBS News to try and work out a deal.

Jim: I don't think anybody thought that the right thing to do was to put me on the air immediately. Do his discussion about. Well, here's their argument and. And here's our consideration. And from our point of view, CBS, his point of view. We don't want to do anything that's going to result in bodily harm or disruption of a prosecution. At the same time though, we have proprietary information that we have gotten thoroughly legitimately. And that we believe to be accurate. And we're not in the business of withholding information from the public.

Eric: But they agreed to hold the story, if the FBI guaranteed them the scoop before those calls with CBS. The operation in Montana was a waiting game, but now the FBI has no choice. They feel like they have to move suddenly. It seems like the entire task force is hopping on a plane from San Francisco to Helena.

David Kaczynski:[145]

[A]t the tail end of March, I caught someone going through our garbage at the curbside. It was a middle-aged guy in a stocking cap who shot a guilty look in my direction, then peeled away in a late-model sedan. Not your typical scavenger, I thought.

“Doesn’t the FBI trust us?” I wondered aloud to Linda. “Let’s hope it’s them,” she rejoined.

A few days later, Ted was arrested.

Project Unabom:[146]

Eric: Kathy … talks to her boss, Terry Turci. He has one explicit instruction for her.

Kathy: Do not call David when they were executing a search warrant, because they were paranoid that he would had some way of letting Ted know that we were on the way and he could be over the continental divide and gone back up into Canada or something. And they forbade me to contact him and warn him about the press that were going to be descending on him once this thing went public, and it was imminent.

The wait for the search warrant

Project Unabom:[147]

Eric: Before dawn on Wednesday, April 3rd, Maxwell drives out to a steakhouse called the Seven Up Ranch and Resort on the outskirts of Lincoln. The FBI has rented it out as their command post.

Max: The owners of the seven Up Ranch had a nice continental breakfast for us and lots of coffee and all of the people that we brought in the day before arrived and assembled there, and Jim Freeman conducted the briefing. Of what everybody responsibilities were and where they would be and how it would go down. Yeah, we had a short special weapons and tactics briefing so that we knew for sure that they knew what their part was in this, and I think I briefed him a little bit on the topography and the geography and so forth.

Eric: As of that morning. The FBI still didn't have a search warrant the photos they'd collected Max his personal sighting of Ted. Everything Kathy pocket. Had gotten from David Kaczynski since he. Agreed to help them. It was all. Compelling, but the Justice Department wasn't convinced this was a huge case, even if they. Could get a federal judge. To sign off and they arrested Ted, he was going to be represented by the best federal public defenders in the country, and they would certainly challenge the legitimacy of the search warrant in court. Did the FBI really have enough?

Gorelick: I think that the Criminal division was worried about whether there was sufficient evidence for a search warrant.

Eric: Jamie Gorelick was the deputy Attorney general at the time. The number two in the DOJ behind Attorney General Janet Reno.

Gorelick: And that the review of the search warrant was elevated to Merrick.

Eric: Merrick is in Merrick Garland. The current US Attorney general. At the time he was Gorelick's top deputy. A big sticking point for the DOJ was that the search warrant depended largely on linguistic analysis. A comparison of Ted's old writings and the Unabomber's manifesto, and communicates to the press. This was groundbreaking. Normally search warrants are based on physical evidence, eyewitness accounts, nuts and bolts, police stuff, and it made all the lawyers. Very uneasy. So Jamie and Mark talked it out.

Gorelick: He and I discussed that and agreed that the matched wording was sufficient for the search warrant.

Eric: But the government still needed. A judge to sign off on the morning of April 3rd. Terry was in federal court trying to clear that last hurdle. So Max and everyone else had. Nothing to do but wait and wait and wait.

Max: Was mid morning, I think around 10:00 o'clock or something that Jim got the telephone call at. The seven up grants from Terry telling him that. the judge had signed the OR.

The arrest

On April 3, 1996 Kaczynski was arrested.

