The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski: Reflecting on 25 Years

WASHINGTON D.C. (FBI.gov) The FBI looks back at the Unabomber case, 25 years after the arrest of Ted Kaczynski.
[Music] april 3rd 1996 two fbi agents and a u.s forest service police officer knock on the door of a 10 by 12 foot cabin secluded in the montana mountains throughout the home of theodore kaczynski the man who had become known to the world as the unabomber that knock was nearly 20 years in the making the investigation andy kozinski had started back in 1978 after he’d left the first of his homemade explosive devices in a parking lot near the university of illinois in chicago to catch the brilliant recluse who had been disciplined about leaving few clues the fbi had to rethink its investigative strategies lean on the media in a new way and turn to the public for help [Music] it’s been 25 years since the arrest of the man who mailed and placed 16 bombs three of them deadly to mark this anniversary our host kristen fletcher revisited the case with the fbi leader who helped get those agents to that cabin door and the special agent who got inside the mind of a deadly terrorist i’m steve lewis and this is inside the fbi by 1993 some people thought the unabomber was dead he had placed his last bomb in february 1987 in the parking lot of a salt lake city computer store that day an employee watched a man leave an item near some of the parked cars the bomber noticed the woman watching him from the window but he calmly walked away minutes later the store owner’s son pulled into the lot and picked up the item which looked like boards with nails protruding from the top it exploded on contact sending him to the hospital with life-threatening injuries that bomb was similar to one left in the parking lot of a computer store in sacramento california 15 months earlier that bomb had killed the store’s owner after the salt lake city bomb though six years went by and nothing perhaps the unabomber had died or simply decided to stop but then on june 22 1993 a geneticist at the university of california opened a package in his kitchen and a bomb exploded two days later a prominent computer scientist from yale lost several fingers to another mailed bomb not only was the unabomber alive but his campaign of violence was growing more intense several months later in the early spring of 1994 special agent terry turchi was happily sitting at a desk in the fbi’s palo alto office he had a view of stanford’s campus and a portfolio of national security investigations then came an offer from fbi headquarters that turkey could not in fact refuse take over the unibomb task force here’s turkey recounting that conversation he said when do you think you can be here how quickly can you get up to san francisco from palo alto which was in the south bay so i i said well ed i have uh a number of things to wrap up of course so how about a couple of weeks and he said how about this afternoon at about two or three o’clock [Music] and uh that was pretty much the end of my time in palo alto and the beginning of my time on unibomb and uh that 45-minute drive to san francisco that afternoon was a really long drive turkey said some good work had already been done on the case the bureau had formed the unibomb task force in 1993 to bring together all of the investigating agencies including atf and the postal inspection service but progress had stalled and after nearly a year of examining the bombings some of which were 10 or 15 years prior many of the investigators and analysts were looking to move along so the challenge was time and the challenge was figuring out how to keep people focused on this case when their morale was kind of starting to to drop pretty considerably turkey knew he was going to need a new approach but let’s start with what they did know in 1994 first the unabomber was called the unabomber because universities that’s the un and airlines ca were the early targets of his bombs turkey recounts what he saw in the investigation so far spanning 16 years and 14 bombs he begins with the first known unibomb device the uh may 1978 bomb was interesting because it was found at the university of chicago circle campus and it had ten dollars in uncancy stamps but it was not mailed it was just by a car so that that kind of stood out uh the third bomb was interesting because it had been placed on an airplane most people don’t realize that almost immediately in the unabomber’s career he could have brought down an airplane and killed many people but that third bomb which was on that plane in 1979 flying from chicago to uh to washington dc simply malfunctioned it didn’t work right so that became important to us as well the fourth bombing was also in the chicago area was mailed to the president of united airlines at the time percy wood it was mailed to his house and it was proceeded by a letter by 1985 there were four bombs and they included a mail bomb from uh salt lake to a professor james mcconnell at the university of michigan he was a psychologist and uh like the percy wood bomb this bomb was built into a uh hollowed-out um three-way notebook and there was a letter though with the bomb this time with the package and it was a request of professor mcconnell to review a student’s so-called master thesis in a topic called the history of science this would become so important to us that uh i didn’t know it of course then but as i was reading all this but a few months later it would become one of the discoveries that would start us off on a number of investigative projects that had to do with writing the fourth and final bomb of course in 1985 was the bomb that killed hugh schrutten the owner of ren tech computer store in sacramento in december of 1985. by 1987 he shows up again at another kind of strip mall computer store called anne’s only this time it’s in salt lake city and uh once again kind of a major una bomb event the subject is seen by a witness inside the cam store and this is where the artist’s rendition comes from the composite drawing joined the man in the gray hooded sweatshirt and the aviator sunglasses after being seen and leaving that bomb also next to a wheel of a car the bomber dropped out of sight for six years and uh and just kind of disappeared we heard nothing from him until 1993. that’s when the case came alive again with those two mailed bombs turkey made some changes to the task force in consultation