by Waits, Chris
JiLvS, 1975 [Kaczynski journal]
Well I have some events to record. After I got back from the hike...I was feeling pretty disappointed and discouraged. After a day or 2 I started to feel better—then that [expletive] [name] took his caterpillar up along the Road that goes past the cabin. That road was sufficiently closed off by [name] (when he put in our new roads) to prevent the passage of ordinary vehicles, but it was still accessible for trail bikes and snowmobiles. Then when we had that extra ordinary storm of wet snow that broke so many trees, that road w^as so closed off by fallen trees that it was hardly practical for trail bikes and snowmobiles. Then that [expletive] [name] cleared it all out w ith his cat, though it is still blocked for ordinary- vehicles. Makes me want to kill that [expletive]. Anyhow, it got me all upset and ver' depressed—all the more because the [expletive] is cutting pests [sir, probably posts] up along [name] and that cuts down still further the places where I can walk in quiet and solitude....
This was about the time Ted began to "feel that there was no place to escape civilization," as he wrote in his journals, and started to lay plans to get away from the world around him by building his small, high-mountain secret cabin.
July 24, 1975
Today I hiked to a side-gulch of [name]. In a very secluded spot on a steep slope, I started building an 8 X 8 log cabin that I will be able to use year-round.
I have already packed in the stove that I made. After testing the stove I found out that the door was too large and it leaked smoke. I fixed the problem by blocking off part of the door with some old sheet-metal that I scrounged. It seems to work fairly well now.
I have been cutting trees for my cabin with my ax which I find works much better than cutting the logs with my bow saw. Using the ax was awkward at first but now I'm quite used to it.
It was imperative to do some digging to level up the floor for my cabin and I am almost done with this part.
I'm in a very good mood. Things are going well for me on this project.
July 27, 1975
My secret log cabin isn't going as fast as I had expected but I'm almost finished with cutting and building the walls.
July 28, 1975
Today I finished building the walls and cutting and erecting the logs for the framework of the roof.
July 29, 1975
My work today was temporarily halted by a rain storm. I still managed to get the cabin covered over by piling the tops of the trees used for the cabin against it. I built a stove hearth inside and firmly fixed the stove I have built
to it by placing rocks and soil around it which also helps protect the logs in the w all from the heat.
I will have to leae tomorrow to replenish some of my supplies.
Arc. 5, 6 AND 7, 1975
On the fifth I returned to my little secret cabin I had been building.
I finished with all of the frame logs today. I haven't chinked the spaces between the logs yet but I will have time this winter to do that by placing small poles and boards between the spaces. I even began to do some of that today.
I was very pleased at how fast I was able to build this secret cabin. It only took me about seven and a half days total time not counting the time I spent cutting wood for my fire.
This last trip I worked more on the roof making it rain proof by covering it with a blue nylon tarp that I took from a place I had found it stored.
Then I cut as much wood for my small stove that I could comfortably store in my small cabin. When I finished I masked the secret cabin with pine boughs and branches from the trees I had used to build the small cabin so that it was camouflaged and could hardly be noticed or seen from more than one hundred feet, or maybe even less.
There isn't a very big chance of my secret cabin being found because it is in a very secret place far away from civilization.
He built his remote structure so he could get away from noise and people, but he also used it and its secret location to plan and plot his acts of murder and revenge. He not only had a hideout between bombings where he changed in and out of his disguise clothing and where he stayed while his beard grew back—apparent from his late-February 1987 encounter with Betty at the old miner's cabin and the disguise
clothing found in the secret cabin—but he also had a refuge where he could sometimes build and test his bombs.
His arrest and the events that followed it led to the discovery of this most private part of his life, which was just starting to unfold in the spring of 1997, a year after Ted's arrest.
When Betty and I arrived home late Saturday afternoon, April 26, after our hike to the cabin site, I was eager to call Dave Weber and tell him about everything I'd found.
I had made the first detailed list of cabin contents, and taken two more rolls of pictures, and also drew a diagram to scale of the small hut's interior and where some of the more important evidence was positioned.
Dave had phoned the morning before to say he had just sent a two-foot-by-two-foot aerial photograph of the Stemple area taken from 32,000 feet, with approximately the same scale as topographical maps. He wanted me to mark important locations, including the site of the secret cabin, and return the aerial.
There were still things I hadn't been able to accomplish at the cabin site, such as checking out the scrap pile and the fire pit where Ted had burned and then buried his cans. Some items were still locked in the ice inside the structure, but I'd be returning soon.
Dave and I were now phoning each other almost daily and he was just as excited to get back to Lincoln as I was eager for him to arrive.