Project Unabom:[148]

Eric: So they immediately deploy a few agents take up positions in elk hunting cabins near Ted property, two SWAT teams dressed in ghillie suits. Those camouflage jumpsuits covered in foliage that make people look like swamp monsters form a perimeter around Ted. Cabin Max drives to Butches Lumbermill the plan. This for Max to approach Ted Cabin with two other people Montana based. FBI agent named Tom McDaniel and a Forest Service officer named Jerry Burns. Ted Kaczynski knows Jerry Burns. They've interacted before, so he's not going in disguise, but Max and the local FBI agent Tom are posing as surveyors from a mining company that Butch hired that winter to explore his property. Ted knows about the mining company, so the FBI figures he won't be suspicious when Jerry. The Forest Service officer asks. Him to come out and show them where his property line is.

Max: Freeman finally said, OK, you know on the radio, let's go put it into motion and that was shortly before noon on April 3rd.

Eric: Max, Tom and Jerry Walk from Bush's lumber mill to Ted property line.

Max: The 40 yards to the cabin you're exposed and out in the middle of nowhere. And also when we had rifles in the cabin, I knew he had a 30 out six and then we added 22 as well as maybe other weapons. And then as we approached the cabin as Jerry was hailing him, we didn't hear anything in the cabin. And we got right up to the cabin. And Jerry and Tom were directly in front of the cabin door. I was standing on the corner of the cabin and we were exposed. There's no doubt about that.

Eric: Because they're posing as mining reps, they're not wearing bulletproof vests, no body armor. Everything depends on Ted buying their disguise.

Max: Uh, no sound coming from the cabin. No response from within the cabin.

Eric: For a split second Max doubts the whole plan, he wonders, is this really going to work?

Max: At which time the door opened. And Ted Kaczynski kind of stood in the door with it ajar, directly in front of Jerry Burns. I still. Shake my head because he was covered in grease. His jeans were essentially rotting off them big holes and they were dragging off. Huge had a hair wild sticking out all over and he smelled terrible. He had a body odor that I could smell him for days afterwards. There's no way to describe it.

Eric: It's time for Jerry to convince Ted to come out.

Max: And Jerry said hi, Mr Kaczynski, Jerry Burns with the US Forest Service and I have these two gentlemen here from the mining company. That's going to be doing exploration here in the spring, and I'm trying to show them where your corner posts are so they don't their employees. Don't encroach upon your property when they come up here to do their exploration. And his response was. As my corner posts are clearly marked and Jerry said, well, I understand that Mr. Kosinski, but there's still several feet of snow in this Canyon, and they're covered, and it would sure save us a lot of time if you came out and showed them to us as opposed to us cropping around on your property. And that got his attention. And he said, well, OK, and he started to come out of the cabin 'cause he was still standing in the doorway and he stopped and he said well, let me get my coat and Jerry reached out, grabbed him, Tom wrapped him up in a bear hug and they're struggling around. Then I got to walk around in front of him with my weapon directly. To his face, identified myself as an FBI agent and that we were there to serve a search warrant on his property.

Eric: As he says, those words Ted stopped struggling. His muscles relax. He knows he's not going to get away. They cuff him, lead him down to one of the elk hunting cabins.

Here was Ted's experience:[149]

Here’s exactly what happened. I was in my cabin about the middle of the day on April 3rd and I heard a voice up the hillside calling “is anybody home?” There were three guys walking down the hill toward my cabin. They certainly did not look like the kind of people that I would have thought FBI agents would have been. Two of them were old guys and one of ‘em was, you know, fat with a big paunch, you know? I always thought FBI agents would be youngish men in business suits with ties, and all that stuff and these guys were dressed like people who were doing a geological survey for mining purposes. They said, “we’re from the Nordic Drilling Company,” and then as I started to back off from the door to put my shoes on, this one guy sort of stepped toward me and he sort of had a funny look on his face.

And then suddenly he reached out and grabbed me and pulled me out of the cabin. One guy pulled out a gun and pointed it at me and then they put handcuffs on me. The three guys were the only three that I saw at first because there were a whole bunch of FBI agents around there that came swarming around after they took me.

Well, they let me know what the investigation was about very soon after they… I mean, even before I was formally arrested, but they didn’t ask me any questions about the case. And of course, if he had asked me anything that was, you know, about the Unabomb case, I wouldn’t have answered it.

The FBI’s first conversation with Ted

Project Unabom:[150]

Max: There was an old wood burning stove there and the only source of heat for the cabin and the agents that were there from ATF was trying to start a fire. And the cabin was filling up with smoke and Kaczynski was sitting at this straight back chair at this old Formica table and the smoke was filling up the cabin and he said. Does he know how to build a fire? He said, well, tell him and so Kaczynski said. I need to open the flu once he opened the flu and stoked the fire or it started to draw. But Kaczynski was I know at that time just shaking his head saying Oh my God or these are guys that caught me. They can't even build a fire in the cabin.

