The Bombings & Communications of Ted Kaczynski as part of his Terror Campaign (1978-1995)

Introduction

Between 1978 and 1995, Kaczynski mailed or hand-delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated bombs that cumulatively killed three people and injured 23 others. Sixteen bombs were attributed to Kaczynski. While the bombing devices varied widely through the years, many contained the initials "FC", which Kaczynski later said stood for "Freedom Club", inscribed on parts inside. He purposely left misleading clues in the devices and took extreme care in preparing them to avoid leaving fingerprints; fingerprints found on some of the devices did not match those found on letters attributed to Kaczynski.

Bombings carried out by Kaczynski:

Timeline Order & Jump Link	Date	State	Location	Detonation	Victim(s)	Occupation of victim(s)	Injuries
#1	May 25, 1978	Illinois	Northwestern University	Yes	Terry Marker	University police officer	Minor cuts and burns
#2	May 9, 1979	Illinois	Northwestern University	Yes	John Harris	Graduate student	Minor cuts and burns
#3	November 15, 1979	Illinois	American Airlines Flight 444 from Chicago to Washington, D.C. (explosion occurred midflight)	Yes	Twelve passengers	Multiple	Non-lethal smoke inhalation
#4	June 10, 1980	Illinois	Lake Forest	Yes	Percy Wood	President of United Airlines	Severe cuts and burns over most of body and face
#5	October 8, 1981	Utah	University of Utah	Bomb defused
#6	May 5, 1982	Tennessee	Vanderbilt University	Yes	Janet Smith	University secretary	Severe burns to hands; shrapnel wounds to body
#7	July 2, 1982	California	University of California, Berkeley	Yes	Diogenes Angelakos	Engineering professor	Severe burns and shrapnel wounds to hand and face
#8	May 15, 1985	California	University of California, Berkeley	Yes	John Hauser	Graduate student	Loss of four fingers and severed artery in right arm; partial loss of vision in left eye
#9	June 13, 1985	Washington	The Boeing Company in Auburn	Bomb defused
#10	November 15, 1985	Michigan	University of Michigan	Yes	James V. McConnell	Psychology professor	Temporary hearing loss
#11	November 15, 1985	Michigan	University of Michigan	Yes	Nicklaus Suino	Research assistant	Burns and shrapnel wounds
#12	December 11, 1985	California	Sacramento	Yes	Hugh Scrutton	Computer store owner	Death
#13	February 20, 1987	Utah	Salt Lake City	Yes	Gary Wright	Computer store owner	Severe nerve damage to left arm
#14	June 22, 1993	California	Tiburon	Yes	Charles Epstein	Geneticist	Severe damage to both eardrums with partial hearing loss, loss of three fingers
#15	June 24, 1993	Connecticut	Yale University	Yes	David Gelernter	Computer science professor	Severe burns and shrapnel wounds, damage to right eye, loss of use of right hand
#16	December 10, 1994	New Jersey	North Caldwell	Yes	Thomas J. Mosser	Advertising executive at Burson-Marsteller	Death
#17	April 24, 1995	California	Sacramento	Yes	Gilbert Brent Murray	Timber industry lobbyist	Death

1. May 25-26, 1978: Northwestern Security Guard Injured by ‘Unabomber’ Exploding Package

Don Foster:[1]

Ted Kaczynski chose his designated victims (those whose names he actually put on a parcel) by searching for them in academic reference works. … While Professor Smith of RPI was not widely published, nor well known in his field, nor known personally to Kaczynski, his name and field of expertise appear in a reference work called Dissertation Abstracts International (the DAI), a useful research tool containing a trove of information about newcomers to academic disciplines.

The DAI identifies “Edward John Smith (1966), RPI” as a computer and aerospace engineer with a pilot design for “Attitude Control” intended for guiding the pitch of large orbital spacecraft.

If there’s one phrase that Ted Kaczynski had hated since childhood more than any other (even “technological society”), it was “attitude control.” Edward John Smith, the “attitude control” engineer, was a perfect first target for Ted the Iceman, a.k.a. coolheaded logician Kaczynski.

So, despite attitude control not having the same meaning here, perhaps the term caught his eye whilst searching through the catalogue for scientists advancing high-tech research. As he would write later:[2]

All the university people whom we have attacked have been specialists in technical fields. (We consider certain areas of applied psychology, such as behavior modification, to be technical fields.) We would not want anyone to think that we have any desire to hurt professors who study archaeology, history, literature or harmless stuff like that. The people we are out to get are the scientists and engineers, especially in critical fields like computers and genetics.

Writing in August after having arrived back at his cabin, Ted explained:[3]

I came back to the Chicago area in May, mainly for one reason: So that I could more safely attempt to murder a scientist, businessman, or the like. Before leaving Montana I made a bomb in a kind of box, designed to explode when the box was opened. This was a long, narrow box. I picked the name of an electrical engineering professor out of the catalogue of the Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute and addressed the bomb -- a package to him.

I took the package to downtown Chicago, intending to mail it from there (this was in late May, I think around the 28th or 29th), but it didn’t fit in mail boxes and the post-office package-drops I checked did not look as if they would swallow such a long package except in one post-office (Merchandise Mart); but that was where I had bought stamps for the package a few days before, so I was afraid to go there again because, going there twice in a short time, my face might be remembered.

So I took the bomb over to the U. of Illinois Chicago Circle Campus, and surreptitiously dropped it between two parked cars in the lot near the science and technology buildings.

I hoped that a student ‒ preferably one in a scientific field ‒ would pick it up, and would either be a good citizen and take the package to a post office to be sent to Renssalaer, or would open the package himself and blow his hands off, or get killed.

I checked the newspapers carefully afterward but could get no information about the outcome of what I did ‒ the papers seem to report only crimes of special importance.

I have not the least feelilng of guilt about this ‒ on the contrary I am proud of what I did. But I wish I had some assurance that I succeeded in killing or maiming someone.

I am now working, in odd moments on another bomb.

Describing the bombing:[4][5]

An unmailed package is found in a car park at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and brought to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, because of its return address; the addressee now teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Buckley Crist, the material sciences professor named in the return address on the package cannot identify it, and turns it over to campus security. When Northwestern police officer Terry Marker opens it, it explodes, injuring him slightly. The package contains a pipe bomb packed in a carved wooden box. The bomb is made of a nine-inch pipe filled with explosive powders and triggered by a nail held by rubber bands that strikes and ignites match heads when the box is opened. The package contains 10 $1 commemorative Eugene O’Neill stamps on its outer wrapper. Authorities will later speculate that the bomber may have chosen the O’Neill stamps because the playwright was an ardent supporter of anarchists.

GREG: The Unabomber's first bomb ended up at Northwestern University based on a return address. The return address on the package was to a professor in the technological institute. The bomb was found in a parking lot.

JOEL: It's got a label on it, it's got postage on it, it's ready to be mailed. So why wasn't it mailed? Why is it laying in this parking lot? We reconstructed it exactly how it was, and that's when we found it wouldn't fit through the door of the mailbox. So, the bomber probably built it, got to the mailbox and it wouldn't fit. And then what do you do? Well, you drop it and you leave.

GREG: And it was retrieved by an officer from the, uh, Department of Security. It did partially detonate which caused minor injuries.

JOEL: No one recognizes this bomber. No one has seen this bomber's work before. The bomber is clever, but he's clearly not an expert bomb maker.

PETER: He's making these clumsy bombs with wooden ends to them, using black powder as a propellant. He's using this kind of very crude detonating system - match heads. They're not all that sophisticated.

On seeing no mention of a bomb explosion in the newspapers Kaczynski wrote:[6]

I did make an attempt with a bomb, whether successful or not I don't know.

2. May 9, 1979: John Harris, a graduate student at Northwestern University, is injured by a bomb.

On Aug 21, 1978 he wrote:[7]

I am now working, in odd moments on another bomb.

Then on May 31, 1979, after briefly travelling back and forth to Chicago to place the bomb he wrote:[8]

The bomb mentioned just above used match-heads as an explosive. Earlier this month I left it in a room marked “graduate student research” at the Technological Institute at Northwestern University. The bomb used match-heads as an explosive. The bomb was in a cigar box and was arranged to go off when the box was opened. I did it this way instead of mailing the bomb to someone because an unexpected package in the mail might arouse suspicion, especially since a short while before there had been an incident in the news where cops in Alabama had been killed and maimed by a bomb sent them in the mail.

According to the newspaper, a "graduate researcher" at northwestern was "hospitalized with cuts on the arms and burns around the eyes." (Tribune, May 9) Unfortunately, I didn't notice anything in the article indicating that he would suffer any permanent disability. I figured the bomb was probably not powerful enough to kill (unless one of the lead pellets I put in it happened to penetrate a vital organ). But I had hoped that the victim would be blinded or have his hands blown off or be otherwise maimed. Actually, the guy might have been blinded if he hadn’t been wearing glasses. The article said his “eyeglasses were blown off.” He had burns around the eyes, and maybe he would have had burns in the eyes if his glasses hadn’t momentarily absorbed the flow of hot gasses. Well, at least I put him in the hospital, which is better than nothing. But not enough to satisfy me. Well, live and learn. No more match-head bombs. I wish I knew how to get hold of some dynamite.

More details:[9][10][11]

May 9, 1979 - A bomb hidden in a Phillies brand cigar box is left on a table in the Technical Building on the Northwestern University campus. The device is left untouched until mid-afternoon, when John G. Harris, a graduate student in the Civil Engineering department, opens the box. The resulting explosion causes him cuts and burns, but not serious injury.

On May 9, 1979, exactly one year after his first bomb attack, a second device exploded at Northwestern University in Evanston, just forty-five minutes from his family’s modest five-room home in Lombard. This device was hand delivered and was found with no address and no postmark. Kaczynski detailed his bombings in his journals and even explained his rationale for sending explosives to unsuspecting and innocent individuals across the nation. “I intend to start killing people,” Ted wrote in one entry that was later submitted to the court by a government psychiatrist as proof that Kaczynski was not mentally ill and was fit to stand trial.

The bomb used match-heads as an explosive. The bomb was in a cigar box and was arranged to go off when the box was opened. According to the newspaper, a "graduate researcher" at northwestern [John Harris] was "hospitalized with cuts on the arms and burns around the eyes." Unfortunately, I didn't notice anything in the article indicating that he would suffer any permanent disability.

3. November 14, 1979: Explosive on Plane Fails Partially Detonates, Passengers Suffered From Smoke Inhalation

Court TV:[12]

November 14, 1979 - A parcel with a bomb hidden inside is mailed from a post office in the Chicago area.

November 15, 1979 - It is routed by the Post Office to Washington, D.C. and put aboard an American Airlines Boeing 727. The bomb, equipped with a barometer to measure altitude, explodes as the plane reaches 34,500 feet. Smoke fills the cabin and the pilots are forced to make an emergency landing at Dulles Airport near Washington. Eighteen passengers are treated on the scene for smoke inhalation and the baggage compartment is damaged by fire resulting from the explosion. The FBI later attributes the bomb to the Unabomber.

Ted's Journal:[13]

MONDAY, JAN. 23, 1978

Yesterday … was a very happy day. Only a few jets passed over, and mostly there was peace and quiet.

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 — I heard only 8 jets. Today was good in the early morning, but later in the 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. 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 shit 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?

DEC 29, 1979.

Late summer and early autumn I constructed a device. Much expense, because I had to go to Gr. Falls to buy materials, including a barometer and many boxes of cartridges for the powder.

In some of my notes I mentioned a plan-for revenge on society, the plan was to blow up an airliner in flight. Late summer and early autumn I constructed-device. Much expense, because had to go to gr. Falls to-buy materials, including barometer and many boxes cartridges for the powder. I put more than a quart of-smoke less powder in a can, rigged barometer so device would-explode at 2000ft. Or conceivably as high as 3500ft. Due-to variation of atmospheric pressure.

In late October I mailed the package from Chicago as priority mail so it would go by air. Unfortunately plane not destroyed, bomb too weak. Newspaper said was “low power device”. Surprised me.

Possible explanations… defective barometer. Light touch of barometer needle on contact is not absolutely reliable in transmitting current. I will try again if I can get a better explosive.

Bomb did not accomplish much. Probably destroyed some mail. At least it gave them a good scare. The papers said the FBI are investigating the incident. The FBI can suck my cock.

So I came back to Montana early December, now working on another plan.

4. June 10, 1980: Package Injures United Airlines President

FBI Report:[14]

UNABOM Device #4 was mailed from Chicago, Illinois to Percy Wood, then President of United Airlines, on June 6, 1980.

Court TV:[15]

June 9, 1980 - A package arrives at the home of United Airlines president Percy Wood. Several days earlier, Wood had received a letter from an Enoch W. Fischer at his home in Lake Forest, Ill, which said that Fischer would send to Wood, in a separate package, a book of great importance to all business executives.

Here’s the initial letter sent a few days before the bomb:[16]

3414 N. Ravenswood
Chicago, IL 60657
June 3, 1980

Mr. Percy Addison Wood
887 Forest Hill
Lake Forest, IL 60045
Dear Mr. Wood:

I am taking the liberty of sending you, under separate cover, a book which I believe to have great social significance. I am sending copies of this book, “Ice Brothers,” by Sloan Wilson, to a number of prominent people in the Chicago area because I believe this to be truly a book for our time, a book that should be read by all who make important decisions affecting the public welfare.

I realize that a man in your position does not have time to read every book that is recommended to him, so that I may have wasted time and money in sending you a copy of Mr. Wilson’s work. But I feel sure that it will be worth your while to at least glance through the book. Since it is as entertaining as it is significant, perhaps you will then decide to read the entire work.

Sincerely,
Enoch W. Fischer

Court TV:[17]

When Wood opens the book, a device inside explodes, causing Wood serious cuts on his face and thigh. The initials "FC" are discovered etched into a metal remnant of the bomb, authorities later learn that “FC” stands for “Freedom Club.”

Coded journal:[18]

In June 1980, I sent a bomb to P. S. Wood, Pses. of United Air Lines according to newspapers he was hospitalized with cuts and burns and had surgery for removal of fragments. FBI said bomb had enough powder to kill, but “faulty craftmanship weakened it cause culprit left something loose.” This is false though, my design may have been poor due to ignorance of the technology. … I know for certain there was nothing ‘loose’ in the explosive unit itself, because the ends of the pipe were stopped with plugs fastened with epoxy and for each plug two nails passing thru plug and both sides of pipe. … After complicated preparations I succeeded in injuring the pres of United A.L.

Later he wrote:[19]

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 doesn’t 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 don't occur often enough to be a problem. I am definitely glad to have done what I have.

Don Foster:[20]

The sender and address are fictitious. At “3414 N. Ravenswood” agents found only a vacant lot on the North Line tracks, halfway between the Chicago Loop and Northwestern University.

Looking for an appropriate victim, the Unabomber had once again visited a library, consulting the 1978–1979 edition of Who’s Who in America, and selected “WOOD, Percy Addison” as the best target for a bomb from among the seventy-five famous Woods listed there.

In 1968, he was named the Bay Area’s “Industry Man of the Year.” He now lived on Forest Hill Road in Lake Forest. He ran a commercial airline, and was a member of two clubs plus the Society of Automotive Engineers.

5. October 8, 1981: A bomb is found in a University of Utah classroom in Salt Lake City.

A description of the event:[21]

October 8, 1981 - A student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City discovers a large wrapped package in a hallway and brings it to the attention of a staff member, who calls the campus police. The campus police chief believes it is a bomb and brings in a bomb squad, which diffuses the device with a small explosive charge. The device is later found to contain a small metal tag with "FC" stamped on it.

Ted's Journal:[22]

My projects for revenge on the technological society are expensive and I need money to carry them out. For instance, last fall I attempted a bombing and spent nearly three hundred bucks just for travel expenses, motel, clothing for disguise, etc. aside from cost of materials for bomb. And then the thing failed to explode. Damn. This was the firebomb found in University of Utah business school outside the door of a room containing some computer stuff.

6. May 5, 1982: Janet Smith, a secretary, is injured by a bomb at Vanderbilt University. Addressee was Patrick Fischer.

Here’s a description of the bombing:[23]

May 5, 1982 - A package is mailed to Professor Patrick C. Fischer at Pennsylvania State University. A secretary at Penn State forwards the package to Vanderbilt University, where Fischer has been teaching for over two years -- though at the time he is in Puerto Rico. Janet Smith, Fischer's secretary, is seriously injured on her face and arms when she opens the package, which explodes. The package was mailed from Provo, Utah with a return address of LeRoy Bearnson, an electrical engineering professor at Brigham Young university, using cancelled stamps, presumably so that the package would be returned to the sender. Bearnson later tells investigators he had no knowledge of the package, and they believe the package may have been intended for him. A small metal tag inside the bomb contains the initials "FC."

Ted's Journal:[24]

May about 1982 I sent a bomb to a computer expert named Patrick Fischer. His secretary opened it. One newspaper said she was in hospital? in good condition? With arm and chest cuts. Other newspaper said bomb drove fragments of wood into her flesh. But no indication that she was permanently disabled. Frustrating that I can’t seem to make a lethal bomb. Used shotgun powder in this last hoping it would do better than rifle powder. Revenge attempts have been gobbling much time, impeding other work. But I must succeed, must get revenge.

Unabomber: In His Own Words:[25]

JOEL: The 1982 Corey Hall device contains a note. It's a very short type-written sentence: Wu, W-U, "It works! I told you it would, R.V." Now we have potentially a clue or potentially an intended red herring, but it has to be run out in either case. You try to find people named Wu. Do they know anybody who has initials named R.V.? And if they don't, we still will try to find all the people in that area who have, uh, the name R.V.

KEVIN: You know, you could tell it was a guy who was intellectually enjoying this, and is not stupid. Because a lot of criminals are stupid, or at least ignorant, and they don't do things like the Unabomber did. They don't conduct their campaign of terror the way the Unabomber is conducting his campaign of terror.

7. July 2, 1982: Diogenes Angelakos, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, is injured at the University of California at Berkeley.

Court TV:[26]

July 2, 1982 - UC-Berkeley engineering professor Diogenes J. Angelakos sees what he believes is a piece of engineering equipment on the floor of a faculty lounge in Cory Hall at Berkeley, where the mathematics and computer science departments are located. Upon lifting the object's handle, it explodes and causes him serious injuries to his hand, arm and face.

Ted's Journal:[27]

I went to the University of California Berkeley and I placed in Computer Science Building a bomb consisting of a pipe bomb in a gallon can of gasoline. According to newspapers, the vice chairman of the computer sci. dept. picked it up. He was considered to be ‘out of danger of losing any fingers but would need further surgery for bone and tendon damage in hand. Apparently pipe bomb went off but did not ignite gasoline. I don’t understand it. Frustrated. Traveling expenses for raids such as the foregoing are very hard on my slender financial resources.