After the hard search the previous summer with few discoveries, his effort to find the cabin had become more like a quest. There wasn't anything Dave would like more than to consummate his many hours of toil by standing next to Ted's small log building. That desire was intensified by the fact Ted had taunted agents, calling the FBI a joke. They had a personal stake in the investigation: their pride and reputation.
While waiting that weekend for the FBI aerial to arrive in the mail, I spent my time mapping some of Ted's trails and campsites.
Finally on Wednesday, the postman delivered a long tube that contained the rolled-up photo-map. It was a beautiful, sharp, and very detailed photograph of the mountainous terrain between Lincoln and Stemple Pass, with every detail visible, from ridge and trail to the smallest little valley.
^Kaczynski's 'home cabin in Florence Gulch.
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Dave's note that accompanied it read:
Chris,
Well, here we go— hope this photo-map will help you spot Ted's bed and breakfast. The scale is 1:24,000. Dave
I Stem pie Pass Road
^
McCleUan Gulch
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On Friday, May 2,1 was home working on my notes right after lunch when Bobby Didriksen called and described what amounted to a disruptive morning at the Lincoln Post Office.
While he was picking up his letters, one of the postal workers pulled a package that resembled a mail bomb out of a large mail bag. It wasn't only its weight and composition that made them immediately suspicious, but also to whom it was addressed.
I decided to drive into town and talk to Postmaster Don Pearson. When I got there one postal worker still was shaken and upset.
The heavy package had been mailed in a cardboard Priority Mail envelope, designed to carry a pound or two. But this one weighed in at a hefty eleven pounds, stuffed to the breaking point with a sand-
like material. It was wrapped w irh a clear packa^in
It was addressed to none other than 'led, with a return address from a fictitious relatie in (California.
Don said he suspected it was a hoax; Ted's name w^as misspelled and the numerical address was not quite right. But he wasn't going to take any chances. He called the Federal Postal Investigator and was told to tu
rn it ox er to the postal inspector who would drive up from Great F'alls, and not to anyone else, not even the FBI. Because it was mail related, the Postal Service had control of this investigation.
The package was then marked w ith a forwarding address, since Ted no longer lived in Lincoln, and was given unopened to the Postal Investigator when he arrived.
Don was mystified how eleven pounds could be squeezed into a Priority envelope and wondered w hat kind of material would have that weight-to-volume ratio.
I told him there were many ground compounds, some explosive, that would weigh that much. Magnetite and hematite (black sand) w ould easily do the job. He said he wanted to bring up an envelope sometime and have me demonstrate.
That afternoon I called Dave Weber and told him about the excitement at the post office. He said none of the agents had heard anything about the package.
On Sunday, May 4, I hiked back up to the secret cabin to check the snow^ and ice level. On the return trip I followed a circuitous route lower on the mountain.
Directly below the cabin Ted had cut a blaze at least fifteen or twenty years ago on the trunk of a lodgepole pine. The old trail mark provided a new clue that w^ould prove invaluable in future excursions.
As might be expected, Ted marked his forest trails and routes in a non-traditional manner. Old-timers normally blazed both sides of a trunk and cut their marks conspicuously into the trees, usually within eyesight of the next blaze along a trail, so they and others could easily follow^ routes through heavily forested mountain terrain.
Ted, on the other hand, blazed only one side of the tree to mark the route in, unless it was a special juncture in the trail, like a cut-off point. He marked his trees very carefully, barely nicking the heart-
no
wood. His blazes were often spaced several hundred yards apart and couldn't be seen from one another.
Ted traveled the blazed route below the cabin often and knew the general direction so he didn't need many markers to keep him oriented on the criss-crossing game trails. Plus, the infrequent number and positioning of blazes would make it difficult for anyone else to follow the route. After a few trips Ted became familiar with his trails through the timber and didn't need the blazes, which would gradually weather, turn gray, blend into the surroundings and almost disappear.
He took great care to disguise his trails and it took several hours to fmd all the blazes and flag his route into the secret cabin. The last blaze was located directly below the cabin. As I studied his system it dawned on me that he intentionally ended the trail with a blaze directly downhill of his destination. He knew that from the last marked tree he had to walk straight up the mountain's sixty percent slope quite a distance and he'd arrive at the cabin site.
All these precautions would have been tedious and time-consuming for the average person, but Ted had plenty of time and his cryptic methods virtually ensured that nobody would be able to follow him or locate any of his secret mountain places.
When Dave Weber called the following day, Monday, May 5, he was excited about the discovery of the blazes. He indicated they might be a key that would help unlock some of the remaining puzzles. As we talked about their importance, he started to share information about sketches Ted had drawn in his journals, including diagrams of secret caches and camps, marked only by vague points of reference like rocks, trees, streams, and tree blazes.
