Unabomber myth was intriguing
by Gregory Ellis
When I tuned in to KNX newsradio on the evening of April 3, I briefly
thought I had entered the Twilight Zone. The top story was something
I never honestly expected to hear: that a suspect had been arrested in the
Unabomber case, which had become, over the past 18 years, the longest, most
expensive manhunt in U.S. history. In the three weeks since the arrest of
Theodore J. Kaczynski, I've followed just about every news item featuring
new details of his life and of the evidence found in his ramshackle Montana
cabin linking him to the serial bombings.
Actually, my preoccupation
with the Unabomber case began last semester when I wrote a paper on him for
a terrorism class. After reading his 35,000-word manifesto "Industrial
Society and Its Future," and studying his M.O., I must confess I held a
fair degree of respect for the Unabomber. Although I disagreed with the
radical environmentalist and anarchist views he put forth, it was clear
from his detailed and organized arguments that the Unabomber was highly
intelligent. It was equally clear from his writings and methods that the
Unabomber had an extremely consistent philosophy. For example, he was so
opposed to technology that he preferred spending up to 40 hours
hand-crafting his bomb switches instead of buying mass-produced ones for as
little as 89 cents. Finally, I was more than a little awed by his ability
to blow people up, blackmail two of the biggest newspapers in the nation
into publishing his diatribe and avoid capture for as long as he did. As a
classmate of mine put it, "Try shooting someone on the opposite side of the
country. You can't. But that's what the Unabomber did--and he did it for
almost 20 years."When the details of Ted
Kaczynski's bizarre life started to emerge, I wasn't all that surprised at
what surfaced. Everyone who knew him described him as extremely
intelligent, and his hermit-like lifestyle of rabbit-hunting and
subsistence gardening almost perfectly matched the way of life the
Unabomber glorified in his manifesto. Of course, a lot more information
about Kaczynski has come to light since his arrest. He was described by one
employer as "pathologically shy." He blamed his mother for his almost total
inability to form relationships with people. He yearned almost pathetically
for a wife and children in his correspondence with pen pal Jose Sanchez
Arreola. And he was fired by his own brother for harassing a female
supervisor he briefly dated. All this highly unflattering information might
lead us to think of Ted Kaczynski as an insane hermit whose bombings were
completely indiscriminate. However, the Unabomber's attacks followed a very
sane, thoroughly calculated pattern. In a letter to the New York
Times, the Unabomber wrote, "The people we are out to get are the
scientists and engineers, especially in critical fields like computers and
genetics." If Kaczynski is the Unabomber (and all the evidence found so far
indicates that he is), knowing that the attacks were calculated makes the
Montana hermit a much more chilling figure, as he coldly and deliberately
killed three people and injured 22 others in an attempt to destroy
industrial society and replace it with what he called "wild
nature."Of course, the ultimate
irony of the Unabomber is that in order to destroy industrial society he
had to embrace it. No matter how closely he lived his life according to his
philosophy, he depended on technology to make his attacks work. He
triggered his bombs with batteries, deployed them via buses and a
technology-laden postal system, and finally put forth his views through
print and electronic media. And the industrial society he so despised
latched onto him in that strange way we always fixate upon fringe
characters--only we did it through technology. It turns out the easiest
place to find the Unabomber manifesto is on the World Wide Web, which has
several copies among its over 3,000 Unabomber-related sites, as I
discovered the other day. One UC San Francisco student even took the time
to post the manifesto paragraph by paragraph. Thus, if he is the Unabomber,
Kaczynski might find most appalling is that the segment of society he hated
the most was the segment most interested in his views.Currently, federal
prosecutors are pondering whether or not to try Kaczynski in Northern
California; they're afraid the Unabomber's radical environmental views
might strike a chord there, generating sympathy for Kaczynski. It may well
have been easy for some people to romanticize the brilliant eco-warrior
behind the sunglasses and sweatshirt who confounded the feds for nearly two
decades. Perhaps it's for the best that Ted Kaczynski turned out to be an
ugly man who wrote ugly limericks about people who rejected him; if
convicted, these details might make it easier to see the Unabomber for what
he really is: a hypocritical "evil coward," as victim David Gelernter
described him. For all his intelligence and philosophical fervor, the
Unabomber blew people up over distances of thousands of miles and enjoyed
it. If convicted of the Unabomber's crimes (once he is officially charged),
Theodore Kaczynski will deserve the stiffest penalties industrial society
can levy against him.Gregory Ellis is a senior majoring in political science.