Unabomber: In His Own Words (2020): Season 1, Episode 4 - Part Four - full transcript
Federal
officials say
their most promising lead yet
in the Unabomber case
has them searching
the home tonight
of a man who lives south
of the small town of Lincoln,
Montana.
- Holy crap,
there was like 78 agents
on the hill,
that you couldn't even see,
until after he was arrested.
These men were like
jumping up and down,
they were all happy,
slapping each other
on the back,
"We got him! We got him!"
- We were watching
the evening news and uh...
they said they'd arrested
a suspect
in the Unabomber case
and there was a local angle
to the story.
Oh my God.
And there is my brother
and he's, gosh,
he's looking
like a mountain man,
all torn clothes,
scraggly hair.
And we were so mad
at the FBI
because they had promised
that our names would not
be revealed,
and that they would notify us
ahead of time
before the arrest was made.
- The FBI has arrested
a suspect in Montana
after he was fingered
by relatives.
- First of all, that word
"fingered" bothered me.
Um, doesn't really encapsulate
what we went through
in terms of the process
and the-the care and the grief
that went into what we did.
Neighbors here said
that since the 1970s,
Kaczynski has been living
a solitary life.
A reclusive man some called
the "Hermit on the Hill."
- It was disbelief.
It was absolute disbelief.
It was so surreal.
I never would have thought
that my neighbor
was sitting in that little cabin
creating bombs
and killing people
while he lived a half
a mile away from us.
No. It was
simply anger and revenge,
and I was... I was going
to strike back.
Try not to get blown up.
Sir, are you
the Unabomber?
Are you
the Unabomber?
- When the Unabomber is
arrested and identified,
especially since he went
for 17 years
committing these crimes,
wow, it's-it's of course
it's a feeding frenzy
for the media.
We ended up surrounded,
kind of in a siege, you know.
Ted Kaczynski's
brother, David,
who remains secluded in
this Schenectady house...
Some people said
there were
a hundred people out there
and some of the children
down the block came
and marched and said,
go away, go away,
you shouldn't be bothering
these people.
That was nice of them.
- Uh, they weren't leaving
with their cameras
and their notebooks
until we came out
and talked to them.
And I would have rather walked
into fire
than walked into those cameras
at that moment,
it was like the worst possible
pain you could be feeling
and then it's all public.
Here's my mother,
and she's got to go
through this now.
As soon as we get out the door,
all the lights come on
and people are yelling at mom,
are saying,
"Mrs. Kaczynski,
do you think your son's
the Unabomber?"
And she answered, she said,
"I don't know, you people
know more than I do,"
I think is what she said.
They attempted
to interview Ted
immediately after
arresting him.
And he refused to be
interviewed basically.
I get a call saying,
"You gotta go to uh...
gotta go to Montana."
You know, at the...
at the time,
there were no GPS capabilities,
so we get a paper map,
and we look at the squiggly
black lines
leading to this little
500-person nowhere,
which is, you know,
a hellacious drive over
some mountains far away.
And we get to the cabin
and the FBI guys are still
rousting the place
and uh, tossing it like a...
uh...
like a bear in a garbage can.
And they're-they're finding
all kinds of clues.
They're finding the typewriter.
They're finding other writings.
They're finding bomb materials.
It's a gold mine.
There was notes about
the construction of the bombs,
the selection of the victims,
a rough draft of the manifesto.
Turned out there was
a hoodie and a pair
of aviation sunglasses
in the cabin.
There were three of us
in there
who were looking at things,
and one of the three
pulled out a box
from under Mr. Kaczynski's bed.
It was just a cardboard box,
and inside it was a plastic
bag,
and inside the plastic bag
was a box
wrapped entirely in aluminum
foil.
And in this cabin,
which was extremely smoky,
uh, there was a lot of soot,
it was a dark place.
All of a sudden,
was this shiny,
glowing cube,
and at that moment,
as in a cartoon,
the light bulb lit over each
person's head,
and the person
that was holding it,
set it down,
and we backed away
very quietly.
And it turned out
that was a bomb,
it was completely ready to go,
had the battery in it,
everything else.
It seemed apparent
that as soon as the weather
cleared Mr. Kaczynski
was going to be headed out
to deliver that into
the mail-stream
and on to its victim.
- The moment I found that out,
I realized,
thank God we did what we did.
Thank God, we saved a life
in the end.
I did what I did
with the heaviest heart
I've ever had.
When Ted was arrested
and assigned a provisional
attorney,
um, the first thing he asked
the attorney was,
"How did they ever find me?"
And the attorney said,
"Well, um,
it's being reported
that your brother
turned you in."
And again,
I heard this third hand
but Ted had said,
"No, that's not possible,
David loves me,
he'd never do that."
I don't know if it was
at that point
or at some point,
he told his attorneys
that he would never ever
have anything to do
with his family again.
That as far as he was
concerned, I was no brother.
Then we go
for the perp walk.
When Ted gets trotted out
to go to the courthouse.
So, deputies bring Ted out
and he's walking...
like a ramrod.
