Ted Kaczynski’s Journals

Most of these journals are not publicly available as they were sold at auction into a private collection.[1] So, some of the texts are only public as short extracts or only partially typed-up.

Short List of Available Journals

The Full List

Quoting Ted:[2][3][4][5]

These are journals that I kept over a span of more than twenty-five years. Some contain accounts of my personal experiences. Some are filled with my thoughts and ideas, and quotations from my reading. Some contain mixed materials. The journals are highly reliable, since they are completely honest and nearly all of the information about personal experiences was written down within a few days of the events.

The journals are divided into eight series, as follows:

Series I, #1 through #7

Series II, #1 through #6

Series III, #1 through #8

Series IV, #1

Series V, #1

Series VI, #1 through #5

Series VII, #1 through #4

Series VIII, #1

Series I. Contains ideas and quotations. #6 contains also some personal material, but not overly intimate.

#1. June 7, 1969 to Jan 22, 1970
#2. Feb 1, 1970 to Nov. 19, 1970
#3. Nov 30, 1970 to May 14, 1970
#4. June 7, 1971 to Dec 6, 1972
#5. Dec 9, 1972 to Dec 9, 1974
#6. Jan 3, 1975 to May 19, 1975
#7. Dec 20, 1975 to May 3, 1997

Series II. Outdoor journal — camping out.

#1. June 8, 1972 to Aug 7, 1972
#2. Sept 8, 1972 to Oct 26, 1972
#3. Feb 10, 1974 to Aug 28, 1974
#4. June 5, 1975 to Feb 6, 1976
#5. May 18, 1977 to Jan 26, 1978
#6. June 26, 1979 to Oct 23, 1979

Series III. Outdoor journal — at cabin, but #6 and #7 contain also some camping-out experiences

#1. Dec 1, 1971 to April 22, 1972
#2. April 27, 1972 to Oct 1, 1972
#3. Oct 2, 1972 to Nov 4, 1972
#4. June 24, 1973 to May 28, 1974
#5. May 31, 1974 to Sept 14, 1975
#6. Sept 14, 1975 to Feb 25, 1977
#7. Feb 28, 1977 to April 22, 1978
#8. Jan 25, 1980 to May 18, 1980

Series IV. Outdoor stuff at cabin mixed with highly personal stuff.

#1. June 9, 1979 to June 22, 1979

Series V. Personal experiences, outdoor or city; ideas and quotations; coded stuff (code probably breakable).

#1 June 22, 1980 to Jan 16, 1984

Series VI. Highly personal stuff. #4 also contains ideas and quotations.

#1. Sept 20, 1972 to Nov 12, 1974
#2. July 17, 1978 to Aug 23, 1978
#3. Letters of Aug 25, 1978 and Sept. 2, 1978
#4. Aug 29, 1978 to May 8, 1979
#5. Jan 6, 1975 to March 30, 1975

Series VII. Outdoor experiences, ideas and quotations.

#1. Jan 23, 1984 to March 3, 1986
#2. Sept 14, 1984 to Jan 26, 1993
#3. April 1, 1986 to June 22, 1990
#4. Nov 24, 1993 to Jan 23, 1996

Map

Autobiography

Coded stuff (unbreakable code)

Bb. Notes on My Journals. This is a set of notes commenting on Series I and II of the journals.

Bc. Baby Book. This is a journal, kept by my mother, of the first nineteen months of my life. I think it is reasonably reliable. In the first place, the entries were all made soon after the events. In the second place, the Baby Book contains no indication of my mother’s characteristic exaggerations. In the third place, my mother seems to have been trying to be objective and “scientific” in recording her observations. And in the fourth place, something happened to my mother when I was about eight years old. I think that before that time she had better control over herself and would have been more careful to be truthful than she was after.

Here I am going to confess to—or, to be more accurate, brag about—some misdeeds I have committed in the last few years.

Quoting a cryptography journal:[6]

The first and more complex encryption system, Code # I, is written in a notebook that Kaczynski called Notebook X. Notebook X is composed as a dated journal containing plaintext journal entries intermixed with portions of ciphertext. This system utilizes numerous safeguards, including the use of intentional misspellings and encryption errors, meaningless punctuation, nonsense words, and Spanish and German text intermixed with English plaintext and ciphertext. Kaczynski also chose to omit and add word breaks at random and use nulls throughout his enciphered text....

