Unabomber

by Dave Shors

  FROM KACZYNSKI AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  The reader must realize by now that in high school and college, I often became terribly angry at someone, or hated someone, but as a matter of prudence, I could not express that anger or hatred openly. I would therefore indulge in fantasies of dire revenge. However, I never attempted to put any such fantasies into effect, because I was too strongly conditioned by my early training, against any defiance of authority. To be more precise: I could not have committed a crime of revenge, even a relatively minor crime, because my fear of being caught and punished was all out of proportion to the actual danger of being caught. I could have much more easily risked my life in a lawful way, then [sic] take an equal risk of spending 30 days in jail for some minor crime. Thus, when I had a fantasy of revenge, I had very little comfort from it, because I was all to [sic] clearly aware that I had had many previous fantasies of revenge, and nothing had ever come of any of them. This was very frustrating and humiliating. Therefore I became more and more determined that some day I would actually take revenge on some of the people I hated.

  As those thoughts matured, Ted planned, but couldn’t quite follow through with, his first attempt to murder a scientist.

  CHRISTMAS DAY, 1972:

  About a year and a half ago, I planned to murder a scientist—as a means of revenge against organized society in general and the technological establishment in particular. Unfortunately, I chickened out. I couldn’t work up the nerve to do it. The experience showed me that propaganda and indoctrination have a much stronger hold on me than I realized. My plan was such that there was very little chance of my getting caught. I had no qualms before I tried to do it, and thought I would have no difficulty. I had everything all prepared. But when I tried to take the final irrevocable step, I found myself overwhelmed by an irrational, superstitious fear—not a fear of anything specific, merely a vague but powerful fear of committing the act. I cannot attribute this to a rational fear of being caught. I made my preparations with extreme care, and I figured my chances of being caught were less than, say, my chances of being killed in an automobile accident within the next year. I am not in the least nervous when I get into my car. I can only attribute my fear to the constant flood of anticrime propaganda to which one is subjected. For example, murderers in TV dramas are always caught.

  Shortly before his mail-bombing began, he wrote:

  FALL 1977

  The technological society may be in some sense inevitable, but it is so only because of the way people behave. Consequently I hate people. (I may have some other reasons for hating some people, but the main reason is that people are responsible for the technological society and its associated phenomena, from motorcycles to computers to psychological controls. Almost anyone who holds steady employment is contributing his part in maintaining the technological society.) Of course, the people I hate most are those who consciously and willfully promote the technological society, such as scientists, big businessmen, union leaders, politicians, etc., etc. I emphasize that my motivation is personal revenge. I don’t pretend to any kind of philosophical or moralistic justification.

  The concept of morality is simply one of the psychological tools by which society controls peoples’ [sic] behavior. My ambition is to kill a scientist, big businessman, government official, or the like. I would also like to kill a communist.

  Ted coolly considered the consequences of being caught. At first he planned one violent act that would result in his death. In his autobiography, he looked back on a session with a psychiatrist he saw while contemplating a sex change operation; he changed his mind while still in the waiting room, yet directed his disgust at the doctor.

  FROM KACZYNSKI AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  As I walked away from the building afterwards, I felt disgusted about what my uncontrolled sexual cravings had almost led me to do and I felt humiliated, and I violently hated the psychiatrist. Just then there came a major turning point in my life. Like a Phoenix, I burst from the ashes of my despair to a glorious new hope. I thought I wanted to kill that psychiatrist because the future looked utterly empty to me.

  I felt I wouldn’t care if I died. And so I said to myself “why not really kill that psychiatrist and anyone else whom I hate.” What is important is not the words that ran through my mind, but the way I felt about them. What was entirely new was the fact that I really felt I could kill someone. My very hopelessness had liberated me. Because I no longer cared about death. I no longer cared about consequences, and I suddenly felt that I really could break out of my rut in life and do things that were daring, “irresponsible,” or criminal. My first thought was to kill somebody I hated and then kill myself before the cops could get me. (I’ve always considered death preferable to long imprisonment.) But, since I now had new hope, I was not ready to relinquish life so easily. So I thought “I will kill, but I will make at least some effort to avoid detection, so that I can kill again.” Then I thought, “Well, as long as I am going to throw everything up anyway, instead of having to shoot it out with the cops or something, I will go up to Canada, take off into the woods with a rifle, and try to live off the country. If that doesn’t work out, and if I can get back to civilization before I starve, then I will come back here and kill someone I hate.”

  What was new here was the fact that I now felt I really had the courage to behave “irresponsibly.” All these thoughts passed through my head in the length of time it took me to walk a quarter of a mile. By the end of that time I had acquired bright new hope, an angry, vicious kind of determination and high morale.

  Ted’s feelings at the time on preserving his life and finally being able to place his first bomb are also reflected in his autobiography, started in 1978 and finished in 1979, written while Ted was in Illinois.

