Unabomber : the secret life of Ted Kaczynski Read online

  This book made available by the Internet Archive.

  Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010

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  Introduction

  Ted Kaczynski is a master illusionist, a sleight-of-mind artist who based his life on deception. He shrouded his violent acts beneath the gentle facade of a Montana hermit, pulling doves of innocence out of his scruffy beard, smelly clothes, and non-intrusive lifestyle while he injured and killed people with his deadly bombs.

  Who would have thought on the morning of April 3, 1996, when the spring Chinook winds were thawing the small mountain community of Lincoln out of the grips of a long winter freeze, that Kaczynski's deadly bag of tricks would be exposed that very day.

  By mid-day, Lincoln was abuzz. In the middle of the morning, Kaczynski had been tricked into coming out of his one-room cabin and was in the custody of federal agents. In the early evening dusk he was being transported along the same gravel Stemple Pass Road where he had often walked and ridden his bicycle, on his way to a small FBI office in Helena.

  By midnight, when he was safely incarcerated in Lewis and Clark County Jail in Helena, the town of Lincoln had been jolted into the million-watt limelight of world attention, never to be the same again.

  Chris Waits awoke that same April day in nearby McClellan Gulch, knowing dozens of federal agents were in Lincoln scrutinizing his friend and neighbor of nearly twenty-five years. At first Waits thought the investigation might be related to hunting violations, since Kaczynski lived off the land, and had shot deer and elk out of season for many years.

  But there was too much attention, too many federal agents lurking in the Lincoln area for a mere poacher to warrant.

  The Unabomber, though.^ Never. Waits was as shocked as the rest of the community when he learned Kaczynski was a suspect, and even

  defended his iniioecnee until the oxerwhehiiin^ physieal evidenee mounted.

  Kaezynski's arrest shook Waits to the eore and initially made him fear that he mi«!;ht e en be a suspeet in the ease.

  As the in estimation unfolded and Waits was eleared of any possible inxolvement, the FBI's evidence search extended far beyond Kaczynski's small Lincoln cabin. Agents played a cat-and-mouse game w ith Waits while searching the rugged mountain terrain near his home.

  What were they looking for.^ Waits determined it was something critical, something that would help prove the government's case against Kaczynski. And Waits was certain the evidence was hidden in the thousands of timbered acres behind his house in McClellan Gulch.

  FBI agents were reluctant to involve outsiders, so Waits decided to start his own search, and spent all his free time combing the back-country.

  He hiked many back-country game trails looking for evidence that included Kaczynski's secret hunting camps.

  Summer wound down, and Waits still hadn't discovered the key evidence everyone was after.

  By late November a major arctic cold front threatened to turn the rugged mountain terrain into a no-man's land. Waits decided to take one last trip into the backcountry. As the day wore on, it seemed to be another futile search. Trudging through the snow in the late afternoon, Waits decided to drop off the mountain and return home. Yet a strange premonition pushed him farther into the mountains as darkness settled.

  Something forced him to cHmb one last steep slope. He looked through the stands of lodgepole pine in the dimming light and saw the ghost image of a small log cabin. It was a secret shack and hideout Ted had built years earlier.

  The discovery opened many doors with the FBI, as Waits later became a confidant and was tagged as a trial witness.

  Who would have thought Lincoln could be the lair of one of the most threatening domestic terrorists in our history.^ The mere threat of his bombs could paralyze the nation or close down airports. He deceived two of the country's most prestigious and powerful newspapers into publishing his 35,000-word manifesto. In return, he wrote.

  he would stop killing people. But he continued to build more sophisticated devices and plot further acts of revenge.

  As millions of Americans and the entire human community hungered for more information about Kaczynski after his arrest, sketchy details portrayed him as a mathematical genius and former Berkeley math instructor who had left academia to become a mountain hermit.

  Stories focused on his early years in the Heartland, academic successes at Harvard, Michigan, and Berkeley, his reclusive childhood and failed forays into the world of lasting relationships.

  But then in 1971, when Kaczynski built his cabin on a heavily timbered 1.4 acres in Florence Gulch within a mile of Stemple Pass Road, he literally dropped off the face of the earth.

  During the next twenty-five years, almost half of his life, he survived as a primitive hunter-gatherer, much like the early miners and settlers who moved into this untamed part of the West in the mid-19th century.

  But this was not Henry David Thoreau, living the peaceful life at Walden Pond. This was Theodore John Kaczynski, a criminal willing to kill at the slightest provocation of the technological arm—or tentacle of an octopus, as he would describe it—of our society.

  He lusted for revenge. He wanted to rub his hands in the blood of modern technocrats. Only the death of a scientist, businessman or a Communist would ease the pain of his hatred.

  How do we know this.^

  Not because Ted's secret twenty-five years were scrutinized during a public trial. The details of his twisted logic and hatred would have been aired before a shocked world-wide audience had he faced twelve jurors in Sacramento Federal Court. His thoughts, plans of revenge, and descriptions of his life would have amazed the people he threatened.

