Theodore Kaczynski

BA, Harvard University

Yes, the “Unabomber”—a name concocted by the media from the FBI’s designation of the mystery terrorist as UNABOM, for “University and Airline Bomber.”

Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski was a brilliant, if awkward, child. He skipped sixth and eleventh grades, easily outstripped his peers (and probably his teachers) in mathematical ability, and entered Harvard at age sixteen. While there he was subjected to an ethically iffy psychology experiment in which students were told they were to discuss their personal beliefs with a fellow student. But, after filling out a form detailing their values and opinions, and having electrodes attached to their heads, the subjects instead were sneeringly grilled and derided by an attorney^* and in later phases of the study shown footage of their impotent rage and humiliation. Sound as if it could have helped push socially insecure (and still teenaged) Ted over the line? We don’t know.

After Kaczynski graduated, he went to the University of Michigan for his PhD, where his teachers spoke of him in tones of awe. “He was an unusual person,” said one of his math professors. “He was not like the other graduate students. He was much more focused about his work. He had a drive to discover mathematical truth.” Another said with a sigh, “It is not enough to say he was smart.”

Probably. But it is also not enough to say he wasn’t in possession of all his God-given marbles. After he got his PhD he taught at Berkeley (the youngest professor ever hired, at the time), but got bad marks from undergrads for mumbling and being distracted and nervous. He quit soon thereafter, lived with his parents for two years, and finally moved into a cabin—kind of a fixer-upper; it lacked electricity and running water—in the woods near Lincoln, Montana. He did odd jobs, got money from his family, and briefly worked with his father and his brother, David (about whom more in a minute), in a foam-rubber factory. David had to fire Ted for harassing a female employee.

Kaczynski bought land and built another cabin, determined to become entirely self-sufficient and to continue his postgrad studies—sociology and political philosophy—autodidactically. In the absence of friends, lovers, strangers, colleagues, and media, his mind became a petri dish for the extravagant proliferation of extreme subjectivity. When, on a hike to his favorite rural spot, he found it destroyed by a road, he was devastated. And he wanted revenge.

He was already committing small acts of sabotage against the encroachments of civilization on his isolated freehold. Now he began to cultivate a theory—since every miserable, brilliant, self-taught genius has a theory. His was that civilization had been on a disastrous track for centuries, reform would never work to correct it, and only drastic acts of destruction would awaken the sheeple to their true plight.

So he started mailing bombs. It began in 1978 and lasted seventeen years, during which time he killed three and injured twenty-three others. The victims were chosen at random, but all were connected in some way with modern technology. He planted clues about a fictitious insurgent group (FC, for “Freedom Club”) and in all communications referred to himself as “we.”*

In 1995, after the third fatality, he sent letters to media outlets saying that if they would publish his 35,000-word manifesto (Industrial Society and Its Future), he would cease sending bombs. The ethics, and the wisdom, of printing it was a matter of lively debate, but in the end the New York Times and the Washington Post ran the screed. In it, Kaczynski expounds an analysis of human history, deploring how most people are driven to depression and despair by the unavailability of meaningful work. (Catchy lede: “… the Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.”) Like most theories propounded by intelligent crackpots, it’s both somewhat plausible and historically laughable.

The FBI had announced a $1 million reward for information leading to the Unabomber’s capture. Once the manifesto was published, the bureau received a thousand calls a day for months—none of which panned out.

But Ted’s sister-in-law, Linda, had for a while encouraged David to consider the possibility that the Unabomber was none other than Ted. David had resisted; now he dug out letters and essays Ted had written in the 1970s and saw clear, obvious similarities in his ideas and their expression. David hired an attorney. The attorney hired an investigator. The investigator contacted a former FBI hostage negotiator. Everyone agreed to keep David’s name out of it. That failed. Dan Rather told FBI director Louis Freeh he had twenty-four hours to arrest Ted Kaczynski, after which CBS would broadcast the whole story.

FBI agents arrested Kaczynski on April 3, 1996, at his Montana cabin. The evidence—bomb components; reams of journal pages describing the Unabomber’s crimes; a live bomb ready to be shipped—was somewhat* damning. A court-appointed shrink found him to be a paranoid schizophrenic, but still competent to stand trial. To avoid the death penalty Kaczynski pleaded guilty to all federal charges. (At one point he wanted to withdraw the plea, but the judge refused.) He is now serving eight life sentences at a supermaximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.

The minds and personalities of brilliant mathematicians are notoriously fragile.^*