Eric: Inside the cabin, the task force had created a display for Ted Timeline, showing the 16 bombings photographs from the incidents. The forensic sketch based on the eyewitness sighting in Salt Lake City. The idea was it. Might get Ted to talk Max as Ted didn't even look. Got it.

Max: He kept asking me if he was under arrest and I kept telling him no. He was under investigative detention and he kept saying well, can I get up and walk around and I'd say no and he said, well, can you take the handcuffs off? And I'd say no. He said well in my free to leave and I said no, and he looked me in the eyes as kind of sounds to me like. I'm under arrest.

Eric: Actually arresting Ted for a crime depended on what the FBI found in the cabin. The hope was that there would be some trace of Ted crimes. Maybe bomb making materials, but if there was nothing, if it was just a cabin in the woods, the whole thing might unravel quickly. Max his job was to stay with Ted while the other agents conducted their search.

Max: I said we're going to be here for a while, while this search is going on. I don't know how long it's going to take. I'd like to talk with you and he looked me straight in the eye and he said I'll be happy to talk with you as long as we don't talk about the case. So for the next 5 hours we talked about living in the mountains and foraging in the mountains and hiking in the mountains and. How the global sky said all was at you fellers up on humbug contour trail back in February and then again later he would say. Is that you to spend down at the Miller cabin for the last week or so?

Eric: Ted hadn't realized the FBI was coming, but he knew something unusual was up. He just hadn't quite put it together in time.

Max: It was very apparent that he was very intelligent and articulate, but at one point in the afternoon I said I know from what I read that you were a mathematics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and what kind of math did you teach at Berkeley? And he kind. Of sat up straight in the chair and pulled back and looked at me and said. How much mathematics did you have in school? And I said, well, I had algebra and advanced algebra, geometry and solid geometry, and little trigonometry with a smattering and calculus. And they said her and it wouldn't do any good for me to try to explain to you what I taught because you wouldn't understand it.

Ted is finally charged with being the Unabomer

Project Unabom:[151]

Eric: As the day wore on, a debate was raging inside the federal government. Can we charge this guy? Do we have enough evidence? It was evening on the East Coast when the debate made its way to the top law enforcement officials in the country. Louis Freeh, the director of the FBI. And Janet Reno, the US Attorney general.

Gorelick: It was Passover and American invited Janet to his Seder.

Eric: This is deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick again.

Gorelick: And when we called and said we're in the cabin, everyone is OK. We have found bomb making equipment. Can we charge Kaczynski as the Unabomber?

Eric: Jamie wasn't at Merrick Garland's Passover seder that night. But she was in the loop.

Gorelick: And Merrick view, discussing it with the attorney general, was that that bomb making equipment would be sufficient to charge Kaczynski with possession of. Bomb making material. And not to charge that he was the Unabomber.

Eric: Over the next two weeks, the evidence team because they're worried about booby traps, moves painstakingly slowly through the cabin. They found a live bomb under Ted's bed, A Smith Corona typewriter with pica font and 2.54 centimeters. Basing tucked in his loft and what appeared to be a master copy of the Manifesto Industrial Society and its Future.

Gorelick: At which point Merrick, after discussing this with Janet, said you can charge Ted Kaczynski with being the Unabomber.

The news breaks

C-SPAN:[152]

As FBI agents closed in on the Unabomber suspect in a remote Montana cabin, Dan Rather of CBS News broke into afternoon programming to announce that the 17-year manhunt was nearing an end.

“The FBI is preparing to execute a search warrant” on the home of the Unabomber suspect, CBS News Washington correspondent Jim Stewart said shortly after 3 p.m. EST on Wednesday.

Mr Heyward of CBS News said some network executives wanted to broadcast news of the Unabomber suspect on the evening news on Monday or Tuesday.

They go on to say they … ran with it not because the FBI was about to go in, but because they found out that CNN and ABC knew about it and they might get scooped on it, so they decided to go. And the story says a number of people in the FBI are unhappy about it.

