---------- From: cynthia ford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 16:24:43 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Ted Kacyznski, brainwashed by OSS Psychiatrist Henry A. Murray >X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Light Version 3.0.5 (32) >Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 19:12:25 -0400 >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Ted Kacyznski, brainwashed by OSS Psychiatrist Henry A. Murray > >see: OSS Psychiatrist Henry A. Murray >"Multiform Assessments of Personality Development Among Gifted College Men, >1941-1965," by Henry A. Murray >Henry A. Murray's abstract of the study to which he subjected Theodore >Kaczynski and other Harvard students. Posted by the Henry A. Murray >Research Center of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. > >ATLANTIC MONTHLY >http://www.theatlantic.com/cgi-bin/o/issues/2000/06/chase.htm > >J U N E 2 0 0 0 >Alston Chase is the author of Playing God in Yellowstone (1986) and In a >Dark Wood (1995). He is at work on a book about Theodore Kaczynski. ><Picture: Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber> > >In the fall of 1958 Theodore Kaczynski, a brilliant but vulnerable boy of >sixteen, entered Harvard College. There he encountered a prevailing >intellectual atmosphere of anti-technological despair. There, also, he was >deceived into subjecting himself to a series of purposely brutalizing >psychological experiments -- experiments that may have confirmed his >still-forming belief in the evil of science. Was the Unabomber born at >Harvard? A look inside the files > >by Alston Chase > >(The online version of this article appears in four parts. Click here to go >to part two, part three, or part four.) > > ><Picture: L>IKE many Harvard alumni, I sometimes wander the neighborhood >when I return to Cambridge, reminiscing about the old days and musing on >how different my life has been from what I hoped and expected then. On a >trip there last fall I found myself a few blocks north of Harvard Yard, on >Divinity Avenue. Near the end of this dead-end street sits the Peabody >Museum -- a giant Victorian structure attached to the Botanical Museum, >where my mother had taken me as a young boy, in 1943, to view the >spectacular exhibit of glass flowers. These left such a vivid impression >that a decade later my recollection of them inspired me, then a senior in >high school, to apply to Harvard. > >This time my return was prompted not by nostalgia but by curiosity. No. 7 >Divinity Avenue is a modern multi-story academic building today, housing >the university's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology. In 1959 a >comfortable old house stood on the site. Known as the Annex, it served as a >laboratory in which staff members of the Department of Social Relations >conducted research on human subjects. There, from the fall of 1959 through >the spring of 1962, Harvard psychologists, led by Henry A. Murray, >conducted a disturbing and what would now be seen as ethically indefensible >experiment on twenty-two undergraduates. To preserve the anonymity of these >student guinea pigs, experimenters referred to individuals by code name >only. One of these students, whom they dubbed "Lawful," was Theodore John >Kaczynski, who would one day be known as the Unabomber, and who would later >mail or deliver sixteen package bombs to scientists, academicians, and >others over seventeen years, killing three people and injuring twenty-three. > ><Picture: I>HAD a special interest in Kaczynski. For many years he and I >had lived parallel lives to some degree. Both of us had attended public >high schools and had then gone on to Harvard, from which I graduated in >1957, he in 1962. At Harvard we took many of the same courses from the same >professors. We were both graduate students and assistant professors in the >1960s. I studied at Oxford and received a Ph.D. in philosophy from >Princeton before joining the faculty at Ohio State and later serving as >chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Macalester College, in >Minnesota. Kaczynski earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of >Michigan in 1967 and then joined the Berkeley Department of Mathematics as >an instructor. In the early 1970s, at roughly the same time, we separately >fled civilization to the Montana wilderness. > >In 1971 Kaczynski moved to Great Falls, Montana; that summer he began >building a cabin near the town of Lincoln, eighty miles southwest of Great >Falls, on a lot he and his brother, David, had bought. In 1972 my wife and >I bought an old homestead fifty-five miles south of Great Falls. Three >years later we gave up our teaching jobs to live in Montana full-time. Our >place had neither telephone nor electricity; it was ten miles from the >nearest neighbor. In winter we were snowbound for months at a time. > >In our desire to leave civilization Kaczynski and I were not alone. Many >others sought a similar escape. What, I wondered, had driven Kaczynski into >the wilderness, and to murder? To what degree were his motives simply a >more extreme form of the alienation that prompted so many of us to seek >solace in the backwoods? > >Most of us may believe we already know Ted Kaczynski. According to the >conventional wisdom, Kaczynski, a brilliant former professor of mathematics >turned Montana hermit and mail bomber, is, simply, mentally ill. He is a >paranoid schizophrenic, and there is nothing more about him to interest us. >But the conventional wisdom is mistaken. I came to discover that Kaczynski >is neither the extreme loner he has been made out to be nor in any clinical >sense mentally ill. He is an intellectual and a convicted murderer, and to >understand the connections between these two facts we must revisit his time >at Harvard. > >I first heard of the Murray experiment from Kaczynski himself. We had begun >corresponding in July of 1998, a couple of months after a federal court in >Sacramento sentenced him to life without possibility of parole. Kaczynski, >I quickly discovered, was an indefatigable correspondent. Sometimes his >letters to me came so fast that it was difficult to answer one before the >next arrived. The letters were written with great humor, intelligence, and >care. And, I found, he was in his own way a charming correspondent. He has >apparently carried on a similarly voluminous correspondence with many >others, often developing close friendships with them through the mail. > >Kaczynski told me that the Henry A. Murray Research Center of the Radcliffe >Institute for Advanced Study, although it released some raw data about him >to his attorneys, had refused to share information about the Murray team's >analysis of that data. Kaczynski hinted darkly that the Murray Center >seemed to feel it had something to hide. One of his defense investigators, >he said, reported that the center had told participating psychologists not >to talk with his defense team. > >After this intriguing start Kaczynski told me little more about the Murray >experiment than what I could find in the published literature. Henry >Murray's widow, Nina, was friendly and cooperative, but could provide few >answers to my questions. Several of the research assistants I interviewed >couldn't, or wouldn't, talk much about the study. Nor could the Murray >Center be entirely forthcoming. After considering my application, its >research committee approved my request to view the records of this >experiment, the so-called data set, which referred to subjects by code >names only. But because Kaczynski's alias was by then known to some >journalists, I was not permitted to view his records. > >Through research at the Murray Center and in the Harvard archives I found >that, among its other purposes, Henry Murray's experiment was intended to >measure how people react under stress. Murray subjected his unwitting >students, including Kaczynski, to intensive interrogation -- what Murray >himself called "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" attacks, >assaulting his subjects' egos and most-cherished ideals and beliefs. > >My quest was specific -- to determine what effects, if any, the experiment >may have had on Kaczynski. This was a subset of a larger question: What >effects had Harvard had on Kaczynski? In 1998, as he faced trial for >murder, Kaczynski was examined by Sally Johnson, a forensic psychiatrist >with the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, at the order of a court. In her evaluation >Johnson wrote that Kaczynski "has intertwined his two belief systems, that >society is bad and he should rebel against it, and his intense anger at his >family for his perceived injustices." The Unabomber was created when these >two belief systems converged. And it was at Harvard, Johnson suggested, >that they first surfaced and met. She wrote, > >During his college years he had fantasies of living a primitive life and >fantasized himself as "an agitator, rousing mobs to frenzies of >revolutionary violence." He claims that during that time he started to >think about breaking away from normal society. > > > >It was at Harvard that Kaczynski first encountered the ideas about the >evils of society that would provide a justification for and a focus to an >anger he had felt since junior high school. It was at Harvard that he began >to develop these ideas into his anti-technology ideology of revolution. It >was at Harvard that Kaczynski began to have fantasies of revenge, began to >dream of escaping into wilderness. And it was at Harvard, as far as can be >determined, that he fixed on dualistic ideas of good and evil, and on a >mathematical cognitive style that led him to think he could find absolute >truth through the application of his own reason. Was the Unabomber -- "the >most intellectual serial killer the nation has ever produced," as one >criminologist has called him -- born at Harvard? > >The Manifesto > > ><Picture: T>HE story of Kaczynski's crimes began more than twenty-two years >ago, but the chain of consequences they triggered has yet to run its >course. Dubbed "the Unabomber" by the FBI because his early victims were >associated with universities or airlines, Kaczynski conducted an >increasingly lethal campaign of terrorism that began on May 26, 1978, when >his first bomb slightly injured a Northwestern University public-safety >officer, Terry Marker, and ended on April 24, 1995, when a bomb he had >mailed killed the president of the California Forestry Association, Gilbert >Murray. Yet until 1993 Kaczynski remained mute, and his intentions were >entirely unknown. > >By 1995 his explosives had taken a leap in sophistication; that year he >suddenly became loquacious, writing letters to newspapers, magazines, >targets, and a victim. Two years later The Washington Post, in conjunction >with The New York Times, published copies of the 35,000-word essay that >Kaczynski titled "Industrial Society and Its Future," and which the press >called "The Manifesto." > >Recognizing the manifesto as Kaczynski's writing, his brother, David, >turned Kaczynski in to the FBI, which arrested him at his Montana cabin on >April 3, 1996. Later that year Kaczynski was removed to California to stand >trial for, among other crimes, two Unabomber murders committed in that >state. On January 8, 1998, having failed to dissuade his attorneys from >their intention of presenting an insanity defense, and having failed to >persuade the presiding judge, Garland E. Burrell Jr., to allow him to >choose a new attorney, Kaczynski asked the court for permission to >represent himself. In response Burrell ordered Sally Johnson to examine >Kaczynski, to determine if he was competent to direct his own defense. >Johnson offered a "provisional" diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, but >she concluded that Kaczynski was nevertheless competent to represent >himself. Burrell refused to allow it. Faced with the prospect of a >humiliating trial in which his attorneys would portray him as insane and >his philosophy as the ravings of a madman, Kaczynski capitulated: in >exchange for the government's agreement not to seek the death penalty, he >pleaded guilty to thirteen federal bombing offenses that killed three men >and seriously injured two others, and acknowledged responsibility for >sixteen bombings from 1978 to 1995. On May 4, 1998, he was sentenced to >life in prison without possibility of parole. > >Driving these events from first bomb to plea bargain was Kaczynski's strong >desire to have his ideas -- as described in the manifesto -- taken seriously. > >"The Industrial Revolution and its consequences," Kaczynski's manifesto >begins, "have been a disaster for the human race." They have led, it >contends, to the growth of a technological system dependent on a social, >economic, and political order that suppresses individual freedom and >destroys nature. "The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human >needs. Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the >needs of the system." > >By forcing people to conform to machines rather than vice versa, the >manifesto states, technology creates a sick society hostile to human >potential. Because technology demands constant change, it destroys local, >human-scale communities. Because it requires a high degree of social and >economic organization, it encourages the growth of crowded and unlivable >cities and of mega-states indifferent to the needs of citizens. > >This evolution toward a civilization increasingly dominated by technology >and the power structure serving technology, the manifesto argues, cannot be >reversed on its own, because "technology is a more powerful social force >than the aspiration for freedom," and because "while technological progress >AS A WHOLE continually narrows our sphere of freedom, each new technical >advance CONSIDERED BY ITSELF appears to be desirable." Hence science and >technology constitute "a mass power movement, and many scientists gratify >their need for power through identification with this mass movement." >Therefore "the technophiles are taking us all on an utterly reckless ride >into the unknown." > >Because human beings must conform to the machine, > >our society tends to regard as a "sickness" any mode of thought or behavior >that is inconvenient for the system, and this is plausible because when an >individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as >well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to >adjust him to the system is seen as a "cure" for a "sickness" and therefore >as good. > > > >This requirement, the manifesto continues, has given rise to a social >infrastructure dedicated to modifying behavior. This infrastructure >includes an array of government agencies with ever-expanding police powers, >an out-of-control regulatory system that encourages the limitless >multiplication of laws, an education establishment that stresses >conformism, ubiquitous television networks whose fare is essentially an >electronic form of Valium, and a medical and psychological establishment >that promotes the indiscriminate use of mind-altering drugs. > >Since the system threatens humanity's survival and cannot be reformed, >Kaczynski argued, it must be destroyed. Indeed, the system will probably >collapse on its own, when the weight of human suffering it creates becomes >unbearable. But the longer it persists, the more devastating will be the >ultimate collapse. Hence "revolutionaries" like the Unabomber "by hastening >the onset of the breakdown will be reducing the extent of the disaster." > >"We have no illusions about the feasibility of creating a new, ideal form >of society," Kaczynski wrote. "Our goal is only to destroy the existing >form of society." But this movement does have a further goal. It is to >protect "wild nature," which is the opposite of technology. Admittedly, >"eliminating industrial society" may have some "negative consequences," but >"well, you can't eat your cake and have it too." > ><Picture: T>HE Unabomber's manifesto was greeted in 1995 by many thoughtful >people as a work of genius, or at least profundity, and as quite sane. In >The New York Times the environmental writer Kirkpatrick Sale wrote that the >Unabomber "is a rational man and his principal beliefs are, if hardly >mainstream, entirely reasonable." In The Nation Sale declared that the >manifesto's first sentence "is absolutely crucial for the American public >to understand and ought to be on the forefront of the nation's political >agenda." The science writer Robert Wright observed in Time magazine, >"There's a little bit of the unabomber in most of us." An essay in The New >Yorker by Cynthia Ozick described the Unabomber as America's "own >Raskolnikov -- the appealing, appalling, and disturbingly visionary >murderer of 'Crime and Punishment,' Dostoyevsky's masterwork of 1866." >Ozick called the Unabomber a "philosophical criminal of exceptional >intelligence and humanitarian purpose, who is driven to commit murder out >of an uncompromising idealism." Sites devoted to the Unabomber multiplied >on the Internet -- the Church of Euthanasia Freedom Club; Unapack, the >Unabomber Political Action Committee; alt.fan.unabomber; Chuck's Unabomb >Page; redacted.com; MetroActive; and Steve Hau's Rest Stop. The University >of Colorado hosted a panel titled "The Unabomber Had a Point." > >By 1997, however, when Kaczynski's trial opened, the view had shifted. >Although psychiatrists for the prosecution continued to cite the manifesto >as proof of Kaczynski's sanity, experts for the defense and many in the >media now viewed it as a symptom and a product of severe mental illness. >The document, they argued, revealed a paranoid mind. During the trial the >press frequently quoted legal experts who attested to Kaczynski's insanity. >Gerald Lefcourt, then the president of the National Association of Criminal >Defense Lawyers, said the defendant was "obviously disturbed." Donald >Heller, a former federal prosecutor, said, "This guy is not playing with a >full deck." The writer Maggie Scarf suggested in The New Republic that >Kaczynski suffered from "Narcissistic Personality Disorder." > >Michael Mello, a professor at Vermont Law School, is the author of The >United States of America vs. Theodore John Kaczynski. He and William >Finnegan, a writer for The New Yorker, have suggested that Kaczynski's >brother, David, his mother, Wanda, and their lawyer, Tony Bisceglie, along >with Kaczynski's defense attorneys, persuaded many in the media to portray >Kaczynski as a paranoid schizophrenic. To a degree this is true. Anxious to >save Kaczynski from execution, David and Wanda gave a succession of >interviews from 1996 onward to The Washington Post, The New York Times, and >Sixty Minutes, among other outlets, in which they sought to portray >Kaczynski as mentally disturbed and pathologically antisocial since >childhood. Meanwhile -- against his wishes and without his knowledge, >Kaczynski insists -- his attorneys launched a mental-health defense for >their client. > >One psychology expert for the defense, Karen Bronk Froming, concluded that >Kaczynski exhibited a "predisposition to schizophrenia." Another, David >Vernon Foster, saw "a clear and consistent picture of schizophrenia, >paranoid type." Still another, Xavier F. Amador, described Kaczynski as >"typical of the hundreds of patients with schizophrenia." How did the >experts reach their conclusions? Although objective tests alone suggested >to Froming only that Kaczynski's answers were "consistent with" >schizophrenia, she told Finnegan it was Kaczynski's writings -- in >particular his "anti-technology" views -- that cemented this conclusion for >her. Foster, who met with Kaczynski a few times but never formally examined >him, cited his "delusional themes" as evidence of sickness. Amador, who >never met Kaczynski at all, based his judgment on the "delusional beliefs" >he detected in Kaczynski's writing. And Sally Johnson's provisional >diagnosis -- that Kaczynski suffered from "Paranoid Type" schizophrenia -- >was largely based on her conviction that he harbored "delusional beliefs" >about the threats posed by technology. The experts also found evidence of >Kaczynski's insanity in his refusal to accept their diagnoses or to help >them reach those diagnoses. > >Most claims of mental illness rested on the diagnoses of experts whose >judgments, therefore, derived largely from their opinions of Kaczynski's >philosophy and his personal habits -- he was a recluse, a wild man in >appearance, a slob of a housekeeper, a celibate -- and from his refusal to >admit he was ill. Thus Froming cited Kaczynski's "unawareness of his >disease" as an indication of illness. Foster complained of the defendant's >"symptom-based failure to cooperate fully with psychiatric evaluation." >Amador said that the defendant suffered "from severe deficits in awareness >of illness." > >But Kaczynski was no more unkempt than many other people on our streets. >His cabin was no messier than the offices of many college professors. The >Montana wilds are filled with escapists like Kaczynski (and me). Celibacy >and misanthropy are not diseases. Nor was Kaczynski really so much of a >recluse. Any reporter could quickly discover, as I did through interviews >with scores of people who have known Kaczynski (classmates, teachers, >neighbors), that he was not the extreme loner he has been made out to be. >And, surely, a refusal to admit to being insane or to cooperate with people >who are paid to pronounce one insane cannot be taken seriously as proof of >insanity. > >Why were the media and the public so ready to dismiss Kaczynski as crazy? >Kaczynski kept voluminous journals, and in one entry, apparently from >before the bombing started, he anticipated this question. > >I intend to start killing people. If I am successful at this, it is >possible that, when I am caught (not alive, I fervently hope!) there will >be some speculation in the news media as to my motives for killing.... If >some speculation occurs, they are bound to make me out to be a sickie, and >to ascribe to me motives of a sordid or "sick" type. Of course, the term >"sick" in such a context represents a value judgment.... the news media may >have something to say about me when I am killed or caught. And they are >bound to try to analyse my psychology and depict me as "sick." This >powerful bias should be borne [in mind] in reading any attempts to analyse >my psychology. > > > >Michael Mello suggests that the public wished to see Kaczynski as insane >because his ideas are too extreme for us to contemplate without discomfort. >He challenges our most cherished beliefs. Mello writes, > >The manifesto challenges the basic assumptions of virtually every interest >group that was involved with the case: the lawyers, the mental health >experts, the press and politics -- both left and right.... Kaczynski's >defense team convinced the media and the public that Kaczynski was crazy, >even in the absence of credible evidence ... [because] we needed to believe >it.... They decided that the Unabomber was mentally ill, and his ideas were >mad. Then they forgot about the man and his ideas, and created a curative >tale. > > > >Mello is only half right. It is true that many believed Kaczynski was >insane because they needed to believe it. But the truly disturbing aspect >of Kaczynski and his ideas is not that they are so foreign but that they >are so familiar. The manifesto is the work of neither a genius nor a >maniac. Except for its call to violence, the ideas it expresses are >perfectly ordinary and unoriginal, shared by many Americans. Its pessimism >over the direction of civilization and its rejection of the modern world >are shared especially with the country's most highly educated. The >manifesto is, in other words, an academic -- and popular -- cliché. And if >concepts that many of us unreflectively accept can lead a person to commit >serial murder, what does that say about us? We need to see Kaczynski as >exceptional -- madman or genius -- because the alternative is so much more >frightening. > >"Exceedingly Stable" > > ><Picture: N>O. 8 Prescott Street in Cambridge is a well-preserved >three-story Victorian frame house, standing just outside Harvard Yard. >Today it houses Harvard's expository-writing program. But in September of >1958, when Ted Kaczynski, just sixteen, arrived at Harvard, 8 Prescott >Street was a more unusual place, a sort of incubator. > >Earlier that year F. Skiddy von Stade Jr., Harvard's