And I'm thinking,
this is the only chance I'm
gonna get to talk to this guy.
So, I jump over the berm
and I run over to him
while the cops
are pulling him off.
So, I'm talking to the guy.
Ted, did you do it?
"Did you kill people?
Are you really the Unabomber?"
He's looking straight ahead.
And he turns, at one point,
and says, "No".
Are you responsible
for these bombings?
But the interesting
thing to me, for that,
is he's very much in control.
This, this is who he is.
He's not a guy who explodes,
loses it.
He's a tightly controlled guy,
and he's very smart.
The accused
Unabomber
was brought from his jail cell
in Montana
to an airfield in Sacramento,
Sunday morning.
He was sporting a bullet
proof vest
plus shackles and handcuffs.
- My biggest concern was
I didn't want my brother
to get the death penalty.
The only possible acceptable
ending of this
is for my brother
to get a life sentence
rather than a death sentence.
I could not picture
what it would be like
for mom and me be,
you know, looking at the clock
and you know,
hands of the clock
are going to midnight,
and knowing that Ted's being
strapped into a gurney
and executed.
That was unthinkable.
Are you responsible
for these bombings?
Sir, Are you responsible
for these bombings?
- Guys, let's just
let him through.
- Take the hold.
- Stay back.
It's instantly
a circus trial.
David, his brother,
is positioning to try
to get him out of the death
penalty,
and David doesn't have
a whole lot of say,
but he's... he's forceful.
And Ted is insisting
that he's not crazy.
A person can be found
insane
if they have a severe mental
defect
which causes them not
to know the nature
and quality of their act,
or the wrongfulness
of their act.
But in his case,
the evidence that he knew
his act was wrong
was extensive.
And so, I think that
the defense attorneys
knew that they'd have a very
hard time with insanity,
but their goal was to convey
to the jury
his degree of mental illness,
so that they would consider
not executing him.
I learned that in the opening
arguments for the defense,
they planned to show
one picture
of Theodore Kaczynski
as a professor,
dressed very nicely,
and the other was the picture
when he's scruffy
and being taken out,
as being captured.
So how did this successful
mathematician turn into
this kind of primitive-looking
person?
Meanwhile, the
FBI's explored the possibility
of having a Montana National
Guard helicopter
hoist Kaczynski's tiny shack
onto a flatbed truck
and then haul it out
of the deep woods.
Nothing made me think
he was some madman.
I wouldn't have been interested
in visiting with him
if, if I thought he was some
psychotic individual
who had delusions
or something like that.
Ted Kaczynski and I
started corresponding
soon after his arrest
in April '96.
Between the spring of '97
and the beginning of 1998,
I visited him three
or four times.
That was quite an experience
just for me
and of course, I wasn't-
it wasn't my ass on the line.
We were friendly, yeah.
Yeah, it was very comfortable.
I mean, it was very informal.
You know. "How you doin', Ted?"
I guess he just wanted somebody
to talk to.
I believe I was the only
visitor he had.
But I saw nothing whatsoever,
nothing even slightly
to suggest he was crazy.
The finding
that Theodore Kaczynski
is competent to stand trial
came after he spent nearly
20 hours
being examined by psychiatrist,
Sally Johnson.
- And she diagnosed him as
competent to stand trial,
competent even to be sentenced
to death,
competent to defend himself,
but having schizophrenia.
In prepping
for the trial,
the defense team was looking
for mitigating evidence.
These are any factors
that could help the team
try to convince the jury
not to put Ted to death.
But as things went on,
matters got more
and more tense.
Because the main thing
that he said over and over
and over again was,
"You can adopt any defense
you like,
except insanity defense,
which would make a mockery
of my work,
the whole reason that I exist."
- I was shocked by the defense
team's decision
that when they go to trial,
that they were going to use
the information of him being
three years at Harvard
University in an experiment.
- So part of what the defense
team found
were fragmentary records
of a psychological study
that Ted had participated in
during his undergrad days
at Harvard.
The study lasted over
a period of 3 years
and they met on a weekly basis.
It's never been heard
in public.
We have no idea what happened
over the course
of the 3-year period.
This audio only gives us
a very small glance
into what really happened.
- I didn't know
about the experiments
Ted was undergoing.
He never talked
about them to me.
I don't remember it being
a conversation
within our family until
long after Ted's arrest.
My brother was subjected
to research
that by today's standards
would be considered
completely unethical.
He was one of the people
that I really considered
a best friend.
I have just a wonderfully warm
feeling about him,
and I think I used
the word lovable.
We found common ground
and I remember lots and lots
of wonderful discussions
and so I really valued
our friendship.
It was sad to see that he,
as a result of some
experiments,
withdrew from the friendship.
If I had known how evil -
and I'll use that word -
those experiments were,
I certainly would
have done something.
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.
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.
- It was very unpleasant.
That was the point
of the experiment.
He wanted to understand
the dark sides of human beings
and the light sides
of human beings.
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.