with the head of the fbi san francisco field office they were going to engage in a deep reinvestigation of each bombing a process he knew would be long and would feel fruitless and frustrating at times so he asked everyone to choose another member of the task force to partner with his thinking was that they could bounce ideas off each other and keep one and other spirits up they hired an outside computer consultant to clean up and compile all the data they had into a single database that would allow them to better review suspects referred through the tip line they created a document called unibomb known facts fiction and theory and during a regular cycle of meetings they assessed and reassessed this document adding and deleting from it as theories were developed dismissed and re-evaluated and they grew the team often relying on new agents and other personnel who they trained on their own each member was included in every detail of the investigation regardless of their role every fbi employee not just fbi agents every fbi employee working on this case needs to be at these meetings and everybody’s opinion counts so in other words we were asking everyone to become highly involved in every aspect of this investigation as far as being in a position to render an opinion or give their ideas in front central to the reinvestigation in turkey’s mind was to take a fresh look at the bomber himself turkey wanted an updated profile and he felt special agent kathleen puckett who had been on his counterintelligence squad and was now working toward a phd in clinical psychology was the person to do it here’s kathleen puckett on the difficulty of creating an extensive portrait of the suspect she describes as the most careful serial bomber anyone had ever seen this guy left practically no way to trace back any evidence that was left at the scene parts of the bombs components anything else he was a real cipher the um the profiling unit usually has a lot of evidence at a scene to review to come up with a profile of an unknown offender in this case they had no latent fingerprints no hair and fibers that led anywhere not even even in some of these devices along the way the batteries were even stripped you couldn’t even trace the batteries back to where they were purchased or acquired and a lot of the wood and different things looked just like junk that was picked up by the side of the road with the reinvestigation of each crime however the task force began to piece together more of the bomber’s background the first device tied to the unabomber which had been found in that parking lot in 1978 had clearly been meant for the mail it was addressed and stamped and there was a mailbox not far away so why was it left on the ground it was during one of those task force meetings that turchie threw out the idea that maybe the bomb just wouldn’t fit in the mailbox to test the theory they recreated the dimensions of the device and consulted postal records on the size of the mailbox that was at the site in 1978 sure enough it would not have fit puckett and turkey said that small detail and a closer look at the other early bombings helped the task force determine that the bomber knew the chicago area well they figured he may have lived there and used it as his base early in his bombing campaign the team also re-examined the few cover letters that had proceeded or been attached to some of the bombing devices given the unabomber’s caution about leaving physical evidence those letters were a rare source of needed clues one mentioned a book called ice brothers that the team went back and read trying to suss out what messages may have been in the text of the book he also mentioned a somewhat obscure field of study called the history of science in the letter attached to another bomb it turned out only a few universities offered the history of science as a course of study harvard and princeton were among the few puckett said they got another rare glimpse into the mind of the bomber when he started communicating more directly in 1993 he sent a letter to the new york times the letter said essentially we are an anarchist group uh we are the anarchist group fc and uh you know we by the time you receive this something significant will will have occurred and then what fascinated me was the statement if nothing goes wrong and i thought okay this is the caution this is the the the very very careful preparation he’s older he’s more uh he’s more speculative he’s more uh he’s less he’s more controlled than we initially might have thought he was despite what he’d written they knew the bomber was not part of a group no group could stay that tight that undetectable for so many years as 1994 drew to a close turkey said the task force was making progress it was feeling more positive as the pieces came together but then the investigation hit its low point in december 1994 a powerful bomb killed an advertising executive in his new jersey home his wife and toddler had just left the house when the bomb detonated in april 1995 another strong device killed the president of the california forestry association kathleen puckett said so much of the focus of the past investigative work had been trying to find clues by looking at the victims were they linked to the bomber were they linked to each other puckett saw something else none of the victims knew each other none of them had anything in common none of them had been to school together or had a fraternity membership or you know worked in business or anything like that very very disparate and we thought you know he’s picking these people up out of things he’s reading he’s not he doesn’t know any of these people his focus she believed was on the deadliness of his bombs they had grown more sophisticated and dangerous over time and on his secrecy after he was seen in 1987 he disappeared for a number of years and never placed another bomb the rest were all sent in the mail he would do anything to avoid being caught [Music] in the summer of 1995 the unabomber reached out to the media again this time with an offer publish his writings and he won’t bomb again he sent several publications a dense long essay called industrial society and its future his manifesto the question now in front of the unibomb task force do we publish this the first conclusion was no we don’t give in to terrorists there would be no exchange of publication for a thin hope that the violence would stop but eventually