dean of freshmen, had >decided to use the house as living accommodations for the brightest, >youngest freshmen. Von Stade's well-intentioned idea was to provide these >boys with a nurturing, intimate environment, so that they wouldn't feel >lost, as they might in the larger, less personal dorms. But in so doing he >isolated the overly studious and less-mature boys from their classmates. He >inadvertently created a ghetto for grinds, making social adjustment for >them more, rather than less, difficult. > >"I lived at Prescott Street that year too," Michael Stucki told me >recently. "And like Kaczynski, I was majoring in mathematics. Yet I swear I >never ever even saw the guy." Stucki, who recently retired after a career >in computers, lived alone on the top floor, far from Kaczynski's >ground-floor room. In the unsocial society of 8 Prescott, that was a big >distance. "It was not unusual to spend all one's time in one's room and >then rush out the door to library or class," Stucki said. > >Francis Murphy, the Prescott Street proctor, was a graduate student who had >studied for the Catholic priesthood, and to Kaczynski it seemed the house >was intended to be run more like a monastery than a dorm. Whereas other >freshmen lived in suites with one or two roommates, six of the sixteen >students of Prescott Street, including Kaczynski, lived in single rooms. >All but seven intended to major in a mathematical science. All but three >came from high schools outside New England, and therefore knew few people >in Massachusetts. They were, in Murphy's words, "a serious, quiet bunch." > >Much has been made of Kaczynski's being a "loner" and of his having been >further isolated by Harvard's famed snobbism. Snobbism was indeed pervasive >at Harvard back then. A single false sartorial step could brand one an >outcast. And Kaczynski looked shabby. He owned just two pairs of slacks and >only a few shirts. Although he washed these each week in the coin-operated >machine in the basement of the house next door to 8 Prescott, they became >increasingly ragtag. > >But it is a mistake to exaggerate Kaczynski's isolation. Most public high >schoolers at Harvard in those days, including Kaczynski, viewed the tweedy >in-crowd as so many buttoned-down buffoons who did not realize how >ridiculous they looked. And the evidence is that Kaczynski was neither >exceptionally a loner nor, at least in his early years at Harvard, >alienated from the school or his peers. > >Harvard was a "tremendous thing for me," Kaczynski wrote in an unpublished >autobiography that he completed in 1998 and showed to me. "I got something >that I had been needing all along without knowing it, namely, hard work >requiring self-discipline and strenuous exercise of my abilities. I threw >myself into this.... I thrived on it.... Feeling the strength of my own >will, I became enthusiastic about will power." > >Freshmen were required to participate in sports, so Kaczynski took up >swimming and then wrestling. He played the trombone, as he had in high >school, even joining the Harvard band (which he quit almost as soon as he >learned that he would have to attend drill sessions). He played pickup >basketball. He made a few friends. One of his housemates, Gerald Burns, >remembers sitting with Kaczynski in an all-night cafeteria, arguing about >the philosophy of Kant. After Kaczynski's arrest Burns wrote to the >anarchist journal Fifth Estate that Kaczynski "was as normal as I am now: >it was [just] harder on him because he was much younger than his >classmates." And indeed, most reports of his teachers, his academic >adviser, his housemaster, and the health-services staff suggest that >Kaczynski was in his first year at Harvard entirely balanced, although >tending to be a loner. The health-services doctor who interviewed Kaczynski >as part of the medical examination Harvard required for all freshmen >observed, > >Good impression created. Attractive, mature for age, relaxed.... Talks >easily, fluently and pleasantly.... likes people and gets on well with >them. May have many acquaintances but makes his friends carefully. Prefers >to be by himself part of the time at least. May be slightly shy.... >Essentially a practical and realistic planner and an efficient worker.... >Exceedingly stable, well integrated and feels secure within himself. >Usually very adaptable. May have many achievements and satisfactions. > > > >The doctor further described Kaczynski thus: "Pleasant young man who is >below usual college entrance age. Apparently a good mathematician but seems >to be gifted in this direction only. Plans not crystallized yet but this is >to be expected at his age. Is slightly shy and retiring but not to any >abnormal extent. Should be [a] steady worker." > >The Roots of the Unabomber > > ><Picture: I>N 1952, when Kaczynski was ten, his parents moved from Chicago >to the suburban community of Evergreen Park -- in order, they later >explained to Ted, to provide him with a better class of friends. The >community into which the Kaczynskis moved would soon be in turmoil. >Evergreen Park was a mixed neighborhood of Irish, Italians, Czechs, and >Poles who now felt themselves under siege by yet another group of new >arrivals. > >On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of >Education of Topeka that segregated schooling was unconstitutional. To many >people in Evergreen Park this was tantamount to a declaration of war. Even >before the Court's decision they had feared what they saw as black >encroachment. African-American communities stood just next door, and black >families came to town to shop and eat at Evergreen Park restaurants. Black >teenagers hung around Evergreen Plaza. > >This environment tended to isolate the Kaczynskis, who by several accounts >were liberal on race matters. Aggravating their isolation was Evergreen >Park's fragmented school system. Until 1955 the town had no public high >school building, and students were bused to high schools in surrounding >communities. Evergreen Park High School was not completed until 1955, and >Ted Kaczynski, who became a member of the first class that spent all four >years there, found himself in a school without cohesion or community, where >few of the students knew one another. As Spencer Gilmore, a former science >teacher, lamented, there was "no commonality in the student body." Howard >Finkle, who was then a social-studies teacher, describes Evergreen Park in >those years as a school for strangers. Soon the school was riven by cliques. > >Despite this fractured environment, school administrators sought to push >the students hard academically. "The fact to keep in mind about Evergreen >Park," Kaczynski's algebra teacher, Paul Jenkins, told me, "is that Gene >Howard [the principal of Evergreen Park High School at the time] enjoyed a >big budget. He had combed the country for the best instructors he could >find -- folks who would be teaching junior college in most places. Yet most >of the kids were incredibly naive. Some had never even been to downtown >Chicago. The faculty was presenting them with ideas they'd never >encountered before. Some hated the experience; others loved it. And it blew >the minds of some, including perhaps Ted." The students, according to >Finkle, were asked to read books ordinarily used by college undergraduates. >The intellectually ambitious, like Kaczynski, adapted readily to these >demands, but in a school where the most popular boys carried cigarette >packs rolled up in the sleeves of their T-shirts, excelling at academics >meant social exile. > >What pressures did Kaczynski face among his family? Ted Kaczynski insists >that the Kaczynski home was an unhappy one and that his social isolation >came about because his parents pushed him too hard academically. David and >Wanda say that theirs was a happy and normal home but that Ted had shown >signs of extreme alienation since childhood. When family members squabble, >it is almost impossible for anyone -- least of all an outsider -- to know >who is right. And the Kaczynskis are squabblers. > >The letters and other materials Kaczynski sent me in the course of our >correspondence -- including his 1998 autobiography, containing quotations >from doctors, teachers, and college advisers -- naturally support his >version. Unfortunately, however, I am limited in my ability to use these, >because Kaczynski has continually changed his mind about the terms and >conditions for the use of his autobiography and other documents. >Nevertheless, most of the people I interviewed tended to support most of >his claims. I offer my own interpretation of his family relations, which is >supported by interviews and infused with knowledge of documents that >Kaczynski sent to me. > >Kaczynski's father, Theodore R. "Turk" Kaczynski, was a self-educated >freethinker living in a conventionally Catholic working-class community. In >his autobiography Kaczynski claims, and a close friend of Turk's confirms, >that Wanda tended to be fearful that their family would be perceived as >different. Although nonconformist, the Kaczynskis wanted to be perceived as >conforming. Thus, Kaczynski records, although the Kaczynskis were atheists, >his parents instructed him to tell people they were Unitarians. The tension >created by the family's efforts to look good to the neighbors increased >significantly when, in the fifth grade, Kaczynski scored 167 on an IQ test. >He skipped the sixth grade, leaving his friends behind to enter a new class >as the smallest kid in the room. > >From then on, according to Kaczynski and also according to others who knew >the family, his parents valued his intellect as a trophy that gave the >Kaczynskis special status. They began to push him to study, lecturing him >if his report card showed any grade below an A. Meanwhile, Turk seemed -- >to Kaczynski, at least -- to become increasingly cold, critical, and distant. > >When Kaczynski was a sophomore, the Evergreen Park High School >administration recommended that he skip his junior year. His band teacher >and friend, James Oberto, remembers pleading with Kaczynski's father not to >allow it. But Turk wouldn't listen. "Ted's success meant too much to him," >Oberto says. > >Two years younger than his classmates, and still small for his age, >Kaczynski became even more of an outcast in school. There was "a gradual >increasing amount of hostility I had to face from the other kids," Sally >Johnson reports Kaczynski as admitting. "By the time I left high school, I >was definitely regarded as a freak by a large segment of the student body." > >Apparently caught between acrimony at home and rejection at school, >Kaczynski countered with activity. He joined the chess, biology, German, >and mathematics clubs. He collected coins. He read ravenously and widely, >excelling in every field from drama and history to biology and mathematics. >According to an account in The Washington Post, he explored the music of >Bach, Vivaldi, and Gabrieli, studied music theory, and wrote musical >compositions for a family trio -- David on the trumpet, Turk at the piano, >and himself on the trombone. He played duets with Oberto. > >These achievements made Kaczynski a favorite of his teachers. Virtually all >those with whom I talked who knew him well in those years saw him as >studious and a member of the lowest-ranking high school clique -- the >so-called briefcase boys -- but otherwise entirely normal. His physics >teacher, Robert Rippey, described him to me as "honest, ethical, and >sociable." His American-government teacher, Philip Pemberton, said he had >many friends and indeed seemed to be their "ringleader." Paul Jenkins used >Kaczynski as a kind of teaching assistant, to help students who were having >trouble in math. School reports regularly gave him high marks for neatness, >"respect for others," "courtesy," "respect for law and order," and >"self-discipline. "No one was more lavish in praise of Kaczynski than Lois >Skillen, his high school counselor. "Of all the youngsters I have worked >with at the college level," she wrote to Harvard, > >I believe Ted has one of the greatest contributions to make to society. He >is reflective, sensitive, and deeply conscious of his responsibilities to >society.... His only drawback is a tendency to be rather