Ted Kaczynski 'The Unabomber' [Full Story]

 

Who was The Unabomber

The Unabomber is that the nickname was given to American domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski, who conducted a 17-year series of attacks, using mail bombs to focus on academics, business executives etc
The Unabomber bombing campaign – which killed three people and injured 23 – started within the late 1970s and continued until Kaczynski was caught in 1996 following a nationwide manhunt led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). His capture marked the top of the FBI’s longest and costliest manhunt.full-width

Kaczynski, who had lived as a recluse during a remote cabin without electricity or running water outside Lincoln, Montana, since 1971, famously authored a 35,000-word manifesto entitled “Industrial Society and It's Future.”

In it, he argued that technology had led citizenry far away from nature and toward what he called “surrogate activities” like popular entertainment and sports. He involved citizenry to return to what he described as “wild nature.” In his view, this included an end to all or any research project.

After he sent his manifesto to multiple newspapers and tv stations within the sort of several letters, he vowed to prevent his attacks if it had been published, in full, during a major newspaper. Both The NY Times and the Washington Post published the manifesto in its entirety in September 1995.

Kaczynski was arrested seven months later, in April 1996, nearly a year to the date after his last admitted bombing.-Research source[1]

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Early Life OF TED KACZYNSKI

 

Ted Kaczynski’s youth

Theodore Kaczynski was born in Chicago in 1942 to a working-class family of Polish ancestry. He was one among two children, alongside younger brother David, who would later get entangled in his older sibling’s arrest.

People who attended school with Ted noted that he was a “loner” who excelled academically.

After graduating early from Evergreen Park Community highschool (he skipped 11th grade), Kaczynski was accepted at Harvard University on a full scholarship at the age of 16. While at the Ivy League school, Kaczynski didn’t make many friends, but he continued to perform exceedingly well academically.

However, it had been during his time at Harvard that Kaczynski also participated during a controversial study led by psychologist Henry Murray.

In the experiment, subjects were asked to write down an essay on their personal philosophies. Later, while attached to electrodes to live their physiological response, the study subjects were subjected to hours of insults and private attacks.

The essays were used as a basis for the insults.

It’s believed that Kaczynski participated during this experiment for quite 200 hours, lasting for 3 years beginning in 1959, which his mental and emotional well-being suffered as a result.

Still, he graduated from Harvard, with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1962. He would later earn a master’s degree (1964) and a doctorate (1967) within the same subject from the University of Michigan.

After completing his education, at 25, Kaczynski became the youngest professor within the history of the University of California at Berkeley when he was hired to show undergraduate geometry and calculus within the fall of 1967. However, he resigned, without providing a reason, two years later.

The Unabomber in Montana

After leaving Berkeley, Kaczynski returned to Illinois to measure together with his parents for 2 years before moving to a cabin he had inbuilt the woods outside Lincoln, Montana, in 1971.

With little or no money, Kaczynski hoped to measure self-sufficiently by teaching himself survival skills like hunting and organic farming. He also worked odd jobs within the area and received some support from his family.

By 1975, though, he had become disturbed by the encroachment of land and industrial development within the area around his home. Influenced by the writings of French Christian anarchist philosopher Jacques Ellul, Kaczynski began vandalizing construction sites within the Lincoln area in an attempt to sabotage development.

It was only the start.

The Unabomber Attacks

Kaczynski began using mail bombs sent via the U.S. mail – or that he occasionally hand-delivered himself – during a series of coordinated attacks over a period of 17 years, beginning in 1978.

His first target, Northwestern University professor of engineering Buckley Crist, escaped injury when a package together with his address was found during a parking zone outside his office block and “returned” to him. Crist alerted security, noting that he had not sent the package.

A watchman opened the package suffered a hand injury when the bomb inside exploded.

It’s unclear why Kaczynski targeted Crist. However, at the time, he was again living in Illinois and dealing together with his father and brother. Kaczynski was fired from that job for insulting a female supervisor with whom he had briefly had a romantic relationship.

Over subsequent seven years, Kaczynski sent nine homemade pipe bombs to multiple targets, including executives at American and United airlines and academic administrators, injuring several people, some seriously.

In December 1985, a bomb sent to Sacramento shop owner Hugh Scrutton exploded, causing his death. it had been the primary fatality attributed to Kaczynski. In all, the so-called Unabomber, as he had by then become known, committed 14 attacks, involving 16 bombs, killing three and injuring another 23.

His last attack, on April 24, 1995, also in Sacramento, killed timber industry lobbyist Murray.

Unabomber Manifesto

By then, the FBI was already hot on Kaczynski’s trail. supported the similarities of the devices utilized in the attacks, that they had already linked many of them and attributed them to at least one perpetrator or group of perpetrators.

They also believed the attacker had connections to the Chicago area and therefore the San Francisco Bay area, which Kaczynski in fact did.

The FBI called its ongoing investigation “UNABOM” (for university and airline bomber) and therefore the media thus dubbed the attacker the “Unabomber.” Still, Kaczynski’s identity was unknown to authorities.

That began to vary after he sent his now-infamous manifesto to the media. within the summer of 1995, Kaczynski sent letters demanding that his essay entitled “Industrial Society and Its Future” be published.

If it wasn’t, he threatened to commit more attacks.

Eventually, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh agreed that the manifesto should be published, although this was a controversial decision.

The writings advocated for “an ideology that opposes technology” and therefore the “counter-ideal” of nature. In fact, Kaczynski argued that technology and an industrialized society effectively destroys human freedom because it must “regulate human behavior closely so as to function.”

Interestingly, critics and academics would later write that while Kaczynski deserved scorn for the violent acts he committed, many of his manifesto’s ideas were quite reasonable. 

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David Kaczynski

The manifesto’s ideas were also familiar to Kaczynski’s younger brother David, who already harbored suspicions that his brother was the Unabomber by the time he read the manifesto after it had been published in September 1995.

By then, the 2 brothers had become estranged. David visited the FBI together with his suspicions, and shared with them letters he had received from Ted over the years.

Investigators were ready to compare the typewritten letters to the pages of the first manifesto, and linguistic analysis later confirmed that the documents were presumably written by an equivalent author.

David had asked the FBI to stay his role within the investigation a secret, but the knowledge was leaked to Dan Rather, then of CBS News.

Unabomber Arrested

On April 3, 1996, after having an enquiry warrant for the elder Kaczynski’s cabin authorized by a federal judge in Montana, FBI officers descended upon the agricultural compound. There, they found Kaczynski during a disheveled state, surrounded by bomb-making tools and parts.

Later that month, he was indicted by a federal jury on 10 counts of illegally transporting, mailing, and using bombs, and three counts of murder. Although his attorneys wanted to him to enter an plea of insanity, Kaczynski refused and instead pleaded guilty to all or any charges.

He remains incarcerated, serving eight life sentences with no chance of parole at the Supermax security prison in Florence, Colorado.

While in prison, Kaczynski has written and published two books – Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore J. Kaczynski, a.k.a. “The Unabomber” and Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and the way – both of which expand on the ideas included in his original manifesto.

Sources

History.com
Unabomber, FBI.gov.
“The Unabomber: 20 Years Later.” Biography.com.
Farhi, P. (2015). “How publishing a 35,000-word manifesto led to the Unabomber.” WashingtonPost.com.
Finnegan, W. (2018). “When the Unabomber Was Arrested, one among the Longest Manhunts in FBI History Was Finally Over.” SmithsonianMag.com.
Stories About: Unabomber. NPR.org.
Chase, Alston (2000). “Harvard and therefore the Making of the Unabomber.” The Atlantic.