“The news leak forced us to go with what we had at that point and get a warrant to search the place,” the Daily News quoted an unidentified source as saying.

“I’m sure that continuing surveillance would have given us the strongest possible case. We didn’t have that luxury,” the source said.

It’s amazing to think how close news agencies came to breaking the story before the FBI could get a search warrant that would stand up in court. Especially since we know Ted was an avid follower of the news on radio and in print, so it could have easily led to Ted hearing on the radio that the FBI were about to raid him. In such a scenario we could have seen Ted attempting to escape into Canada with his guns:[153]

Also, if Ted had found someone in the local town to become an accomplice in the vague knowledge that he was a wanted man, e.g. weaving a story about having accidently killed a man who was harming his girlfriend years ago. Then, perhaps this friend could have tipped him off to the suspiciously large number of undercover officers arriving in town:[154]

SW: The FBI began doing a background check on Ted after his brother David turned his name in to the agency. The FBI learned that Ted had spent an enormous amount of time in our library and wanted to know why. So they put an undercover agent in our library to find out to whom Ted had talked and to see if they could gather information about him.

AL: Did the undercover agent actually use the library?

SW: He came in as a patron, a freelance photographer, who had been hired by a magazine in California to do a major feature on a mine in Lincoln. He came in March and April of 1996 to take photos of the mine and we helped him in his research. We actually thought he was wonderful..., a real freelance photographer. He spent an enormous amount of time going through maps and books and asking us questions. We trusted him; he was perfect. We fell hook, line, and sinker. A couple of times he tried to steer the conversation towards Ted, but I told him that we don’t talk about patrons who use our library.

Could his family not have risked Ted striking again by saying nothing or threatening Ted?

In Ted’s mind ultimately his family ideally should have supported his cause and not said anything, but failing that, they should have threatened him not to send any more bombs, and risk that he would ignore them or kill them. Quoting Ted:[155]

The Unabomber had promised to stop the bombings if his conditions were met. … My brother knew that I am reliable about keeping promises and that, if I were the Unabomber, there would be no more bombings as long as the conditions were met. Since the manifesto had already been published, the Unabomber was not to resume his attacks unless the media refused to publish his three follow-up messages; which was unlikely given that they had published the manifesto.

As conditions for permanently stopping his attacks, the Unabomber demanded publication of the manifesto and of three much shorter annual follow-up messages. He also reserved the right to use violence if the authorities ever succeeded in tracking him down.

Thus, by helping the FBI to find the Unabomber, my brother would have been increasing the risk of further violence—if I were the Unabomber.

In any case, if my brother was worried about that possibility, he could have sent me a message (an anonymous one, if he thought that necessary) stating that he suspected me of being the Unabomber and that he would give my name to the FBI if there were any more bombings. If I were the Unabomber, that would have been an effective deterrent.

But I think David would have been running a real risk of Ted killing him and Linda in that case in a double murder-suicide, like how he fantasized about killing the first time he got the desire to kill.

The frustration at being blackmailed by both the brother he was incredibly competitive with and the woman who had taken him away from the wild and ideals similar to his own for good would likely be too much to bear.

As well, he had another bomb built under his bed even though his reputation was on the line for not sending anymore, so I think killing people came from a place of intense anger which he couldn't control.

Ted could also have simply carried on anonymous bombings and shootings outside of his usual pattern, so as to avoid suspicion that he was the perpetrator, for instance in a new country.

Ultimately David felt there was a duty to the victims, their families and anyone scared of being killed for their job, to have some resolution in knowing the perpetrator of this bombing campaign couldn’t harm anyone else.

Whenever some tragic event happens, many people strongly desire to know what could have been the best solutions to remedy the problem at various stages. The longer a bad situation drags on for, the more the remedies that could have helped all parties begin to take on the fantastical.

If you would like to see this short flight of fantasy fleshed out, then I’m prepared to lay it on you, but if you think it callas feel free to stop reading.

Like I said I think people often have a primal need to problem solve tragic situations which we relate to personally, and if the multiverse theory is correct, there exists a reality in which David and Linda selflessly trained themselves in psychotherapy, philosophy, self-defense and marksmanship whilst monitoring Ted.

Then we can imagine them approaching him in exactly the right way so as to be able to have a heart to heart from which point Ted’s risk to others only diminished. Through their expertise at meeting him where he was at and helping him unpick his arguments to reform in his attitude towards bodily harm violence.