quiet in his >original meetings with people, but most adults on our staff, and many >people in the community who are mature find him easy to talk to, and very >challenging intellectually. He has a number of friends among high school >students, and seems to influence them to think more seriously. > > > >Kaczynski was accepted by Harvard in the spring of 1958; he was not yet >sixteen years old. One friend remembers urging Kaczynski's father not to >let the boy go, arguing, "He's too young, too immature, and Harvard too >impersonal." But again Turk wouldn't listen. "Ted's going to Harvard was an >ego trip for him," the friend recalls. > >General Education and the Culture of Despair > > ><Picture: A>LL Harvard freshmen in the 1950s, including Kaczynski and me, >were immersed in what the college described as "general education" and >students called Gen Ed. This program of studies, which had been fully >implemented by 1950, was part of a nationwide curricular reform that sought >to inculcate a sense of "shared values" among undergraduates through >instruction in the Judeo-Christian tradition. > >Unlike the usual departmental offerings, which focused on methodological >issues within a discipline, Gen Ed courses were intended to be >interdisciplinary, with material arranged for students historically >(chronologically) rather than analytically. Required Gen Ed courses focused >on science, literature, philosophy, history, and Western institutions. The >undergraduate curriculum, therefore, was initially designed to be neatly >divided into two categories, one general and one specialized, one >emphasizing history and values, the other emphasizing the value-free >methodologies employed by scholars in the various academic fields. This >attempt at balance would give rise to a battle in the long war between >humanism and positivism. > >From the archives: > >"Wanted: American Radicals," by James Bryant Conant (May 1943) >"In this country we must invoke our radical ancestors and with their spirit >attack the problems of a stratified society, highly mechanized and forced >to continue along the road of mass production." > >"Education in the Western World," by James Bryant Conant (November 1957) >"I should like to approach the subject of education for the professions in >the mood of the comparative educationalist. I should like to examine in >particular the way the future members of the professions are recruited, >selected, and educated in certain European nations and the United States." > >The Gen Ed curriculum was born of a lofty impulse: to establish in higher >education -- as President Harry Truman's Commission on Higher Education >would later express it -- "a code of behavior based on ethical principles >consistent with democratic ideals." Harvard's president, James B. Conant, >in his charge to the committee that would design Gen Ed, wrote, > >Unless the educational process includes at each level of maturity some >continuing contact with those fields in which value judgments are of prime >importance, it must fall far short of the ideal. The student in high >school, in college and in graduate school must be concerned, in part at >least, with the words "right" and "wrong" in both the ethical and >mathematical sense. > >The committee's report, General Education in a Free Society (1945), was >known, for the color of its cover, as the Redbook. The solution that the >Redbook committee offered was a program of instruction that, in the words >of the education historian Frederick Rudolph, called for "a submersion in >tradition and heritage and some sense of common bond strong enough to bring >unbridled ego and ambition under control." The Redbook's program of reform >caught the imagination of educators across the country. By the mid-1950s >more than half the colleges in America were offering programs of general >education modeled along the same lines. > >Although at Harvard the name caught on, the philosophy behind it did not. >Gen Ed was doomed from the start. > >By 1950 the Harvard faculty was divided between those who, chastened by >their experience in World War II and especially by the bombings of >Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saw science and technology as a threat to Western >values and even human survival and those -- a majority -- who saw science >as a liberator from superstition and an avenue to progress. Both these >views found their way into the Gen Ed curriculum. > >The dominant faction had little sympathy for the Redbook's resolve to >inculcate Judeo-Christian ethics. Because of the majority's resistance, >many Redbook-committee recommendations were never fully implemented. And >those recommendations that were incorporated into the curriculum were >quickly subverted by many of the people expected to teach it. These >professors in fact emphasized the opposite of the lesson Conant intended. >Rather than inculcate traditional values, they sought to undermine them. >Soon "Thou shalt not utter a value judgment" became the mantra for Harvard >freshmen, in dorm bull sessions as well as in term papers. Positivism >triumphed. > >Superficially, the positivist message appeared to be an optimistic one, >concerning the perfectibility of science and the inevitability of progress. >It taught that reason was a liberating force and faith mere superstition; >the advance of science would eventually produce a complete understanding of >nature. But positivism also taught that all the accumulated nonscientific >knowledge of the past, including the great religions and philosophies, had >been at best merely an expression of "cultural mores" and at worst >nonsense; life had no purpose and morality no justification. > >Even as positivism preached progress, therefore, it subliminally carried -- >quite in contradiction to the intent of Gen Ed's framers -- a more >disturbing implication: that absolute reason leads to absolute despair. G. >K. Chesterton wrote, "Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what >does breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go mad ... mathematicians go >mad." Hence Gen Ed delivered to those of us who were undergraduates during >this time a double whammy of pessimism. From the humanists we learned that >science threatens civilization. From the scientists we learned that science >cannot be stopped. Taken together, they implied that there was no hope. Gen >Ed had created at Harvard a culture of despair. This culture of despair was >not, of course, confined to Harvard -- it was part of a more generalized >phenomenon among intellectuals all over the Western world. But it existed >at Harvard in a particularly concentrated form, and Harvard was the place >where Kaczynski and I found ourselves. > >Although I cannot say exactly what Kaczynski read, he must have absorbed a >good measure of the Gen Ed readings that infused the intellectual and >emotional climate on campus. Gen Ed courses in social science and >philosophy quickly introduced us to the relativity of morals and the >irrationality of religion. To establish that ethical standards were merely >expressions of Western cultural mores, we were assigned to read works by >anthropologists such as Margaret Mead (Coming of Age in Samoa) and Ruth >Benedict (Patterns of Culture). In Humanities 5, or "Ideas of Man and the >World in Western Thought," we read Sigmund Freud's polemic against >religious faith, The Future of an Illusion, which dismisses the belief that >life has purpose as a mere expression of infantile desires and as >confirming that "man is a creature of weak intelligence who is governed by >his instinctual wishes." > >In expository writing we encountered Thorstein Veblen's prediction that "so >long as the machine process continues to hold its dominant place as a >disciplinary factor in modern culture, so long must the spiritual and >intellectual life of this cultural era maintain the character which the >machine process gives it." We read Norbert Wiener, who warned that unless >human nature changes, the "new industrial revolution ... [makes it] >practically certain that we shall have to face a decade or more of ruin and >despair." > >And Lewis Mumford told us, > >Western man has exhausted the dream of mechanical power which so long >dominated his imagination.... he can no longer let himself remain >spellbound in that dream: he must attach himself to more humane purposes >than those he has given to the machine. We can no longer live, with the >illusions of success, in a world given over to devitalized mechanisms, >desocialized organisms, and depersonalized societies: a world that had lost >its sense of the ultimate dignity of the person. > > > >In "German R" ("Intermediate German With Review of Fundamentals"), which >both Kaczynski and I took, we encountered a whole corpus of pessimistic >writers, from Friedrich Nietzsche ("God is dead," "Morality is the herd >instinct of the individual," "The thought of suicide is a great source of >comfort") to Oswald Spengler ("This machine-technics will end with the >Faustian civilization and one day will lie in fragments, forgotten -- our >railways and steamships as dead as the Roman roads and the Chinese wall, >our giant cities and skyscrapers in ruins like old Memphis and Babylon"). > >In several courses we studied Joseph Conrad, who would later become one of >Kaczynski's favorite writers, and whose description of the villain in Heart >of Darkness could have been applied to Kaczynski himself: "All Europe >contributed to the making of Kurtz.... " He was "a gifted creature.... He >was a universal genius." Conrad's The Secret Agent, a satire about >bomb-wielding anarchists who declare war on science (and whose intentional >irony Kaczynski may have missed), presages the Unabomber manifesto. >"Science," one of the plotters suggests, "is the sacrosanct fetish." > >All the damned professors are radicals at heart. Let them know that their >great panjandrum has got to go, too.... The demonstration must be against >learning -- science.... The attack must have all the shocking senselessness >of gratuitous blasphemy.... I have always dreamed of a band of men absolute >in their resolve to discard all scruples in the choice of means, strong >enough to give themselves frankly the name of destroyers, and free from the >taint of that resigned pessimism which rots the world. No pity for anything >on earth, including themselves, and death enlisted for good and all in the >service of humanity -- that's what I would have liked to see. > > > ><Picture: W>HAT impact did this reading have on us? Speaking as a former >college professor, I can say that most curricula have absolutely no effect >on most students. But readings can have profound effects on some students, >especially the brightest, most conscientious, and least mature. Certainly >the intellectual climate generated by Gen Ed informed Kaczynski's >developing views. The Unabomber philosophy bears a striking resemblance to >many parts of Harvard's Gen Ed syllabus. Its anti-technology message and >its despairing depiction of the sinister forces that lie beneath the >surface of civilization, its emphasis on the alienation of the individual >and on the threat that science poses to human values -- all these were in >the readings. And these kinds of ideas did not affect Kaczynski alone -- >they reached an entire generation, and beyond. > >Gen Ed had more than an intellectual impact. According to a study of >Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates that included Kaczynski's class of >1962, conducted by William G. Perry Jr., the director of the university's >Bureau of Study Counsel, the undergraduate curriculum had a profound impact >on the emotions, the attitudes, and even the health of some students. > >According to Perry, intellectual development for Harvard and Radcliffe >undergraduates typically encompassed a progression from a simplistic, >"dualistic" view of reality to an increasingly relativistic and >"contingent" one. Entering freshmen tend to favor simple over complex >solutions and to divide the world into truth and falsehood, good and bad, >friend and foe. Yet in most of their college courses, especially in the >social sciences and the humanities, they are taught that truth is relative. >Most accept this, but a number cannot. They react