Kaczynski’s second encryption system, Code # II, is significantly less complex than Code # I. Code # II involves two separate notebooks called Notebook A and Notebook B, each filled entirely of strings of comma-delimited ciphertext numbers. Code # II does not employ as many safeguards as Code # I. However, in order to decipher this system, one requires the entirety of both notebooks and a list of meanings similar to, but different from, the one mentioned in Code # I. This list of meanings was divided into three pages as seen in Figure 5.

Quoting California Uni:[7]

C-2: Checks papers for publication of manuscript; lists hiding places for various articles with maps; list of names at Orvana Mining; serial numbers of guns; location of telephone boxes.

Series I

Journal #1–7

The Ted K Archive — Extracts from Ted Kaczynski’s Journal Series I

Journal #1

University of Michigan Library — Box 82, Folder 1, Journal series I #1, 1969: K2046F.
The Ted K Archive — Ted Kaczynski’s 1969 Journal

Journals #2–7

Private collection.

Series II

Journal #1–6

Short Extracts

Journal #1

Private collection.

Journal #2

University of Michigan Library — Box 82 2 Journal series II #2, 1972 : K2046N

Journals #3–6

Private collection.

Series III

Journals #1–4

Private collection.

Journal #5 — May 31, 1974 to Sept 14, 1975

The Ted K Archive — Ted Kaczynski’s 1974 Journal
California Uni.- Day-to-day account of activities, Missing page numbered 37 C-228 E

Journals #6–8

Private collection.

Series IV

Journals #1

Private collection.

Series V

Journal #1

Private collection.

Series VI

Journal #1 (1972)

The Ted K Archive — Ted Kaczynski’s Salt Lake City Journal (1972)
California Uni. — “Highly Personal Info” C-230 B

Journal #2 (1978)

The Ted K Archive — Ted’s Journal on His Plans to Disfigure the Face of a Romantic Interest
California Uni. — C-230 A: “Women and sex”, There are two page 28’s [numbered by T. Kaczynski]

Journal #3

Private collection.

Journal #4

The Ted K Archive — Ted Kaczynski’s 1978 Journal
California Uni. — Ideas and quotations C-230 E

Journal #5

The Ted K Archive — Ted Kaczynski’s Oakland California Journal
California Uni. — C-230: Death, Bomb references
University of Michigan Library — Box 79, Folder 8, Journal series VI #5, 1975: K2003E

Series VII

Journal #1

The Ted K Archive — Journal #1 from Series 7 (1984–1986)
University of Michigan Library — Box 79 6 Journal series VII #1, 1984–1986: K2046T

Journals #2–4

Private collection.

Series VIII

Journal #1

Private collection.

Prison Journal

Personal diary entries in Spanish (2008)

Notes on my Journals

The Ted K Archive — Ted’s Notes on his Journals (Feb. 1996)
California Uni. — “Personal Papers” (Notes on journal); manifesto references, encoding references. C-3

Baby Book

University of Michigan Library — Box 68, Folder 10 “Bc: Baby book”

Crime Journals

Ted Kaczynski’s Journal of Early Crimes

The Ted K Archive — Ted Kaczynski’s Journal of Early Crimes
California Uni. — C-1: Bombs #1 and 2; vandalism; booby-traps, killing a businessman, government official, scientists.

Notebook X

The Ted K Archive — Notebook X
California Uni. — C-229: “Personal experiences, ideas, and quotations”, Not all numbered pages are present.

Fully Coded Notebook of Crimes

The Ted K Archive — Fully Coded Notebooks of Crimes
California Uni. — A Review and Compilation of the Writings of Ted Kaczynski (Section 3)

Ted Kaczynski’s Notebook

The Ted K Archive — Ted Kaczynski’s Notebook
California Uni. — C-2: Checks papers for publication of manuscript; lists hiding places for various articles with maps; list of names at Orvana Mining; serial numbers of guns; location of telephone boxes.

Ted Kaczynski’s Notebook of Where He Sourced His Materials