  The FBI and the prosecution team had a detailed description of Kaczynski's life of crime, because he was a prodigious writer. His small cabin, heated only by a wood stove and with none of the conveniences of our time, was an archive of his written word. Organized in volumes of scratchpads, pocket notebooks and three-ring binders were some 22,000 pages of his life's script.

  Most of his work was handwritten in English, some in Spanish.

  The most incriminatin
  When the FBI returned to Lincoln during the summer of 1997 to study the evidence found in the secret cabin and to search other areas of McClellan Gulch, Waits guided them through the terrain he knew so w ell. During the search Waits became the first outsider to see and study many of Kaczynski's documents, w^hich included hundreds of pages from the Unabomber's personal journals.

  As he worked with the FBI, Waits compiled notes daily and committed as much of the material to memory as possible.

  Kaczynski's journals also described buried caches of ammunition, bomb parts, and food on W^aits' land.

  W^aits was sure Kaczynski also had a cache hidden in McClellan Gulch containing copies of journal notes and his bomb experiments.

  After FBI agents returned to Sacramento to prepare for the trial, Waits continued his search for the hidden caches and other evidence. Through his searches, and several unnamed sources, he finally obtained the motherlode—literally hundreds of pages of Kaczynski's personal journals and notes.

  All the information would have become public record if the Unabomber had been tried. Instead, Kaczynski and federal prosecutors worked out a plea agreement in which he admitted his guilt in exchange for sentences of life in prison.

  Ted's plea bargain was a disservice to the American people and his victims, becau
se no one other than a few- professionals had a chance to study the inner face of this modern-day terrorist.

  The plea saved the country the great expense of a long public trial, one that promised to be a circus, but it also meant Kaczynski's written admission in his personal journals to dozens of crimes w^as locked away in some evidence room. Much of his self-analysis w^on't be seen for years, probably until after his death.

  Some short excerpts have found their way into the mainstream press.

  But only bits and pieces until this point.

  Waits was probably the only outsider w ho had seen the Kaczynski journals. Certainly, he was the only person outside the select group

  of lawyers, agents, and psychiatrists who had actual copies of documents.

  Waits also had an unusual perspective shared by no one. He had known Kaczynski for years, given him rides, fixed his bicycle, and watched the mountain hermit make regular excursions into McClellan Gulch.

  Combining the knowledge of his friend, his experiences with the FBI and the material from Kaczynski's journals, Waits was able to compile a story that contains the first significant understanding of Kaczynski's secret years in Lincoln and his mental process as explained in his own words.

  In the pages that follow, we glimpse, through Ted's own description, his anguish during a first attempt to kill a scientist in 1971. He backed out at the last minute, not because his plan was flawed, but because he lacked the final resolve. You'll study how he consciously broke down any moral fiber left in his dark soul so by the mid-1970s, he was ready to strike with a deadly venom. You'll read how the noise of helicopters and jet planes drove him to "tears of impotent rage," enough so that he hiked high into the mountains to shoot at passing helicopters with a high-powered rifle. His plan to cripple a helicopter wasn't successful because he found them difficult to hit.

  He carried his hatred of aircraft and those who flew them to a much more dangerous plateau in late 1979 when he mailed a package bomb rigged to a barometer so it would explode at a certain altitude. The early device wasn't potent enough to blow up the aircraft carrv ing the package in its cargo hold, but the device did start a fire, forcing an emergency landing at Dulles International Airport.

  The journal quotes you'll read for the first time here are but a small percentage of Kaczynski's massive writings. But they're revealing, and important in the process of our understanding and healing.

  You'll read his own words describing why he pursued a life of violence.

  You'll also come to understand that Kaczynski's is a multi-layered personality. His love of the wilderness lands of Western Montana was sincere and deep rooted.

  The following quote from one of Kaczynski's journals supports that theory:

  S.vn ki)Y, Ji i,v 14, 1979 IN McClkllan (iiLcii

  Today 1 had the most wonderful morning Vc had for a long time. At this beautiful dark, densely wooded spot, the Wisp began calling me, so I followed it to an oxen meadow. I slowly climbed to the top of the mountain through this strip of magic meadow. I gathered some mint along the way and felt as if it would bring me luck to drink tea from mint gathered in this enchanted landscape. (I didn't believe it, of course; it was just a feeling.) At the top of the mountain I looked down on the ridges below and contemplated the sight for some time. Then I climbed down through the Douglas Fir parks, over to the meadow strip again, and sat for aw hile looking at the blue lupine and yellow flowers of some plant of the composite family, both of which dotted the meadow. Then I climbed back down to camp, looking at the plants. Only 2 jets passed, and those when my walk was nearly over, so that I was able to forget civilization and the threat it poses to these wonderful solitudes. Thus I was able to drink in the things that I saw^ with full appreciation. This gulch is a glorious place. It has special magic. I never get tired of seeing these fme old parks of Douglas firs around here.

  What made Kaczynski different from you and me.'^ He looked and lived like many others in the mountains of the West. He loved to read and reflect. He bought groceries, nurtured vegetables in his gardens, cross-pollinated wild and garden variety plants. He wasted little of the animals he hunted. He even boiled the head of a coyote over a campfire, opened the skull, and then ate the brains like pudding with a spoon. He loved the wilderness and w anted to live off the land, undisturbed by modern society.