8. May 15, 1985: John Hauser is injured by a bomb at the University of California at Berkeley.

Court TV:[28]

John Hauser, a Berkeley graduate student and Air Force captain, discovers a three-ring binder attached to a file box in the computer lab in Cory Hall, the site of the Unabomber attack in May of 1982. When he opens the binder, it explodes. Hauser sustains serious injuries: partial loss of vision in his left eye and trauma to his right hand -- including nerve damage and the loss of four fingers. Diogenes Angelakos, victim of the 1982 bomb, is across the hall when the bomb explodes and uses Hauser's tie to make a tourniquet. One of the metal pins used in the bomb has the letters "FC" etched onto it.

Kaczynski later feels some guilt:[29]

I must admit I feel badly about having crippled this man's arm. It has been bothering me a good deal. This is embarrassing because while my feelings are partly from pity, I am sure they come largely from the training, propaganda, brainwashing we all get, conditioning us to be scared by the idea of doing certain things. It is shameful to be under the sway of this brainwashing. But do not get the idea that I regret what I did.

John Jacobi:[30]

Still, he goes on to argue that the bombing was justified, as Hauser was a pilot and aspiring to be an astronaut, ‘a typical member of the technician class’. Later in his journals he mentioned Hauser again to say, ‘I am no longer bothered by this guy partly because I just “got over it” with time, partly because his aspiration was so ignoble.’

Kaczynski:[31]

So many failures with feeble ineffective bombs was driving me desperate with frustration. Have to get revenge for all the wild country being fucked up by the system….Recently I camped in a paradise like glacial cirque. At evening, beautiful singing of birds was ruined by the obscene roar of jet planes. Then I laughed at the idea of having any compunction about crippling an airplane pilot.

9. June 13, 1985: A package bomb mailed to Boeing in Auburn, Washington, is discovered and disarmed

Court TV:[32]

A brown paper package with a return address of Weiburg Tool & Supply in Oakland, California -- a company that turns out to be fictitious -- arrives at the Fabrication Division of Boeing in Auburn, Washington. Because the parcel has no specific addressee, it remains in interoffice mail until it is sent to the mail room. Employees there partially open it and discover the bomb inside, whereupon they call in a bomb squad, which diffuses the bomb. Both metal plugs sealing the pipe containing the bomb have the initials "FC" stamped on them. The postal stamps used on the package have the phrase "America's Light Fueled By Truth and Reason" and "Of the People By the People For the People" printed on them.

10 & 11. November 15, 1985: Nicklaus Suino is injured by a package bomb mailed to University of Michigan professor James McConnell

Court TV:[33]

Fall of 1985 - Kaczynski allegedly transports a bomb from Montana to Sacramento.

November 15, 1985 - University of Michigan psychology professor James McConnell is sent a package from a Ralph Kloppenburg at the University of Utah. Attached to the outside of the package is a letter to McConnell requesting that he review an enclosed manuscript. When Nick Suino, McConnell's assistant, opens the package, it explodes, injuring Suino's arm and midsection and causing McConnell, who is in the room at the time, to lose part of his hearing. It is later determined that Kloppenberg is a fictitious person. Again, the metal plugs on the bomb have "FC" stamped on them. The same types of postage stamps used on the Boeing bomb are used on this package.

Ted’s letter ruse:[34]

Department of History
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
November 12, 1985

Dr. James V. McConnell
2900 E. Delhi Road
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48103

Dear Dr. McConnell:

I am a doctoral candidate in History at the University of Utah. My field of interest is the history of science, and I am writing my dissertation on the development of the behavioral sciences during the twentieth century.

This dissertation aspires to be more than a mere collection of facts. In it I am attempting to analyse the factors in society at large that tend to promote vigorous development in a given area of science, and especially I am attempting to shed light on the way in which progress in a particular field of research influences the public attitudes toward the field in such a manner as to further accelerate its development, as through research grants, increased interest on the part of the students, and because I believe that they illustrate particularly well my hypotheses concerning the interaction of science and society.

I have now prepared an initial version of the dissertation, but expect to revise it heavily before putting it into final form. Before completing the revisions, I am asking several distinguished researchers in behavioral sciences for their comments on the paper. It is for this purpose that I am sending you herewith a copy of my dissertation on its preliminary form.

Since this dissertation is very long and detailed, I realize that you may not have time to read it in its entirety, but I would appreciate it very much if you could at least look over Chapters 11 and 12, the chapters most closely related to your own field of research, and give me your comments and any corrections you may have. Particularly I would like to know your reaction to the idea outlined in the last three paragraphs of Chapter 12. Of course, any comments that you might care to make on any other part of the dissertation would also be most welcome.

I thank you in advance for your kind assistance.

Very truly yours,

Ralph C. Kloppenburg

After his arrest a coldly detached note was found in his cabin with a copy of this letter:[35]

Letter mailed with the package of exp. 100. The letter was in an envelope attached to the package with tape.

12. December 11, 1985: Shop Owner Killed by ‘Unabomber’ Device Disguised as Road Hazard

Court TV:[36]

In Sacramento, California, Hugh C. Scrutton is killed when he tries to remove what looks to be a road hazard from the parking lot—a block of wood with nails protruding from it inside a paper bag—behind his computer rental shop. The “hazard” is actually a bomb consisting of three 10-inch pipes filled with a mixture of potassium sulfate, potassium chloride, ammonium nitrate, and aluminum powder. The bomb contains shrapnel consisting of sharp chunks of metal, nails, and splinters. It explodes with enormous force, killing Scrutton almost instantly.

Ted's Journal:[37]

Experiment 97.

In the morning of October 3rd[1985], we placed under the igniting wire the first part of the #3 mixture. In the morning of October 6th, we added a little more of the #3 mixture, in order to bring the top of the black powder mass closer to the igniting wire.

In the afternoon of October 8th, the paste of #2 mixture was placed on the igniting wire. In the afternoon of October 9th, another paper cone was correctly placed on the ignitor, the powder paste was finished, and the cone was filled with the paste of #3 mixture.

On the afternoon of October 11th, the paper was removed from the ignitor. At noon on October 24th, the ignitor was covered with a layer of a 5-minute epoxy, and later with a layer of brown wrapping paper glued with a 5-minute epoxy.

At noon on October 25th the ignitor was covered with a layer of paraffin. The paraffin was then scratched with a razor blade, so there was only a very thin layer left.

[October 29], we put in the pipe the lid with the ignitor and we sealed everything well with epoxy. On the afternoon of November 15th, 7.639 units of ^4 mixture were prepared and placed in the pipe.

[November 16] ... the lid was placed on the open end of the pipe and everything was sealed well with epoxy ... the device itself (that is, the pipe with its contents and cover) is now finished.

On December 8th, around 10:00am (official time) the last connection was soldered (fig. 13). The device was deployed on December 11th, 1985.

December 11, 1985, Rentech bomb placed in Sacramento.

[Last entry, December 27] ... the device detonated with very good results.

I planted bomb disguised to look like scrap of lumber behind Rentech Computer Store in Sacramento. According to the San Francisco Examiner, Dec. 20, the 'operator' (owner? manager?) of the store was killed, 'blown to bits', on Dec. 12. Excellent. Humane way to eliminate somebody. He probably never felt a thing. 25000 dollar reward offered. Rather flattering.

December, 1985: Letter to San Francisco Examiner

Ted:[38]

TO THE SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

The bomb that crippled the right arm of a graduate student in electrical engineering and damaged a computer lab at U. of Cal. Berkeley last May was planted by a terrorist group called Freedom Club. We are also responsible for some earlier bombing attempts; among others, the bomb that injured a professor in the computer science building at U. of Cal., the mail bomb that injured the secretary of computer expert Patrick Fischer at Vanderbilt University 3 ½ years ago, and the fire bomb planted at the Business School at the U. of Utah, which never went off. We have nothing against academics as such. We could have attacked businessmen or scientists working for private corporations. But academics are easy targets because anyone can walk into college buildings without being questioned, and academics are less likely to be suspicious of a package received in the mail than someone in the business world would be.

We have waited until now to announce ourselves because our earlier bombs were embarrassingly ineffectual. The injuries they inflicted were relatively minor. In order to influence people, a terrorist group must show a certain amount of success. When we finally realized that the amount of smokeless powder needed to blow up anyone or anything was too large to be practical, we decided to take a couple of years off to learn something about explosive and develop an effective bomb.

First, we had to learn some basic physics, chemistry and mathematics, since none of us had any scientific background to start with. Then we had to go through some time-consuming experiments. That we now have an effective bomb is shown by what we did to that electrical engineer’s arm with less than two ounces of explosive. He would have been killed if he had been standing so as to take the fragments in the body instead of the arm. You can imagine what we will be able to do when we have worked out ways to use this explosive in larger quantities, say ten, twenty five or fifty pounds. We hope those computer freaks over at the university like fireworks, cause they are going to see some good ones.

To prove that we are the ones who planted to bomb at U. of Cal. last May, we will mention a few details that could be known only to us and the FBI men who investigated the incident. The explosive was contained in an iron pipe of nominal ¾ inch (actually about 13/16 inch) inside diameter. The ends of the pipe were closed with iron plugs secured with iron pins, of 5/16 inch diameter. One of the plugs had the letters FC (for Freedom Club) marked on it. (There was a metal disc attached to the plug to help assure a good seal. If this was not blown off it would be necessary to remove it in order to see the letters FC.) The bomb was ignited by electricity passing through a fine steel filament. The load-wires passing through the plug to the filament were 18 gauge with green insulation. The rest of the wiring was 16 gauge with flesh covered insulation. Six Duracell size D batteries were used. This should be enough to prove that we planted the bomb.

We enclose a brief statement partly explaining our aims. We hereby give the San Francisco Examiner permission to print in full any and all of the material contained in this envelope. We give ANYONE permission to print it. We want the material to be in the public domain so that anyone can print it. We don’t know if this note is legally adequate to put our statement in the public domain, especially since we are not going to sign our names to this letter, but you can be sure we are not going to sue anyone for infringement of copyright for printing this material, so you might as well go ahead and print it.

– THE FREEDOM CLUB

1. The aim of the Freedom Club is the complete and permanent destruction of modern industrial society in every part of the world. This means no more airplanes, no more radios, no more miracle drugs, no more paved roads, and so forth. Today a large and growing number of people are coming to recognize the industrial-technological system as the greatest enemy of freedom. Many evidences of these changing attitudes could be cited. For the moment we content ourselves with mentioning one statistic. “According to a January 1980 poll, only 33 percent of the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany [West Germany] still believe that technological development will lead to greater freedom; 56 percent think it is more likely to make us less free.” This is from “1984: Decade of the Experts?” – an article by Johanno Strasser in 1934 revisted: Totalitarianism in our century, edited by Irving Howe and published by Harper and Row, 1983. (This article as a whole helps to show the extent to which technology is becoming a target of social rebellion.)

2. The hollowness of the old revolutionary ideologies centering on socialism has become clear. Now and in the future the thrust of rebellion will be against the industrial-technological system itself and not for or against any political ideology that is supposed to govern the administration of that system. All ideologies and political systems are fakes. They only result in power for special groups who just push the rest of us around. There is only one way to escape from being pushed around, and that is to smash the whole system and get along without it. It is better to be poor and free than to be a slave and get pushed around all your life.

3. No ideology or political system can get around the hard facts of life in industrial society. Because any form of industrial society requires a high level of organization, all decisions have to be made by a small elite of leaders and experts who necessarily wield all the power, regardless of any political fictions that may be maintained. Even if the motives of this elite were completely unselfish, they would still HAVE TO exploit and manipulate us simply to keep the system running. Thus the evil is in the nature of technology itself.

4. Man is a social animal, meant to live in groups. But only in SMALL groups, say up to 100 people, in which all members know one another intimately. Man is not meant to live as an insignificant atom in a vast organization, which is the only way he can live in any form of industrialized society.

5. The Freedom Club is strictly anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-leftist. One reason for this is that the left has a consistent record of unintentionally (when not intentionally) subverting rebel movements of any kind and turning them into leftist movements. Until now, leftism has had an image as THE ideology of rebellion, so that many persons who join any rebel movement are likely to be left-leaning. When enough leftists have joined such a movement it acquires a leftish aroma which attracts still more leftists until the movement becomes just another socialist sect. Therefore the Freedom Club must completely disassociate itself from any form of leftism. This does not imply that we are in any sense a right-wing movement. We are apolitical. Politics only distracts attention from the real issue.

6. Don’t think that we are sadists or thrill-seekers or that we have adopted terrorism lightly. Though we are young we are not hot-heads. We have become terrorists only after the most earnest consideration.

The foregoing statement gives only a very incomplete indication of our goals and motives. We will explain ourselves more fully in later communications.

13. February 20, 1987: ’Unabomber’ Device Explodes, Injuring Utah Shop Owner; Eyewitness Generates Sketch of Suspect

Project Unabom:[39]

Eric: Gary Wright got into the computer business in the early 1980s, computers were different. Back then, they weren't sleek and fast and seamlessly integrated into every aspect. Of our lives. They were industrial, physical, constantly breaking like some old car, or the outboard motor on a boat you needed to get under the hood.

Gary: So, clients would pay 3/5 six, $700.00 a month for you to come out and clean the computer.

Eric: Specifically, Gary would repair the hard drives which had two main parts, a ceramic head and the disc below it where the data was recorded.

Gary: If dust got caught between the head and the media, it would crash that ceramic head into this disc and start tearing off the oxide that was on top of these aluminum. Plates that were spinning at like 3600 RPMS and you'd lose all your data.

Eric: Gary got good at doing this, kind of work, he was a capable technician and he's a really personable guy, a born salesman, talk with Gary a little bit and you want to buy something from him.

So it wasn't long before Gary decided to start his own company and pretty soon they had big contracts with the military with the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, which is where Gary lived, they got into retail and expanded to four locations selling brand new Apple PC's. If you were in Salt Lake City back then and you wanted a Macintosh plus or an Apple 2C, there was a good chance you were going to buy it from Gary. Gary remembers feeling like it was all too good to be true, the way his life was lining up. One morning in February 1987, he's on his way to work on a beautiful blue sky day.

Gary: Sunroofs open music blared. You can imagine I'm a 20 something year old just enjoying life and drive back towards the office and pull into the parking lot. And as I was pulling in, I looked to the right and I saw this piece of debris sitting there like a piece of wood, and I'm like that's kind of weird.

Eric: It was sitting near the front tire of a car. Gary Parks and walks over to pick it up as he gets close. He sees there are a few nails sticking out of it. Like maybe someone was looking to. Puncture the tire of that car.

Gary: I'm walking towards it and I actually hesitated for a second because the nails are like Chrome and I'm thinking that's that's odd. I've never seen chrome nails before, but I still walked towards it and as I bent down to pick it up, there was like a slight click and a whole bunch of pressure and then this sound that sounded like a fighter jet going over, so just a massive screech and the next thing I knew was like 22 feet back.

Eric: 22 feet back and somehow he was still standing.

Gary: I don't remember flying through the air, but I somehow came out of that and landed on my feet and so I don't. I don't know how that happened, whether you know you see movies and maybe it was that exact thing. Just going back through the air few feet off the ground or something and then landing on my feet. And the best way I can describe that feeling was the matrix, where he's avoiding bullets and things like that. It was the weirdest feeling ever. I'm looking at the telephone and electrical wires going into the building in a sine wave, and that sine wave is just moving slow just up and down and I look around and I'm noticing there's little like Snowflake looking things coming down and a piece of red, almost like confetti. Some tape of some sort was spinning down in a circle and kind of just concentric coming down slow and I'm watching it going man, you might die.

Eric: Gary can see that his arms are full of shrapnel. There's blood all over his white shirt. But he's having trouble figuring out what's happened to the rest of his body because he can't bend his neck.

Gary: The reason I couldn't bend my neck down was when the bomb exploded, being inside of wood there would turn into like millions of slivers, but they had impaled themselves under my neck. So I was like a porcupine and I was basically crunching down on those. Pieces of wood, those slivers that were impaled in my neck, so it was a little weird feeling. I mean, I didn't feel any pain, but at the same time I was just having trouble looking down and around.

Eric: Molten metal had burned holes deep into his body, severed a nerve in his forearm, cut an artery, but also cauterized that wound, which Gary thinks probably saved his life. There was metal all over his face. His sunglasses were pitted with tiny craters from the blast. He looked like he was wearing welders goggles. A chunk of wood from the bomb hit his mouth with so much force he'd need years of dental work to repair the damage to his teeth. Splinters from the device were everywhere.

Gary: The wood was particularly tough because it's an organic and you can't see that on an X-ray very well. So, like years later, I'd be shaving and I'd hit what I thought was a hard whisker and there'd be 1/2 inch piece of wood I'd pull out.

Eric: The injuries Gary Wright sustained that day took a major toll. Multiple surgeries. Years of physical therapy, a few things he's living with to this day, but once the violent shock began to wear off, Gary asked himself. Who did this to me and why?

Gary: I literally went back and recreated everything I possibly remember and I'm a kind of person I remember. Every school teacher I'm in for every phone number whatever, but to go back and recreate every relationship I could possibly think of and every person I could have made angry from kindergarten forward. I mean I had people. That I had met on jobs in California years prior that I just felt like, well, that was just slightly off. I mean, could it have been them?

Project Unabom:[40]

Eric: A few minutes before Gary Bent down to pick up that piece of wood in the parking lot, one of his employees, a woman named Tammy Flui, looked out the back window of the office and saw a stranger walking through the parking lot carrying something. She watched him. Placed the thing near the tire of her car, then walk off. The whole thing was odd. But she was busy and figured she'd take care of it later. And then the bomb went off in the midst of the chaos, she realized that was the guy. And she'd gotten a good look at him. Aviator sunglasses, a hoodie, facial hair, and soon there was that famous forensic sketch. The investigation into the Unabomber was almost a decade old. This was the 12th bomb and the sketch made from Tammy's eyewitness account would be seen by millions of people. It was easily. The biggest break the case had ever had.

The FBI, the ATF, the US Postal Service, the local police in Salt Lake City, they weren't going to let this moment pass. Dozens of agents swooped into the area and set-up a multi agency UNABOM task force. There was a makeshift command center in a gymnasium where they chase down all kinds of leads. But nothing lead anywhere agents looked into it, but any potential suspects got ruled out quickly. The task force kept at it for a few months, but by the late spring activity was dropping off. Agents got reassigned, that big bustling command center got shut down.