In this alternate reality, we could have seen Ted sending to the New York Times a new philosophical essay on learned optimism, promising to have changed, along with proof of authenticity, his secret identifying number and a hand crafted sculpture of a sword being bent into a plowshare, using some of the same techniques for how he built components for his bombs.

Then finally, both Ted and David could have had an incredibly positive vision to work towards together in throwing down the gauntlet to the government, that…

If…

A) The government can pass a law allowing the prosecutor’s office to offer cast iron plea deals to anonymous informants and perpetrators before being arressted, similar to the way they offer plea deals to let people serve a few months sentence on house arrest for murder in order to get information to arrest two other people for murder…

Then…

B) The Unabomber would be willing to accept a deal to go away to a rural prison for a few years where he can work some of the time outdoors.

Finally, even in this alternative reality, I imagine no government would like to look weak, so they would likely still refuse, but the test for Ted, David & Linda then would be proving the government wrong in not accepting the deal, by keeping Ted in a healthy place mentally, helping him along a therapeutic journey, such that his anger never bubbled up to the point of hurting people unjustifiably again.

As much as it’s intriguing to attempt to flesh out thought experiments, I think this only serves to further illustrate the burden that would be placed on David & Linda to risk their own safety and start whole new lives in order to hobby craft the role a more ideal society should be playing.

Could his family not have risked Ted getting the death penalty by saying nothing?

Again, in Ted’s mind, ultimately, his family ideally should have supported his cause and not said anything to the media that prosecutors could use to get a guilty verdict.

But, failing that ideal, I think Ted imagined that a dutiful social contract could have been kept to him that entailed some amount of risk of Ted receiving the death penalty, but also didn’t help the prosecution any further than he had done in handing over Ted's letters.

Though again this would have entailed living with the fear of being killed for revenge if Ted ever did get out or Ted attempting to killing other people.

David's primary goal in speeking to the media was to prevent Ted from getting the death penalty.

Quoting Ted:[156]

Whether or not their portrayal of me would make the death penalty less likely in the event of my conviction, it obviously makes my conviction more likely. In fact, my mother and brother have indicated that they want me to be convicted.

After my brother’s and mother’s interviews with the New York Times and the Washington Post, and on 60 Minutes, my attorneys made it quite clear to Dave that by giving media interviews he was not helping but harming my legal position. On October 24, 1996, in Investigator #3’s office in San Francisco, with Dr.K. present, Investigator #3 told Dave that the kind of publicity he was creating was causing me emotional distress to such an extent that it was interfering with my ability to cooperate with my lawyers in preparing my defense. Dave seemed to acknowledge that he heard and understood.

Yet in January, 1997, my brother gave another media interview of the same kind as the earlier ones. At this point he could hardly have claimed that he didn’t know he was harming me.

In his media interviews, Dave described events in language that seemed to have been chosen to make me appear guilty. In fact, the prosecuting attorneys in my case quoted his statements to the media several times in their brief opposing the Motion to Suppress Evidence that my attorneys filed on my behalf:

“The truthfulness of the affidavit and its supporting reports is strongly supported by David Kaczynski’s post-search public statements. For example, about two weeks before David executed his declaration in this case, the Sacramento Bee quoted him as discussing the phrase ‘cool-headed logician’ as follows: ‘I thought, “Who else have I ever heard use that expression but Ted?” No one.

* * *

It’s got to be him.’ … During an interview with the New York Times … David stated that when he first read the introductory section of the UNABOM manuscript his ‘jaw dropped,’ and he experienced ‘chills,’ because ‘it sounded enough like him that I was really upset that it could be him.’

After writing all that, Ted wanted to spend three lines fairly acknowledging that David helped his defense team, as part of his goal to get him off the death penalty:[157]

Nevertheless—my brother has cooperated with my attorneys by participating in several interviews with them and with Dr.K., and he signed for them a declaration that they used with their Motion to Suppress Evidence.

Ted also felt a sense of betrayal that Dave would continue discussing his mental health after the trial.