against relativism by >clinging more fiercely to an absolute view of the world. To some of these >students, in Perry's words, "science and mathematics still seem to offer >hope." > >Nevertheless, Perry wrote, "regression into dualism" is not a happy >development, for it "calls for an enemy." Dualists in a relativistic >environment tend to see themselves as surrounded; they become increasingly >lonely and alienated. This attitude "requires an equally absolutistic >rejection of any 'establishment'" and "can call forth in its defense hate, >projection, and denial of all distinctions but one," Perry wrote. "The >tendency ... is toward paranoia." > >As is evident in his writings, Kaczynski rejected the complexity and >relativism he found in the humanities and the social sciences. He embraced >both the dualistic cognitive style of mathematics and Gen Ed's >anti-technology message. And perhaps most important, he absorbed the >message of positivism, which demanded value-neutral reasoning and preached >that (as Kaczynski would later express it in his journal) "there was no >logical justification for morality." > >After he graduated from Harvard, Kaczynski encountered a book by the French >philosopher Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (1954). Its message >was that mankind no longer saw technology as merely a tool but now pursued >its advancement as an end in itself. Society served technology, not vice >versa. Individuals were valued only insofar as they served this end. Their >education and the structure of their institutions were shaped solely for >the purpose of technological progress. > >By the time he encountered Ellul, Kaczynski recalled in 1998, "I had >already developed at least 50% of the ideas of that book on my own, and ... >when I read the book for the first time, I was delighted, because I >thought, 'Here is someone who is saying what I have already been thinking.'" > >The Murray Experiment > > ><Picture: P>ERHAPS no figure at Harvard at this time better embodied the >ongoing war between science and humanism than Henry A. "Harry" Murray, a >professor in Harvard's Department of Social Relations. A wealthy and >blue-blooded New Yorker, Murray was both a scientist and a humanist, and he >was one of Lewis Mumford's best friends. He feared for the future of >civilization in an age of nuclear weapons, and advocated implementing the >agenda of the World Federalist Association, which called for a single world >government. The atomic bomb, Murray wrote in a letter to Mumford, "is the >logical & predictable result of the course we have been madly pursuing for >a hundred years." The choice now facing humanity, he added, was "One World >or No World." > >Yet unlike Mumford, Murray maintained a deep faith in science. He saw it as >offering a solution by helping to transform the human personality. "The >kind of behavior that is required by the present threat," Murray wrote >Mumford, "involves transformations of personality such as never occurred >quickly in human history; one transformation being that of National Man >into World Man." Crucial to achieving this change was learning the secret >of successful relationships between people, communities, and nations. And >coming to understand these "unusually successful relations" was the object >of Murray's particular research: the interplay between two individuals, >which he called the "dyad." > >The concept of the dyad was, in a sense, Murray's attempt to build a bridge >between psychology and sociology. Rather than follow Freud and Jung by >identifying the individual as the fundamental atom in the psychological >universe, Murray chose the dyad -- the smallest social unit -- and in this >way sought to unite psychiatry, which studied the psyches of individuals, >and sociology, which studied social relations. This kind of research, he >apparently hoped, might (as he put it in a 1947 paper) promote "the >survival and further evaluation of Modern Man, "by encouraging the >emergence of the new "world man" and making world peace more likely. > >Murray's interest in the dyad, however, may have been more than merely >academic. The curiosity of this complex man appears to have been impelled >by two motives -- one idealistic and the other somewhat less so. He lent >his talents to national aims during World War II. Forrest Robinson, the >author of a 1992 biography of Murray, wrote that during this period he >"flourished as a leader in the global crusade of good against evil." He was >also an advocate of world government. Murray saw understanding the dyad, it >seems, as a practical tool in the service of the great crusade in both its >hot and cold phases. (He had long shown interest, for example, in the whole >subject of brainwashing.) During the war Murray served in the Office of >Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, helping to develop >psychological screening tests for applicants and (according to Timothy >Leary) monitoring military experiments on brainwashing. In his book The >Search for the "Manchurian Candidate" (1979), John Marks reported that >General "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS director, "called in Harvard >psychology professor Henry 'Harry' Murray" to devise a system for testing >the suitability of applicants to the OSS. Murray and his colleagues "put >together an assessment system ... [that] tested a recruit's ability to >stand up under pressure, to be a leader, to hold liquor, to lie skillfully, >and to read a person's character by the nature of his clothing.... Murray's >system became a fixture in the OSS." > >One of the tests that Murray devised for the OSS was intended to determine >how well applicants withstood interrogations. As he and his colleagues >described it in their 1948 report "Selection of Personnel for Clandestine >Operations -- Assessment of Men," > >The candidate immediately went downstairs to the basement room. A voice >from within commanded him to enter, and on complying he found himself >facing a spotlight strong enough to blind him for a moment. The room was >otherwise dark. Behind the spotlight sat a scarcely discernible board of >inquisitors.... The interrogator gruffly ordered the candidate to sit down. >When he did so, he discovered that the chair in which he sat was so >arranged that the full strength of the beam was focused directly on his >face.... > >At first the questions were asked in a quiet, sympathetic, conciliatory >manner, to invite confidence.... After a few minutes, however, the examiner >worked up to a crescendo in a dramatic fashion.... When an inconsistency >appeared, he raised his voice and lashed out at the candidate, often with >sharp sarcasm. He might even roar, "You're a liar." > > > >Even anticipation of this test was enough to cause some applicants to fall >apart. The authors wrote that one person "insisted he could not go through >with the test." They continued, "A little later the director ... found the >candidate in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of his cot, sobbing." > >Before the war Murray had been the director of the Harvard Psychological >Clinic. After the war Murray returned to Harvard, where he continued to >refine techniques of personality assessment. In 1948 he sent a grant >application to the Rockefeller Foundation proposing "the development of a >system of procedures for testing the suitability of officer candidates for >the navy." By 1950 he had resumed studies on Harvard undergraduates that he >had begun, in rudimentary form, before the war, titled "Multiform >Assessments of Personality Development Among Gifted College Men." The >experiment in which Kaczynski participated was the last and most elaborate >in the series. In their postwar form these experiments focused on stressful >dyadic relations, designing confrontations akin to those mock >interrogations he had helped to orchestrate for the OSS. > >go to part one, part two, or part four.) > > ><Picture: P>LANNING for the last of Murray's "multiform assessments" was >well under way by the spring of 1959. The idea, according to Murray's >notes, was to "call for volunteers from a large undergraduate course." > >Get about 80 sophomores; administer a series of scales or questionnaires >dealing with various dimensions of personality; pick 25 subjects, some >extremely high, some extremely low and some in middle on each of these >scales; study these 25 subjects over a three year period by the multiform >method of assessment; come up with 700 rank orders, and using a computer, >obtain clusters of intercorrelations, factors, but final decisions are >reached after prolonged discussions and reassessments; enormous amount of >data which staff analyzes, interprets, formulates. > > > >Kaczynski told Mello that he was "pressured into participating" in the >Murray experiment. His hesitation turned out to be sensible. Researchers >gave the volunteers almost no information about the experiment in which >they would participate. Each was simply asked to answer yes to the >following question: "Would you be willing to contribute to the solution of >certain psychological problems (parts of an on-going program of research in >the development of personality), by serving as a subject in a series of >experiments or taking a number of tests (average about 2 hours a week) >through the academic year (at the current College rate per hour)?" > >In fact it would never be clear what the "certain psychological problems" >were. And the test that served as the centerpiece for this undertaking >appears remarkably similar to the old OSS stress test. Students would be >given the third degree. But whereas the OSS applicants must have known that >enduring unpleasant interrogations could be part of their job, these >students did not. The intent was to catch them by surprise, to deceive >them, and to brutalize them. As Murray described it, > >First, you are told you have a month in which to write a brief exposition >of your personal philosophy of life, an affirmation of the major guiding >principles in accord with which you live or hope to live. > >Second, when you return to the Annex with your finished composition, you >are informed that in a day or two you and a talented young lawyer will be >asked to debate the respective merits of your two philosophies. > > > >When the subject arrived for the debate, he was escorted to a "brilliantly >lighted room" and seated in front of a one-way mirror. A motion-picture >camera recorded his every move and facial expression through a hole in the >wall. Electrodes leading to machines that recorded his heart and >respiratory rates were attached to his body. Then the debate began. But the >students were tricked. Contrary to what Murray claimed in his article, they >had been led to believe that they would debate their philosophy of life >with another student like themselves. Instead they confronted what Forrest >Robinson describes as a "well-prepared 'stooge'" -- a talented young lawyer >indeed, but one who had been instructed to launch into an aggressive attack >on the subject, for the purpose of upsetting him as much as possible. > >Robinson has described what happened next. > >As instructed, the unwitting subject attempted to represent and to defend >his personal philosophy of life. Invariably, however, he was frustrated, >and finally brought to expressions of real anger, by the withering assault >of his older, more sophisticated opponent.... while fluctuations in the >subject's pulse and respiration were measured on a cardiotachometer. > > > >Not surprisingly, most participants found this highly unpleasant, even >traumatic, as the data set records. "We were led into the room with bright >lights, very bright," one of them, code-named Cringle, recalled afterward. > >I could see shadowy activities going on behind the one-way glass ... [Dr. >G] ... started fastening things on me. [I] had a sensation somewhat akin to >someone being strapped on the electric chair with these electrodes ... I >really started getting hit real hard ... Wham, wham, wham! And me getting >hotter and more irritated and my heart beat going up ... and sweating >terribly ... there I was under the lights and with movie camera and all >this experimentation equipment on me ... It was sort of an unpleasant >experience. > > > >"Right