John: When they came to the conclusion that they were kind of disbanding the Unabomber task force, it was kind of a bummer in a way, because it's like, Oh well, we're never going to know.

14. June 22, 1993: Charles Epstein, a geneticist at University of California at San Francisco, is injured by a bomb sent to his home.

June 16-18, 1993 - Kaczynski transports several bombs from Montana to Sacramento.

June 18, 1993 - Kaczynski mails a bomb, contained in a wooden box and placed in a padded envelope, from Sacramento to nearby Tiburon, to the residence of Dr. Charles Epstein, a geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco. The return address on the bomb is listed as James Hill, a chemist at California State University, Sacramento. He also mails a similar bomb to Dr. David Gelernter, a computer science professor at Yale University. The package to Gelernter has a return address listed as Mary Jane Lee of the computer science department at Cal State in Sacramento. Neither Hill nor Lee had any knowledge of the packages at the time.

June 22, 1993 - One package arrives at Epstein's house. His daughter brings it from the mailbox and leaves it on the kitchen counter. Late that afternoon, Epstein opens the package in his kitchen. It explodes, causing him a broken arm, abdominal trauma and the loss of several fingers.

15. June 24, 1993: David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale University, is injured

The New York Times:[41]

A prominent computer science professor at Yale University was critically injured yesterday by a mail bomb that Federal officials said marked the re-emergence of a mysterious bomber who terrorized campuses and high-technology companies around the country in the 1970's and 80's.

Court TV:[42]

June 23, 1993 - The mail bomb sent to Gelernter explodes when he opens it, causing him to lose sight in one eye, hearing in one ear and the loss of part of his right hand. He claims that he had to drag himself down five flights of stairs to a university hospital a block away. Shortly after the bombing, the switchboard at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center received a call saying, "You are next." Gelernter's brother Joel, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, works at the VA hospital. Joel Gelernter is also a geneticist, and authorities look for connections to the Epstein bombing.

Ted:[43]

I take very seriously the suffering that David Gelernter underwent. Gelernter is no cliche, but a highly intelligent, thoughtful, talented, and sensitive man whom no one could describe as a mere stereotype. I consider that he deserved what he got, but that is a judgement that I do not adopt lightly and it is one about which I have mixed feelings.

The New York Times:[44]

Mr. Gelernter, who had studied to become a rabbi, is best known for inventing an innovative computer programming language he named Linda, after the pornography star Linda Lovelace. It has attracted a wide following in both the scientific world and for its commercial applications in publishing and computer animation. He has also expressed a strong commitment to applying computer technology to a wide array of social and economic problems.

Los Angeles Times:[45]

University officials and Gelernter’s colleagues said he is widely known in the computer-science community for writing a computer language called Linda, which makes it possible to link a number of small computers together in order to solve problems that only ultra-expensive supercomputers could tackle a few years ago.

Here’s a description of the popular techno-futurist book written by Gelernter which Ted may have seen advertised in a newspaper or simply came across in the library:[46]

Technology doesn't flow smoothly; it's the big surprises that matter, and Yale computer expert David Gelernter sees one such giant leap right on the horizon. Today's small scale software programs are about to be joined by vast public software works that will revolutionize computing and transform society as a whole. One such vast program is the Mirror World.

Imagine looking at your computer screen and seeing reality--an image of your city, for instance, complete with moving traffic patterns, or a picture that sketches the state of an entire far-flung corporation at this second. These representations are called Mirror Worlds, and according to Gelernter they will soon be available to everyone. Mirror Worlds are high-tech voodoo dolls: by interacting with the images, you interact with reality. Indeed, Mirror Worlds will revolutionize the use of computers, transforming them from (mere) handy tools to crystal balls which will allow us to see the world more vividly and see into it more deeply. Reality will be replaced gradually, piece-by-piece, by a software imitation; we will live inside the imitation; and the surprising thing is--this will be a great humanistic advance. We gain control over our world, plus a huge new measure of insight and vision.

In this fascinating book--part speculation, part explanation--Gelernter takes us on a tour of the computer technology of the near future. Mirror Worlds, he contends, will allow us to explore the world in unprecedented depth and detail without ever changing out of our pajamas. A hospital administrator might wander through an entire medical complex via a desktop computer. Any citizen might explore the performance of the local schools, chat electronically with teachers and other Mirror World visitors, plant software agents to report back on interesting topics; decide to run for the local school board, hire a campaign manager, and conduct the better part of the campaign itself--all by interacting with the Mirror World.

Gelernter doesn't just speculate about how this amazing new software will be used--he shows us how it will be made, explaining carefully and in detail how to build a Mirror World using technology already available. We learn about disembodied machines, trellises, ensembles, and other computer components which sound obscure, but which Gelernter explains using familiar metaphors and terms. (He tells us that a Mirror World is a microcosm just like a Japanese garden or a Gothic cathedral, and that a computer program is translated by the computer in the same way a symphony is translated by a violinist into music.)

Mirror Worlds offers a lucid and humanistic account of the coming software revolution, told by a computer scientist at the cutting edge of his field.

June 24, 1993: Joel Gelernter, is threatened with a terror attack

According to the New York Times the bombing occurred around 8 A.M. at the computer science center at Yale University in New Haven.[47]

According to the Los Angeles Times in the ‘midmorning’ hours, so between 8-10 A.M. The switchboard at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in New Haven received a call saying, "You are next."[48]

Gelernter's brother Joel, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, works at the VA hospital. Joel Gelernter is also the author of research into the connection between genetics and alcoholism. Charles Epstein, a geneticist was injured two days earlier in a similar mail bombing.

Federal agents checked Joel Gelernter's mail, but the hospital wasn't evacuated. Assistant Chief Dean Eserman of the New Haven police said the authorities did not know if the bombing and the phone threat were related.

Kaczynski sent a letter to the New York Times that had to be postmarked, so in the mail system a day before this bombing, and yet had to arrive a day later than the bombing, in order to prove he knew the bombing was going to happen ahead of time. So for them not to simply dismiss the letter before or long after it happened.

So, he already needed to know what day the parcel would be delivered. This would align with how he knew the bomb would be delivered that morning and so why he felt confident calling that morning.

Phoning was the fulfilment of a closer to in person cruelty that he hadn't managed to work up the courage to do early in his criminal career, but he had devised a plan to be at a safe enough distance to not back down this time after the plan was set in motion with the New York Times letter.

His first plan to mutilate someone had been an ex-romance which had proved too much for him in person.

His first plan to kill had been in-person in a likely murder-suicide of a scientist, and at at least one time after the many mail bombings he hoped to kill someone in person in another likely murder-suicide, but each time the prospect of coming face to face with the person he wanted to kill broke his nerves.

So, I think mail bombings were very much his second-best option to fulfilling his emotional desires to experience visiting his cruelties on someone in person. Even though intellectually he did feel mailbombing was a safer and more effective means of targeting more specific people that he felt were closer up the ‘neck of the snake’ of technological progress.

We’ve seen in this book how the practice of attempting to overcome these inhibitions locally carried on, despite the risk. For instance shooting at helicopters and cows. Putting up wire across trees in an attempt to decapitate dirt bikers. And the shooting of a miner in the back, with the same 30-30 rounds he favoured which he had written about in his diary.

Finally, we know he was not above using some technology such as payphones, as he made a point of visiting and sending letters to the phone company for feeling that the machines robbed him of many of his coins.[49] As well in his books and letters from prison he has advocated people who want to destroy technological society ought to be at the forefront of grassroots taught technological competence:[50]

Of course, technology can be used by rebels, too, against the established power-structure. Thus, a future revolution probably will not be carried out in the same way as any of the revolutions of the past or present.

Instead, the outcome will depend heavily on technological manipulations, both by the authorities and by the revolutionaries. The importance for revolutionaries of technological competence is therefore evident.

June 24, 1993: Letter to Warren Hodge of the New York Times

Ted:[51]

We are an anarchist group calling ourselves FC. Notice that the postmark on this envelope precedes a newsworthy event that will happen about the time you receive this letter, if nothing goes wrong. This will prove that we knew about the event in advance, so our claim of responsibility is truthful. Ask the FBI about FC. They have heard of us. We will give information about our goals at some future time. Right now we only want to establish our identity and provide an identifying number that will ensure the authenticity of any future communications from us. Keep this number secret so that no one else can pretend to speak in our name.

553-25-4394

Late Summer of 1993: First letter to Earth First!

Mailed from Helena in late summer of 1993

EARTH FIRST! JOURNAL
POB 5176
Missoula, Montana 59806

Dear SFB,

It seems to me that the EARTH FIRST! JOURNAL is neglecting an important tactic. The JOURNAL should regularly publish lists of ecocriminals, stating the environmental crimes of each, and giving their home addresses and phone numbers. An entry in the list might read, for example, “H. Greed Moneygrubber, member of board of directors of Arborophagous Lumber Company, which has aggressively lobbied for more timber-cutting in national forests, regularly engages in irresponsible logging practices, and is currently cutting in the Wilderness Mountain area of the Pristine National Forest. Office; Suite 1000A+, Collosal Building, Metropolis, Washington 99999, phone (000) OOO-OOOO. Home: 69 Woodland Way, Rich-bitch Hills, Washington 99999. phone (OOO) 000-0069."

Publishing the home addresses and phone numbers of these people is important. They usually have unlisted phone numbers, for obvious reason. If they get angry phone calls from environmentalists at their office, or if protesters gather outside the company building, that is only a minor annoyance. But if protesters gather at the homes of these ecocriminals or phone them at 2:00AM, that hits them where it hurts.

The problem is how to find out their addresses and phone numbers so you can publish them. Maybe you could hire a private detective to teach you how to dig up such information. (Best not to tell him you're from EF! though.)

C.U. Laatter

16. December 10, 1994: Bomb Kills Ad Executive; ‘Unabomber’ Justifies Murder by Citing Exxon Valdez Oil Spill

December 10, 1994 A package bomb explodes outside the North Caldwell, New Jersey house of Thomas Mosser, the executive vice president of advertising firm Young & Rubicam. Mosser is killed in the explosion when he opens the package. The return address is listed as H.C. Wickel at San Francisco State University. Subsequent investigation determines that no such person exists. The bombing is attributed to the Unabomber.

Project Unabom:[52]

The Moser device was particularly devastating. It was detonated on a Saturday afternoon when Moser's wife and two young daughters were at home. If one of the girls hadn't darted into another room to stage a pretend tea party a few seconds before Moser. Opened the package. The bomb might very well have killed her and her mother Susan. Susan Moser was the first person to respond to the scene. She found her husband bleeding profusely, his stomach slashed open his face, blackened and disfigured.

Cathy Puckett, specialized in sensitive interviews so she got the call to go visit the Moser family a few weeks after the attack.

Cathy: I mean when I got there to interview the, you know, Susan Moser, his widow, there were still it was still crime scene. The kitchen was still a crime scene and there were green paneling nails still embedded in the cast iron pots that were hanging up over the sink. So, she'd been living in that crime scene since we were there in. I think we were there early January. [So, a month later.]

Eric: The Thomas Mosher bomb turned a long running investigation into an episode of 24. It was more powerful than the ones received by Charles Epstein and David Gelernter. It was the kind of bomb that really could bring down an airplane. The task force had limitless resources. The backing of the highest levels of the federal government and their efforts had come to nothing. They hadn't spooked the Unabomber, they had no clue who he was or where he was. Max Knoll remembers the feeling of desperation.

Max: Thomas Moser had just been killed, were working virtually 16 and more hours a day with our noses to the grindstone and were working nights and weekends and so forth.

Alston Chase:[53]

IN NOVEMBER 1994, an environmental group calling itself the "Native Forest Network" held a meeting in Missoula, Montana, dubbed the "Second International Temperate Forest Conference." Its topic was "Focus on Multinationals." Up to five hundred people attended. Among the literature available at the convocation was a radical environmentalist publication, Live Wild or Die!, whose cover declared, "Hastening the downfall, hearkening the dawn."

This pamphlet also contained an "Eco-Fucker Hit List," which identified enemy number one as the Timber Association of California and gave readers the name and address of its communications officer, Roberta Anderson. Enemy number three was the Exxon Corporationdubbed "Hexxon"-put there because of its culpability in the Prince William Sound oil spill. And a passing topic of discussion at the meeting was the charge, made in the June 21, 1993, issue of Earth First! Journal, that a public relations firm the magazine identified as "BurstonMarsteller" should share blame for the accident, for cleaning up the corporation's image afterward.

In fact, this information was inaccurate. Anderson had died several years previously. The association had changed its name to the California Forestry Association. There was no "t" in Burson, and this agency had never worked on the oil spill issue. But Kaczynski, who would later confess at his trial to have read the Earth First! Journal article, almost certainly saw the "Eco-Fucker Hit List," and may have even attended the conference, believed these false claims. And he would do something about it.

How the prosecution knew this fact was simple:[54]

[D]uring the search of the defendant's cabin, the Government found a letter written to Earth First!ers. Its title was 'Suggestions for Earth First!ers from FC'. That letter stated in part, 'As for the Mosser bombing'-and I'm quoting now - 'our attention was called to Burson-Marsteller by an article that appeared in Earth First!, Litha,' which is the way of describing the edition of that joumal, 'June 21st, 1993, page 4'.

Firstly, here is that Earth First article:[55]

B.C.

New studies provide irrefutable evidence of a joint government-industrial strategy to destroy the remaining wild areas before they can be protected. Most of the remaining wild areas will be roaded and logged in the next three to five years.

—Scott Greacen

The war over British Columbia's last vast wilderness areas is moving into its final stages. BC populations of keystone species like Grizzly and Salmon face a future so bleak it defies imagination. How could a region so vast and wild be so swiftly and utterly laid waste?

British Columbia has millions of acres of roadless wilderness, the last and greatest wildlands of temperate North America, and some dedicated folks working to keep the wild alive. But the province's politics are still caught in an industrial death-grip. BC is a virtual colony of the multinational corporations which hold the rights to strip the almost all of the province's remaining forests. BC's legal system protects timber companies, not natural systems. Its citizens cannot sue to stop illegal projects; in most cases, they don't even have the right to see government plans.

In BC as elsewhere, activists are moving from a blobs-on-the-map vision of wilderness protection to landscape- level conservation planning. Unfortunately, the multinationals have learned from the US, and the BC government is running full steam ahead on a program of landscape-leveling devastation. A stream of barges is now steaming up the BC coast, carrying heavy equipment to the last great valleys of virgin temperate rainforest. And nobody even knows it's happening.

This spring, BC's New Democratic Party (NDP) government approved the timber industry's plan for the forests of Clayoquot (klak'-wit) Sound, and by doing so dropped all pretense to environmental sensitivity. As the last large, mostly intact area left on either coast of Vancouver Island, Clayoquot Sound is essential to the survival of native ecosystems on the island, and the decades- long struggle to protect the sound has become the political centerpiece of the battle for BC's forest wilderness. In rage and disgust at the government's decision—and its investment of $50 million in Macmillan Bloedel—even the terminally timid groups which dominate BC environmental politics have withdrawn from the government's CORE (Commission on Resources and the Environment) processes.

The CORE process is a multiparty roundtable process which, together with the ludicrous PAS (Protected Area Strategy)—a scheme focused on protecting a representative scrap of each of BC's native ecosystems—was supposed to have been the NDP's great solution to the crises of BC's natural resource policies. But both "planning" processes have been revealed as "talk-and-log shows," in which the only areas getting even temporary protection are those for which replacement sacrifice areas can be found. The Webb Reports Activists' bitter feelings have been crystallized by two reports prepared for CORE by researcher Clinton Webb. Using government plans not previously available to the public, Webb has painstakingly confirmed activists' worst nightmares, providing irrefutable evidence of a deliberate government-industrial strategy to destroy the remaining wild areas before they can be protected. "The conservation options are disappearing very quickly," Webb told the joumal. "There are hundreds of people working full time planning and approving logging plans, and only a handful working to monitor and trying to stop the plans."

Webb prepared reports for the three most hotly disputed regions of the province: Vancouver Island, the Cariboo-Chilcotin, and the Kootenays. His first task was to inventory wilderness areas, including many important areas about which environmental groups know little or nothing. Having mapped the "conservation options," Webb then compared the remaining undeveloped areas with five-year logging plans approved by the BC Ministry of Forests.

The results are stupefying. On Vancouver Island, where between 2.5% and 3.5% of the islands magnificent temperate old growth forests have been protected in reserves, Webb was able to identify 295 unprotected wilderness sub- areas. 98 or 33% are scheduled for logging in 1992 alone, and 194, or 66% will be cut by 1995/6. According to his report,

"a total of 215 or 73% of the remaining unprotected wilderness sub- areas ... were found to be either potentially threatened or definitely scheduled for logging between 1992 and 1995/6. Because road building usually precedes actual logging by one or two years, this fragmentation and loss of wilderness conservation options will occur within the next two or three years unless the logging plans are significantly changed in the very near future."

Counting cutblocks (clearcuts, and big ones: BC holds the world's record for clearcut size), Webb identified a total of 1050 planned cutblocks for Vancouver Island, 1201 forthe Cariboo-Chilcotin, and 1326 in the Kootenays. That's a total of 3577 major clearcuts planned for areas that are now wild, all to be completed by 1997/8.

It is difficult, but very important, to understand the implications of Webb's report He offers an analogy: "It's like a bathtub when you pull the plug. Itdrains slowly at first, but when you get near the bottom it flows out very quickly indeed." The bottom line is stark. In the next two or three years, BC will make choices about wilderness destruction that will not be open again for the next two or three thousand years.

The Rest of the Grim Picture

BC environmentalists don't have a lot left to work with. They've run public education campaigns envied the world over. They can't sue. Big Timber owns the conservative politicians and much of the media outright, and uses Big Labor to keep progressives on a tight leash. Peaceful blockades by desperate communities, including hundreds by forceful, committed bands of native people (known in Canada as First Nations), have been met with a ruthless, coordinated campaign of intimidation and suppression by industry and government. On Vancouver Island alone, 107 people have been prosecuted for interfering with logging operations. Many have been sentenced to hundreds of hours of community service, and given two years' probation while more than 20 others have spent up to 45 days in jail. Activists across the province face a wave of SLAPP suits as well.

The BC Forest Alliance has retained the services of the world's largest public relations firm, Burston-Marsteller Ltd. of New York. This company practices a highly sophisticated form of conflict management, and has previously represented the Argentinean government, Union Carbide after Bhopal; and Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Burston- Marsteller has apparently had quite a bit to do with shaping the provincial media's coverage of forest and other environmental issues.

Industry propagandists have been particularly successful in using a few pitiful instances of monkeywrenching to spread eco-terrorist hysteria across the province, helping to obscure industry's enormous crimes.