David built up strong friendships with people fighting similar cases against the death penalty and felt obligated to continue discussing his brother’s case to help others. But for Ted this was a further insult, as it was confirmation that David’s belief in Ted being mentally ill was a deeply held conviction, and not simply a personal desire to opportunistically get his brother off the death penalty:[158]

Since agreeing to a plea bargain in January 1998, I have been out of danger of the death penalty, On February 22, 1998, my brother gave an interview to the Schenectady Sunday Gazette according to which, “David Kaczynski said his convictions about his brothers mental illness have alienated him from a brother whom he still loves deeply. ‘It seems like every word I speak is a dagger to my brother’s heart,’ he said.” Yet Dave has continued to give interviews to which he lies about me and talks about my alleged mental illness (e.g. People magazine August 10, 1998), even though he no longer has the excuse that he is trying to save me from the death penalty.

What were his prison conditions like?

Ted wrote to Green Anarchist magazine about his life in prison:[159]

Thank you for your letter of September 8. I don't know what press reports you may have said about the ADX, but you should bear in mind that press reports are wildly inaccurate - as I learned from press reports about my own case.

I think it is inhuman to keep people locked up under any conditions, but beyond the mere fact of imprisonment I don't feel that the conditions here are bad as you seem to believe. I'll describe them briefly, but it must be understood that this description applies only to the part of the prison where the high-profile (that is, the famous) prisoners are kept. I know nothing about the rest of the prison. ...

And here are some pictures of different cells in the prison, plus what I think is the newest public photo of Ted:

[1] David Kaczynski. David Kaczynski on Emotional Healing from a Buddhist Perspective [Lecture]. Ishkah. March 13th, 2013. Original link. Archived link.

[2] David Kaczynski. Families as Secondary Consumers of the Mental Health System [Lecture]. NYS Consumer Affairs. 2012. Original link. Archived link.

[3] Mick Grogan (Director). Unabomber: In His Own Words [Documentary]. Netflix. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[4] Mick Grogan (Director). Unabomber: In His Own Words [Documentary]. Netflix. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[5] Ted Kaczynski. Truth versus Lies, Title page – page 90 [Book]. Folder 11, Box 66, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Page 14. Original link. Archived link.

[6] Mick Grogan (Director). Unabomber: In His Own Words [Documentary]. Netflix. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[7] Ted Clayton. Political Philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre [Essay]. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Summer 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[8] David Kaczynski. David Kaczynski on Emotional Healing from a Buddhist Perspective [Lecture]. Ishkah. March 13th, 2013. Original link. Archived link.

[9] Mick Grogan (Director). Unabomber: In His Own Words [Documentary]. Netflix. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[10] Saul Newman. The Politics of Post-Anarchism [Book]. The Ted K Archive. August 15, 2010. Original link. Archived link.

[11] Ole Martin Moen. The Unabomber's Ethics [Essay]. The Ted K Archive. 2018. Original link. Archived link.

[12] David Kaczynski. Every Last Tie [Book]. Duke University Press. January 8, 2016. Original link. Archived link.

[13] FBI. David Kaczynskis’ First Interview [Court Document]. The Ted K Archive. February 18, 1996. Original link. Archived link.

[14] Ted Kaczynski. Truth versus Lies [Book]. Boxes 66 & 67, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Original link. Archived link.

[15] Ted Kaczynski. Truth versus Lies [Book]. Boxes 66 & 67, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Original link. Archived link.

[16] Ted Kaczynski. Truth versus Lies [Book]. Boxes 66 & 67, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Original link. Archived link.

[17] Ted Kaczynski. Truth versus Lies [Book]. Boxes 66 & 67, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Original link. Archived link.

[18] Stephen J. Dubner. Running to Do Evil [Podcast Interview]. Freakonomics. April 25, 2013. Original link. Archived link.

[19] David Kaczynski. David Kaczynski on Emotional Healing from a Buddhist Perspective [Lecture]. Ishkah. March 13th, 2013. Original link. Archived link.

[20] Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography

[21] Eileen Pollack. From the Unabomber to the Incels: Angry Young Men on Campus, Literary Hub [Essay]. October 4. 2019. Original link. Archived link.

[22] Sally Johnson. Psychiatric competency report of Dr. Sally C. Johnson [Court Document]. Court TV . Sept, 1998. Original link. Archived link.

[23] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[24] James Anderson and Matthew Brown. ‘Unabomber’ Ted Kaczynski Moved to Prison Medical Facility [Essay]. AP News. December 23, 2021. Original link. Archived link.

