Andrew.
I mean, this is bringing up
a whole lot of memories about,
you know,
how Ted Kaczynski actually ended up,
you know, in custody.
I mean, it was great.
A great mystery for a very long time.
Who was responsible for these
homemade bombs, these explosions
which led
and which were deadly explosions and
and then ultimately how investigators
were able to piece it together?
I mean,
it really was an extraordinary mystery.
It really was.
It's one of those cases
that will go down
in the history of the FBI
as one of the most challenging
and arduous investigations we've mounted,
but ultimately successful in 1995.
You know,
we learned, of course, once
we located Mr.
Kaczynski and taken him into custody
and saw the primitive conditions
under which he was living.
That's what made it so hard
to really develop
any effective leads, leads
for all those years.
You know,
he was
so completely off
the grid, really leaving
no trace of himself
in any of the traditional ways
that people do.
But fortunate Lee,
with the publication of his manifesto,
we were able to develop the sort of
information from the public
and specifically from family members
that helped us crack the case.
And let's try to unravel some of that,
because he was living in a cabin.
I mean, it was
I mean, he wanted to be off the grid.
That was his ambition.
But what at least one of the bombings
took place as early
as in the seventies
at a Chicago University.
And then you also
and it was a great mystery
who was responsible for all of this
He was off the grid in a cabin, but
perhaps his abduction
or his arrest came it was self-inflicted.
I mean, he authored this manifesto.
He sent it right to the FBI.
Perhaps he thought he would
continue to be mysterious,
but then they were able to piece together
any relations and use this
as evidence, publish it.
And it was his brother
who ultimately would help turn him in.
Right. That's absolutely right.
So Kaczynski started in the late 1970s
with what began as a primitive
low-Tech mail bombing campaign directed
predominantly at universities
and airline industry representatives.
And different airline related targets,
of course in 79 was able to get a
bomb on a an American Airlines flight
that fortunately did not detonate
but it let off a great degree of smoke
which
alerted the pilots
and able to effect an emergency landing.
There's no doubt
that had that bomb going off
it would have taken the plane down
and taken all those lives with it.
So an incredibly focused
determined, resilient adversary.
Right.
And somebody who was motivated primarily
by his extremist positions
with respect to the environment.
You know, people today
we think about domestic terrorism.
We typically think about it
in very different contexts.
In the eighties and 1990s,
environmental terrorism
was a major program
that was being worked by the FBI
because we had extremist activity around
people who objected
to environmental development.
And Kaczynski
was really kind of
at the forefront of those
of those thoughts,
not that he was a member of a group of it
at the forefront of that ideology.
And he pursued this bombing campaign
as a way of striking back
against technological advancement,
which he believed
was damaging the environment
in ways that needed to be stopped.
Are you
able to share
with us some of the concerns that the FBI
that the attorney general at the time,
you know, Janet Reno had about whether
they share this manifesto
with the public,
whether it would be
used as an instrument,
you know, to to further or agitate
threats against the US
domestic terrorism, and at the same time
what they were contemplating
as to how
it could ultimately be a tool
to help capture the Unabomber.
Sure.
You know,
I know I'm aware of those deliberations
and those concerns
only from the same way that you and your
your viewers are from understanding
the history of it.
I actually came into the bureau in 1996.
It was right
as as the case was kind of
coming to its close.
Nevertheless,
having been
in many
many high level meetings with attorneys
general and FBI directors
around things, things, you know,
I can only imagine
the way that each possible
impact of the causes of action
that they were considering
was micro analyze to understand
are we making this issue worse
if we give this person a platform,
if we allow him
to put his ideology out there,
if it has an inspirational effect
on other like minded people,
we could actually essentially
be doing his job for him.
On the other hand, and as I understand,
Attorney General Janet Reno argued pretty
strenuously that this was our best shot
of kind of shaking the tree, as it were,
to try to
identify the author of the manifesto
and that, to her
credit, is exactly how it worked out.