- Ted was told
he was gonna be debating
political philosophy
with a fellow student.
How tempting that
would have been.
- It was not a debate.
It was a full-on aggressive
attack
of Ted as a human being,
as Ted as an intellect.
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.
- Ted was deceived.
He didn't know that this person
had a script
and the person's objective
was to humiliate
and traumatize him.
The goals were not
malicious
or malign in any way.
Why would they be?
Why would this man
who had been working
in psychology for decades
and who had produced some
of the best psychologists
in the United States
at the time,
why would he engage in
malignant interrogation?
- 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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
- Thousands of students all
over the United States
performed very ably in these
kinds of experiments
without a problem.
I do not believe
that the testing
at the Harvard Psychological
Clinic did anything at all
to transform
Theodore Kaczynski.
- 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.
- 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 uh,
he-he-he basically said,
well, I wanted to show
that I could take it,
that I couldn't be broken.
And the thought that occurs
to me was,
well, maybe sometimes
it's better to be broken
than to be hardened.
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.
- It's perverse. It's sick.
It doesn't work.
And it's wrong in every
conceivable way.
But that's what Kaczynski
was subjected to.
- Those experiments could
have really fueled the fire.
And really made him distrust
the powers that be,
the authorities and be hostile
towards them.
It's not hard to imagine that
when he's being attacked
and discredited
and broken down,
he's gonna have to have
some sort of counterattack
psychologically.
So, he's going to have
to become counter-rigid,
counter-certain
and counter-hostile,
and then he just turns that
into behavior in the world.
We began to think about
how this three-year experiment
in which Ted was involved,
that that might have triggered
his schizophrenia.
- I think it would be a mistake
to have this simple
reductionistic formula
and say, oh, you know,
Kaczynski was made into
the Unabomber at Harvard,
that's much too simplistic.
But certainly, those studies
were-were harmful to him.
What was revealed,
I think, beyond question,
was that his lawyers were
death penalty liberals,
I guess you would say,
that anything goes
to protect his life.
Kaczynski stopped
the trial
when he demanded to defend
himself earlier this month...
but Judge Burrell says the
request may have been too late.
- He called one time,
and I said, "Ted, there's
something you gotta know.
I think you're the last person
who doesn't know this.
It's an insanity defense
and nothing else, straight up."
And I'll never forget
what he said.
He said,
"Why, the lying bastards."
You know,
it was kind of amazing.
- If the Unabomber
is schizophrenic,
it kind of undercuts
his whole mission.
People say, "Oh, these are
the deeds of a madman.
You know,
you'd have to be crazy
to be so concerned
about technology
that you do what Kaczynski
has done."
Ted wanted to fire
his attorneys;
he didn't want anyone
saying he was mentally ill.
The judge said,
"It's too late in the trial.
It would take too many months
for new attorneys
to get up to speed."
He said, "All right.
Then I'll represent myself.
I don't want these attorneys
representing me."
And the judge simply
said,
"You-you don't have the right
to just throw all this out
at this stage of the game.
You just don't.
So, I'm ruling against it.
You are stuck with them
and you are stuck
with their defense.
Insanity."
And that night he tried
to kill himself,
he tried to hang himself.
- This is not manipulation,
this is not cunning,
this is not an attempt
of someone
to escape legal process,
this is a very heartfelt
reaction on his part.
You know,
he felt that
everything he had worked for,
now,
was going to be made out
as mental illness;
that he was not in control.
In California,
the trial of the Unabomber
has come to an abrupt end
just as opening statements
were about to start.
Ted Kaczynski pleaded guilty
to murder
in exchange for life in prison.
I got a call to say
that I could down
and give the victim's
impact statement.
As I'm reading my statement,
I go through it.
Ted Kaczynski had been sitting
at the desk.
He had a yellow legal pad
takin' lots of notes
and there comes a point in
the statement I say to him,
"You know, Ted,
I don't hate you.
I forgave you and I forgave you
a long time ago."
And in that second, when I told
him that I forgave him,
his pencil dropped
and he just looks at me,
like, I've got these eyes
staring right back at me
and for me, it was the perfect
transference.
It's like, "Nope, you own it.
Now I've transferred it to you.
You carry it.
I've carried it a long time."
I mean, I think it shocked him
because he wasn't expecting
any empathy from anybody.
Well, on the day he was
sentenced from the plea deal,
I visited him one last time.
And all of the,
the lawyers were all gone,
the hundreds of the
international media,
two blocks long of stuff,
all gone. All over.
And that was the last I saw him
and uh...
I said,
"So what was that like?
How did that feel?"
And he said, "Well,
it was the damnedest thing.
They brought in all these
people
who were weeping and wailing,
but the plea deal
had already been arranged,
already been agreed to.
So, what is the point?"
And I thought to myself,
"Well, you killed
their loved ones.
Might be one reason."
It was a little bit chilling.
Like, you don't know why these
people would want to come
and express their grief or,
you know?
That didn't seem to be
part of it.
It's an ultra secure
prison.
We have 122 prisons in
the federal prison system
but there's only one Supermax.