[25] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[26] Ted Kaczynski. Truth versus Lies [Book]. Boxes 66 & 67, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Original link. Archived link.

[27] Joel Achenbach & Serge F. Kovaleski. The Profile of a Loner [Essay]. Washington Post. April 7, 1996. Original link. Archived link.

[28] Lis W. Wiehl and Lisa Pulitzer. Hunting the Unabomber: The FBI, Ted Kaczynski, and the Capture of America’s Most Notorious Domestic Terrorist [Book]. Nelson Books. April 28, 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[29] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[30] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[31] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[32] A Review and Compilation of the Writings of Ted Kaczynski

[33] Ted Kaczynski. C1: Bombs #1 and 2; vandalism; booby-traps, killing a businessman, government official, scientists [Journal]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[36] Don Foster. Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous [Book]. Henry Holt and Company. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[37] Ted Kaczynski. U-7: Letter and envelop from FC to Warren Hoge (Assistant Managing Editor, NY Times) [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[38] Ted Kaczynski. C1: Bombs #1 and 2; vandalism; booby-traps, killing a businessman, government official, scientists [Journal]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[39] Ted Kaczynski. Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography [Book]. The Ted K Archive. 1979. Original link. Archived link.

[40] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[41] Theresa Kintzs' Interview with Ted Kaczynski

[42] Ted Kaczynski. Letter to a Turkish Anarchist [Letter]. Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, No. 63. retrieved on June 9, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[43] The Bombings & Communications of Ted Kaczynski as part of his Terror Campaign

[44] Kaczynski and his lawyers

[45] Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography

[46] Kaczynski and his lawyers

[47] Ted's Notes on his Journals (Feb. 1996)

[48] Kaczynski and his lawyers

[49] Multiple Authors. Ted Kaczynski [Essay]. Wikipedia . 22 June 2022‎. Original link. Archived link.

[50] Mick Grogan (Director). Unabomber: In His Own Words [Documentary]. Netflix. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[51] Michael Sperber. Dostoyevsky’s Stalker and Other Essays on Psychopathology and the Arts [Book]. University Press of America. 2010. Original link. Archived link.

[52] Alex Uziel. Debunking the Ted Kaczynski ‘MK Ultra’ Myth [Essay]. Media Disinfo. March 27, 2021. Original link. Archived link.

[53] Michael Sperber. Dostoyevsky’s Stalker and Other Essays on Psychopathology and the Arts [Book]. University Press of America. 2010. Original link. Archived link.

[54] Sally Johnson. Psychiatric competency report of Dr. Sally C. Johnson [Court Document]. Court TV . Sept, 1998. Original link. Archived link.

[55] Ted Kaczynski. Truth versus Lies [Book]. Boxes 66 & 67, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Original link. Archived link.

[56] Ted Kaczynski. Truth versus Lies [Book]. Boxes 66 & 67, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Original link. Archived link.

[57] Mick Grogan (Director). Unabomber: In His Own Words [Documentary]. Netflix. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[58] Ted Kaczynski (Author) & Kelli Grant (Curator). Kaczynski and his lawyers [Letter]. Yahoo News. Original link. Archived link.

[59] Government's Sentencing Memorandum

[60] Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography

[61] An early attempt to argue for hunter-gatherer societies or human extermination

[62] Ted Kaczynski. Ted Kaczynski's Letter Correspondence With David Skrbina. From Ted to Skrbina — August 29, 2004. Technological Slavery. Fitch & Madison Publishers, 2022. https://fitchmadison.com/product/technological-slavery-volume-one-2022/. Archived Link.

[63] The Bombings & Communications of Ted Kaczynski as part of his Terror Campaign

[64] Industrial Society and Its Future

[65] Answer to Some Comments Made in Green Anarchist

[66] Social Darwinism

[67] Ted Kaczynski. Ted Kaczynski's Letter Correspondence With David Skrbina. From Ted to Skrbina — August 29, 2004. Technological Slavery. Fitch & Madison Publishers, 2022. https://fitchmadison.com/product/technological-slavery-volume-one-2022/. Archived Link.

[68] Ted Kaczynski. Answer to Some Comments Made in Green Anarchist. Box 65 of the University of Michigan’s Special Collection’s Library (Labadie Collection. Archived Link.