Taking Action

Road blockades will continue this summer on Vancouver Island both at the Walbran (see story next page) and at Clayoquot Sound, where Friends of Clayoquot Sound (FOCS) will again be coordinating protests in cooperation with local native peoples.

BC activists have begun to call for a worldwide boycott of BC's wood products industries. Garth Lenz of FOCS is one pressing for boycotts of Interfor and Macmillan Bloedel; he states simply, "consumers should not be supporting the destruction." Lenz and Valerie Langer of FOCS toured Europe with a slideshow presentation that cost $5000. In response, the industry bankrolled a $1.5 million tour by top officials of the provincial government.

Radicalization of BC's famously polite environmental movement may be the most lasting result of the NDP's sham reforms, but it is by no means easy to be a public radical in British Columbia. Environmental activists in BC are constrained both by Canada's civil culture and by the necessity of living and working in communities dominated by industrial interests. Many have horror stories of harassment, intimidation and violence. Canadian police agencies routinely monitor known activists. This is something to bear in mind if you plan to visit BC: you will be denied entry to the province if authorities learn you are an environmental activist—if, for example, you admit to having been arrested once on a logging road. Be discreet.

In addition to the ongoing tragedies of southern Vancouver Island, there are stories in this issue about the Kemano II dam project and the plight of the Grizzly in BC. What binds all these horrors together, beyond their common location, are links to the world outside BC. Were it not for the US, European, and Asian markets for timber, metals, power, water, and even pieces of dead bears, the multinationals and their minions could not afford to destroy BC. US activists must help save BC, in part because we may be the only ones who can.

Now, here is the version of the letter he sent or planned to send to the Earth First! Journal. This version doesn’t include the claim about having chosen Mosser as a target due to reading an article in the Earth First! Journal, so potentially there are parts that have been redacted, or maybe he thought twice about making life difficult for Earth First!ers by drawing more police attention to them:[56]

Suggestions for Earth First!ers from FC

Earth First! wants to eliminate the industrial form of society. This is clearly a revolutionary goal. Yet it seems that many or most Earth First!ers still think and act like reformers, not like revolutionaries.

This is illustrated by Darryl Cherney’s response to the bombing in which we assassinated the president of the California Forestry Association. According to newspaper reports Cherney was upset by the bombing because he was afraid that there would be retaliatory attacks on Earth First!ers. Now we respect (with certain qualifications) the nonviolent principles of Earth First! (even though we don’t think it would be practical for everyone to abide by them) and if any Earth First!ers get beaten up in retaliation for our bombings we certainly sympathize with them. But Cherney’s reaction shows that his mentality is that of a reformer, not a revolutionary.

To a revolutionary, what is important is not the short-term goal of saving this or that bit of wilderness or securing some grudging tolerance from the timber industry sympathizers. What is important is the long-term goal of weakening and destabilizing industrial society so that a revolution against it may become possible. From this point of view it is desirable that timber industry sympathizers should make physical attacks on Earth First!ers, because such behavior tends to increase the social stresses in industrial society and helps to turn people against the system.

It is important to distinguish between what the industrial system “wants” and what certain people who claim to represent the system may want or may do. By what the system “wants” we mean that which helps to assure the survival and growth of the industrial system. This corresponds approximately with what is desired by the most rational, self-restrained and “responsible” members of the systems [sic.] controlling elite. But people who believe themselves to be supporters of the system often behave in ways that are harmful to the system and thus serve as unwitting allies of those who want to overthrow the system.

Take police brutality as an example. The most rational and “responsible” members of the system’s elite are against police brutality. They want the police to use just enough force (and no more than just enough) to insure [sic.] public order and obedience to the system’s rules, because they know that police brutality increases social stresses and tends to break down respect for the system. Bad cops (or timber industry goons) who beat people up regard themselves as pro-system and hate those who are against the system, but the behavior of such cops actually helps to undermine the system. Thus police brutality is not really a part of the system, but is a kind of disease of the system.

Similarly, the irresponsible politicians who are currently repealing environmental laws may be acting as unwitting allies of revolutionaries. If their actions lead to a few more cases like Love Canal and the Exxon Valdez oil spill, they will be helping to destroy respect for the system. Moreover the actions of these politicians help to weaken the standards of decent, “responsible” political behavior on which the stability of the system depends.

Footnote [In their own way, Rush Limbaugh, reckless right wing politicians and their like are rebels against the industrial system even though they do not regard themselves as such. They want the technology and “prosperity” that the system provides but they reject the restraint and social discipline that are required for the long-term health and stability of the system. These people thinkthey are for social discipline, but their concept of social discipline is primitive: pile more homework on the kids and make everybody click their heels and salute the flag. The kind of social discipline the system needs would include temperance in the expression of political opinions, and realization that what is good for the long-term health of the system is not always what brings the biggest profits right now, and that psychological techniques are more sophisticated than just “getting tough” are needed to make children behave in conformity with the needs of the system. Through their irrational antics and lack of self-restraint Rush Limbaugh & Co. are helping to weaken the system. Our most dangerous enemies are not reckless right-wingers but those leaders who take a rational and balanced approach to promoting the growth and power of the system. That is why we of FC always make it our policy to vote for those politicians are are most corrupt, incompetent or irrational. They are the ones who will help us break down the system. Pete Wilson said we deserve to die for blowing up the president of the California Forestry Association. He shouldn’t be so ungrateful. We voted for him.]

What the rational, self-controlled, “responsible” members of the system’s elite want is not reckless repeal of environmental legislation; they want enough environmental legislation to preserve the system’s image of benevolence but not enough to interfere very seriously with economic growth and the increase of the system’s power. They want exploitation of natural resources that is rationally planned for long-term economic growth and stability, and that takes into consideration social needs (e.g. health, esthetics) as well as economic ones. Like police brutality, environmental recklessness is not really a part of the system, but is a disease of the system.

Needless to say, police brutality and environmental recklessness make us sick at the stomach, and we know that Earth First!ers react the same way. And of course we have to stand against these things. But at the same time it has to be recognized that ending police brutality and environmental recklessness are goals of reformers. The goal of revolutionaries is to undermine the system as a whole, and to this end police brutality and the grosser forms of environmental recklessness are actually helpful.

The trouble with Earth First!ers is that, like reformers, they devote their attention almost exclusively to fighting evils that are peripheral outgrowths of the system rather than fighting those institutions, structures and attitudes that are central to the system and on which the system most depends. We’ve only read about 6 or 8 issues of Earth First!, but if these can be taken as a fair sample then EF! articles are devoted almost exclusively to wilderness and environmental questions. These are extremely important matters, but if you devote your attention exclusively to them you will never overthrow the industrial system, and as long as the system survives the most you can hope to do is slow, not stop, the taming or destruction of wilderness. Therefore we argue that the Earth First! journal should devote at least half of its content to questions that have central relevance to the development of the industrial-technological system. How about some articles on genetic enigineering and its probably consequences for life on earth? How about some articles concerning the tremendous powers that computer technology is putting in the hands of the system? What will be the consequences if the computer scientists ever succeed in developing machines that are more intelligent than human beings? How about some articles on propaganda and other psychological tools that help to induce behavior that conforms to the needs of the system?

Most importantly, you need to develop a coherent ideology that opposes technology and industrialism and is based on analysis and understanding of the industrial system, and you need to develop plans and methods for weakening, undermining and destabilizing industrial society.

As for action, with only one exception all the actions we’ve seen reported in Earth First! have been focussed on environmental and wilderness issues. But as long as you fight only on environmental and wilderness issues you are fighting defensively. The best defense is a good offense, and to fight offensively you’ve got to get out of the woods and attack the structures that make the system run. For example, instead of demonstrating (or monkeywrenching) at a logging site, you might demonstrate (or monkeywrench) at a chemical plant. And the issue that you demonstrate about should not be a particular case of environmental destructiveness but the very existence of the chemical industry itself. You have to use your ingenuity to devise some forms of action that will weaken the system as a whole, not just slow its destruction of the environment.

* * *

Another indictaion of Earth First!’s essentially reformist mentality is your attitude about the paper industry. You want to stop the cutting of trees for paper by finding alternative sources of fiber, such as hemp. This is a reformist attitude. The revolutionary attitude would be: Stop cutting trees for paper, and if that means that the system comes grinding to a halt for lack of paper, so much the better. To hell with the system.

You will answer that if your program implied an end to the mass production of paper, then you would have no chance of putting that program into effect, because few people would support a program incompatible with the continued existence of industrial society.

But of course! That is the difference between the reformer and the revolutionary. The reformer seeks to bring about some improvement in conditions NCW, by means that are compatible with the survival of an existing system of society. The revolutionary advocates measures that are incompatible with the existing system, knowing that those measures cannot be put into effect now. But by advocating such measures he plants in people’s minds the idea that doing away with the existing system is a conceivable alternative. In this manner he helps to prepare the way for a future revolution that may occur when the time is ripe.

* * *

Some Earth First!ers think they can change the system just by providing, through their own actions, examples of noble, nonviolent, passive, environmentally nondestructive behavior. But it won’t work. Look at history! It’s been tried before, repeatedly. The earliest Christians, the Quakers, certain Hindus and Buddhists relied on passive, nonviolent loving-kindness, but they had little or no lasting effect on the behavior of the human race in general. people of the saintly type may have an important role to play in a revolutionary movement, but their kind of action by itself cannot bring down the industrial system. For that, revolutionaries of a tough, practical type are needed.

* * *

It is a big mistake to complain about “capitalism.” To do so gives the impression that industrial society would be OK if it were run according to some other ideology, such as socialism. Actually socialism in Eastern Europe did more damage to the environment than any capitalism did in the West. Our enemy is not capitalism, socialism, or any other ideology that may pretend to guide the system. Our enemy is the industrial-technological system itself.

* * *

The Earth First! journal should have a section in which successful monkeywrenching operations are reported. Reading about successful operations will encourage and stimulate other monkeywrenchers. Those who have carried out successful operations should report their action to the journal in an anonymous letter. Such letters will constitute evidence in “criminal” cases, so the journal will have to turn them over to the police to avoid prosecution for obstruction of justice. Therefore senders of the letters should make sure they bear no evidence such as fingerprints or handwriting.

Also, after every major successful monkeywrenching operation, the saboteurs should send anonymous letters to the mainstream media explaining both the reasons for that particular monkeywrenching attack and the long-term goals of the radical environmental movement.

The effectiveness of monkeywrenching operations will be greatly increased if they are systematic and coordinated rather than random and sporadic. Each monkeywrenching group should plan not just one operation but a campaign of operations lasting several months. Such a campaign is best designed not to attack a lot of unrelated targets, but to concentrate pressure on some particular class of targets. For example, the monkeywrenching group might select a particular logging or mining company, or a chemical or electronics firm, and attack a series of targets belonging to that particular organization. It would be difficult to coordinate the efforts of different monkeywrenching groups without compromising security. But some degree of coordination might be achieved by passing the word through the grapevine that a certain week is to be a week of intense sabotage. A lot of sabotage concentrated into one week would be more effective than the same amount of sabotage spread out over an extended period.

FC

17. April 24, 1995: Kaczynski carries out the last mail bombing before he will be arrested in a years time, killing California Forestry Association President Gilbert Murray

Court TV:[57]

March or April 1995 - Kaczynski transports a bomb from Montana to Oakland, California.

April 20, 1995 - Kaczynski mails the bomb to William Dennison, the former president of the California Forestry Association.

April 24, 1995 - Gilbert Murray, Dennison's successor as president, opens the package bomb, which explodes. Murray is killed in the explosion.

Project Unabom:[58]

Four months later, on April 24th, 1995, the Unabomber strikes again. And kills again. This time it's Gilbert Murray, the President of California, logging industry Trade Organization. Murray was a well liked, soft spoken guy with a wife and two teenage sons and he hadn't even been the intended recipient of the. Bomb the Unabomber had addressed the package to the guy. Who had the job? Before him, so it was a screw up. But the Unabomber said he didn't care.

Bron Taylor:[59]

In July 1998 Earth First! held its national Earth First! Rendezvous in south-central Oregon. Green anarchists among them distributed the seventh issue of Live Wild or Die. It included a striking amount of violent and revolutionary images, including a reproduction of a previous 'Ecofucker Hit List'. It was the same list that had previously been published and that included on it a Timber Association official and that some believe the Unabomber may have used to target one of his victims. The Association official and address was crossed out and the words 'Who's next?' were scrawled nearby. On the opposite page was printed a statement made by Theodore Kaczynski protesting his defense team's efforts to portray him as insane and promising that 'more will be heard from me in the future'.

Knowing that dark-humor is a common trait among movement activists, I asked editors of this issue of LWOD about the apparent embrace of Kaczynski and how serious was their implicit endorsement of assassination and terrorist tactics. The editor told me it was about one-third satire, onethird scare-tactic and one-third serious. A second editor later confirmed that this interpretation was 'about right'. Such sentiments leave unresolved what it would take for people to risk 'paying the price' (a phrase I heard during such discussions) that a resort to violence might exact.

Here’s one version of the “Eco-Fucker Hit List” from Issue #2:

First Batch of Letters: Offer to stop bombing if a major newspaper publishes his manifesto (April 1995)

Along with the mailbomb, Kaczynski sends four letters:[60]

Warren Hodge who is editor of The New York Times receives a letter with the initials "FC" and the identifying number originally indicated in 1993. The letter discusses a number of the previous attacks and offers reasons for the selection of the victims. According to the text, Mosser was chosen because of his work for a firm that "helped Exxon clean up its public image after the Exxon Valdez incident"; the professors were selected because they were experts in certain fields.

The author of the letter claims to be part of an anarchist group aiming to "break down all society into very small, completely autonomous units" and discusses aspects of the explosive devices. The author then suggests a "bargain": if a lengthy manuscript is published, the "group" will cease its "terrorist activities," though it differentiates between terrorism and "sabotage," the former relating to people and the latter to destruction of property. "We reserve the right to engage in sabotage," says the letter.

Additionally, a number of letters are received with the "FC" identifying mark on this day and referring to Warren Hoge, the New York Times editor who received the June 1993 letter.

David Gelernter, the victim of the 1993 bomb, receives one saying that "there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world and you wouldn't have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source." The letter is also an attempt to mislead the FBI into thinking they are searching for someone without a university education.

Dr. Phillip Sharp at MIT receives a letter postmarked Oakland, California and dated April 20 that warns him: "It would be beneficial to your health to stop your research in genetics."

Dr. Richard Roberts of New England Biolabs receives a letter with identical postmark and language to the one sent to Sharp.

Finally, he sends the manuscript to the environmentalist magazines ‘Earth First Journal’ & ‘Live Wild or Die’, in the case of the former with a promise to desist from terrorism only if they can get it printed as a book, distributed nationally and well publicized. And in the case of the latter with the stated hope that they will be willing to get it printed and distributed before anyone else, based on no deal, so that he can declare the other offers void and can carry on bombing.

Letter to Warren Hoge of the New York Times (April 24)

Ted:[61]

This is a message from the terrorist group FC. To prove its [sic.] authentic we give our identifying number (to be kept secret): 553-25-4394.

We blew up Thomas Mosser last December because he was a Burston-Marsteller executive. Among other misdeeds, Burston-Marsteller [sic.] helped Exxon clean up its public image after the Exxon Valdes incident. But we attacked Burston-Marsteller less for its specific misdeed than on general principles. Burston-Marsteller is about the biggest organization in the public relations field. This means that its business is the development of techniques for manipulating people’s attitudes. It was for this more than for its actions in specific cases that we sent a bomb to an executive of this company.

Some news reports have made the misleading statement that we have been attacking universities or scholars. We have nothing against universities or scholars as such. All the university people whom we have attacked have been specialists in technical fields. (We consider certain areas of applied psychology, such as behavior modification, to be technical fields.) We would not want anyone to think that we have any desire to hurt professors who study archaeology, history, literature or harmless stuff like that. The people we are out to get are the scientists and engineers, especially in critical fields like computers and genetics. As for the bomb planted in the [crossed out] Business School at the U. of Utah, that was a botched operation. We won’t say how or why it was botched because we don’t want to give the FBI any clues. No one was hurt by that bomb.

In our previous letter to you we called ourselves anarchists. Since “anarchist” is a vague word that has been applied to a variety of attitudes, further explanation is needed. We call ourselves anarchists because we would like, ideally, to break down all society into very small, completely autonomous units. Regrettably, we don’t see any clear road to this goal, so we leave it to the indefinite future. Our more immediate goal, which we think may be attainable at some time during the next several decades, is the destruction of the worldwide industrial system. Through our bombings we hope to promote social instability in industrial society, propagate anti-industrial ideas and give encouragement to those who hate the industrial system.

The FBI has tried to portray these bombings as the work of an isolated nut. We won’t waste our time arguing about whether we are nuts, but we certainly are not isolated. For security reasons we won’t reveal the number of members of our group, but anyone who will read the anarchist and radical environmentalist journals will see that opposition to the industrial-technological system is widespread and growing.

Why do we announce our [crossed out] goals only now, through we made our first bomb some seventeen years ago? Our early bombs were too ineffectual to attract much public attention or give encouragement to those who hate the system. We found by experience that gunpowder bombs, if small enough to be carried inconspicuously, were too feeble to do much damage, so we took a couple of years off to do some experimenting. We learned how to make pipe bombs that were powerful enough, and we used these in a couple of successful bombings as well as in some unsuccessful ones. Unfortunately we discovered that these bombs would not detonate consistently when made with three-quarter inch steel water pipe. They did seem to detonate consistently when made with massively reinforced one inch steel water pipe, but a bomb of this type made a long, heavy package, too conspicuous and suspicious looking for our liking.

So we went back to work, and after a long period of experimentation we developed a type of bomb that does not require a pipe, but is set off by a detonating cap that consists of chlorate explosive packed into a piece of small diameter copper tubing. (The detonating cap is a miniature pipe bomb.) We used bombs of this type to blow up the genetic engineer Charles Epstein and the computer specialist David Gelernter. We did use a chlorate pipe bomb to blow up Thomas Mosser because we happened to have a piece of light-weight aluminum pipe that was just right for the job. The Gelernter and Epstein bombings were not fatal, but the Mosser bombing was fatal even though a smaller amount of explosive was used. We think this was because the type of fragmentation material that we used in the Mosser bombing is more effective [crossed out] than what we’ve used previously.

Since we no longer have to confine the explosive in a pipe, we are now free of limitations on the size and shape of our bombs. We are pretty sure we know how to increase the power of our explosives and reduce the number of batteries needed to set them off. And, as we’ve just indicated, we think we now have more effective fragmentation material. So we expect to be able to pack deadly bombs into ever smaller, lighter and more harmless looking packages. On the other hand, we believe we will be able to make bombs much bigger than any we’ve made before. With a briefcase-full or a suitcase-full of explosives we should be able to blow out the walls of substantial buildings.