If you were going to design
a person,
to do Supermax time
it's Kaczynski,
it's Kaczynski.
He has the ability
to not need others.
During my tenure there,
he was a model inmate.
He's Ted Kaczynski.
He controls the box.
We control the prison.
He controls the box.
Like most political
terrorists,
he wants to have a soapbox,
for his, you know,
for his cause.
He knows that he has a conduit
to the outside world
where he can send his writings.
- He-he must spend hours
a day writing.
I-I would say
he's probably satisfied
that he's been able to
communicate with people
and get the ideas out,
get books published.
- He can be a voice for what
he wants to get done.
An environmental
group
claimed responsibility
for the blaze
which caused an estimated
$12 million in damage.
The group says it was
protesting an expansion
of the resort that threatened
wildlife.
I think the Unabomber
to a lot of kids
in the mid 90's and late 90's,
yeah, I think Ted
was an inspiration.
And they were going out into
about 10 to 15 western states,
burnin' shit down.
They were ratcheting things up.
It wasn't just blockades
anymore,
and it just wasn't peaceful
non-violent protests.
I think Kaczynski
thinks of himself
as a revolutionary
in the sense that
people feel very powerless
against this, you know...
in anarchist circles, often
it's called the "mega-machine".
Do not resist arrest.
- You know, this whole
industrial society.
He was kind of a vanguard
that wanted to demonstrate
that you can fight
back against the system.
- Whose streets?
- Our streets!
- Whose streets?
- Our streets!
Yeah!
- Shit, get out of here!
- Get the fuck out of here!
He's the latest in
a long history of people
who have struck out against
society's norms
thinking that they knew
the way to uh...
solve them through violence.
It's dangerous
for him to encourage others
to try to follow that model
and talk about, write about,
advise other activists
to take human life.
It's not the way forward.
There has to be a red line
for activists.
I think Kaczynski's way
was not the right way.
I think his writing
was the right way.
If you put the doctor
name on there
you had it as part of a course
at the college
and you studied it,
we wouldn't be as shocked.
I'd say he's 90% there,
and if you haven't read it,
you're going to say,
"Gosh this warden's -
he drank the water!
Stockholm syndrome
is kicking in!
He's getting too close!
Kaczynski must have hypnotized
him," or whatever.
No, writing is writing.
Academic and criminal activity
should be,
could be separated here.
It's today...
it's today on paper.
Hey, I get it.
- If we look at the problems
that have progressed
in the last say 20 years,
since the manifesto came out,
virtually all areas of concern
have gotten worse.
And the root cause of all
these problems
is advanced technology.
All the evidence suggests
that he was right,
that the system is at the root
cause of these problems,
that we cannot control it,
we cannot stop it
and very quickly,
we may even lose the ability
to even undermine the system
and then it will be too late.
- I just can't understand
the leap
of having to do it with violence
and killing innocent people.
If you go right to the part
that says,
"I might have to hurt people
to get this word out
because otherwise they might
not print it,"
that's bent.
There's victims, there's people
that were harmed.
And what do we want?
If we want him to die,
keep him where he is...
he'll probably die.
Ted's in a box.
Most likely his next box
will be underground.
In Sacramento
today,
a redwood was dedicated
to the memory of Gill Murray,
Kaczynski's last victim.
Prosecutors say that bomb
was so devastating
that Murray's family was left
with nothing to bury
but his feet.
- You had a program to try
improve the world.
How much improvement is it
when you're killing people off
doing it?
- Every time I reach out
to do something
I'm reminded by the lack
of dexterity in my hand.
I mean, this will be always be
with me.
There is no closure,
my arm doesn't suddenly
come back on Monday
when he's sentenced.
- There's no such thing
as closure.
There's different,
there's better,
there's all kinds
of other words,
but there's no closure.
Closure means it's done.
It's never done.
It's not ever gonna be done.
But I don't believe in being
a victim.
I believe in being a survivor,
and making a difference
and fighting.
- Little by little,
part of our healing
began to come about through
contacts
with some of the victims.
I think it was Linda's idea,
she says,
you know, we should really
write to those people
and apologize and tell them,
you know,
no matter how much we're trying
to save Ted's life,
it doesn't mean that we devalue
their loved ones life.
- He called one evening
and he had to leave a message.
So, it was like, "Ah, well,
I'm David Kaczynski."
So really uncomfortable
for him.
But a little while later
when he and I finally
connected,
I just said, "Hey, David.
This-this isn't your burden
to carry.
It's going to get better.
But you can't carry this one.
And so, I said,
"if you ever need to talk,
just feel free,
24/7, just call me."
- And he's become a dear,
dear friend of ours,
of many years standing.
- I think it was kind of ironic
but a lot bigger than me,
that two guys could,
you know,
go through crap
and then come together.
- And to me, that's what
gives me some hope,
the idea that there is this,
sort of this,
this goodness in people that,
that transcends...
um, the anger,
the violence, the--
You know, the prejudice,
the bad things we see
from time to time.