[69] The Bombings & Communications of Ted Kaczynski as part of his Terror Campaign

[70] Industrial Society and Its Future

[71] Answer to Some Comments Made in Green Anarchist

[72] Industrial Society and Its Future

[73] Is the Unabomber an Anarchist?

[74] Strategic Guidelines for an Anti-Tech Movement

[75] Industrial Society and Its Future

[76] Unabomber; In His Own Words

[77] Letters from a serial killer: Inside the Unabomber archive

[78] Ted Kaczynski's Letter Correspondence With David Skrbina

[79] Children of Ted; The Unlikely New Generation of Unabomber Acolytes

[80] Industrial Society and Its Future

[81] Ibid.

[82] 2001 Interview

[83] 1959 Autobiography

[84] 1979 Journal

[85] Letter to David

[86] 1999 Interview

[87] 1978 Journal

[88] 1980 Journal

[89] 2001 Interview

[90] Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography

[91] Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography

[92] From the Unabomber to the Incels: Angry Young Men on Campus

[93] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[94] Truth versus Lies

[95] Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography

[96] Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography

[97] Ted Kaczynski's 1959 Autobiography (Tabled Version)

[98] Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography

[99] Ted Kaczynski's 1979 Autobiography

[100] Ted Kaczynski's 1978-79 Journal

[101] Letter to the Editors, Green Anarchy #10, Fall 2002. Original link. Archived link.

[102] A Review and Compilation of the Writings of Ted Kaczynski

[103] Context Books Correspondence

[104] Truth versus Lies

[105] Unabomber; In His Own Words

[106] Truth versus Lies

[107] Families as Secondary Consumers of the Mental Health System.

[108] Unabomber; In His Own Words

[109] Unabomber; In His Own Words

[110] Truth versus Lies

[111] Truth versus Lies

[112] Original link. Hunting the Unabomber: The FBI, Ted Kaczynski, and the Capture of America’s Most Notorious Domestic Terrorist.

[113] 60 Minutes: Ted Kaczynski's Family, S29E1. Sept 15, 1996.

[114] Truth versus Lies

[115] A Review and Compilation of the Writings of Ted Kaczynski

[116] Unabomber: A Desire to Kill

[117] The Letters Between Ted Kaczynski and his Brother David

[118] A Review and Compilation of the Writings of Ted Kaczynski

[119] Ibid.

[120] Ibid.

[121] Ibid.

[122] Ibid.

[123] Ibid.

[124] Ibid.

[125] Ibid.

[126] A Review and Compilation of the Writings of Ted Kaczynski

[127] Conversations with the producer of this great documentary on Ted's math career: Ted Kaczynski's PhD Thesis

[128] Truth versus Lies (Original Draft)

[129] Journal #1 of 4 from Series VII (1984-1986)

[130] Ted Kaczynski, Math Tutor

[131] Conversations with the producer of this great documentary on Ted's math career: Ted Kaczynski's PhD Thesis

[132] Conversations with the producer of this great documentary on Ted's math career: Ted Kaczynski's PhD Thesis

[133] A Review and Compilation of the Writings of Ted Kaczynski

[134] Ted Kaczynski, Math Tutor

[135] Ibid.

[136] Ted Kaczynski's Letter Correspondence With Julie Ault

[137] Strategic Guidelines for an Anti-Tech Movement

[138] Falling in love with the Unabomber

[139] Truth versus Lies

[140] Ted Kaczynski, Math Tutor

[141] Ted Kaczynski on 911 politics and policy

[142] Kaczynski and his lawyers

[143] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[144] Ibid.

[145] David Kaczynski. Every Last Tie [Book]. Duke University Press. January 8, 2016. Original link. Archived link.

[146] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[147] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[148] Ibid.

[149] Mick Grogan (Director). Unabomber: In His Own Words [Documentary]. Netflix. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[150] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[151] Ibid.

[152] Brian Lamb. Washington Friday Journal [TV Show]. C-SPAN. April 5, 1996. Original link. Archived link.

[153] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[154] Surviving the Unabomber Media Circus

[155] Ted Kaczynski. Truth versus Lies [Book]. Boxes 66 & 67, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Original link. Archived link.

[156] Ibid.

[157] Ibid.

[158] Ibid.

[159] A text dump on Green Anarchist