away," said another, code-named Trump, describing his experience >afterward, "I didn't like [the interrogator]." > >[Dr. G] ... came waltzing over and he put on those electrodes but in that >process, while he was doing that, kind of whistling, I was looking over the >room, and right away I didn't like the room. I didn't like the way the >glass was in front of me through which I couldn't see, but I was being >watched and right away that puts one in a kind of unnatural situation and I >noted the big white lights and again that heightens the unnatural effect. >There was something peculiar about the set-up too, it was supposed to look >homey or look natural, two chairs and a little table, but again that struck >me as unnatural before the big piece of glass and the lights. And then [Mr. >R] ... who was bubbling over, dancing around, started to talk to me about >he liked my suit.... the buzzer would ring or something like that, we were >supposed to begin.... he was being sarcastic or pretty much of a wise >guy.... And the first thing that entered my mind was to get up and ask him >outside immediately ... but that was out of the question, because the >electrodes and the movie and all that ... I kind of sat there and began to >fume and then he went on and he got my goat and I couldn't think of what to >say.... And then they came along and they took my electrodes off. > > > >And so it went. One subject, Hinge, thought he was "being attacked." >Another, Naisfield, complained, "The lights were very bright.... Then the >things were put on my legs and whatnot and on the arm, ... I didn't like >the feel of the sticky stuff that was on there being sort of uncomfortable." > >Although the "stressful dyadic proceeding" served as the centerpiece of >Murray's experiment (it occurred during the second year of the three-year >study), it was merely one among scores of different tests the students took >in order to allow Murray and his associates to acquire, as Murray wrote, >"the most accurate, significant, and complete knowledge and understanding >of a single psychological event that is obtainable." > >Before the dyadic confrontation took place, Murray and his colleagues >interviewed the students in depth about their hopes and aspirations. During >this same period the subjects were required to write not only essays >explaining their philosophies of life but also autobiographies, in which >they were told to answer specific, intimate questions on a range of >subjects from thumb-sucking and toilet training to masturbation and erotic >fantasies. And they faced a battery of tests that included, among others, >the Thematic Apperception Test, a Rorschach test, the Minnesota Multiphasic >Personality Inventory, the California Psychological Inventory, a "fantasy >inventory," a psychological-types inventory, the Maudalay Personality >Inventory, an "inventory of self-description," a "temperament >questionnaire," a "time-metaphor test," a "basic disposition test," a >"range of experience inventory," a "philosophical outlook test," a >food-preference inventory, analyses of their literary tastes and moral >precepts, an "odor association test," a "word association test," an >argument-completion test, a Wyatt finger-painting test, a >projective-drawings test, and a "Rosenzweig picture frustration test." The >results were then analyzed by researchers, who plotted them in numerous >ways in an effort to develop a psychological portrait of each personality >in all its dimensions. > >Only after most of this data had been collected did researchers administer >the stressful dyadic confrontation. During the year following this session >each student was called back for several "recall" interviews and sometimes >was asked to comment on the movie of himself being reduced to impotent >anger by the interrogator. During these replays, Murray wrote, "you will >see yourself making numerous grimaces and gestures" and "uttering >incongruent, disjunctive, and unfinished sentences." > >During the last year of the experiment Murray made the students available >to his graduate-student assistants, to serve as guinea pigs for their own >research projects. By graduation, as Kenneth Keniston, one of these >researchers, summarized the process later, "each student had spent >approximately two hundred hours in the research, and had provided hundreds >of pages of information about himself, his beliefs, his past life, his >family, his college life and development, his fantasies, his hopes and >dreams." > >Why were the students willing to endure this ongoing stress and probing >into their private lives? Some who had assisted Murray in the experiment >confessed to me that they wondered about this themselves. But they -- and >we -- can only speculate that some of the students (including Kaczynski) >did it for the money, that some (again, probably including Kaczynski) had >doubts about their own psychic health and were seeking reassurance about >it, that some, suffering from Harvard's well-known anomie, were lonely and >needed someone to talk to, and that some simply had an interest in helping >to advance scientific knowledge. But in truth we do not know. Alden E. >Wessman, a former research associate of Murray's who has long been bothered >by the unethical dimension of this study, said to me recently, "Later, I >thought: 'We took and took and used them and what did we give them in >return?'" > >What was the purpose of the experiment? Keniston told me that he wasn't >sure what the goals were. "Murray was not the most systematic scientist," >he explained. Murray himself gave curiously equivocal answers. At times he >suggested that his intent was merely to gather as much raw data as possible >about one interpersonal event, which could then be used in different ways >to help "develop a theory of dyadic systems." At other times he recalled >the idealistic goal of acquiring knowledge that would lead to improving >human personality development. At still other times his language seemed to >suggest a continued interest in stressful interrogations. For example, >Murray explained in his "Notes on Dyadic Research," dated March 16, 1959, >that an ongoing goal of the research, which focused heavily on "degree of >anxiety and disintegration," was to "design and evaluate instruments and >procedures for the prediction of how each subject will react in the course >of a stressful dyadic proceeding." > >Sometimes Murray suggested that his research might have no value at all. >"Cui bono?" he once asked. "As [the data] stand they are nothing but raw >data, meaningless as such; and the question is what meaning, what >intellectual news, can be extracted from them?" In another context he >asked, "Are the costs in man-hours incurred by our elaborate, multiple >procedures far greater than any possible gains in knowledge?" > >Such equivocation prompts one to ask, Could the experiment have had a >purpose that Murray was reluctant to divulge? Was the multiform-assessments >project intended, at least in part, to help the CIA determine how to test, >or break down, an individual's ability to withstand interrogation? The >writer Alexander Cockburn has asked whether the students might have been >given the hallucinogenic drug LSD without their knowledge, possibly at the >request of the CIA. By the late 1950s, according to some, Murray had become >quite interested in hallucinogenics, including LSD and psilocybin. And soon >after Murray's experiments on Kaczynski and his classmates were under way, >in 1960, Timothy Leary returned to Harvard and, with Murray's blessing, >began his experiments with psilocybin. In his autobiography, Flashbacks >(1983), Leary, who would dedicate the rest of his life to promoting >hallucinogenic drugs, described Murray as "the wizard of personality >assessment who, as OSS chief psychologist, had monitored military >experiments on brainwashing and sodium amytal interrogation. Murray >expressed great interest in our drug-research project and offered his >support." > >Forrest Robinson reports in his biography that Murray took psilocybin and >in 1961 delivered a talk on his experience to the International Congress of >Applied Psychology. That Leary had Murray's support was confirmed by Martin >A. Lee and Bruce Schlain in their book Acid Dreams: The Complete Social >History of LSD (1985). > >Leary returned to Harvard and established a psilocybin research project >with the approval of Dr. Harry Murray, chairman of the Department of Social >Relations. Dr. Murray, who ran the Personality Assessments section of the >OSS during World War II, took a keen interest in Leary's work. He >volunteered for a psilocybin session, becoming one of the first of many >faculty and graduate students to sample the mushroom pill under Leary's >guidance. > > > >Kaczynski thinks he was never given LSD. And after exhaustive research I >could find no evidence that LSD was ever used in Murray's research. >Nevertheless, whether the research had a defense connection of some sort >remains an open question. Although direct evidence of support from a >federal defense grant is so far lacking, circumstantial evidence exists: >the strong similarity between the OSS stress tests and the later >experiments, Murray's association with the OSS, his grant proposal to do >research for the Navy Department, and the lack of any clearly explained >purpose for the study. Obviously, the dyadic studies would have had >considerable utility for the defense establishment, either as a framework >for testing recruits or as continuing work on how to improve interrogation >techniques. > >A Turning Point > > ><Picture: W>HAT was the state of Kaczynski's mental health at the time of >the multiform-assessments project and immediately afterward? The evidence >suggests that he was entirely sane during those years. By the spring of >1998 Kaczynski had obtained from the Murray Center his answers (along with >those of other Murray-experiment participants) on the Thematic Apperception >Test, which Murray had given to Kaczynski during the first year of the >experiment. At Kaczynski's request, his lawyers sent these to a >psychological-testing expert: Bertram Karon, at Michigan State University. >Because participants were identified only by code names, Karon was able to >conduct a blind evaluation -- measuring the answers without knowing who had >given them. Karon found that on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 a complete >absence of illness and 10 the highest degree of illness, "Lawful" scored 0 >for "Schizotypy" and 2 for "Psychopathy." Kaczynski's undergraduate >experience and behavior had been unremarkable. The reports of his >housemaster, his adviser, and the university doctors attested to his >normalcy, as did the observations of classmates. There is no evidence of >immediate mental degradation in the project's aftermath. Emotional turmoil >is another matter. As Sally Johnson, the forensic psychiatrist, reported, >Kaczynski clearly began to experience emotional distress then, and began to >develop his anti-technology views. > >And there is one thing that comes through clearly in the essays, test >answers, and interviews of Murray's subjects at the outset of the >experiment: many of these young men already exhibited attitudes of anger, >nihilism, and alienation -- reflecting, perhaps, just how persuasively a >culture of despair had infused student attitudes and suggesting that some >might have been especially vulnerable to stress. > >Bulwer admitted that "right now I have sort of a nihilistic outlook on >life.... How do you justify studying if you regard yourself as an ant >crawling through a great huge anthill with millions of others?" > >Ives (speaking of living a conventional life) confessed, > >And for doing all this I will hate myself. I mourn the world in which I >live because for me there is no place unless I compromise. All I can do is >gather up the shattered remains of my hope and love and in the debris of >the world keep at least one small blaze of poetry burning.... I most feel >akin to the artists and the philosophers and have a hatred for the >scientists. The scientists I hate because they are pursuing goals which are >destined to remove man even further from himself. > > > >Naisfield averred, "I don't feel that there is any purpose