There is uh,
there is a core of humanity
that's just like...
officials say
their most promising lead yet
in the Unabomber case
has them searching
the home tonight
of a man who lives south
of the small town of Lincoln,
Montana.
- Holy crap,
there was like 78 agents
on the hill,
that you couldn't even see,
until after he was arrested.
These men were like
jumping up and down,
they were all happy,
slapping each other
on the back,
"We got him! We got him!"
- We were watching
the evening news and uh...
they said they'd arrested
a suspect
in the Unabomber case
and there was a local angle
to the story.
Oh my God.
And there is my brother
and he's, gosh,
he's looking
like a mountain man,
all torn clothes,
scraggly hair.
And we were so mad
at the FBI
because they had promised
that our names would not
be revealed,
and that they would notify us
ahead of time
before the arrest was made.
- The FBI has arrested
a suspect in Montana
after he was fingered
by relatives.
- First of all, that word
"fingered" bothered me.
Um, doesn't really encapsulate
what we went through
in terms of the process
and the-the care and the grief
that went into what we did.
Neighbors here said
that since the 1970s,
Kaczynski has been living
a solitary life.
A reclusive man some called
the "Hermit on the Hill."
- It was disbelief.
It was absolute disbelief.
It was so surreal.
I never would have thought
that my neighbor
was sitting in that little cabin
creating bombs
and killing people
while he lived a half
a mile away from us.
No. It was
simply anger and revenge,
and I was... I was going
to strike back.
Try not to get blown up.
Sir, are you
the Unabomber?
Are you
the Unabomber?
- When the Unabomber is
arrested and identified,
especially since he went
for 17 years
committing these crimes,
wow, it's-it's of course
it's a feeding frenzy
for the media.
We ended up surrounded,
kind of in a siege, you know.
Ted Kaczynski's
brother, David,
who remains secluded in
this Schenectady house...
Some people said
there were
a hundred people out there
and some of the children
down the block came
and marched and said,
go away, go away,
you shouldn't be bothering
these people.
That was nice of them.
- Uh, they weren't leaving
with their cameras
and their notebooks
until we came out
and talked to them.
And I would have rather walked
into fire
than walked into those cameras
at that moment,
it was like the worst possible
pain you could be feeling
and then it's all public.
Here's my mother,
and she's got to go
through this now.
As soon as we get out the door,
all the lights come on
and people are yelling at mom,
are saying,
"Mrs. Kaczynski,
do you think your son's
the Unabomber?"
And she answered, she said,
"I don't know, you people
know more than I do,"
I think is what she said.
They attempted
to interview Ted
immediately after
arresting him.
And he refused to be
interviewed basically.
I get a call saying,
"You gotta go to uh...
gotta go to Montana."
You know, at the...
at the time,
there were no GPS capabilities,
so we get a paper map,
and we look at the squiggly
black lines
leading to this little
500-person nowhere,
which is, you know,
a hellacious drive over
some mountains far away.
And we get to the cabin
and the FBI guys are still
rousting the place
and uh, tossing it like a...
uh...
like a bear in a garbage can.
And they're-they're finding
all kinds of clues.
They're finding the typewriter.
They're finding other writings.
They're finding bomb materials.
It's a gold mine.
There was notes about
the construction of the bombs,
the selection of the victims,
a rough draft of the manifesto.
Turned out there was
a hoodie and a pair
of aviation sunglasses
in the cabin.
There were three of us
in there
who were looking at things,
and one of the three
pulled out a box
from under Mr. Kaczynski's bed.
It was just a cardboard box,
and inside it was a plastic
bag,
and inside the plastic bag
was a box
wrapped entirely in aluminum
foil.
And in this cabin,
which was extremely smoky,
uh, there was a lot of soot,
it was a dark place.
All of a sudden,
was this shiny,
glowing cube,
and at that moment,
as in a cartoon,
the light bulb lit over each
person's head,
and the person
that was holding it,
set it down,
and we backed away
very quietly.
And it turned out
that was a bomb,
it was completely ready to go,
had the battery in it,
everything else.
It seemed apparent
that as soon as the weather
cleared Mr. Kaczynski
was going to be headed out
to deliver that into
the mail-stream
and on to its victim.
- The moment I found that out,
I realized,
thank God we did what we did.
Thank God, we saved a life
in the end.
I did what I did
with the heaviest heart
I've ever had.
When Ted was arrested
and assigned a provisional
attorney,
um, the first thing he asked
the attorney was,
"How did they ever find me?"
And the attorney said,
"Well, um,
it's being reported
that your brother
turned you in."
And again,
I heard this third hand
but Ted had said,
"No, that's not possible,
David loves me,
he'd never do that."
I don't know if it was
at that point
or at some point,
he told his attorneys
that he would never ever
have anything to do
with his family again.
That as far as he was
concerned, I was no brother.
Then we go
for the perp walk.
When Ted gets trotted out
to go to the courthouse.
So, deputies bring Ted out
and he's walking...
like a ramrod.
