The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future The Freedom Club (FC) targeted “the technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride into the unknown.” For those who opposed this future, the manifesto was a call to arms. These systems needed to be destroyed, “wild nature” restored. Individual freedom and autonomy were being eliminated by centralized systems of control. The “manifesto,” as it became known, was a dark, densely argued treatise, in 232 numbered paragraphs, on the malignant role of technology in modern society. “The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race,” it began. He wrote in the name of “an anarchist group calling ourselves FC.” Remarkably, using an offer to “desist from terrorism,” he prevailed upon the Washington Post and the New York Times to publish, in 1995, a 35,000-word essay called “Industrial Society and Its Future.” In 1993, Kaczynski began writing to newspapers, taunting his victims, and threatening new targets. David Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale, lost the use of his right hand, suffered severe burns and shrapnel wounds, and had his right eye damaged. Gilbert Murray, a timber industry lobbyist, was killed in Sacramento. Thomas Mosser, an advertising executive, was murdered in his home in North Caldwell, New Jersey. Hugh Scrutton, a computer store owner in Sacramento, California, was the first target to die from his wounds. Janet Smith, a secretary at Vanderbilt University, sustained shrapnel wounds and burns to her face. He suffered burns and cuts over much of his body. Percy Wood, the president of United Airlines, was an early victim. This is the story of how the FBI broke its own rules to catch the notorious Unabomber, who had randomly killed and maimed people while leaving a cold trail of terrorism for sixteen years. Unabomber: How the FBI Broke Its Own Rules to Capture the Terrorist Ted Kaczynski Kaczynski’s bombs were handcrafted, impossible to trace, and became more sophisticated and deadly with time. Tracking him was one of the longest and most expensive manhunts in FBI history. Sixteen bomb attacks, killing three people and injuring 23, were ultimately attributed to him. Law enforcement dubbed him the “Unabomber” because his early targets were universities and airlines. In 1978, he began sending parcel bombs to scientists, businessmen and others whose work enraged him. He hunted and gardened and kept to himself, eating squirrels, rabbits, parsnips, berries. He built a bare-bones cabin in the woods near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived without electricity or indoor plumbing. “Ever since my early teens I had dreamed of escaping from civilization,” he later told an interviewer. In 1969, Kaczynski abruptly fled academia. Indeed, he fiercely resented his mother’s insistence that he was a genius. But mathematics was unimportant to him, he later said. Raised in and around Chicago, he went to Harvard on scholarship at age 16 and, in 1967, became the youngest assistant professor of mathematics ever at the University of California, Berkeley. I covered it, and in the end surprised myself by thinking that he had been deprived of his day in court.īefore he became the Unabomber, Theodore J. He finally came into focus, for me, at his trial. I wanted to write about him, but not from the police point of view and not speculatively, when nobody yet knew who he was. His attacks were frightening and unpredictable, but, in the later stages of his 17-year terror campaign, he emerged from the shadows as a vengeful philosopher bent on changing history. The Unabomber cut a swath both deep and narrow through the country’s psyche. A massive task force-150 full-time personnel from the FBI and the U.S.
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