Clearly we are in a position to do a great deal of damage. And it doesn’t appear that the FBI is going to catch us any time soon. The FBI is a joke.

The people who are pushing all this growth and progress garbage deserve to be severely punished. But our goal is less to punish them than to propagate ideas. Anyhow we are getting tired of making bombs. It’s no fun having to spend all your evenings and weekends preparing dangerous mixtures, filing trigger mechanisms out of scraps of metal or searching the sierras for a place isolated enough to test a bomb. So we offer a bargain.

We have a long article, between 29,000 and 37,000 words, that we want to have published. If you can get it published according to our requirements we will permanently desist from terrorist activities. It must be published in the New York Times, Time or Newsweek, or in some other widely read, nationally distributed periodical. Because of its length we suppose it will have to be serialized. Alternatively, it can be published as a small book, but the book must be well publicized and made available at a moderate price in bookstores nationwide and in at least some places abroad. Whoever agrees to publish the material will have exclusive rights to reproduce it for a period of six months and will be welcome to any profits they may make from it. After six months from the first appearance of the article or book it must become public property, so that anyone can reproduce or publish it. (If material is serialized, first instalment becomes public property six months after appearance of first instalment, second instalment, etc.) We must have the right to publish in the New York Times, Time or Newsweek, each year for three years after the appearance of our article or book, three thousand words expanding or clarifying our material or rebutting criticisms of it.

The article will [crossed out] not explicitly advocate violence. There will be an unavoidable implication that we favor violence to the extent that it may be necessary, since we advocate eliminating industrial society and we ourselves have been using violence to that end. But the article will not advocate violence explicitly, nor will it propose the overthrow of the United States Government, nor will it contain obscenity or anything else that you would be likely to regard as unacceptable for publication.

How do you know that we will keep our promise to desist from terrorism if our conditions are met? It will be to our [crossed out] advantage to keep our promise. We want to win acceptance for certain ideas. If we break our promise people will lose respect for us and so will be less likely to accept the ideas.

Our offer to desist from terrorism is subject to three qualifications. First: Our promise to desist will not take effect until all parts of our article or book have appeared in print. Second: If the authorities should succeed in tracking us down and an attempt is made to arrest any of us, or even to question us in connection with the bombings, we reserve the right to use violence. Third: We distinguish between terrorism and sabotage. By terrorism we mean actions motivated by a desire to influence the development of a society and intended to cause injury or death to human beings. By sabotage we mean similarly motivated actions intended to destroy property without injuring human beings. The promise we offer is to desist from terrorism. We reserve the right to engage in sabotage.

It may be just as well that failure of our early bombs discouraged us from making any public statements at that time. We were very young then and our thinking was crude. Over the years we have given as much attention to the development of our ideas as to the development of bombs, and we now have something serious to say. And we feel that just now the time is ripe for the presentation of anti-industrial ideas.

Please see to it that the answer to our offer is well publicized in the media so that we won’t miss it. Be sure to tell us where and how our material will be published and how long it will take to appear in print once we have sent in the manuscript. If the answer is satisfactory, we will finish typing the manuscript and send it to you. If the answer is unsatisfactory, we will start building our next bomb.

We encourage you to print this letter.

FC

P.S. Mr. Hoge, at this time we are sending letters to David Gelernter, Richard J. Roberts and Phillip A. Sharp, the last two being recent Nobel Prize winners. We are not putting our identifying number on these letters, because we want to keep it secret. Instead, we are advising Gelernter, Roberts and Sharp to contact you for confirmation that the letters do come from FC.

Letter to David Gelernter

Ted:[62]

Dr. Gelernter:

People with advanced degrees aren’t as smart as they think they are. If you’d had any brains you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world and you wouldn’t have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source.

In the epilog of your book, “Mirror Worlds,” you tried to justify your research by claiming that the developments you describe are inevitable, and that any college person can learn enough about computers to compete in a computer-dominated world. Apparently, people without a college degree don’t count. In any case, being informed about computers won’t enable anyone to prevent invasion of privacy (through computers), genetic engineering (to which computers make an important contribution), environmental degradation through excessive economic growth (computers make an important contribution to economic growth) and so forth.

As for the inevitability argument, if the developments you describe are inevitable, they are not inevitable in the way that old age and bad weather are inevitable. They are inevitable only because techno-nerds like you make them inevitable. If there were no computer scientists there would be no progress in computer science. If you claim you are justified in pursuing your research because the developments involved are inevitable, then you may as well say that theft is inevitable, therefore we shouldn’t blame thieves.

But we do not believe that progress and growth are inevitable.

We’ll have more to say about that later.

FC

P.S. Warren Hoge of the New York Times can confirm that this letter does come from FC.

Letter to Phillip A. Sharp

Ted:[63]

Dr. Sharp: It would be beneficial to your health to stop your research in genetics. This is a warning from FC.

Warren Hoge of the New York Times can confirm that this note does come from FC.

Letter to Richard J. Roberts

Ted:[64]

Dr. Roberts: It would be beneficial to your health to stop your research in genetics. This is a warning from FC.

Warren Hoge of the New York Times can confirm that this note does come from FC.

Letter to Earth First! Journal

Ted:[65]

Earth First!:

This is a message from FC. The FBI calls us “unabom.” We are the people who recently assassinated the president of the California Forestry Association. We know that most radical environmentalists are non-violent and strongly disapprove of our bombings. But we have some things to say that should be of special interest to radical environmentalists. Even if you disagree with our conclusions you can hardly deny that the issues we raise are important ones that radical environmentalists should think about and discuss.

We are enclosing a copy of a manuscript that we are sending to the New York Times, also a copy of the letter that we are sending to the Times with the manuscript. We have reason to hope that the NY Times will either publish the manuscript or arrange for its publication elsewhere. However, if neither the NY Times nor any other major periodical has published the manuscript, or begun to publish it in serialized form, or had it published elsewhere, or announced a definite date for its publication, within 5 months of the day this letter is postmarked, then the Earth First! Journal can publish the manuscript. You can publish it either serialized or in the form of a small book, and you will be welcome to [crossed out] keep any profit you may make from it. Contact NY Times for information concerning what is being done about publication of the manuscript.

We offered the NY Times a promise to desist from terrorism in exchange for publication of our manuscript in a widely read, nationally distributed periodical. Earth First! does not qualify as widely read, so we offer no such promise in [crossed out] exchange for publication in Earth First! However, if Earth First! is willing and able to get the manuscript published in book form, and if the book is [crossed out] distributed nationally and well publicized, then we will abide by the promise to desist from terrorism. Contact the NY Times [crossed out] for information concerning conditions that we laid down in our letters to that newspaper.

Whoever may first publish the manuscript, after a period of 6 months has elapsed since that first publication, anyone [crossed out] (including Earth First!) will have the right to publish the material freely. However, the period might possibly be extended beyond 6 months. See enclosed letter to NY Times.

In any case, you can immediately make up to 5 copies of the manuscript for your own use. If you wear gloves while making the copies you won’t mess up any fingerprints or anything, so the FBI won’t be able to claim you have damaged any evidence.

How do you know this letter really comes from FC? Some part of the letter we are sending to the NY Times will probably be published in the newspaper, and you can [crossed out] compare it with the copy we are sending you. The authenticity of the material that we are sending to the NY Times will be confirmed by means of our secret identifying number.

FC

Material Sent to LWOD

Letter to LWOD

Ted:[66][67]

To LWOD [Live Wild or Die]: This is a message from FC Anarchist Terror Group. We are the people who have been blowing up computer scientists, biotech specialists, public relations experts and so forth. The FBI calls us “Unabom.” About the time you receive this letter you should hear through the media about another bombing, if everything works OK. Notice that this letter was postmarked either before or about the same time as the bombing hit the news, which proves that the letter is authentic. As a means of proving the authenticity of any further communications we may send to you, we give you an identifying number: 14962. Keep this number secret, so that when you receive a letter bearing it you will know that the letter comes from us. This is different from the identifying number that we gave to the New York Times.

We have a manuscript of between 29,000 and 37,000 words that we want to have published. We are writing to the New York Times to try to make a deal over it. We are telling the Times that if they will publish the manuscript serialized in their newspaper, or [crossed out] if they can get it published in book form, we will agree to stop blowing up scientists and corporate execs. For the moment we are more interested in propagating anti-industrial ideas than in killing another exec or biotech nerd.

However, we may find it useful to blow up more biotechnicians and the like at some time in the future, so we would prefer not to be bound by a promise to stop bombing. If we made such a promise we wouldn’t want to break it. So we are looking for some way to get our material published without having to make any promises or deals.

Would LWOD be willing to publish our manuscript in serial form? Or, better, could you get it published in book form and widely distributed to the general public? If you published it in serial form, how long would it take you to publish the whole thing? If you could get it published in book form, how widely would you distribute it and how long would it take you to get it published once we have sent you the manuscript? You’d be welcome to keep any profit you might make on the book and use it to propagate anti-industrial ideas.

The manuscript contains: (1) an analysis of what is wrong with the industrial system; (2) a demonstration that the industrial system cannot be successfully reformed but must be destroyed; (3) appropriate strategy for revolutionaries seeking to destroy the industrial system.

Please give us your answer by placing a classified ad in the San Francisco [crossed out] Chronicle, preferably on May 1, 1995. The ad should begin with the words “Personal to MCHVP.” We ask you to answer in SF Chronicle instead of LWOD because we know of only one place where we can get to LWOD, and if the FBI gets hold of this letter they will be able to watch the few places where it is possible to get LWOD and maybe catch us that way.

We enclose a copy of our letter to the NY Times.

Place the ad in the classification #420, “Personals.” To place ad contact

San Francisco Newspaper Agency
Classified Dept.
925 Mission Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
toll free phone (800) 227–4423

Best Regards,
FC

Copy of letter sent to New York Times. You can print it in LWOD if you like. …

Confidential note to LWOD

Ted:[68]

CONFIDENTIAL NOTE

Enclosed is a letter that presumably will require general discussion by the LWOD staff. But this confidential note contains material that should be known to as few people as possible. So whichever LWOD person opens this envelope, he or she should hide this note and reveal its existence to no one, except when absolutely necessary. Read the other material in this envelope before reading the rest of this confidential[crossed out] note.

The material in this envelope constitutes evidence in a felony case, so LWOD might get in trouble if it doesn’t [crossed out] turn this stuff over to the FBI. It is always possible that your group may contain an FBI infiltrator who will report our letter to his bosses. And if you do publish our manuscript the FBI will know about it. So LWOD may want to give these documents to the FBI (except this confidential note, which can safely be kept secret).

This creates a possible problem, because the FBI will be able to confuse you or us by sending LWOD a fake manuscript or placing a fake ad in the SF Chronicle or some such COINTELPRO trick. Or the FBI may ask the Chronicle not to print your ad on the grounds that it would contribute to “criminal” activity. To get around that, we should have some completely confidential way of communicating. This can be established as follows.

Place an ad in the classified section of the Los Angeles Times, classification #1660, “Personal messages.” The ad should preferably appear on May 9, 1995, but in any case leave a few days between the time when the Chronicle ad appears and the time when the LA Times ad appears. This ad should begin, “Dear Stargazer, the mystic numbers that control your fate are ...” and it should be signed “Numerologist.” In between there will be a sequences of numbers conveying a coded message.

The code works this way. It will be random number code and therefore unbreakable. Use the series of random numbers that we have given on another sheet. Begin by encoding your message according to the following system: For A put 1, for B put 2, for C [crossed out] put 3, etc. up to 26 for Z. For space between two words put 27, for period put 28, for comma put 29, for question mark put 30. When you have your message coded by this system you will have a series of numbers that we can call the basic sequence. You then change the basic sequence by adding to it the numbers of the random sequence. To the first number of the basic sequence add the first number of the random sequence, to the second number of the basic sequence add the second number of the random sequence and so forth. Whenever the sum is greater that 30, subtract 30 from it. The resulting sequence of numbers is what you publish in the LA Times. See example on other sheet.

In your coded ad please give us an address to which we can send you messages with assurance that they will be [crossed out] completely safe and confidential. (We won’t send you any uncoded message that could get you in trouble if it got into the wrong hands.) Also please tell us in your coded ad whether your open ad in SF Chronicle is authentic and can be taken at face value.

Your coded ad probably won’t use up all the numbers of the random sequence. Have the rest of the sequence in case we want it for future use. NEVER USE ANY PART OF THE RANDOM SEQUENCE TWICE. To do so would enable the FBI to decode the message.

We give a separate, confidential identifying number for verification of any messages we may send you: 82771

Legally the FBI can’t open first class mail without a warrant, but there’s always a chance they might have opened the present envelope anyway, so this system of passing confidential messages isn’t 100% secure.

FC

Los Angeles Times Classified Ads Phone Numbers
[213]~~~ 629–4411
(800) 234–4444

Address of Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times
Times Mirror Square
Los Angeles, CA 90052

Letter to ACLU

This is a letter or copy of a letter found in Ted’s cabin. It’s unknown whether or not he sent the letter though:[69]

ACLU Privacy and Technology Project:

This is a message from the terrorist group FC. The FBI calls us “unabom.” We are sending the New York Times a manuscript that contains a good deal of material that is relevant to the problem of technological invasion of privacy. We think this manuscript ought to be of interest to the ACLU Privacy and Technology Project. We have reason to hope that the NY Times will arrange for publication of the manuscript, but if they do not, we imagine they would be willing to provide you with a copy of it if you asked for one.

FC

Penthouse offer to publish (April 28)

Time Magazine:[70]

Three national publications -- The New York Times, Time and Newsweek -- are now struggling with an offer from the so-called Unabomber: publish a long article detailing his views, and he'll end his 17-year terror campaign. But Penthouse may take them off the hook. TIME New York correspondent Jenifer Mattos reports that Bob Guccione, chairman of General Media International, on Thursday issued an open letter to the Unabom suspect offering to publish the 37,000-word manuscript himself in Penthouse, or another magazine he owns "in the hope that it will receive the widest possible dissemination by the media so we can save lives." Guccione told TIME today that he couldn't understand other editors' uneasiness about the issue: "I would do it in an instant. ... In this instance, we should indulge him 100 percent. No censorship, no discussion with editors and the FBI and all that crap. Just publish and be damned." So far, Mattos notes, the Unabomber hasn't called.

Second batch of letters: Threatening to blow up an airliner, delivering the manifesto & other letters (June 1995)

In June, he took what was possibly his last coach out of the sleepy town of Lincoln, Montana for possibly a week long trip before he’d be arrested in just under a year.

No parcel bombs this time though. He had with him four thick 64 page envelopes of his manuscript, three of which went out to the New York Times, Washington Post and Penthouse.

As well as a prank letter to the San Francisco Examiner warning that he planned to blow up an airliner flying out of Los Angeles during the next six days. He would send a letter a day later before heading back to the cabin to acknowledge it was a prank, so the media didn’t think I had just failed to build or send the bomb somehow.

Threat to blow up an airliner (June 27)

Letter addressed to Jerry Roberts of the San Francisco Examiner is received:[71]

WARNING

The terrorist group FC, called Unabomber by the FBI, is planning to blow up an airline out of Los Angeles International Airport sometime during the next six days. To prove that the writer of this letter knows something about FC, the first two digits of their identifying number are 55.

This is a reference to the false Social Security number sent to Warren Hodge of the New York Times.

The Washington Post:[72]

Officials today imposed extraordinary security at California airports and temporarily held air mail to and from the state after the Unabomber threatened to blow up an airliner leaving Los Angeles International Airport in the next six days.

However, at the end of a day of statewide confusion in air travel and mail delivery, senior law enforcement officials said that a letter had been sent by the Unabomber to the New York Times claiming that the initial threat was a hoax. The Times published portions of the letter in its Thursday editions that said the threat was "one last prank."

Letter to the Washington Post (June 27)

Court TV:[73]

The same day, Michael Getler, deputy managing editor at the Washington Post, receives a letter "from the terrorist group FC." The letter mentions the bomb at the Forestry Association and repeats the offer to desist from terrorism if an enclosed manuscript -- a carbon copy of the one sent to Warren Hoge -- is published.

Washington Post:[74]

This is a message from the terrorist group FC. The FBI calls us “unabom.”

In a letter that we sent to the New York Times at the time of our bombing at the California Forestry Association, we offered to desist from terrorism if a manuscript we were preparing were published in accord with certain stated conditions. We are now sending that manuscript to the NY Times and we are sending copies to you, to Penthouse magazine and to a few other people.

If the NY Times is unwilling or unable to publish our manuscript (or arrange for its publication elsewhere) then we offer the Washington Post the same bargain that we offered the NY Times. NY Times has first claim to the right to publish the manuscript, after that the Washington Post and after that Penthouse. If NY Times gives permission, we have no objection to simultaneous publication in NY Times and Washington Post.

By the way, to verify that this letter really comes from FC, compare the enclosed copy of our letter to the NY Times with the original that we sent to the Times. The original bears our secret identifying number. We apologize for sending you such a bad carbon copy of our manuscript. We can’t make copies at a public copy machine because people would get suspicious if they saw us handling our copies with gloves.

FC

The Manifesto

The contents of the manifesto are surprisingly cogent to many:[75]

At 35,000 words, Industrial Society and Its Future lays very detailed blame on technology for destroying human-scale communities. Kaczynski contends that the Industrial Revolution harmed the human race by developing into a sociopolitical order that subjugates human needs beneath its own. This system, he wrote, destroys nature and suppresses individual freedom. In short, humans adapt to machines rather than vice versa, resulting in a society hostile to human potential.

Kaczynski indicts technological progress for its destruction of small human communities and the rise of uninhabitable cities controlled by an unaccountable state. He contends that this relentless technological progress will not dissipate on its own, because individual technological advancements are seen as good despite the sum effects of this progress. Kaczynski describes modern society as defending against dissent an order in which individuals are "adjusted" to fit the system and those outside the system are seen as "bad".

This tendency, he says, gives rise to expansive police powers, mind-numbing mass media, and indiscriminate promotion of drugs. He criticizes both big government and big business as the inevitable result of industrialization, and holds scientists and "technophiles" responsible for recklessly pursuing power through technological advancements.

He argues that this industrialized system's collapse will be devastating and that quickening the collapse—before industrialization further progresses—will mitigate the devastation's impact. He justifies the trade-offs that come with losing industrial society as being worth the cost. Kaczynski's ideal revolution seeks not to overthrow government, but rather, the economic and technological foundation of modern society. He seeks to destroy existing society and protect the wilderness, the antithesis of technology.

