This is the sort of thing that gets me flagged by the FBI. I realize that.
I'm probably on a list somewhere for finding the Unabomber interesting, but I can't help it.
His criminal profile, and the abject failure of the FBI to profile him accurately, is one of the great blunders of American history.
An even greater gaffe is that the CIA likely CREATED the psychological issues that birthed the Unabomber, because he was a victim of the MKUltra program.
Check out my post:
An Introduction To MKUltra: What We DO Know
It may not be well-known that Kaczynski, the man the FBI called "The Unabomber", is a stone cold genius with an IQ of 167 and a mathematical prodigy.
Throughout high school, Kaczynski was ahead of his classmates academically. Placed in a more advanced math class, he soon mastered the material. He skipped the eleventh grade, and by attending summer school was able to graduate at age 15. He was one of his school's five National Merit finalists, and was encouraged to apply to Harvard College.
The FBI had anticipated that the Unabomber would turn out to be a professor denied tenure, or a graduate student unable to attain a doctorate. Kaczynski was no failure. He soared in his field. He won his doctorate and a prize at the University of Michigan for writing the best thesis. He was on a tenure track at Berkeley, steadily publishing papers. One day in 1969 (the day Richard M. Nixon took office, it so happens), Kaczynski announced his resignation in a two-line note to his department chairman. He later said he was leaving the field of mathematics, and didn't know what he wanted to do.
In fact, he left American society.
Kaczynski was not outcast by society; we was alienated by society, and chose to leave. This is a vital point in understanding the bones of this case.
We often think of famous killers as people that society didn't want or couldn't use -- they are damaged goods in some way and society has no use for them. Not with Kaczynski. He was a highly valued member of society who contributed a great deal to academia during his time as a law-abiding citizen.
He began at Harvard with a scholarship in 1958 at the age of 16.
A high school classmate later said that Kaczynski was emotionally unprepared: "They packed him up and sent him to Harvard before he was ready ... He didn't even have a driver's license."
Teddy skipped another grade and after only three years, graduated from high school in 1958, and won a scholarship to Harvard. He was only 16. "The thought was, if he went to a university, such as Harvard, he might not have the pressure to conform in a working-type class community like Evergreen Park, and that the experience might be liberating for him socially," David explained.
Just after graduation, David recalled, Teddy dated a girl once or twice, but ended the relationship by expressing exasperation with her Catholic beliefs. It was typical of Ted, David said, that he would seize upon some pretext for finding fault, and then use it as an excuse to cut off communication.
With all his social handicaps, Teddy was about to be thrust onto a high-powered, prestigious campus. He was younger by two years than most, and by all accounts, emotionally unprepared for the competition that lay ahead.
"They packed him up and sent him to Harvard before he was ready," Mr. Mosny said. "He didn't even have a driver's license."
PRISONER OF RAGE -- A special report.;From a Child of Promise to the Unabom Suspect
Henry Murray was an American psychologist at Harvard University. He was Director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic in the School of Arts and Sciences after 1930. Murray developed a theory of personality called personology, based on "need" and "press". Murray was one of the rare people in Kaczynski's life that he respected. In return for that respect, Murray subjected Kaczynski to a set of unethical and psychologically-damaging experiments for three years.
From late 1959 to early 1962, Murray was responsible for experiments that have come widely to be considered unethical, in which he used twenty-two Harvard undergraduates as research subjects.[4] Among other goals, experiments sought to measure individuals' responses to extreme stress. The unwitting undergraduates were submitted to what Murray called "vehement, sweeping and personally abusive" attacks. Specifically-tailored assaults to their egos, cherished ideas and beliefs were used to cause high levels of stress and distress. The subjects then viewed recorded footage of their reactions to this verbal abuse repeatedly.
Among them was 17-year-old Ted Kaczynski, a mathematician who went on to become the Unabomber, a domestic terrorist targeting academics and technologists for 18 years.[5] Alston Chase's book Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist connects Kaczynski's abusive experiences under Murray to his later criminal career.
As a sophomore, Kaczynski participated in a study described by author Alton Chase as a "purposely brutalizing psychological experiment", led by Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. Subjects were told they would be debating personal philosophy with a fellow student, and were asked to write essays detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations. The essays were turned over to an anonymous attorney, who in a later session would confront and belittle the subject – making "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" attacks – using the content of the essays as ammunition, while electrodes monitored the subject's physiological reactions. These encounters were filmed, and subjects' expressions of rage were later played back to them repeatedly.
Not only did these abusive experiments on the child Kaczynski go on for 3 years, it was someone's job to abuse him every single week of that time for the sake of these psychological experiments.
Every week for three years, someone met with him to verbally abuse him and humiliate him. He never told us about the experiments, but we noticed how he changed. He became harder, more defensive in his interactions with people. If the case had gone to trial, what happened to Ted as a helpless guinea pig in a government-funded study would have come out in open court.
He spent a total of 200 hours being psychologically poked and prodded by these men that he respected.
In all, Kaczynski spent some 200 hours in this research -- all to no apparent scientific purpose.
There is secrecy over these studies -- believe it or not -- despite the fact that they are over a half-century old.
Documents were destroyed at the time, but there is evidence that suggests these experiments are yet another wing of the MKUltra project:
Among the most high profile suspected victims was Ted Kaczynski, who would become infamous as the Unabomber.
MKUltra: Inside the CIA's Cold War mind control experiments
Murray had known connections with CIA:
Michael Mello, author of the recently published book, “The United States of America vs. Theodore John Kaczynski,” notes that at some point in his Harvard years–1958 to 1962–Kaczynski agreed to be the subject of “a psychological experiment.” Mello identifies the chief researcher for these only as a lieutenant colonel in World War II, working for the CIA’s predecessor organization, the Office of Strategic Services. In fact, the man experimenting on the young Kaczynski was Dr. Henry Murray, who died in 1988.
Murray zealously prosecuted the CIA’s efforts to carry forward experiments in mind control conducted by Nazi doctors in the concentration camps. The overall program was under the control of the late Sidney Gottlieb, head of the CIA’s technical services division. Just as Harvard students were fed doses of LSD, psilocybin and other potions, so too were prisoners and many unwitting guinea pigs.
Here is a short documentary entitled Unabomber, LSD and the Internet The Net
Last year the Discovery channel released a short series that is a fantastic fictional treaties on the historical figure of the Unabomber.
The show overall is a fantastic work of art, not just in its transmission of historical information via bio-fiction, but specifically in it's representation of the experience that Ted went through during his ears at Harvard in these terrible experiments.
I cannot find a clip of those scenes specifically, but I believe you can get the show on Netflix. I recommend it.
Kaczynski is probably the most famous victim of the MKUltra Project, but there are indeed many, many more victims out there.
What are your thoughts on this topic?
Share them with me in the comments below.
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@shayne