  His adopted lifestyle was acceptable in the Lincoln area, and would have been tolerated in many remote areas of this country.

  Then there also was his abrupt inner face of a terrorist who wanted to taste revenge over and over. What made him into a serial killer.^

  At this point, only his journal entries can help us understand w hy he was so ordained, or whv he ordained himself so. He readily admits

  his desire to kill was fueled by hatred. He recognized it early in life, but didn't retaliate because of his middle class mores and fear of social punishment.

  That changed. During the mid-1970s, he conditioned himself to ignore fear of punishment, without regard for his own safety, recognizing early on he probably would be caught. Through a selected number of his own journal descriptions the reader will see this logic develop and understand how his attempts became more brazen as he realized he could outsmart the FBI and even escape detection.

  Finally, we must ask, is Ted Kaczynski evil or is he insane.^ That would have been a key question had there been a trial.

  The journal entries found in this book were chosen to help advance an understanding of his mind so you can make your own decision about his sanity.

  Only his own words, mixed with an understanding of how he lived during the lost twenty-five years, will suffice as we try to explore the mysteries of the Unabomber's mind.

  Dave Shors

  The Discovery

  Frigid northeast winds swept the spirit of winter through the heavily timbered Western Montana valley in the first bitter storm of the season. The jet stream was shifting south on cue, tracking right over the small mountain community of Lincoln, invigorating and adding energy to cold arctic air as it moved south out of Canada like a slow-moving mass of molasses. As dawn turned the mountain sky dismal on November 11. 1996, twenty-eight inches of snow already blanketed the ground. The freshness and fierceness of a mountain winter were in the air.

  Breathtaking, the tallness of this place. First, the winding climb along 60-degree slopes. Then the soaring conifers, eighty- and hundred-foot lodgepole pine and Douglas-fir stretching into the gray mountain sky. A stranger here would be chilled by the shade, made dizzy by the altitude. But those who live and work in the mountain community feel sheltered and protected.

  I had criss-crossed these mountains since early June, plotting methodical grids, searching for something important, vers' important. The FBI Unabom Task Force knew key evidence lay hidden in the mountains surrounding Ted Kaczynski's home, but they had packed up and left about the first of September, frustrated and confused by the sheer size and complexirv' of the country. Initially after Kaczynski's arrest as the suspected Unabomber on xpril 3, agents concentrated their evidence search on his one-room cabin and 1.4 acres just off the west end of the old logging road that led up into Florence Gulch near the graveled Stemple Pass Road. But soon the probe widened to thousands of undulating acres lying east of the crescent-shaped Upper Blackfoot River alley.

  During those summer months, rumors had spread like a searing

  forest fire driven by hot, dry August mountain winds. Did the mountain hermit leave behind explosives hidden in forest caves and old deserted hard-rock mine tunnels? Had he built an elaborate bunker system where he tested and stored the homemade devices responsible for killing three and injuring twenty-three others between 1978 and 1995? Had he hidden pipe bombs in the pristine forest, deadly booby traps ready to maim or kill unsuspecting humans or animals? Many mysteries were yet to be unraveled in the mountains near Lincoln, Montana.

  When Ted bought his 1.4 acres four miles southeast of town in 1971, he also bought access to a million acres of mo
untainous terrain. That's part of the Montana culture, an allure reflected in the local newspaper, the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch, where, in the real estate section, you can almost always find an ad offering "Timbered acres, small stream, bordered by Forest Service land." When you buy 1.4 acres bordered by public land near Lincoln, you also buy access to the public lands that stretch all the way to the Canadian border almost 200 miles to the north. The FBI agents understood the "timbered acres" and "small stream" parts of the Montana culture. It's not much different in suburban Chicago or San Francisco. But the "bordered by Forest Service land" had given them fits.

  Kaczynski lived that part of the local culture like a religion. His small acreage and one-room, 12-by-lO-foot primitive cabin, with a wood stove but no electricity, was on a jumping off spot to an isolated primeval world of rippling streams, westslope cutthroat trout, mule deer and regal elk. Parts of this world haven't seen a human soul since the last of the gold miners deserted their sluice boxes in the late 1920s. Many segments of fragile earth here have never been scuffed by a Vibram sole. These days, the only trails are forged by deer or elk moving from their ridgetop beds past towering outcroppings of granite folds and Precambrian sedimentary argillite, reddish in color, to open parks for their moonlight browsing and to small streams for a drink of the earth's purest water. For a hermit-like man looking for total isolation, this was the spot.

  It was back in mid-June when I first realized the FBI investigation had broadened from the intense search of Ted's cabin, root house and garden area to the surrounding mountains. A small plane, fiying

  low on numerous occasions, an aircraft that I didn't rcco^ni/.c as bcin«i; one from Lincoln, tipped me off. The continuing fly-()crs were puzzling. Who was in the plane, and w hat were they looking for.'^ The pilot was flying extremely low, e en though he must have been w ell ersed about the dangers of mountain thermals and downdrafts from the 7,()()()-f()ot ridgetops that could pluck the wings right off his small plane or slam it into a densely forested mountainside in an instant.