Zerzan also explained…[76]

[B]y the way he told me he got his ideas from Elull, it’s an American vernacular version of the technological society, that’s his great gift, that’s his great plus, he made it very readable, … the original translation in English is hard to read, it has that abstract classical mode of the way French are taught to write and it’s very off-putting I think in the rest of the world.

I think almost everyone can agree that it’s good to get more variation in digestible versions of philosophy books and essays.

However, Kaczynski didn’t include some central elements of Ellul’s politics which are wholly sensible. Ellul valued using more minimal viable use technologies where practicable for one’s own mental health and the environment, but he wasn’t for destroying all industrial level technology:[77]

If we see technique as nothing but objects that can be useful (and we need to check whether they are indeed useful); and if we stop believing in technique for its own sake or that of society; and if we stop fearing technique, and treat it as one thing among many others, then we destroy the basis for the power technique has over humanity.

Ellul is a very admirable person for having played a very active role in the French Resistance.

Similarly to how George Orwell talks about getting to experience a glimpse of a more ideal world in anarchist Catalonia, Ellul writes fondly of the communalist caring society the bravest in society were able to build together under the noses of the fascist regime:[78]

In 1944, at the Liberation, I was part of the Movement of National Liberation, I even held certain positions in it, and had begun to believe the dream we had been dreaming during the last few years of the Resistance, often expressed by the saying that we were going to move from Resistance to Revolution. But when we said that-and I would like to point out that Camus first used it in 1943 in combat groups-we did not mean a Communist, Stalinist, Soviet revolution. We meant a fundamental revolution of society, and we made great plans for transforming the press, the media, and the economic structures. They all had elements of socialism, to be sure; but I would say it was more of a Proudhonian socialism, going back to grassroots by means of a federative and cooperative approach.

The main problem with Ellul is simply that he infused many of his sensible arguments against technological overconsumption with fundamentally irrational Christian premises that were entirely unnecessary and make the argument fail for anyone who isn't a believing Christian. For example, he often posits that only Christian culture has been able to help with this problem in the past, and that only through more dedication to a peaceful Christian culture can we be saved from the problems we exist with today.

These weak arguments then inevitably lead to someone like Kaczynski to come along who buys the religiously apocalyptic vision, but not the proposed solution.

So, I wish Kaczynski had picked up a book that had a more secular critique of technological overconsumption that was harder to dismiss in its reformist prescriptions, but it may have just been a case of finding almost any book to justify his desires.

Ellul did in fact predict someone might try to twist his tech minimalist philosophy to justify violence and dedicated many books to arguing how we simply need a peaceful avoidance of engaging with high tech society in situations where we can use the minimum viable technology for the task we want to get done. But obviously Kaczynski dismissed these arguments:[79]

There are several ideas that Kaczynski takes from Ellul. One is that human beings are maladapted to life in a technological society I discussed that at the beginning the basic idea is that human beings evolved in a primitive Stone Age environment we're still genetically hunter-gatherers but now we've been thrust into this world of concrete and steel and we're psychologically ill-equipped to deal with that. ...

Now it's notable though that for Ellul the mismatch between human beings and the technological society was more social than biological and Elull thought that the problem was that our norms and morals and social structures and communities can't evolve fast enough to keep up with technology, whereas Kaczynski wasn't concerned so much about those things he was concerned about our biology, so already there they diverge but the basic idea that we're maladapted or maladjusted to technology comes from Ellul ...

The problem with technology is that it has outstripped the evolution of our social structures and communities and norms ... and I think judging by the first part of the technological society Ellul thinks that in the past we were perfectly capable of resisting the pull of technique. So, he talks about several different societies that resisted the urge to prioritize means over ends. First he says look at the ancient Greeks, the ancient Greeks were incredibly sophisticated philosophically and scientifically, but he claims they had contempt for practical application, they could have used their knowledge to manipulate the world, but they didn't, they wanted to understand it, so he says for the Greeks there was a stark division between science/understanding of the world and technique/application.

Letter addressed to Warren Hodge of the New York Times (June 28)

Court TV:[80]

Warren Hoge at the Times receives another letter from "FC" that offers the identifying number used previously and includes a 65-page manuscript, referenced in the April 1995 letter and conditions for publication. The message ends by stating that the group has "no regret" that the April bomb blew up Gilbert Murray, whom it calls "the 'wrong' man," and not William Dennison.

Quoting Ted:[81]

New York Times:

This is a message from FC,

If the enclosed manuscript is published reasonably soon and receives wide public exposure, we will permanently desist from terrorism in accord with the agreement that we proposed in our last letter to you.

In that letter we stated that whoever agreed to publish the manuscript was to have exclusive rights to it for six months, after which the material was to become public property. We are willing to be flexible about the six month limit. The reason we offered exclusive rights (temporarily) was to provide an incentive for publication of the manuscript. Presumably, whoever published it would hope to profit by doing so. We assume that the six month limit should be ample if the material is published in a periodical, but if it is published in book form we don’t know how long the publisher would need exclusive rights in order to have a reasonable expectation of making a profit. So if the NY Times arranges for publication in book from, we leave the period of exclusive rights to your discretion. But it should be no longer than necessary and in any case must not exceed one year, unless you publish in the Times good and convincing reasons for making it longer than that. We don’t want our material to remain locked up by a copyright, especially if it is published in the form of a book and the book doesn’t sell.

----------

Contrary to what the FBI has suggested, our bombing at the California Forestry Association was in no way inspired by the Oklahoma City bombing. We strongly deplore the ind of indiscriminate slaughter that occurred in the Oklahoma City event. We have no regret about the fact that our bomb blew up the “wrong” man, Gilbert Murray, instead of William N. Dennison, to whom it was addressed. Though Murray did not have Dennison’s inflammatory style he was pursuing the same goals, and he was probably pursuing them more effectively because of the very fact that he was not inflammatory.

A letter from an anarchist to the editors of the NY Times made us realize that we owe an apology to the radical environmentalist and non-violent anarchist movements. Statements we made in our letters to the NY Times would tend to associate us with anarchism and radical environmentalism and therefore might make the public think of anarchists and radical environmentalists as terrorists. So we want to make it clear that there is a NONVIOLENT anarchist movement that probably includes most people in America today who would describe themesleves as anarchists. It’s a safe bet that practically all of them strongly disapprove of our bombings. Many radical environmentalists do engage in sabotage, but the overwhelming majority of them are opposed to violence against human beings. We know of no case in which a radical environmentalist has intentionally injured a human being. (There was one injury due to a tree spiking incident, but the spiking was probably intended only to damage equipment, not injure people.)

We decided to call ourselves anarchists not in order to associate ourselves with any particular anarchist group or movement but only because we felt we needed some label to apply to ourselves and “anarchist” was the only one that seemed to fit. The term “anarchist” has been applied to a wide variety of attitudes and about the only thing these attitudes have in common is opposition to the power of governments and other large organizations. That certainly fits us.

For an organization that pretends to be the world’s greatest law-enforcement agency, the FBI seems surprisingly incompetent. They can’t even keep elementary facts straight. Many news reports based on information provided by the FBI are incorrect and even contradict each other. Maybe some of these errors and contradictions are the result of journalists mistakes, but it appears that most are the fault of the FBI.

Examples: It was reported that the bomb that killed Gilbert Murray was a pipe bomb. It was not a pipe bomb but was set off by a home made detonating cap. (The FBI’s so-called experts should have been able to determine this quickly and easily, especially since we indicated in an unpublished part of our last letter to the NY Times that the majority of our bombs are no longer pipe bombs.) It was also reported that the address label on this same bomb gave the name of the California Forestry Association incorrectly. This is false. The name was given correctly.

The FBI’s theory that we have some kind of a fascination with wood is about as silly as it can get. They apparently base this theory mainly on the fact that we’ve used a lot of wood in the construction of bomb packages, and several of our targets have lived on streets that are named after trees or have names that include words like “wood,” etc. As for our use of wood in construction, what other material is so light, so easy to work and so readily available in large chunks (such as a 2x4) from which suitable pieces can be cut? One FBI agent mentioned in support of the wood theory that we had used wood to make parts that could have been made out of metal. But why use metal where wood can be used? Wood is much lighter and easier to work. One of the reasons why we use wooden rather than cardboard boxes for mail bombs is that cardboard boxes crush easily and rough handling in the mail could cause damage to trigger mechanisms, possibly resulting in premature detonation. As for our use of “exotic” woods, we’ve used hickory from old tool handles, and we recognized redwood from its color, but apart from that we usually don’t even known what kind of wood we are working with since we just use pieces of scrap lumber that we pick up here and there. As for the “polished” wood, it was only sanded. We sanded the outside of wooden boxes to remove saw marks so that packages would have a smooth, factory-made appearance, less likely to arouse suspicion. Some inside parts were sanded to remove possible fingerprints. Since wood is porous, sweat from the fingers probably penetrated the surface a short distance, so we assume that merely wiping wood does not reliably remove fingerprints. Some metal parts also were scrubbed with sandpaper or emery paper for a similar reason. It is well known that old fingerporints on metal can sometimes be brought out by treating with acid, so presumably the sweat affects the surface of the metal chemically and merely wiping is probably not a reliable method of removing prints. As for the streets named after trees, wood, etc., that’s only chance. Just check a street map of any suburban area and see how many of the street names include as a component either the name of some species of tree or a word such as “wood,” “forest,” “arbor,” “grove” etc. The FBI must really be getting desperate if they resort to theories as ridiculous as this one about the supposed fascination with wood.

-----------

What about the morality of revolutionary violence? To the extent that the word “morality” refers to a code of behavior laid down by society, it is senseless to apply moral criteria to the actions of revolutionaries. Each society prescribes a system of morality that is designated to preserve the existence and facilitate the functioning of that society. Since revolutionaries work to overthrow the society in which they live, they have no reason to abide by its moral code. Of course, those who want to preserve the society always regard the revolutionaries as immoral.

But the word “morality” might also refer to consideration for others as motivated by sympathy or compassion (which exist independently of any socially prescribed code). In this sense one can ask about the morality of revolutionairy violence. Do the revolutionairies goals outweigh the harm they cause to others? Do the people they hurt “deserve” it?

Such questions can be answered only on a subjective basis, and we don’t think it necessary for us to do any public soul-searching in this letter. But we will say that we are not insensitive to the pain caused by our bombings.

A bomb package that we mailed to computer scientist Patrick Fischer injured his secretary when she opened it. We certainly regret that. And when we were young and comparatively reckless we were much less careful in selecting targets than we are now. For instance, in one case we attempted unsuccessfully to blow up an airliner. The idea was to kill a lot of business people who we assumed would constitute a majority of the passengers. But of course some of the passengers would have been innocent people-maybe kids, or some working stiff going to see his sick grandmother. We're glad now that the attempt failed.

But even though we would undo some of the things we did in earlier days, or do them differently, we are convinced that our enterprise is basically right. The industrial-technological system has got to be eliminated, and to us almost any means that may be necessary for that purpose are justified, even if they involve risk to innocent people. As for the people who willfully and knowingly promote economic growth and technical progress, in our eyes they are criminals, and if they get blown up they deserve it.

Of course, people don’t kill others and risk their own lives just from a detached conviction that a certain change should be made in society. They have to be motivated by some strong emotional force. What is the motivating force in our case? The answer is simple: Anger. You’ll as why we are so angry. You would would do better to ask why there is so much anger and frustration in modern society generally. We think that our manuscript gives the answer to that question, or at least an important part of the answer.

We encourage you to print this letter, but we don’t require it as part of the condition for our promise to desist from terrorism.

FC

P.S. We want to add a qualification to our (temporary) grant of exclusive rights to whoever publishes our manuscript. We are sending copies of the manuscript to several other parties besides the NY Times. We want everyone to whom we have sent a copy to have the right to make a small number (say 5) of copies of their copy, for personal use or for private circulation.

FC

Note. Since the public has a short memory, we decided to play one last prank to remind them who we are. But, no, we haven’t tried to plant a bomb on an airline (recently).

Letter to Mr Guccione of Penthouse Magazine

Court TV:[82]

June 29, 1995 - Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione also receives a letter in response to an earlier offer by his magazine to publish FC's manuscript. The letter states conditions for publication in Penthouse, but expresses a preference for publication in the Washington Post or New York Times, which it considers "respectable" publications. Among the conditions are a statement that the group reserves the right to one additional bomb after publication in Penthouse if other media do not publish it.

Here is the full letter by Ted. The ellipses are included in the original:[83]

Mr. Guccione:

This is a message from FC. The FBI calls us “unabom.” You offered to publish our manuscript in Penthouse in exchange for our promise to desist from terrorism, and that is what we are writing to you about.

We have not made any phone calls to you. No communication from FC should be accepted as authentic unless it is verified by means of our secret identifying number, which is known only to the New York Times and the FBI. With the present letter we are sending to the New York Times. That letter carries our identifying number (cut out on your copy) and you can confirm the authenticity of the present letter and accompanying material by comparing your copy of the NY Times letter with the original that we’ve sent to the Times.

We are also enclosing a copy of our manuscript. We are very pleased that you’ve offered to publish our stuff, and we thank you. We aren’t in the habit of reading sex magazines ourselves, but we don’t have anything against those who do read such magazines or those who publish them. However, it will obviously be to our advantage if we can get our stuff published in a “respectable” periodical rather than in Penthouse, because many people do consider sex magazines to be disreputable or worse. Moreover, if we’re not mistaken, Penthouse is basically an entertainment magazine that contains also some serious commentary. In such magazines the serious commentary to some extent serves as part of the entertainment. We are down on the entertainment industry because it is an “opium of the masses” (see paragraphs 147, 156 of our manuscript). So we don’t like the idea of playing footsy with that industry by allowing our writings to be used as entertainment. Therefore, if possible, we’d like to get our stuff published somewhere other than in Penthouse.

We are sending copies of our manuscript to the New York Times and the Washington Post. The NY Times is to have first claim on the right to publish the manuscript (or to arrange for its publication elsewhere), then the Washington Post, and after that Penthouse. If either the New York Times and the Washington Post is willing and able to publish our material (or arrange for its publication elsewhere) reasonably soon, then they will have exclusive rights to the material for a period that will probably be six months (see our letter to NY Times).

If neither the NY Times nor the Washington Post has published the material, or begun to publish it in serial form, or caused it to be published elsewhere, or announced a definite date for its publication, within 3 months from the day the present letter is postmarked, then Penthouse can publish the material, and will have exclusive rights to it for six months in accord with the conditions stated in our letters to NY Times. BUT, Penthouse must publish the material (or publish the first instalment, if it is to be serialized) within two months after the expiration of the 3 month period we’ve just mentioned, and publication of the entire manuscript must be completed within about six months after the first instalment appears.

Also, the deal we offer Penthouse will have to be a little different from what we offered the New York Times. If we offer Penthouse the same promise we offered the Times (to desist permanently from terrorism) then the NY Times will have no incentive to find a “respectable” outlet for the manuscript. They may just say, “What the heck, let Penthouse publish it and that will stop the bombings.” So to increase our chances of getting our stuff published in some “respectable” periodical we have to offer less in exchange for publication in Penthouse. Therefore, if our manuscript is published in Penthouse, and is not published and widely distributed through “respectable” channels, then we promise to desist permanently from terrorism, in accord with conditions specified in our letters to the NY Times, EXCEPT that we reserve the right to plant one (and only one) bomb, intended to kill, AFTER our manuscript has been published.

Since we are grateful for your offer to publish our manuscript, we are sending you an “exclusive” that you can print in Penthouse if you like.

Prior to June, 1993, when we sent a letter to the New York Times, the FBI led the public to believe that “the unabomber” had never explained his motives or claimed credit for any bombings. Since June, 1993 the FBI has maintained that our letter of that month was the first one from “the unabomber,” and they have implied that the significance of the letters “FC” is unknown.

The FBI is probably lying. In December, 1985, shortly after we planted the bomb that killed a computer store owner, we sent a letter to the San Francisco Examiner in which we outlined our motives. This letter revealed that several bombs we’d planted were part of a series, not unrelated events, and it gave enough information about one of the bombs so that the FBI could be sure the letter was authentic. That letter was never mentioned in the Examiner.

Now it is conceivable that the letter was lost in the mail, but that doesn’t seem likely, because in late December, 1985 there was an article in the Examiner about the bombings; this was the first news report that gave any indication that our various bombings were part of a series, and the article stated that it had not previously been realised that the bombings were related. So if the FBI is telling the truth, if they never received that letter, then we have to assume that the letter was lost in the mail and that the FBI just happened to discover on its own at that time that the bombings were related. THis is too much of a coincidence to seem likely. It’s more probable that the Examiner did receive the letter and turn it over to the FBI, and that the FBI, for some obscure reason of its own, asked the Examiner to suppress the letter.

We never followed that letter up with any further communications before June, 1993, because we discovered that the type of bomb we were using then was unreliable. It was a kind of pipe bomb that often failed to detonate properly unless made in a form that was so long nd heavy that it might easily arouse suspicion. So we decided that before attempting again to make a public statement we ought to go back to experimenting and develop a type of bomb that would enable us to be adequate terrorists. That we now have such a bomb is indicated by the success of our last four attacks. By the way, contrary to statements made by the FBI, these are not pipe bombs (except in the case of the Mosser bombing).

We give below some excerpts from our December, 1985 letter to the Examiner. We won’t give the whole letter, because there is just a chance that the FBI may be telling the truth, that they never received the letter, and in that case, if we gave them the whole letter now some parts of it conceivably might be slightly useful to them in their effort to track us down.

The letters FC stand for “Freedom Club.” We now think this name, which we adopted early, is rather inane, but since we’ve already been marking FC on bomb parts for a long time we may as well retain these letters as our signature.

EXCERPTS FROM 1985 LETTER TO SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER

The bomb that crippled the right arm of a graduate student in electrical engineering and damaged a computer lab at U. of Cal. Berkeley last May was planted by a terrorist group called the Freedom Club. We are also responsible for some earlier bombing attempts; among others, the bomb that injured a professor in the computer science building at U. of Cal., the mail bomb that inured the secretary of computer expert Patrick Fischer at Vanderbilt University 3½ years ago, and the fire bomb planted in the Business School at U. of Utah, which never went off. ...