the unibomb task force changed its mind after consulting with fbi leadership and the attorney general’s office they decided to ask the newspapers to publish it the reasons were two-fold first kathleen puckett was all but certain that the promise to stop bombing was hollow she did not believe the unabomber would stop or could second the manifesto with its unique ideas and very particular phrasing spelling and word choices was going to look familiar to someone and the writing would help flesh out the other things the task force had learned and begun to push out to the public through media announcements here’s turchi again on how they focused the public’s attention after a long string of bombings by now we’re telling people it’s not like as random as it looks the unibomber had familiarity and a nexus chicago 78 to 80 salt lake city 81 to 82 maybe as late as 85 san francisco bay area from 85 on corey hall uc berkeley that’s a big factor in this think of all that and now look at this composite look at this man in 1987 with the gray hooded sweatshirt and the aviator sunglasses by the time the manifesto came the public was actually focused and compartmentalized on this message so we had now a huge piece to add to this somebody would recognize this because first of all the writings were very passionate and it was obvious and kathy made a big uh appeal on this in one of our meetings that there’s no question this man really believes in what he’s writing here so he probably held these beliefs his entire life and so that became the basis to now put that into the mix the team hoped it was enough that someone would put it all together terry turchi laughs as he recounts a briefing on the case he did for attorney general janet reno she asked him how will you know the unabomber when you see him from the thousands of other people you get calls on to which turchi somewhat sheepishly responded i think we’ll know it when we see it and then he held his breath until the attorney general looked back at him and said i believe that too the manifesto was published as a special section within the september 19 1995 edition of the washington post between publication date and february 1996 well over 50 000 people called the unibomb tip line only one call ended up being significant a lawyer representing the family of david kaczynski called the fbi’s washington field office to say his client recognized some of the writing in the manifesto he sent an essay his client’s brother ted had written there were enough similarities in the writing to get the immediate attention of agents ted kaczynski was unibomb suspect number 2400 2416 born in chicago he was a brilliant mathematician who started at harvard at 16. he went on to get his phd and taught briefly at the university of california berkeley in 1971 he bought a small piece of land in lincoln montana where he moved and began living largely off the land as the unabomb task force members learned more about kaczynski from his family and from reviewing more of his papers and files and records they became more and more certain they had the right guy but on april 3rd 1996 they knocked on the door of his montana cabin with only a search warrant they would need more evidence to arrest him and there was a real fear that he was so careful so smart so determined to cover his tracks that they would find no physical evidence to tie him to the crimes but turchi said a quick glance into the cabin that day made it clear that the tiny space was a literal bomb-making factory but what was really interesting is on the shelves across the back of the cabin and this is what struck us when we looked in there there were these containers and they were labeled and uh one was labeled with the chemical compound for potassium chlorite and then uh there was sodium chlorate that had its chemical compound label number uh there was sugar and zinc and aluminum and lead and silver oxide all these compounds had shown up in various unibomb devices all of them according to uh pat and don are exposing these guys uh could be used to to make the explosive mixtures and that wasn’t all there were other items on the shelves that were literally bomb components and they were in like quaker oatmeal cans and things like that but they they consisted of things like pieces of metal and plastic pipe and c-cell batteries and electrical wire they arrested kaczynski for possessing explosive materials and continued the search over the next several days by the time we were finished the first 24 hours we had to stop the search because there was a live bomb under his bed wrapped and essentially ready to mail except it did not have any address or indicator of where the victim might be or who the victim could be kathleen puckett had been right the unabomber did not plan to stop the cabin also held extensive writings that included diary entries on all of his crimes there was a small manila envelope and in that envelope there were uh admissions and confessions to all 16 unibomb crimes in detail and in some selected note he said uh i finally was ready to begin my bombing campaign in may of 1978 i had everything ready i did a great job i get on the bus i go to illinois i cover myself nobody knows i’m there i get out there and my bomb doesn’t fit in the mailbox theodore kaczynski eventually agreed to plead guilty to all charges as of this recording he is 78 years old serving life in prison with no possibility of parole [Music] it was a long road but the work turchi and his task force did paid off and with the help of an aware and informed public they stopped a killer and and that is the lesson really that came out of unibomb the way we organized and the fact that we never gave up to learn more about the case visit fbi.gov unabomber we have a video of a reconstruction of the unabomber’s cabin and more details on the case also be sure to listen to part two of this series as we dig into how the unibomb case affected the fbi’s counterterrorism work what the terrorism threat looks like today and how the fbi is working to prevent future attacks special thanks to terry turchi the former deputy assistant director of the fbi counterterrorism division and kathleen puckett who was a founding member of the fbi national security division’s behavioral analysis program both are now retired from the fbi this has been a production of inside the fbi i’m kristen fletcher with the office of public affairs thanks for listening