Kaczynski's brother and his wife
became aware of the manifesto.
They had suspicions about Kaczynski
before the manifesto,
but it was the manifesto that really put
Kaczynski's brother
over the threshold and motivated him
to contact the FBI and say
that he thought he knew about
he knew who the author was.
What more,
if anything, can you tell us
about kind of the evolution
of this criminal profiling
that was kind of born at this time?
So that's become a mainstay of the FBI.
As you know, it's
frequently captured in
law about the bureau and movies and TV
TV series, things like that.
But it's become one of the most
relied upon assets
in these particularly hard cases.
Cold cases,
you know, bombing campaign like this one,
multiple homicide cases that you believe
are linked to the same perpetrator
when investigators have really expended
their well of effective leads
based on forensics and crime scene
evidence and things like that.
They often turn
to the behavioral scientists,
the folks
at what we call BYU, the behavioral
sciences unit,
to try to assist in guiding them towards,
if not specific people,
populations of people
that they should consider
as possible being,
you know, individuals
or groups of people that are
that are that would be
could be involved
in that sort of activity.
It is truly a dark science,
not something that I ever did
when I was in the bureau.
But I have great respect
for the men and women
who do that every day.
I would expect that
those same sort of assets
are being utilized to try to figure out
who was behind the two bombs
left on Capitol Hill on January six.
That's a crime that continues to be
unsolved and one that
causes great concern in law enforcement
for many of the same reasons that we saw
in the Unabomber investigation. Right.
These folks
who are inclined to lash out with bombs
that are either placed
or sent through the mail,
they often start out in rudimentary ways,
but their proficiency
in technology develops over time.
They very rarely ever just stop
engaging in these sorts
of bombing campaigns.
They very frequently
come back to them time and time again.
So that is a case that I'm sure is
is taking a lot of FBI attention
right now.
And it is among the pattern of events.
Is it
the case that
over time there
develops this sort of bravado and almost
like a yearning for attention
without being identified,
to be praised,
that they continue to be so mysterious
and then
suddenly a mistake is made,
like in the case of this manifesto.
It ended up backfiring.
Whereas he may have felt like
he wanted to elaborate on motivation,
that in the end is how they ended up
getting him in part. It's very true.
You know, many of these long,
you know,
extended investigations
over so-called cold cases
with repeat offenders
as they develop almost a sort of dialog
with the investigators
through their criminal acts,
they want to
kind of stay maintain
the attention of the investigators.
They want to constantly kind
of outdo themselves.
It's a real, you know, a
catch 22 for law enforcement
and for investigators
every time they reach out
through making contact
or communications
or engage in another criminal act,
you have the opportunity
of developing the clue
or the investigative lead
that could lead you
to their apprehension.
But of course, every time they do that,
the public is also at great risk.
So there's immense pressure
on the investigators
to bring that back and forth,
to bring that criminal activity to a halt
before, you know,
additional folks are injured.
Or killed.
So still unclear the cause of death.
But he was 81.
He apparently was moved recently
and within the past year
from a facility
in Colorado, federal facility
in Colorado
to North Carolina for health reasons.
How important will it be to publicly
reveal the ultimate cause of death?
I think it's always important
for the government to be transparent
about what happens
in the detention facilities.
Just to my understanding,
there's no reason to believe
from what little
we know about this situation
that there's anything untoward
involved here.
He's obviously exhibited some sort of
health problems in the recent past.
He was moved to the
the facility in North Carolina,
in North Carolina,
likely Butner, the federal prison
hospital in Butner, North
Carolina, is a place
where many federal prisoners
end up who have significant health
issues Bernie Madoff,
I believe, was at Butner
when he passed as well.
So I think it's very important
for transparency reasons
to fully understand
the circumstances around the deaths.
But I would caution speculation
at this point.
We don't really have any reason
to believe anything untoward
happened here just yet.