in my being >alive ..." > >To describe his philosophy of life, Oscar (roughly) quoted Bertrand Russell >(whose writings were assigned in Gen Ed): "Only on the firm foundation of >unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built." > >Quartz announced that there were "no such things as objective values." > >Dorset wrote simply, "Society as I see it stinks." > >Sanwick, as one researcher put it, is "basically distrustful of the whole >enterprise of life." Researchers found analyzing him "almost impossible," >because "his whole life is conceptualized within a bombastic framework of >philosophical concepts: being, life, death, transcendency, preservation, >liberation, repetition, chaos.... One feels ... a great tumult and chaos of >awarenesses, perceptions, and feelings." > >The analysts deemed one subject "a young man in a state of considerable >distress, depression, and confusion.... extremely alienated" and another >prone to "withdrawal, silence." And so on, and on. > >It is clear, also, that Murray's experiment deeply affected at least some >of its subjects. From interviews conducted after the project ended, it is >apparent that certain students had found the experience searing. Even >twenty-five years later some recalled the unpleasantness. In 1987 Cringle >remembered the "anger and embarrassment ... the glass partition ... the >electrodes and wires running up our sleeves." > >Likewise, twenty-five years later Drill still had "very vivid general >memories of the experience ... I remember someone putting electrodes and >blood pressure counter on my arm just before the filming.... [I] was >startled by [his interlocutor's] venom.... I remember responding with >unabating rage." > >What Hinge remembered most vividly twenty-five years later was being >"attacked" and hating "having all my movements and sounds recorded.... we >were led over to the chairs and strapped in and as the wires were attached >to us.... I began to get more involved in the situation and I began to >realize that ... there I was, actually was going to be in front of the >movie camera ... I was surprised by how strongly he was attacking me...." > >And twenty-five years later Locust wrote, > >I remember appearing one afternoon for a 'debate' and being hooked up to >electrodes and sat in a chair with bright lights and being told a movie was >being made.... I remember him attacking me, even insulting me, for my >values, or for opinions I had expressed in my written material, and I >remember feeling that I could not defend these ideas, that I had written >them not intended for them to be the subject of a debate ... I remember >being shocked by the severity of the attack, and I remember feeling >helpless to respond.... So what I seem to remember are feelings >(bewilderment, surprise, anger, chagrin) sensations (the bright lights used >for the filming, the discomfort of the arrangements) reactions (how could >they have done this to me; what is the point of this? They have deceived >me, telling me there was going to be a discussion, when in fact there was >an attack). > > > >And at his twenty-fifth college reunion Ives wrote to Murray, > >My memories of the encounter 25 years ago ... >The young lawyer was surprisingly hostile ... >He had wavey jet black hair ... >The subject was the nature of love. >I argued that love could only be for a specific person. >He argued that one could love all mankind. >We talked about Natasha from WAR & PEACE. >I did not enjoy the experience. > > > >We don't know what effect this experiment may have had on Kaczynski. As >noted, I did not have access to his records, and therefore cannot attest to >his degree of alienation then. Diana Baumrind, a psychologist at the >University of California at Berkeley, observes that deceitful >experimentation can be harmful if the subjects "have been emotionally >unstable prior to the experiment." Kaczynski must certainly have been among >the most vulnerable of Murray's experimental subjects -- a point that the >researchers seem to have missed. He was among the youngest and the poorest >of the group. He may have come from a dysfunctional home. > >Lois Skillen, Kaczynski's high school counselor, is among those who believe >that the Murray experiment could have been a turning point in Kaczynski's >life. Ralph Meister, one of Turk Kaczynski's oldest friends and a retired >psychologist who has known Ted Kaczynski since he was a small boy, also >raises this possibility. So does one of Murray's own research associates. >The TAT results certainly suggest that at the outset of the experiment >Kaczynski was mentally healthy, but by the experiment's end, judging from >Sally Johnson's comments, he was showing the first signs of emotional >distress. > >As Kaczynski's college life continued, outwardly he seemed to be adjusting >to Harvard. But inwardly he increasingly seethed. According to Sally >Johnson, he began worrying about his health. He began having terrible >nightmares. He started having fantasies about taking revenge against a >society that he increasingly viewed as an evil force obsessed with imposing >conformism through psychological controls. > >These thoughts upset Kaczynski all the more because they exposed his >ineffectuality. Johnson reported that he would become horribly angry with >himself because he could not express this fury openly. "I never attempted >to put any such fantasies into effect," she quoted from his writings, >"because I was too strongly conditioned ... against any defiance of >authority.... I could not have committed a crime of revenge even a >relatively minor crime because ... my fear of being caught and punished was >all out of proportion to the actual danger of being caught." > >Kaczynski felt that justice demanded that he take revenge on society. But >he lacked the personal resources at that time to do so. He was -- had >always been -- a good boy. Instead he would seek escape. He began to dream >about breaking away from society and living a primitive life. According to >Johnson, he "began to study information about wild edible plants" and to >spend time learning about the wilderness. And like many American >intellectuals before him, from Henry David Thoreau to Edward Abbey, he >began to form a plan to seek personal renewal in nature. > ><Picture: T>ODAY society would not tolerate the deceptions inherent in the >Murray experiments. The researchers seem to have failed at least two >requirements in the American Psychological Association's current code of >conduct: that they obtain "informed consent" from their subjects and that >they "never deceive research participants about significant aspects that >would affect their willingness to participate, such as physical risks, >discomfort, or unpleasant emotional experiences." But different standards >prevailed then, and what we now view as the abuse of human subjects was >common. Researchers around the country performed experiments on >undergraduates that put them in psychological peril. > >In an infamous experiment conducted in 1962 by the Yale professor Stanley >Milgram, subjects (forty men recruited through mail solicitation and a >newspaper ad) were led to believe that they were delivering >ever-more-powerful electric shocks to a stranger, on orders from the >researcher. Nearly two thirds of them continued to obey the orders even >when they were asked to administer the highest level of shock, labeled >"Danger: Severe Shock." Some participants broke down on learning of their >potential for cruelty. "I observed a mature and initially poised >businessman enter the laboratory smiling and confident," Milgram wrote, >concerning one of his study subjects. "Within 20 minutes he was reduced to >a twitching, stuttering wreck, who was rapidly approaching a point of >nervous collapse." > >A 1971 experiment by the Stanford professor Philip Zimbardo embodied the >pursuit of scientific truth at the expense of students' psychological >health. Zimbardo selected twenty-four students to play a game of guards and >prisoners. Nine were "arrested" and taken to a basement "prison," where >they were guarded by the others. In a very short time the guards began >abusing the prisoners. This sadism erupted so quickly that Zimbardo >discontinued the experiment after six days -- eight days earlier than >originally intended. > >The Murray experiment may not have been as intensely traumatic as these >other experiments. And its ethics were definitely acceptable in their day. >But the ethics of the day were wrong. And they framed Kaczynski's first >encounter with a reckless scientific value system that elevated the pursuit >of scientific truth above human rights. > >When, soon after, Kaczynski began to worry about the possibility of mind >control, he was not giving vent to paranoid delusions. In view of Murray's >experiment, he was not only rational but right. The university and the >psychiatric establishment had been willing accomplices in an experiment >that had treated human beings as unwitting guinea pigs, and had treated >them brutally. Here is a powerful logical foundation for Kaczynski's >latterly expressed conviction that academics, in particular scientists, >were thoroughly compromised servants of "the system," employed in the >development of techniques for the behavioral control of populations. > >The Unabomber > > ><Picture: I>T was the confluence of two streams of development that >transformed Ted Kaczynski into the Unabomber. One stream was personal, fed >by his anger toward his family and those who he felt had slighted or hurt >him, in high school and college. The other derived from his philosophical >critique of society and its institutions, and reflected the culture of >despair he encountered at Harvard and later. The Murray experiment, >containing both psychological and philosophical components, may well have >fed both streams. > >Gradually, while he was immersed in his Harvard readings and in the Murray >experiment, Kaczynski began to put together a theory to explain his >unhappiness and anger. Technology and science were destroying liberty and >nature. The system, of which Harvard was a part, served technology, which >in turn required conformism. By advertising, propaganda, and other >techniques of behavior modification, this system sought to transform men >into automatons, to serve the machine. > >Thus did Kaczynski's Harvard experiences shape his anger and legitimize his >wrath. By the time he graduated, all the elements that would ultimately >transform him into the Unabomber were in place -- the ideas out of which he >would construct a philosophy, the unhappiness, the feelings of complete >isolation. Soon after, so, too, would be his commitment to killing. >Embracing the value-neutral message of Harvard's positivism -- morality was >nonrational -- made him feel free to murder. Within four years of >graduating from Harvard he would be firmly fixed in his life's plan. >According to an autobiography he wrote that chronicled his life until the >age of twenty-seven, "I thought 'I will kill, but I will make at least some >effort to avoid detection, so that I can kill again.'" > >Both Kaczynski's philosophy and his decision to go into the wilderness were >set by the summer of 1966, after his fourth year as a graduate student at >the University of Michigan (where, incidentally, students had rated him an >above-average instructor). It was then, Sally Johnson wrote, that "he >decided that he would do what he always wanted to do, to go to Canada to >take off in the woods with a rifle and try to live off the country. 