  FROM KACZYNSKI AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  It’s not a question of preserving my life and health; getting out of the power of civilization has long since become an end in itself for me. By now I have practically lost all hope of ever attaining this end. There my happiness in my Montana hills is spoiled every time an airplane passes over or anything else happens that reminds me of the inescapability of civilization. Life under the thumb of modern civilization seems worthless to measure and thus I more and more felt that life was coming to a dead end for me and death began at times to look attractive—it would mean peace. There was just one thing that really made me determined to cling to life for awhile [sic], and that was the desire for—revenge—I wanted to kill some people, preferably including at least one scientist, businessman, or other bigshot. This actually was my biggest reason for coming back to Illinois this spring. In Montana, if I went to the city to mail a bomb to some bigshot, [driver’s name] would doubtless remember I rode the bus that day. In the anonymity of the big city I figured it would be much safer to buy materials for a bomb and mail it. (Though the death-wish had appeared, it was still far from dominant, and therefore I preferred not to be suspected of crimes.) As mentioned in some of my notes, I did make an attempt with a bomb—whether successful or not I don’t know. In making a second bomb I have only barely made a start…

  Even though Ted had a few guilty feelings in the beginning, those faded as he continued on his quest for revenge.

  SEPT. 15, 1980 [CODED JOURNAL]

  Since committing the crimes reported elsewhere in my notes I feel better. I am still plenty angry, you understand, but the difference is that I am now able to strike back, to a degree. True, I cant strike back to anything like the extent I wish to, but I no longer feel totally helpless, and the anger duzzent gnaw at my guts as it used throughout. Guilty feelings? Yes, a little. Occasionally I have bad dreams in which the police are after me. Or in which I am threatened with punishment from some supernatural source. Such as the devil. But these dont occur often enuf to be a problem. I am definitely glad to have done what I have.

  Even though this coded entry showed a flicker of guilt, it was doused in his final statement.

  A year earlier, after his first bombing an
d just two months before his second, he had written:

  FROM KACZYNSKI AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  One thing that our society demands is that you have a recognized place in the system. By quitting my job [at Prince Castle Spice Packing Plant], I’ve made myself again an outcast, a good-for-nothing, a bum—someone whom “respectable” people can’t view without a certain element of suspicion. I can’t feel comfortable in this respect until I get away into the hills again—away from society. Besides, in quitting I feel as if I have signed my own death-warrant. Drifting along indefinitely in that job would have been the path of least resistance—and that, in a way, was the only thing remaining between me and the finish of everything. Now the path of least resistance is simply to go back to Montana, and once I’m there, I’ll kill, because, as I decided before I left Montana, if I ever went back there I’d have to kill, because I had too much accumulated anger over the inroads of civilization. I’m not likely to change my mind and go looking for another job—job hunting, going to sleep, and getting up for work again the next morning. (Maybe there would still be something better I could still strive for, some corner of the world where there’s still some wilderness, or other things, but again, I’m so terribly—tired—of struggling.)

  For those reasons, I want to get my revenge in one big blast. By accepting death as the price, I won’t have to fret and worry about how to plan things so I won’t get caught. More over, I want to release all my hatred and go out and kill. When I see a motorcyclist tearing up the mountain meadows, instead of fretting about how I can get revenge on him safely, I just want to watch the bullet rip through his flesh and I want to kick him in the face when he is dying. You mustn’t assume from this that I am currently being tormented by paroxysms of hatred. Actually, during the last few months (except at a few times) I have been troubled by frustrated hatred much less than usual. I think this is because, whenever I have experienced some outrage (such as a low flying jet or some official stupidity reported in the paper), as I felt myself growing angry, I calmed myself by thinking—just wait till this summer! Then I’ll kill! Thus, what I’ve been feeling in recent months is not hot rage, but a cold determination to get my revenge. But I want to be in my home or hills in Montana, not here in the city. Death in the city seems so sordid and depressing. Death in these hills—well, if you have to die, that’s the place to do it! However, it would have been very tempting to just hang onto my job at Prince Castle indefinitely, even though I have nothing to look forward to.

  The truth is, I don’t want to die!

  When Ted returned to Montana in 1979, he had resolved his inner battle over whether he wanted to live, or die in one glorious burst of revenge. He had committed felonies by placing two bombs and he was a month away from planting another by mail aboard an airliner in November 1979.

  His previous successes brought him newfound confidence and boldness, reflected in the acts of vandalism carried out in the Lincoln area and his escalating bombing campaign. He did consider himself slightly vulnerable and occasionally considered the possibilities and ramifications of capture.

  OCT. 23, 1979 [KACZYNSKI JOURNAL]

  I am about to stash these notes in a hiding-place, so I will record now some things that I didn’t like to write here when the notes were not hidden. Before I left on my hike this summer I put sugar in the gas tank of one of [name]’s snowmobiles. So hopefully [name] will have some trouble with it this winter. When I went out on my hike this summer I was planning to lie in ambush by some roadside (dirt by-road) a long way from home and shoot some trail-bikers or other mechanized desecrators of the forest, without too much regard for consequences. But once I was out in the woods I started to reconsider, for two reasons. One was that once I was out in the woods I felt so good that I started to care about the future again—I wanted to have more years to spend in the woods. The other reason is that I thought of an excellent scheme for revenge on a bigger scale and didn’t want to screw it up by getting caught for something else before I had a chance to carry it out. Considering technological civilization as a monstrous octopus, the motorcyclists, jeep-riders, and other intruders into the forest are only the tips of the tentacles.