And I'm thinking,
this is the only chance I'm
gonna get to talk to this guy.
So, I jump over the berm
and I run over to him
while the cops
are pulling him off.
So, I'm talking to the guy.
Ted, did you do it?
"Did you kill people?
Are you really the Unabomber?"
He's looking straight ahead.
And he turns, at one point,
and says, "No".
Are you responsible
for these bombings?
But the interesting
thing to me, for that,
is he's very much in control.
This, this is who he is.
He's not a guy who explodes,
loses it.
He's a tightly controlled guy,
and he's very smart.
The accused
Unabomber
was brought from his jail cell
in Montana
to an airfield in Sacramento,
Sunday morning.
He was sporting a bullet
proof vest
plus shackles and handcuffs.
- My biggest concern was
I didn't want my brother
to get the death penalty.
The only possible acceptable
ending of this
is for my brother
to get a life sentence
rather than a death sentence.
I could not picture
what it would be like
for mom and me be,
you know, looking at the clock
and you know,
hands of the clock
are going to midnight,
and knowing that Ted's being
strapped into a gurney
and executed.
That was unthinkable.
Are you responsible
for these bombings?
Sir, Are you responsible
for these bombings?
- Guys, let's just
let him through.
- Take the hold.
- Stay back.
It's instantly
a circus trial.
David, his brother,
is positioning to try
to get him out of the death
penalty,
and David doesn't have
a whole lot of say,
but he's... he's forceful.
And Ted is insisting
that he's not crazy.
A person can be found
insane
if they have a severe mental
defect
which causes them not
to know the nature
and quality of their act,
or the wrongfulness
of their act.
But in his case,
the evidence that he knew
his act was wrong
was extensive.
And so, I think that
the defense attorneys
knew that they'd have a very
hard time with insanity,
but their goal was to convey
to the jury
his degree of mental illness,
so that they would consider
not executing him.
I learned that in the opening
arguments for the defense,
they planned to show
one picture
of Theodore Kaczynski
as a professor,
dressed very nicely,
and the other was the picture
when he's scruffy
and being taken out,
as being captured.
So how did this successful
mathematician turn into
this kind of primitive-looking
person?
Meanwhile, the
FBI's explored the possibility
of having a Montana National
Guard helicopter
hoist Kaczynski's tiny shack
onto a flatbed truck
and then haul it out
of the deep woods.
Nothing made me think
he was some madman.
I wouldn't have been interested
in visiting with him
if, if I thought he was some
psychotic individual
who had delusions
or something like that.
Ted Kaczynski and I
started corresponding
soon after his arrest
in April '96.
Between the spring of '97
and the beginning of 1998,
I visited him three
or four times.
That was quite an experience
just for me
and of course, I wasn't-
it wasn't my ass on the line.
We were friendly, yeah.
Yeah, it was very comfortable.
I mean, it was very informal.
You know. "How you doin', Ted?"
I guess he just wanted somebody
to talk to.
I believe I was the only
visitor he had.
But I saw nothing whatsoever,
nothing even slightly
to suggest he was crazy.
The finding
that Theodore Kaczynski
is competent to stand trial
came after he spent nearly
20 hours
being examined by psychiatrist,
Sally Johnson.
- And she diagnosed him as
competent to stand trial,
competent even to be sentenced
to death,
competent to defend himself,
but having schizophrenia.
In prepping
for the trial,
the defense team was looking
for mitigating evidence.
These are any factors
that could help the team
try to convince the jury
not to put Ted to death.
But as things went on,
matters got more
and more tense.
Because the main thing
that he said over and over
and over again was,
"You can adopt any defense
you like,
except insanity defense,
which would make a mockery
of my work,
the whole reason that I exist."
- I was shocked by the defense
team's decision
that when they go to trial,
that they were going to use
the information of him being
three years at Harvard
University in an experiment.
- So part of what the defense
team found
were fragmentary records
of a psychological study
that Ted had participated in
during his undergrad days
at Harvard.
The study lasted over
a period of 3 years
and they met on a weekly basis.
It's never been heard
in public.
We have no idea what happened
over the course
of the 3-year period.
This audio only gives us
a very small glance
into what really happened.
- I didn't know
about the experiments
Ted was undergoing.
He never talked
about them to me.
I don't remember it being
a conversation
within our family until
long after Ted's arrest.
My brother was subjected
to research
that by today's standards
would be considered
completely unethical.
He was one of the people
that I really considered
a best friend.
I have just a wonderfully warm
feeling about him,
and I think I used
the word lovable.
We found common ground
and I remember lots and lots
of wonderful discussions
and so I really valued
our friendship.
It was sad to see that he,
as a result of some
experiments,
withdrew from the friendship.
If I had known how evil -
and I'll use that word -
those experiments were,
I certainly would
have done something.
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.
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.
- It was very unpleasant.
That was the point
of the experiment.
He wanted to understand
the dark sides of human beings
and the light sides
of human beings.
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.
- Ted was told
he was gonna be debating
political philosophy
with a fellow student.