We have waited until now to announce ourselves because our earlier bombs were embarassingly inaffectual. The injuries they inflicted were relatively minor. In order to influence people, a terrorist group must show a certain amount of success. When we finally realized that the amount of smokeless powder needed to blow up anyone or anything was too large to be practical, we decided to take a couple of years off to learn something about explosives and develop an effective bomb. …

… The ends of the pipe were closed with iron plugs secured with iron pins of 5/16 inch diameter. One of the plugs had the letters FC (for Freedom Club) marked on it. …

We enclose a brief statement partly explaining our aims. We hereby give the San Franisco Examiner permission to print in full any and all of the material contained in this envelope. …

1. The aim of the Freedom Club is the complete and permanent destruction of modern industrial society in every part of the world. …

2. The hollowness of the old revolutionary ideologies centering on socialism has become clear. Now and in the future the thrust of rebellion will be against the industrial-technological system itself and not for or against any political ideology that is supposed to govern the administration of that system. All ideologies and political systems are fakes. They only result in power for special groups who just push the rest of us around. There is only one way to escape from being pushed around, and that is to smash the whole system and get along without it. It is better to be poor and free than to be a slave and get pushed around all your life.

3. No ideology or political system can get around the hard facts of life in industrial society. Because any form of industrial society requires a high level of organization, all decisions have to be made by a small elite of leaders and experts who necessarily wield all the power, regardless of any political fictions that may be maintained. Even if the motives of this elite were completely unselfish, they would still HAVE TO exploit and manipulate us simply to keep the system running. Thus the evil is in the nature of technology itself.

4. Man is a social animal, meant to live in groups. But only in SMALL groups, say up to 100 people, in which all members know one another intimately. Man is not meant to live as an insignificant atom in a vast organization, which is the only way he can live in any form of industrialized society.

5. The Freedom Club is strictly anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-leftist. … This does not imply that we are in any sense a right-wing movement. We are apolitical. Politics only distracts attention from the real issue.

This was now the third letter in which he attempted to mislead investigators about his age and education, in this case quoting the first letter, whilst pretending to believe he thought it likely the original letter was lost in the post. The missing parts he wanted investigators to focus on were quote:

… First, we had to learn some basic physics, chemistry and mathematics, since none of us had any scientific background …

… Though we are young we are not hot-heads. …

Time Magazine:[84]

Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione told TIME today that he has offered the Unabomber a regular column in the magazine. Guccione, who claims to have spoken briefly by telephone with the Unabomber four days ago, plans to announce the offer on the magazine's Internet site. The Unabomber had said that if The New York Times, the Washington Post, TIME and other major news organizations refused to carry his 35,000-word manifesto, he would accept Guccione's offer to publish it in Penthouse. But in a bizarre turn as media critic, the Unabomber said in that case he would reserve the right to kill one more person, since publishing in Penthouse would not be as prestigious as appearing in the other publications. "I can't do it under those circumstances," Guccione told TIME's Jenifer Mattos today. But he came up with a counter-offer: "In place of killing one more person, a one-page monthly column in the magazine, where they can continue to communicate with the American public in a kind of interactive way, where they could answer letters and respond to critics. It would begin immediately as soon as they gave me the go-ahead, and go on indefinitely." Guccione, who described the Unabomber as sounding "subdued, quiet, quick, tentative" during their 15-second conversation, says he also received a four-page letter, half of its contents exclusively sent to him, which he will publish in the October issue of Penthouse.

Buffalo News:[85]

In a full-page advertisement titled "An Open Letter to the Unabomber", published in today's New York Times, Penthouse magazine publisher Bob Guccione offered the Unabomber a monthly column in his magazine if he agrees not to strike again.

Bob Guccione:[86]

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE UNABOMBER

I am a little miffed and a whole lot disappointed by your recent communication. In your first letter to the New York Times ( date ) you categorically undertook to "desist from all terrorist activities" if the Times or "some other nationally distributed periodical" agreed to publish your manifesto. Well .... I agreed! I agreed immediately and without reservation. Within 24 hours of your letter appearing in the New York Times, I put out a press release saying that I believed your offer was genuine and that on the basis of that belief, I was prepared to publish you fully and without censorship in the next available issue of Penthouse.

Not everyone in the media agrees with that position. Many think that any attempt to strike a deal with you is journalistically unethical and contrary to the proposition that government, big business and the press do not negotiate with terrorists. I answered those and other accusations in the following manner:

1. You held no individual newspaper or other periodical hostage. You did not insist on publication in any one particular forum failing which you would continue to kill. Had you done so, the New York Times would have turned its back and so would I.

2. I disagreed with the popular belief that you are a serial killer and should be treated like one. I pointed out that serial killers derive the whole of their satisfaction from the act of killing ...... that killing was an end in itself. In your case, I suggested that killing was merely a means to the end. Your objectives are much bolder and infinitely more elaborate. You want to change the world! Killing people was your way of attracting attention to a personal philosophical doctrine with vast socio-political change at its center.

3. I further held that anyone who has taken the trouble to write a literate, 37,000 word, philosophical manifesto and who set about killing people to get it published, is most unlikely to destroy the credibility of his thesis by publicly going back on his word. For this reason alone, I do not believe that you would kill again.

In your recent, personal letter to me, however, you have already begun to change the rules. You now say that simple publication in the New York Times or the Washington Post is no longer enough to stay the killings. You are asking for the additional publication of three new statements or "up-dates" annually for three successive years. A commitment to publish something, sight unseen, well into the future is unlikely win favor at either the Times or the Post. Nor would anyone in our industry blame them!

Furthermore, if both the Times and the Post eventually decline to publish you and the rights fall to Penthouse, you will permit publication in these pages but you will penalize us all by taking one more life. That, you say, is the price of appearing in a somewhat less than "respectable" periodical.

You are wrong! Over the years, Penthouse has won just about every distinguished, journalistic award a magazine could win. It has attacked and exposed elements of every, well entrenched power base in the country from government and religion to big business and organized crime. Our weapons are truth, dedication and an utterly fearless disregard for retaliation. I have been featured on presidential "hit-lists"; I've ben the object of retaliatory, I.R.S. audits; I've been bugged, sued, pursued and shot at, but I haven't killed anybody ...... yet!

The demographic mix of our audience is virtually the same as that of the New York Times and the Washington Post, but our total readership is many millions more than the total readership of the Times and the Post combined.

Penthouse is one of the biggest and most quoted magazines in the history of our industry. For 25 years it was and continues to be the single, biggest selling magazine in the Pentagon. If it's attention you want, you'd be hard pressed to do better.

To further tempt you from extracting one additional "penalty" should publication fall to me, I propose to offer you one or more unedited pages in Penthouse every single month for an indefinite period of time. Consider it a regular column in which you may continue to proffer your revolutionary philosophy, answer critics and generally interact with the public. Surely this would be preferable to the three annual updates you are requesting from the New York Times, et al.

In return, I am asking you to put an end to all terrorist activities now and forever. I'm still the only friend you have in the media. Don't let my willingness to publish you make fools of us both!

Satisfying an itch to write letter responses to news articles

At the same time as mailing the manifesto to the major newspapers, he wrote two letters responding to articles he’d read. The first was to a psychologist who’d been quoted in an article about him, who he also sent a photocopy of the transcript. The second was a simple response to a Scientific American article.

Writing letters to small newspapers was a past time he must have enjoyed returning to, only this time anonymously under the terror group named ‘Freedom Club’ he knew his ideas could reach a wider audience.

Thankfully he made the mistake of firstly using his real name when corresponding with newspapers back in the 70s about his anti-technology philosophy, and secondly leaving copies of all the letters in his family house, which his brother would discover later and hand over to the FBI.

Ted:[87]

The next major remission of the insomnia came in late June of 1995. Then the most important part of my work was done and I felt I could really relax. For a month or so I took it easy - I worked on my subsistence chores but did other work only to the extent that I felt like doing it. And I enjoyed the luxury of beautiful, sweet sleep, eight hours or more on most nights.

Tom Tyler Article, Letter & Open Letter Response

April 19, 1995: The San Francisco Chronicle publishes an article about the Oklahoma City bombing and the lengthy spate of bombings attributed to the Unabomber.

The first person quoted in the Chronicle article is Tom Tyler, a social psychology professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

June 30, 1995: Tyler receives a letter from the Unabomber, along with a copy of the manifesto. Ted explained the reason he wrote to Tom is that he had read the article and would like to challenge his views:[88]

“I said in the article that the Oklahoma City bomber and the Unabomber were examples of people who had exaggerated feelings that the government was out to get them,” Tyler later recalls. “The Unabomber objected to that characterization of him.”

July 4, 1995: Tyler then went onto publish an open letter in the San Fransico Chronicle that he knew the Unabomber read, where he said he welcomed Kaczynski’s suggestion that revolution “need not be violent or sudden,” he also said that Kaczynski is not alone in feeling discontented with today’s society, and that “it is wrong to simply say that people who are dissatisfied are in some way non-rational.” However, he also argued that industrial-technological society can be reformed.

The Initial Article Quoting Tom Tyler

LOSS OF FAITH IN INSTITUTIONS / Bombings Linked To Social Malaise:[89]

In a letter to one of his victims, the mysterious terrorist called the Unabomber warns of the evils of technology.

On a Michigan farm, as he is allegedly plotting the Oklahoma City bombing, Timothy McVeigh complains bitterly to neighbors that the U.S. government has become a tyrannical force.

They operate at very different extremes -- the Unabomber declaring himself a left-wing anarchist, and McVeigh drawn to the growing militia movement on the right -- but they seem to share a fundamental fear: A monolithic world order is robbing individuals of control.

"Whether it's the technological elite or the government, it's the same basic idea," said Tom Tyler, head of the social psychology group at the University of California at Berkeley. "It's an exaggerated idea of a kind of secret, all-powerful group that's controlling people's lives."

Although such views are typically marginalized as paranoid or fringe, some experts say they are merely the extreme expressions of a broader social malaise that also drives more "mainstream" movements, such as the backlash against immigrants.

Americans, the analysts say, feel rootless and powerless. Faced with worrisome changes brought about by rapid technological advances, economic upheaval and the end of the Cold War, they are losing faith in basic social institutions -- government, big business and the media.

"This kind of extremism usually comes during times of perceived threat and ambiguity, where people are not exactly sure what's happening," said social psychologist John Dovidio of Colgate University. "We have a society that's in moral chaos. Our values are shifting in ways it's hard for anybody to feel comfortable with."

Experts often relate such anxieties to turbulent economic times, when people feel shut out of job opportunities or excluded from the mainstream. Economic insecurity is a common explanation for the recent rise of citizens' militias and hate groups.

Although the Unabomber seems less motivated by economic worries, his vision of computers taking over the world manifests a similar fear of being left behind, said sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset at George Mason University in Virginia.

Disdain for big business, big government -- and by extension, "big technology" -- is nothing new in America, said Lipset.

"It declined sharply during the Depression and the New Deal," he said. "But since the Second World War, things have been reverting back to the classic American fear of the state. ... This is the most anti-statist country in the developed world."

Most people cope with troubled times without resorting to violence. But their fears may emerge in other ways.

"If we looked at more typical citizens who might be distrusting their government, the way that's getting manifested are things like the anti-immigration initiative, and 'three strikes, you're out,' the idea that we've got to have order and stop these people from destroying our society," said Tyler at UC Berkeley.

Psychologists typically distinguish between normal people and a small number of individuals who make some claim to the moral high ground to justify harming others. But, some warn, these extremists are really on a continuum with the rest of society and cannot simply be dismissed.

"I get nervous when it is said that these people are nuts, it doesn't reflect anything, it's just these crazies," said University of California at Santa Cruz psychology professor Thomas Pettigrew. "They said the same thing about people who desecrated Jewish synagogues. They always said that about the Klan."

While most experts agree that the recent acts of terrorism on U.S. soil are somehow a sign of the times, there is little consensus about what they portend.

One school of thought predicts that society will grow increasingly intolerant -- and violent.

"We know that in Germany, the hyperinflation of the 1920s produced enormous insecurity in the middle class, then the depression broke open, the boundaries of society fell apart and the Nazi party came to power," said social psychologist Raphael Ezekiel at Michigan University.

"A big part of what they were doing was creating violence in the streets, then saying, 'Look, the government can't protect us from violence in the streets.' "

Others, such as Dovidio, say that the current rise in extremism reflects the ebb and flow of society and that tragedies like the Oklahoma bombing may actually inspire a search for greater harmony.

"Society has in general a self- corrective nature," said Dovidio. "Crises develop, kind of the flash points, and those crises help to bring people together again and develop a new sense of direction and coherence."

Letter to Tom Tyler

Ted’s letter:[90]

Dr. Tyler:

This is a message from FC. The FBI calls us "unabom." We read a newspaper article in which you commented on recent bombings, including ours, as an indication of social problems. We are sending you a copy of a manuscript that we hope the New York Times will get published for us.

The trouble with psychologists is that in commenting on what people say or do they often concentrate exclusively on the non-rational motivations behind speech or behavior. But human behavior has a rational as well as an irrational component, and psychologists should not neglect the rational component. So if you take the trouble to read our manuscript and do any further thinking about the "unabom" case, we suggest that you should not only consider our actions as a symptom of some social or psychological problems; you should also give attention to the substance of the issues that we raise in the manuscript. You might ask yourself, for example, the following questions:

Do you think we are likely to be right, in a general way, about the kind of future that technology is creating for the human race?

If you think we are wrong, then why do you think so? How would you answer our arguments? Can you sketch a PLAUSIBLE scenario for the future technological society that does not have the negative characteristics indicated by our scenario?

If you think we are likely to be right about the future, do you consider that kind of future acceptable? If not, then what, if anything, do you think can be done about it?

Do you think our analysis of PRESENT social problems is approximately correct? If not, why not? How would you answer our arguments?

If you think we have identified some present social problems correctly, do you think anything can be done about them? Will they get better or worse with continual growth and progress?

We apologize for sending you such a poor copy of our manuscript. We can't make copies at a public copy machine because people would get suspicious if they saw us handling our copies with gloves.

FC

Tom Tyler’s Open Letter Response

An Open Letter -- Professor to Unabomber / Response addresses concerns of ‘FC’ by Tom Tyler:[91]

On May 1, The Chronicle published an article using both the Oklahoma bombing and the actions of the Unabomber (FC) as examples of general social malaise in America. I was one of several psychologists interviewed for the article.

I have received a letter from FC commenting on that story, along with a copy of his manuscript, "Industrial Society and its Future." I have read the manuscript and am writing this open letter to address the concerns raised by FC, both in his letter to me and in the manuscript itself.

I regret that we cannot communicate more directly. Hopefully, you will read this reply to the questions you have raised. In your letter, you suggest that we look beyond the questions of whether you have social or psychological problems and consider the substance of the issues you raise in your manuscript. This seems to me a fair request.

There is a widespread feeling of social malaise in our society today and we need to consider why people have those feelings. It is wrong to simply say that people who are dissatisfied are in some way nonrational.

We should also consider whether the structure of society is hurting people and needs to be changed. The manuscript you prepared directly addresses this issue.

I agree that it is important for all Americans to talk about what is wrong with our society and to try to find ways to improve it. By circulating your manuscript you are encouraging us to think about these important issues.

I have tried to read and consider your arguments with an open mind. I think violent actions are wrong, and I am pleased that you have decided to communicate your ideas by sending me (and others) your manuscript.

I cannot completely present or comment on all of the issues you raise in your lengthy manuscript within this letter. But I would like to note what seems to me to be several key arguments. The central point of your manuscript is that the economic and technological changes in our society have had a negative effect on people's lives.

Your concerns about widespread feelings of inferiority and over-socialization into conformity with society's rule are widely shared, as is your suggestion that many people do not find their lives very satisfying. Many people today do feel that they have little control over their lives and few opportunities for autonomy.

As you say, they do not feel that they have power over their lives. I think that your feelings and concerns are widely shared. Many people in America are searching for ways to make their lives more fulfilling. I agree with you that technology is resulting in many social problems and that our society has to address those problems and their solution.

You also argue that industrial- technological society cannot be reformed. Here I am less certain that I agree. There have been increasing signs that people are making choices that create individual freedom and local autonomy for themselves.

People quit jobs in corporations to start their own small businesses, people move from large cities to the country, people voluntarily conserve water, recycle their trash, and lower their use of electricity and natural gas.

People are finding many ways to change their lives in positive ways. It seems to me that the revolution you advocate is already occurring. Instead of being trapped in the system through psychological or biological manipulation, people are finding ways to live better lives. People are developing the type of anti-technology ideology that you advocate in your manuscript.

Of course, many people's lives continue to be difficult, and change takes time.

But, given evidence that people are able to make choices that give them a sense of control, does it not seem possible that society can change?

You suggest two ways of creating social change: Developing an alternative ideology and promoting social stress and instability.

As I have noted, there is already evidence that people themselves are developing an alternative ideology that lessens the importance of technology and increases their control and autonomy over their lives.

But how is it useful to promote social stress and instability, especially through acts of violence?

My impression is that people react to violence by becoming less willing to change. Instead of encouraging social change, threats of violence make people fearful and unwilling to consider new ideas.

How can you encourage people to think about your alternative ideology by creating fear and insecurity?

I think that education is the key to changing people. Would it not be possible to try to develop the core group of intelligent, thoughtful, rational people that you describe in your manuscript?

That core group could articulate and develop a new ideology that allows us to move beyond the problems of technological-industrial society. Many members of our society would welcome new ideas about how to deal with the problems created by technology. That group could change society by showing people a better way to live their lives. Do you have thoughts about how such a group could be formed? Who should be on it? What the most important issues for it to address might be?

Let me close by saying that I especially welcome your suggestion in the manuscript that a "revolution" that changes the economic and technological basis of our society need not be violent or sudden. It can occur peacefully and over a period of decades. In that spirit, I think our society should consider the important issues you raise in your manuscript.

Finally, Ted made a note of having read Tylers’ open letter response in his journal:[92]

[He] doubts my claim that the system can’t be reformed, and suggests that my revolution is already in progress. As evidence, he mentions that people are moving to the country and recycling their trash.

An Article Theorizing a Tech Induced Apocalypse is Written & The Unabomber Responds

June 28, 1995 Scientific American also receives a letter whose author claims to be "the terrorist group FC" which references a 1993 article in the magazine on particle accelerators and discusses negative aspects of scientific advances on society.

The Initial Scientific American Article

Strange Matters; Can advanced accelerators initiate runaway reactions? By Russell Ruthen[93]

If you have trouble sleeping, you don’t want to know about the physicist's worst nightmare: an atom smasher produces a new form of matter even more stable than everyday protons and neutrons, thereby triggering a cataclysmic, self-sustaining reaction that consumes the earth.

Although no serious scientists believe an atomic collision could ever lead to a global meltdown, they still want to be very, very sure it will never happen. Since the beginning of the nuclear age, researchers have met many times—usually behind closed doors—to discuss whether there was any chance that a proposed experiment might initiate a catastrophic event. Physicists rarely discuss the issue openly, fearing bad public relations, but recently some have given candid accounts of the secret meetings. “It’s a real concern,” observes Henry J. Crawford of the University of California at Berkeley. “Whenever scientists have started a new accelerator program, one of the first talks is always on this topic.”