  I was not really satisfied with striking at these. My other plan would let me strike perhaps not at the head, but at least much further up along the tentacles.

  Ted now seemed set. He had overcome his inhibitions and his early social indoctrination. He had also successfully tempered his desire to die in one big showdown. And the early bombings remained unsolved.

  The only flaw holding him back was the weak performance of his early bombs. That was something that could be overcome easily through development and testing. He would create lighter, deadlier and more easily hidden devices. The time needed wouldn’t be a problem for Ted, who could apply himself as he had during all those years of schooling. Ted had infinite patience.

  The winter before he went to Illinois, and just before and as the bombings began, Ted regularly complained to his journals about jet planes flying high over the Montana mountains, and of how the noise of loggers or helicopters, and small airplanes spoiled his hikes. He wrote:

  MONDAY, JAN. 23, 1978

  Yesterday, Sunday the 22nd, was a very happy day. Only a few jets passed over, and mostly there was peace and quiet.

  While on a 1979 trip in McClellan Gulch, Ted recorded his deep hatred of aircraft. Ted couldn’t enjoy the secluded forest if there were any noise or other signs of man’s intrusions. And even the most idyllic and private areas Ted knew in McClellan Gulch were not immune to the noises of man in some form or another. This drove Ted to spend less time enjoying the very thing he loved most, and more time and energy working on his plan of revenge against a technological society and its human creators and devotees.

  Soon after he mailed his first bombs, his language changed dramatically:

  JUNE 6, 1979

  The only disruptive sounds this morning have been caused by the 9 evil jet planes that have passed within my hearing.

  JULY 24, 1979

  Yesterday was quite good—heard only 8 jets. Today was good in early morning, but later in morning there was aircraft noise almost without intermission for, I would estimate, about an hour. Then there was a very loud sonic boom. This was the last straw and it reduced me to tears of impotent rage. But I have a plan for revenge….

  No one who doesn’t know how to appreciate the wonderful peace and satisfaction that one can get from solitude and silence in the woods [sic]. In Lombard, Illinois there is far more jet noise, and at times it is very annoying, but it does not disturb me nearly as much as does the lesser jet noise here, because here the noise destroys something wonderful; while in the city there is nothing for the noises to destroy, because one is living in a [expletive] pile anyway….

  By silence I don’t mean all sound has to be excluded, only man-made sound. Most natural sounds are soothing. The few exceptions, like thunder and raven cries, are magnificent and I enjoy them. But aircraft noise is an insult, a slap in the face.

  It is a symptom of the evil of modern society that few people today even understand the old-fashioned proverb, “Silence is golden.” Yet where today can one get silence? NOWHERE—not even up here in these mountains.

  JULY 25, 1979

  In this trip I had been sort of putting aside my anger at the jets, in order to enjoy this wonderful forest.

  But that solid hour of aircraft noise (partly jets and partly light planes) yesterday, capped by a startling sonic boom, brought up all that anger. Things are spoiled for me now, so I will go home today. Then I will work on my revenge plan. I feel very melancholy about leaving this camp. I was so happy here. I had looked forward to staying out in the woods much longer than this. Isn’t there anyplace left where one can just go off by oneself and have peace and quiet?

  Three months later, Ted was still lamenting how that July trip in McClellan Gulch had been ruined by aircraft noise.

  * * *

  OCT. 23, 1979

 
; Now, ever since that last day out when I was upset by the almost solid hour of aircraft noise, I have never taken any full or unalloyed satisfaction in the woods, even on those days when there are few aircraft, motorcycles, or other disturbances…In fact, I have made a conscious decision not to let myself have that feeling of wilderness freedom anymore in this [Lincoln] area, because it is just too miserable when that satisfaction is shattered by planes or the like…You understand, it is not the noise in itself that bothers me, but what that noise signifies. It is the voice of the Octopus—the octopus that will allow nothing to exist outside the range of its control. Now with all the planes and so forth, this area makes me think too much of those miserable remnants of prairie that one sees in the Chicago area around airports and in suburban factory districts, or of the smog-choked Cook County Forest Preserves. Just sad reminders of what once was; though I no longer find satisfaction in this mountain country, I still love it. I suppose it is the same way a mother loves a child who has been crippled and mutilated. It is a love filled with grief.

  On November 15, 1979, Ted’s bomb mailed from Chicago set fire to the cargo aboard American Airlines Flight 444 as it took off from Dulles International Airport. The plane made an emergency return to Dulles. Several passengers were treated for smoke inhalation.

  When Ted arrived in Lincoln, purchased his small plot of land and built his cabin, he immediately started exploring the country. He began with areas adjacent to his home cabin and then spread out from there.

  After the first two or three years he had covered nearly every area within a ten-mile radius. Though he wandered much farther at times, hiking almost twenty-five miles to the north into the back-country of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, he concentrated mainly on the areas to the east and south of his home cabin in Florence Gulch. These areas he thoroughly explored were the ones where he could live off the land, the areas that would sustain him and his way of life.