How tempting that
would have been.
- It was not a debate.
It was a full-on aggressive
attack
of Ted as a human being,
as Ted as an intellect.
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.
- Ted was deceived.
He didn't know that this person
had a script
and the person's objective
was to humiliate
and traumatize him.
The goals were not
malicious
or malign in any way.
Why would they be?
Why would this man
who had been working
in psychology for decades
and who had produced some
of the best psychologists
in the United States
at the time,
why would he engage in
malignant interrogation?
- 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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
- Thousands of students all
over the United States
performed very ably in these
kinds of experiments
without a problem.
I do not believe
that the testing
at the Harvard Psychological
Clinic did anything at all
to transform
Theodore Kaczynski.
- 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.
- 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 uh,
he-he-he basically said,
well, I wanted to show
that I could take it,
that I couldn't be broken.
And the thought that occurs
to me was,
well, maybe sometimes
it's better to be broken
than to be hardened.
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.
- It's perverse. It's sick.
It doesn't work.
And it's wrong in every
conceivable way.
But that's what Kaczynski
was subjected to.
- Those experiments could
have really fueled the fire.
And really made him distrust
the powers that be,
the authorities and be hostile
towards them.
It's not hard to imagine that
when he's being attacked
and discredited
and broken down,
he's gonna have to have
some sort of counterattack
psychologically.
So, he's going to have
to become counter-rigid,
counter-certain
and counter-hostile,
and then he just turns that
into behavior in the world.
We began to think about
how this three-year experiment
in which Ted was involved,
that that might have triggered
his schizophrenia.
- I think it would be a mistake
to have this simple
reductionistic formula
and say, oh, you know,
Kaczynski was made into
the Unabomber at Harvard,
that's much too simplistic.
But certainly, those studies
were-were harmful to him.
What was revealed,
I think, beyond question,
was that his lawyers were
death penalty liberals,
I guess you would say,
that anything goes
to protect his life.
Kaczynski stopped
the trial
when he demanded to defend
himself earlier this month...
but Judge Burrell says the
request may have been too late.
- He called one time,
and I said, "Ted, there's
something you gotta know.
I think you're the last person
who doesn't know this.
It's an insanity defense
and nothing else, straight up."
And I'll never forget
what he said.
He said,
"Why, the lying bastards."
You know,
it was kind of amazing.
- If the Unabomber
is schizophrenic,
it kind of undercuts
his whole mission.
People say, "Oh, these are
the deeds of a madman.
You know,
you'd have to be crazy
to be so concerned
about technology
that you do what Kaczynski
has done."
Ted wanted to fire
his attorneys;
he didn't want anyone
saying he was mentally ill.
The judge said,
"It's too late in the trial.
It would take too many months
for new attorneys
to get up to speed."
He said, "All right.
Then I'll represent myself.
I don't want these attorneys
representing me."
And the judge simply
said,
"You-you don't have the right
to just throw all this out
at this stage of the game.
You just don't.
So, I'm ruling against it.
You are stuck with them
and you are stuck
with their defense.
Insanity."
And that night he tried
to kill himself,
he tried to hang himself.
- This is not manipulation,
this is not cunning,
this is not an attempt
of someone
to escape legal process,
this is a very heartfelt
reaction on his part.
You know,
he felt that
everything he had worked for,
now,
was going to be made out
as mental illness;
that he was not in control.
In California,
the trial of the Unabomber
has come to an abrupt end
just as opening statements
were about to start.
Ted Kaczynski pleaded guilty
to murder
in exchange for life in prison.
I got a call to say
that I could down
and give the victim's
impact statement.
As I'm reading my statement,
I go through it.
Ted Kaczynski had been sitting
at the desk.
He had a yellow legal pad
takin' lots of notes
and there comes a point in
the statement I say to him,
"You know, Ted,
I don't hate you.
I forgave you and I forgave you
a long time ago."
And in that second, when I told
him that I forgave him,
his pencil dropped
and he just looks at me,
like, I've got these eyes
staring right back at me
and for me, it was the perfect
transference.
It's like, "Nope, you own it.
Now I've transferred it to you.
You carry it.
I've carried it a long time."
I mean, I think it shocked him
because he wasn't expecting
any empathy from anybody.
Well, on the day he was
sentenced from the plea deal,
I visited him one last time.
And all of the,
the lawyers were all gone,
the hundreds of the
international media,
two blocks long of stuff,
all gone. All over.
And that was the last I saw him
and uh...
I said,
"So what was that like?
How did that feel?"
And he said, "Well,
it was the damnedest thing.
They brought in all these
people
who were weeping and wailing,
but the plea deal
had already been arranged,
already been agreed to.
So, what is the point?"
And I thought to myself,
"Well, you killed
their loved ones.
Might be one reason."
It was a little bit chilling.
Like, you don't know why these
people would want to come
and express their grief or,
you know?
That didn't seem to be
part of it.
It's an ultra secure
prison.
We have 122 prisons in
the federal prison system
but there's only one Supermax.