The agents knew the sketches were important maps and they had spent much of the previous summer trying to interpret them, but Ted delineated the maps in such a way that the caches and camps could have been located anywhere in the sea of trees surrounding Lincoln.
It would take someone with an intimate knowledge of the surroundings to break the code and fmd the areas that were mapped and described so generically.
Ted had an enormous advantage: he knew the general area being mapped so he didn't need to describe distinguishable features like mountains or streams.
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But I knew the country as well as or better than Ted.
Dave also talked about a trip he took back to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., where all the Unabomber evidence was being stored, so he could study every note, map and description and possibly find a mark, a star, or any other small dot that would indicate where Ted had built his secret cabin.
He found no such mark.
I knew the cabin and the evidence inside were important in the government's case against Ted, but there had to be something more involved to trigger such a huge expenditure of manpower and money.
Dave acknowledged the Feds were concerned about public safety: Ted's bragging about setting a booby-trap out in the woods.
UNDATED JOURNAL ENTRY
Summer '77 I set a booby-trap intended to kill
172
someone, but I won't say what kind or where because if this paper is ever found the trap might be harmlessly removed.
But it probably doesn't have more than maybe a 1 in 5 chance of killing or seriously injuring someone.
FBI agents admitted later this journal entry, along with others about the secret cabin and what might be hidden in or around it, prompted their intensive search. Dave said their instruction from the top was, "You will find it."
I asked Dave if he'd send me copies of Ted's cryptic little drawings to help with my continuing search.
He said he couldn't, but he'd bring them when he returned to Lincoln. His need for caution was apparent. Dave said we had to keep our conversations confidential.
He also had a sense of urgency. He was afraid if we didn't find and gather these exhibits soon there might not be enough time to have them examined and entered as evidence by trial time in the fall.
It was astounding that such a high-profile case didn't warrant more expediency. There were other inner workings of the federal agency that were confusing and seemed counterproductive.
Dave had shared his disappointment and disgust that the agents in charge wouldn't allow him to come to Lincoln alone so we could start examining evidence found in the secret cabin.
As he sarcastically put it, "God forbid that we should find anything without them."
It didn't seem that professional pride, jealousy, and personal egos should have anything to do with this or any other investigation. He agreed, but admitted there wasn't anything he could do.
Dave was aware that if it wasn't for him the prosecution might not even know about the secret cabin's discovery, because they had repeatedly ignored my offers to help. At one point I had even considered letting them find out about my discovery from the press along with everyone else.
He was the one who had taken the time to build our relationship and had gone out of his way to enlist my help, realizing the enormous disadvantage they faced in working in an unfamiliar environment.
T was sure I could understand Ted's coded diagrams and find the secret locations plotted in the drawings it given a chance.
I)a e said he was trying to put a team together for June 1 and asked it that would work. I le and Max Noel were worried about inad-ing our pri acy and didn't want to bring too many people along.
As we hung up it was apparent Dave w^as ready and eager to leave California and come to Lincoln, but everyone involved with the case wanted to get in on the action; they didn't want to miss the tlrst trip to the secret cabin. At one point, they said if they couldn't go, then neither could he, which seemed petty. While Dave was concerned with the integrity and deterioration of key evidence, other members of the Task Force seemed worried about missing out.
Later that day, Betty and I hiked to an old mine adi
t about three fourths of a mile up the gulch, thinking Ted might have used it as a cache site.
Several years earlier the portal to the mine had been nearly closed off by small rock slides, but there had been just enough space to squeeze into the tunnel. Ted was such a packrat, hiding things everywhere, that there was a good chance he had things stashed away inside.
His blaze line to the secret cabin was close by and the old mine site couldn't be seen from the double-tracked and seldom-used road that ran up the gulch. It was a perfect hiding place that I hadn't explored for probably tw o decades.
When w^e arrived at the old mine the opening had been recently covered by more slides of loose stones and gravel. I dug around by hand and finally enlarged the entrance just enough to squeeze through. But when I did, my body blocked the light and it w as impossible to see past the first ten feet of the tunnel.
Betty didn't like the sight of me wedged into a small opening in the side of the mountain with just my feet show ing and she implored me to pull out and return later with rope and better lighting.
Lm not intimidated by close underground spaces, but at her urging I backed out.
We would return to that spot when FBI agents came to Lincoln to begin field investigations.
On Wednesdav, Mav 7, Max called from San Francisco to see if
the cabin photos were back so he could get copies. They hadn't arrived yet, but they should show up any day, I said. The film had been sent to Seattle to avoid any possibility of a local film processor becoming curious about the secret cabin.
We then talked about some of the cabin contents, including the pairs of yellow latex gloves. Max said he would do some research on the gloves, so he wanted all the codes and sticker information from the packages.