Indeed, one of the most astonishing debates of this subject was revealed by Subal Das Gupta and Gary D. Westfall in Physics Today. The story began some 30 years ago, when the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory was planning to build a particle accelerator called the Bevalac. At the time, two theorists, Nobel laureate Tsung Dao Lee and the late Gian-Carlo Wick, raised the possibility that conditions of extreme energy and density could create a new phase of dense and stable nuclear matter. If this substance, known as Lee-Wick matter, existed and could be generated, the physicists feared, it would quickly accrete every atom around it—namely, the laboratory, California and the rest of the planet.

Researchers realized that the Bevalac had a shot at making Lee-Wick matter, and under no circumstances did they want to prove the theorists right during a test run of the machine. “We took the issue very seriously,” comments Westfall, who was a member of the Bevalac’s scientific sta› at the time. “We appointed a blue-ribbon committee to make sure there was no chance it would happen.”

The committee, which included Miklos Gyulassy, who is now at Columbia University, met several times. Together they concluded that the Bevalac had no chance of initiating a nuclear disaster. The physicists reasoned that nature had already performed the relevant experiment: the earth, moon and all celestial bodies are constantly bombarded with an extraordinary number of high energy particles that are produced by stars. Some of the particles collide with atoms on the earth and create conditions that equal or surpass anything the Bevalac could do. Yet the planet was still reassuringly here. Nor had any such event destroyed the moon, which had been struck by countless high-energy particles for at least a few billion years.

In the 1970s the operation of the Bevalac and other accelerators confirmed that Lee-Wick matter did not exist. This happy state of affairs can be explained. When an atomic nucleus collides with another and is compressed into a volume about one fourth its normal value, it expands in about a thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a second. Nuclear matter that has been compressed somewhat is simply not stable.

But what happens if nuclear matter is compressed to more extreme densities? If two nuclei collide at energies a bit beyond those that modern atom smashers can achieve, the nuclei should transform into so-called strange matter. The protons and neutrons of an atom are themselves made up of quarks, and when the quarks collide at high energy, they may yield a heavier particle: the strange quark. The consensus among theorists is that certain combinations of strange quarks with others are stable. Strange matter should grow through the accretion of ordinary atoms. But not to worry. The droplet of matter should not get much larger than a few million strange particles, theorists think. All such particles should carry a relatively large quantity of positive charge that should ultimately cause the droplet to burst apart. “The basic idea is that at equilibrium the stuff has a net positive charge, and as a result it would turn its own reactions off,” Crawford says.

So how can theorists be absolutely certain that an accelerator will never spawn a voracious clump of strange matter? The question was first posed seriously in 1983, when researchers were designing the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The collider, now under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory, promises to be the world’s most powerful smasher of heavy atoms and could quite possibly generate strange matter. Piet Hut of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., put everyone’s fears to rest. Applying the same logic his predecessors had used, Hut showed that innumerable cosmic particles collide with atoms on the earth and moon, creating conditions far more extreme than those of RHIC. Calculations similar to Hut’s have been done “for all the accelerators that have been built so far,” Crawford says, and therefore physicists know they are “not going to be walking in any dangerous territory.”

Although there is no instrument yet built that could cause the earth to become a lump of strange matter, such transformations may occur in other celestial bodies. If a droplet of strange matter forms within a star made of dense neutral matter, it might initiate a chain reaction that would create a strange-matter star. Physicists say such events can occur only in the heavens. Let’s hope they are right.

Letter to Scientific American

Ted’s letter response:[94]

We write in reference to a piece by Russel Ruthen, “Strange Matters: Can Advanced Accelerators Initiate Runaway Reactions?” Science and the Citizen, Scientific American, August, 1993.

It seems that physicists have long kept behind closed doors their concern that experiments with particle accelerators might lead to a world-swallowing catastrophe. This is a good example of the arrogance of scientists, who routinely take risks affecting the public. The public commonly is not aware that risks are being taken, and often the scientists do not even admit to themselves that there are risks. Most scientists have a deep emotional commitment to their work and are not in a position to be objective about its negative aspects.

We are not so much concerned about the danger of experiments with accelerated particles. Since the physicists are not fools, we assume that the risk is small (though probably not as small as the physicists claim). But scientists [crossed out] and engineers constantly gamble with human welfare, and we see today the effects of some of their lost gambles: ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, cancer-causing chemicals to which we cannot avoid exposure, accumulating nuclear waste for which a sure method of disposal has not yet been found, the crowding, noise and pollution that have followed industrialization, massive extinction of species and so forth. For the future, what will be the consequences of genetic engineering? Of the development of super-intelligent computers (if this [unreadable])? Of understanding of the human brain and the resulting inevitable temptation to “improve” it? No one knows.

We emphasize that negative PHYSICAL consequences of scientific advances often are completely unforeseeable. (It probably never occurred to the chemists who developed early pesticides that they might be causing many cases of disease in humans.) But far more difficult to foresee are the negative SOCIAL consequences of technological progress. The engineers who began the industrial revolution never dreamed that their work would result in the creation of an industrial proletariat or the economic boom and bust cycle. The wiser ones may have guessed that contact with industrial society would disrupt other cultures around the world, but they probably never imagined the extent of the damage that these other cultures would suffer. Nor did it occur to them that in the West itself technological progress would lead to a society tormented by a variety of social and psychological problems.

EVERY MAJOR TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCE IS ALSO A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT. These experiments are performed on the public by the scientists and by the corporations and government agencies that pay for their research. The elite groups get fulfilment [sic.], the exhilaration, the sense of power involved in bringing about technological progress while the average man gets only the consequences of their social experiments. It could be argued that in a purely physical sense the consequences are positive, since life-expectancy has increased. But the acceptability of risks cannot be assessed in purely actuarial terms. “(P)eople also rank risks based on ... how equitably the danger is distributed, how well individuals can control their exposure and whether risk is assumed voluntarily.” (M. Granger Morgan, “Risk Analysis and Management.” Scientific American, July, 1993, page 35.) The elite groups who create technological progress share in control of the process and assume the risks voluntarily, whereas the role of the average individual is necessarily passive and involuntary. Moreover, it is possible that at some time in the future the population explosion, environmental disaster of the breakdown of an increasingly troubled society may lead to a sudden drastic lowering of life expectancy.

However it may be with the PHYSICAL risks, there are good reasons to consider the SOCIAL consequences of technological progress as highly negative. This matter is discussed at length in a manuscript that we are sending to the New York Times.

The engineers who initiated the industrial revolution can be forgiven for not having anticipated its negative consequences. But the harm caused by technological progress is by this time sufficiently apparent so that to continue to promote it is [crossed out] grossly irresponsible.

---------------

This letter, which we invite you to print in Scientific American, is from the terrorist group FC. To prove that this letter does come from FC, we quote below the entire fourth paragraph of a letter that we are sending to the New York Times. The authenticity of the letter to the Times is confirmed by means of our secret identifying number.

FOURTH PARAGRAPH OF LETTER TO NY TIMES:

Contrary to what the FBI has suggested, our bombing at the California Forestry Association was in no way inspired by the Oklahoma City bombing. We strongly deplore the kind of indiscriminate slaughter that occurred in the Oklahoma City event. We have no regret about the fact that our bomb blew up the “wrong” man, Gilbert Murray, instead of William N. Dennison, to whom it was addressed. Though Murray did not have Dennison’s inflammatory style he was pursuing the same goals, and he was probably pursuing them more effectively because of the very fact that he was not inflammatory.

Just the Letter Sources

• Letter from Enoch W. Fischer to Percy Addison Wood U-1

• Letter from “Ralph C. Kloppenburg” to Dr. James V. McConnell C-247

• Message to San Francisco Examiner C-248

• Letter and envelop from FC to Warren Hoge U-3

• Letter and envelop from FC to Warren Hoge U-7

• Letter and envelop from FC to David Gelernter U-4

• Letter and envelop from FC to Phillip A. Sharp U-6

• Letter and envelop from FC to Richard J. Roberts U-5

• Letter to Earth First! C-258

• Letter to LWOD with codes C-261

• Letter to LWOD C-262

• Message to ACLU C-259

• Letter and envelop from “Frederick Benjamin Isaac Wood” (“FC”) to Jerry Roberts U-8

• Letter from FC to Washington Post U-10

• Letter and envelop from “FC” to Warren Hoge U-9

• Letter and envelop from “FC” to Rob Guccione (Penthouse) U-11

• LOSS OF FAITH IN INSTITUTIONS; Bombings Linked To Social Malaise Essay

• Letter from “FC” to Dr. Tom Taylor U-13

• Scientific American Essay

• Scientific American Magazine - Full Issue

• Letter to Scientific American (U-12) C-260

[1] Don Foster. Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous [Book]. Henry Holt and Company. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[2] Ted Kaczynski. U-7: Letter and envelop from FC to Warren Hoge (Assistant Managing Editor, NY Times) [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[3] Ted Kaczynski. C1: Bombs #1 and 2; vandalism; booby-traps, killing a businessman, government official, scientists [Journal]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[4] Multiple Authors. Profile: Theodore J. (“Ted”) Kaczynski [Essay]. History Commons . Archived on January 14, 2018. Original link. Archived link.

[5] Mick Grogan (Director). Unabomber: In His Own Words [Documentary]. Netflix. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[6] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[7] Ted Kaczynski. C1: Bombs #1 and 2; vandalism; booby-traps, killing a businessman, government official, scientists [Journal]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[8] Ted Kaczynski. C1: Bombs #1 and 2; vandalism; booby-traps, killing a businessman, government official, scientists [Journal]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[9] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[10] Lis W. Wiehl and Lisa Pulitzer. Hunting the Unabomber: The FBI, Ted Kaczynski, and the Capture of America’s Most Notorious Domestic Terrorist [Book]. Nelson Books. April 28, 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[11] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[12] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[13] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[14] FBI. David Kaczynski’s Statement [Court Document]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[15] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[16] Ted Kaczynski. U-1: Letter from Enoch W. Fischer to Percy Addison Wood [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[17] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[18] Unnamed. Excerpts From Unabomber’s Journal [Essay]. The New York Times. April 29, 1998. Original link. Archived link.

[19] Unnamed. Excerpts From Unabomber’s Journal [Essay]. The New York Times. April 29, 1998. Original link. Archived link.

[20] Don Foster. Author Unknown: On the Trail of Anonymous [Book]. Henry Holt and Company. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[21] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[22] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[23] Multiple Authors. Profile: Theodore J. (“Ted”) Kaczynski [Essay]. History Commons . Archived on January 14, 2018. Original link. Archived link.

[24] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[25] Mick Grogan (Director). Unabomber: In His Own Words [Documentary]. Netflix. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[26] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[27] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[28] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[29] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[30] John Jacobi. A text dump on Dark Mountain [Essay]. The Ted K Archive. May 6, 2016. Original link. Archived link.

[31] John Jacobi. A text dump on Dark Mountain [Essay]. The Ted K Archive. May 6, 2016. Original link. Archived link.

[32] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[33] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[34] Ted Kaczynski. Letter from “Ralph C. Kloppenburg” to Dr. James V. McConnell C-247 [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[35] Ted Kaczynski. Letter from “Ralph C. Kloppenburg” to Dr. James V. McConnell C-247 [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[36] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[37] Chris Waits and Dave Shors. Unabomber: The Secret Life of Ted Kaczynski [Book]. Farcountry Press. 2014. Original link. Archived link.

[38] Ted Kaczynski. Message to San Francisco Examiner C-248 [Letter]. Original link. Archived link.

[39] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[40] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[41] Stephen Labaton. Yale Professor Is Injured by Blast; Mail Bomb Tied to Terror in 70’s [Essay]. The New York Times. 25 June 1993. Original link. Archived link.

[42] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[43] Ted Kaczynski (Author) & Kelli Grant (Curator). Kaczynski and his lawyers [Letter]. Yahoo News. Original link. Archived link.

[44] Stephen Labaton. Yale Professor Is Injured by Blast; Mail Bomb Tied to Terror in 70’s [Essay]. The New York Times. 25 June 1993. Original link. Archived link.

[45] Elizabeth Shogren. Mail Bomb Attack Leaves Yale Computer Scientist in Critical Condition [Essay]. Los Angeles Times. 25 June 1993. Original link. Archived link.

[46] David Gelernter. Mirror Worlds: Or: The Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox...How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean [Book]. Oxford University Press. 1991. Original link. Archived link.

[47] Stephen Labaton. Yale Professor Is Injured by Blast; Mail Bomb Tied to Terror in 70’s [Essay]. The New York Times. 25 June 1993. Original link. Archived link.

[48] Elizabeth Shogren. Mail Bomb Attack Leaves Yale Computer Scientist in Critical Condition [Essay]. Los Angeles Times. 25 June 1993. Original link. Archived link.

[49] Jamie Gehring. Madman in the Woods: Life Next Door to the Unabomber [Book]. Diversion Books. April 19, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[50] Theodore John Kaczynski. Anti-Tech Revolution: Why and How (2nd Edition) [Book]. Fitch & Madison Publishers. 2020. Original link. Archived link.

[51] Ted Kaczynski. U-3: Letter and envelop from FC to Warren Hoge [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[52] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[53] Alston Chase. Harvard and the Unabomber [Book]. W. W. Norton & Co.. Aug 8, 2003. Original link. Archived link.

[54] Bron Taylor. Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism [Essay]. Terrorism and Political Violence 10, no.4: 1-42. 1998. Original link. Archived link.

[55] Earth First!. Earth First! Journal, Vol.13, No.6, Litha [Journal]. Earth First! Journal. June 21, 1993. Original link. Archived link.

[56] Ted Kaczynski. Suggestions for Earth Firsters from FC: K2041G [Letter]. Folder 3, Box 82, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). Original link. Archived link.

[57] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[58] Eric Benson. Project Unabom [Podcast Show]. Pineapple Street Studios. June 27, 2022. Original link. Archived link.

[59] Bron Taylor. Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism [Essay]. Terrorism and Political Violence 10, no.4: 1-42. 1998. Original link. Archived link.

[60] Multiple Authors. Profile: Theodore J. (“Ted”) Kaczynski [Essay]. History Commons . Archived on January 14, 2018. Original link. Archived link.

[61] Ted Kaczynski. U-7: Letter and envelop from FC to Warren Hoge (Assistant Managing Editor, NY Times) [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[62] Ted Kaczynski. U-4: Letter and envelop from FC to David Gelernter [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[63] U-6: Letter and envelop from FC to Phillip A. Sharp

[64] Ted Kaczynski. U-5: Letter and envelop from FC to Richard J. Roberts [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[65] Ted Kaczynski. Letter to Earth First! C-258 [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[66] Ted Kaczynski. Letter to LWOD with codes C-261 [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[67] Ted Kaczynski. Letter to LWOD C-262 [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[68] Ted Kaczynski. Letter to LWOD with codes C-261 [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[69] Ted Kaczynski. Message to ACLU C-259 [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[70] Unnamed. Unabomber . The Penthouse Connection [Essay]. Time. 28 Apr 1995. Original link. Archived link.

[71] Time Staff. Exclusive . . . The New Penthouse Offer [Essay]. Time. June 30, 1995. Original link. Archived link.

[72] Ted Kaczynski. U-8: Letter and envelop from “Frederick Benjamin Isaac Wood” (“FC”) to Jerry Roberts (Editorial Page Editor, San Francisco Chronicle) [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[73] William Claiborne. Unabomber Threatens, Then Calls It a Prank [Essay]. Washington Post. June 29, 1995. Original link. Archived link.

[74] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[75] Ted Kaczynski. U-10 : Letter from FC to Washington Post [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. 1995-06-24. Original link. Archived link.

[76] Multiple Authors. Ted Kaczynski [Essay]. Wikipedia . 22 June 2022‎. Original link. Archived link.

[77] Theo Slade. A Conversation with John Zerzan on Direct Action, School Shootings, Authenticity, Veganism & More [Video Interview]. Activist Journeys. Aug 9, 2021. Original link. Archived link.

[78] Jacques Ellul. Perspectives on Our Age: Jacques Ellul Speaks on His Life and Work [Book]. House of Anansi Press Perseus-PGW. 2004. Original link. Archived link.

[79] Jacques Ellul. Perspectives on Our Age: Jacques Ellul Speaks on His Life and Work [Book]. House of Anansi Press Perseus-PGW. 2004. Original link. Archived link.

[80] Griffin Kiegiel (Host). The Anti-Tech Cast [Podcast Interview]. The Ted K Archive. July 30, 2021. Original link. Archived link.

[81] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[82] Ted Kaczynski. U-9: Letter and envelop from “FC” to Warren Hoge [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[83] Multiple Authors. The Unabomber: A Chronology [Essay]. Court TV . archived on February 07, 2009. Original link. Archived link.

[84] Ted Kaczynski. U-11: Letter and envelop from “FC” to Rob Guccione (Penthouse) [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[85] Arthur Spiegelman. Unabomber Excerpts Show State of Mind 2 Papers Publish 3,000 Words From Mainfesto Reflecting His Concerns’ [Essay]. Buffalo News. Aug 3, 1995. Original link. Archived link.

[86] Robert Graysmith. Unabomber: A Desire to Kill [Book]. Regnery Publishing; Distributed to the trade by National Book Network. 1997. Original link. Archived link.

[87] Ted Kaczynski (Author) & Kelli Grant (Curator). An attack of desire for women [Letter]. Yahoo News. Original link. Archived link.

[88] George Lardner and Lorraine Adams. To Unabomb Victims, a Deeper Mystery [Essay]. Washington Post. April 14, 1996. Original link. Archived link.

[89] Pamela Burdman. LOSS OF FAITH IN INSTITUTIONS / Bombings Linked To Social Malaise [Essay]. SF Gate. 1 May 1995. Original link. Archived link.

[90] Ted Kaczynski. U-13: Letter from “FC” to Dr. Tom Taylor [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. 1995-06-24. Original link. Archived link.

[91] Tom Tyler. An Open Letter -- Professor to Unabomber / Response addresses concerns of `FC' [Essay]. SF Gate. July 4, 1995. Original link. Archived link.

[92] Ted Kaczynski. C2: 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 [Journal]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.

[93] Russell Ruthen. Strange Matters. Scientific American, August 1993, Page 17. Original link. Archived link.

[94] Ted Kaczynski. Letter to Scientific American (U-12) C-260 [Letter]. California University of Pennsylvania Special Collections. Original link. Archived link.