'If it >doesn't work and if I can get back to civilization before I starve then I >will come back here and kill someone I hate.'" This was also when he >decided to accept the teaching position at Berkeley -- not in order to >launch an academic career but to earn a grubstake sufficient to support him >in the wilderness. > >In 1971 Kaczynski wrote an essay containing most of the ideas that later >appeared in the manifesto. "In these pages," it began, "it is argued that >continued scientific and technical progress will inevitably result in the >extinction of individual liberty." It was imperative that this juggernaut >be stopped, Kaczynski went on. This could not be done by simply >"popularizing a certain libertarian philosophy" unless "that philosophy is >accompanied by a program of concrete action." > >At that time Kaczynski still had some hope of achieving his goals by >peaceful means -- by establishing "an organization dedicated to stopping >federal aid to scientific research." It would not be long before he decided >this was fruitless. The same year, Johnson wrote, he was "thinking >seriously about and planning to murder a scientist." Meanwhile, he began to >practice what radical environmentalists call "monkeywrenching" -- >sabotaging or stealing equipment and setting traps and stringing wires to >harm intruders into his wilderness domain. Later in the 1970s he began >experimenting with explosives. In 1978 he launched his campaign of >terrorism with the bomb that injured Terry Marker. > >The Evils of Intelligence > > ><Picture: T>ODAY Ted Kaczynski is serving four life terms in a >maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado. Out of sight, he is not out >of play. His manifesto continues to be read at colleges around the country. >Through letters, he maintains relations with many people he knew before his >arrest. And although most Americans are morally repulsed by the Unabomber's >terrorism, many accept his anti-technology views and silently tolerate >extremist actions on behalf of saving "wild nature." > >Kaczynski has attracted a large new following of admirers. Indeed, he has >become an inspiration and a sort of leader in exile for the burgeoning >"green anarchist" movement. In a letter to me Kaczynski made clear that he >keeps in contact with other anarchists, including John Zerzan, the >intellectual leader of a circle of anarchists in Eugene, Oregon, who was >among the few people to visit Kaczynski while he was in jail in Sacramento, >awaiting trial. According to The Boston Globe, Theresa Kintz, one of >Zerzan's fellow anarchists, was the first writer to whom Kaczynski granted >an interview after his arrest. Writing for the London-based Green >Anarchist, Kintz quoted Kaczynski as saying, "For those who realize the >need to do away with the techno-industrial system, if you work for its >collapse, in effect you are killing a lot of people." > >The Los Angeles Times has reported that last June, 200 of Zerzan's comrades >rioted in Eugene, smashing computers, breaking shop windows, throwing >bricks at cars, and injuring eight police officers. According to the >Seattle Times, followers of Zerzan's also arrived in force at last >December's "Battle of Seattle," at the World Trade Organization meeting, >where they smashed shop windows, flattened tires, and dumped garbage cans >on the street. > >Kaczynski continues to comment approvingly on the violent exploits of >environmental radicals. In a letter he wrote last year to the Denver >television reporter Rick Sallinger, he expressed his support for the Earth >Liberation Front's arsons at the Vail ski resort -- fires that destroyed >more than $12 million worth of property. > >"I fully approve of [the arson]," he wrote Sallinger, "and I congratulate >the people who carried it out." Kaczynski went on to commend an editorial >in the Earth First! Journal by Kintz, who wrote, "The Earth Liberation >Front's eco-sabotage of Vail constituted a political act of conscience >perfectly in keeping with the sincere expression of the biocentric paradigm >many Earth First!ers espouse." > >It is unlikely that Kaczynski will someday be a free man again, but it is >not impossible. Although he pleaded guilty in January of 1998 to the >Unabomber crimes, that outcome is currently under appeal. He claims that >his attorneys deceived him and acted against his wishes by preparing a >"mental defect" defense for him, and that by allowing this to happen, the >court violated his Sixth Amendment right to direct his own defense. The >Ninth Circuit Court has agreed to hear his appeal, and a new trial is a >possibility. > >Some, including me, believe that if Kaczynski does win a new trial, he will >argue that his killings were necessary in order to save the world from a >great evil -- namely, technology. Most legal experts believe that this >would be an unpersuasive and even suicidal defense strategy, leading >directly to a guilty verdict and a sentence of death. But apparently >Kaczynski would rather die a martyr for his ideas than live out his life in >prison. At any rate, his essential point is correct: the Unabomber is not >only a killer but a sane one. He is a terrorist, like Timothy McVeigh, the >Oklahoma City bomber, and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the World Trade Center >bomber. And like them, he is evil. But what kind of evil? > ><Picture: T>HE real story of Ted Kaczynski is one of the nature of modern >evil -- evil that results from the corrosive powers of intellect itself, >and its arrogant tendency to put ideas above common humanity. It stems from >our capacity to conceive theories or philosophies that promote violence or >murder in order to avert supposed injustices or catastrophes, to acquiesce >in historical necessity, or to find the final solution to the world's >problems -- and by this process of abstraction to dehumanize our enemies. >We become like Raskolnikov, in Crime and Punishment, who declares, "I did >not kill a human being, but a principle!" > >Guided by theories, philosophies, and ideologies, the worst mass killers of >modern history transformed their victims into depersonalized abstractions, >making them easier to kill. Much the way Stalin, citing Communist dogma, >ordered the murder of millions of peasants toward "the elimination of the >Kulaks as a class," so Kaczynski rationalized his murders as necessary to >solve "the technology problem." > >The conditions that produce violence continue to flourish. Despite their >historically unprecedented affluence, many middle-class Americans, >particularly the educated elite, are still gripped by despair. The >education system continues to promote bleak visions of the future. >Meanwhile, alienating ideologies, offering the false promise of quick >solutions through violence, proliferate. > >Although most Americans strongly condemn terrorist acts committed in the >name of political agendas of which they do not approve, many turn a blind >eye toward savagery done in the name of ideals they share. Indeed, many are >reasonably comfortable with violence short of murder, as long as it's done >for a cause they support. It was easy for Americans to unite in condemning >the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City bombings, because few approved of >the bombers' goals: the destruction of the state of Israel and of the U.S. >government. But some conservatives seem to be untroubled by anti-abortion >bombings or by the rise of armed militias, and some liberals consistently >condone or ignore the proliferation of terrorism putatively committed on >behalf of animals or the environment. > >Not surprisingly, then, ideologically inspired violence has become >increasingly commonplace -- tolerated and sometimes even praised. Just >after the bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, The Wall Street Journal >noted that terrorism "has become a part of life." > >According to the FBI, explosive and incendiary bombings doubled during the >first four years of the 1990s. And although the number of such incidents >has declined slightly since that time, certain kinds of "single-issue" >terrorism -- including acts committed on behalf of Kaczynski's cause of >choice, "saving wild nature" -- are becoming increasingly prominent. Last >year the director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, told Congress, "The most >recognizable single issue terrorists at the present time are those involved >in the violent animal rights, anti-abortion, and environmental protection >movements.... the potential for destruction has increased as terrorists >have turned toward large improvised explosive devices to inflict maximum >damage." > >After concluding a ten-month investigation of this phenomenon, the Portland >Oregonian reported last fall, > >Escalating sabotage to save the environment has inflicted tens of millions >of dollars in damage and placed lives at risk.... Arsons, bombings and >sabotage in the name of saving the environment and its creatures have swept >the American West over the last two decades, and Oregon is increasingly the >center of it. At least 100 major acts of such violence have occurred since >1980, causing $42.8 million in damages. > > > >The Oregonian found that "during the last four years alone, the West has >been rocked by 33 substantial incidents, with damages reaching $28.8 >million." And although "these crimes started nearly two decades ago -- some >seem clearly inspired by Edward Abbey's 1975 novel, The Monkey Wrench Gang >-- they have escalated dangerously, sometimes with the use of bombs, in the >last six years." > >No one other than Kaczynski's three victims has yet been murdered by a >fanatical environmentalist, but investigators consider it merely a matter >of time before someone else is killed for similar reasons. "I think we've >come very close to that line," one federal agent told the Oregonian, "and >we will cross that line unless we deal with this problem." > >We may cross that line sooner than we think. In a September, 1998, letter >to me, Kaczynski wrote, > >I suspect that you underestimate the strength and depth of feeling against >industrial civilization that has been developing in recent years. I've been >surprised at some of the things that people have written to me. It looks to >me as if our society is moving into a pre-revolutionary situation. (By that >I don't mean a situation in which revolution is inevitable, but one in >which it is a realistic possibility.) The majority of people are >pessimistic or cynical about existing institutions, there is widespread >alienation and directionlessness among young people.... Perhaps all that is >needed is to give these forces appropriate organization and direction. > > > >Seen from that perspective, it might seem that the rest of society is only >a few steps behind Kaczynski. When Henry Murray spoke of the need to create >a new "World Man," this was not what he had in mind. > >(The online version of this article appears in four parts. Click here to go >to part one, part two, or part three.) > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Alston Chase is the author of Playing God in Yellowstone (1986) and In a >Dark Wood (1995). He is at work on a book about Theodore Kaczynski. > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ >Copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. >The Atlantic Monthly; June 2000; Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber - >00.06 (Part Four); Volume 285, No. 6; page 41-65. > >Discuss this article in the Education & Teaching conference of Post & >Riposte. >More on politics and society in The Atlantic Monthly and Atlantic Unbound. >Elsewhere on the Web >Links to related material on other Web sites. > >"Multiform Assessments of Personality Development Among Gifted College Men, >1941-1965," by Henry A. Murray >Henry A. Murray's abstract of the study to which he subjected Theodore >Kaczynski and other Harvard students. Posted by the Henry A. Murray >Research Center of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. > >The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: Standing Trial? (January 16, 1998) >A transcript of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in which Elizabeth Farnsworth >speaks with experts about Theodore Kaczynski, mental competency, and the law. > >Unabomber >Comprehensive coverage of the Unabomber trial by the Sacramento Bee. >Includes profiles of central figures, court transcripts and relevant >documents, photos, video clips, an archive of articles, and more. > > > > > > > "Let Us Consider The Human Brain As > A Very Complex Photographic Plate" > 1957 G.H. Estabrooks > FOR K A R E N #01182 > who died fighting 4/23/99 > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > www.aches-mc.org > 807-622-5407 > > For people like me, violence is the minotaur; we spend our lives > wandering its maze, looking for the exit. (Richard Rhodes) > > Never befriend the oppressed > unless you are prepared to > take on the oppressor. > (Author unknown) > > "