If you were going to design
a person,
to do Supermax time
it's Kaczynski,
it's Kaczynski.
He has the ability
to not need others.
During my tenure there,
he was a model inmate.
He's Ted Kaczynski.
He controls the box.
We control the prison.
He controls the box.
Like most political
terrorists,
he wants to have a soapbox,
for his, you know,
for his cause.
He knows that he has a conduit
to the outside world
where he can send his writings.
- He-he must spend hours
a day writing.
I-I would say
he's probably satisfied
that he's been able to
communicate with people
and get the ideas out,
get books published.
- He can be a voice for what
he wants to get done.
An environmental
group
claimed responsibility
for the blaze
which caused an estimated
$12 million in damage.
The group says it was
protesting an expansion
of the resort that threatened
wildlife.
I think the Unabomber
to a lot of kids
in the mid 90's and late 90's,
yeah, I think Ted
was an inspiration.
And they were going out into
about 10 to 15 western states,
burnin' shit down.
They were ratcheting things up.
It wasn't just blockades
anymore,
and it just wasn't peaceful
non-violent protests.
I think Kaczynski
thinks of himself
as a revolutionary
in the sense that
people feel very powerless
against this, you know...
in anarchist circles, often
it's called the "mega-machine".
Do not resist arrest.
- You know, this whole
industrial society.
He was kind of a vanguard
that wanted to demonstrate
that you can fight
back against the system.
- Whose streets?
- Our streets!
- Whose streets?
- Our streets!
Yeah!
- Shit, get out of here!
- Get the fuck out of here!
He's the latest in
a long history of people
who have struck out against
society's norms
thinking that they knew
the way to uh...
solve them through violence.
It's dangerous
for him to encourage others
to try to follow that model
and talk about, write about,
advise other activists
to take human life.
It's not the way forward.
There has to be a red line
for activists.
I think Kaczynski's way
was not the right way.
I think his writing
was the right way.
If you put the doctor
name on there
you had it as part of a course
at the college
and you studied it,
we wouldn't be as shocked.
I'd say he's 90% there,
and if you haven't read it,
you're going to say,
"Gosh this warden's -
he drank the water!
Stockholm syndrome
is kicking in!
He's getting too close!
Kaczynski must have hypnotized
him," or whatever.
No, writing is writing.
Academic and criminal activity
should be,
could be separated here.
It's today...
it's today on paper.
Hey, I get it.
- If we look at the problems
that have progressed
in the last say 20 years,
since the manifesto came out,
virtually all areas of concern
have gotten worse.
And the root cause of all
these problems
is advanced technology.
All the evidence suggests
that he was right,
that the system is at the root
cause of these problems,
that we cannot control it,
we cannot stop it
and very quickly,
we may even lose the ability
to even undermine the system
and then it will be too late.
- I just can't understand
the leap
of having to do it with violence
and killing innocent people.
If you go right to the part
that says,
"I might have to hurt people
to get this word out
because otherwise they might
not print it,"
that's bent.
There's victims, there's people
that were harmed.
And what do we want?
If we want him to die,
keep him where he is...
he'll probably die.
Ted's in a box.
Most likely his next box
will be underground.
In Sacramento
today,
a redwood was dedicated
to the memory of Gill Murray,
Kaczynski's last victim.
Prosecutors say that bomb
was so devastating
that Murray's family was left
with nothing to bury
but his feet.
- You had a program to try
improve the world.
How much improvement is it
when you're killing people off
doing it?
- Every time I reach out
to do something
I'm reminded by the lack
of dexterity in my hand.
I mean, this will be always be
with me.
There is no closure,
my arm doesn't suddenly
come back on Monday
when he's sentenced.
- There's no such thing
as closure.
There's different,
there's better,
there's all kinds
of other words,
but there's no closure.
Closure means it's done.
It's never done.
It's not ever gonna be done.
But I don't believe in being
a victim.
I believe in being a survivor,
and making a difference
and fighting.
- Little by little,
part of our healing
began to come about through
contacts
with some of the victims.
I think it was Linda's idea,
she says,
you know, we should really
write to those people
and apologize and tell them,
you know,
no matter how much we're trying
to save Ted's life,
it doesn't mean that we devalue
their loved ones life.
- He called one evening
and he had to leave a message.
So, it was like, "Ah, well,
I'm David Kaczynski."
So really uncomfortable
for him.
But a little while later
when he and I finally
connected,
I just said, "Hey, David.
This-this isn't your burden
to carry.
It's going to get better.
But you can't carry this one.
And so, I said,
"if you ever need to talk,
just feel free,
24/7, just call me."
- And he's become a dear,
dear friend of ours,
of many years standing.
- I think it was kind of ironic
but a lot bigger than me,
that two guys could,
you know,
go through crap
and then come together.
- And to me, that's what
gives me some hope,
the idea that there is this,
sort of this,
this goodness in people that,
that transcends...
um, the anger,
the violence, the--
You know, the prejudice,
the bad things we see
from time to time.
There is uh,
there is a core of humanity
that's just like...