November 15: On This Day in World History … briefly

1979: Plane forced to land after ‘Unabomber’ bomb found

Theodore John Kaczynski also known as ‘Unabomber’ was an American domestic terrorist, former mathematics professor, and anarchist author. A mathematics prodigy, he abandoned an academic career in 1969 to pursue a primitive lifestyle. Between 1978 and 1995, he killed three people and injured 23 others in an attempt to start a revolution by conducting a nationwide bombing campaign targeting people involved with modern technology. In conjunction, he issued a social critique opposing industrialisation and advancing a nature-centred form of anarchism.

In 1971 Kaczynski moved to a remote cabin without electricity or running water near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learning survival skills in an attempt to become self-sufficient. After witnessing the destruction of the wilderness surrounding his cabin, he concluded that living in nature was untenable and began his bombing campaign in 1978. In 1995, he sent a letter to The New York Times and promised to ‘desist from terrorism’ if The Times or The Washington Post published his essay, Industrial Society and Its Future, in which he argued that his bombings were extreme but necessary to attract attention to the erosion of human freedom and dignity by modern technologies that require large-scale organisation.

Kaczynski was the subject of the longest and most expensive investigation in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Before his identity was known, the FBI used the acronym UNABOM (University and Airline Bomber) to refer to his case, which resulted in the media naming him the ‘Unabomber’. The FBI and Attorney General Janet Reno pushed for the publication of Industrial Society and Its Future, which led to a tip-off from Kaczynski’s brother, David Kaczynski, who recognised the writing style.

The initial 1978 bombing was followed by bombs sent to airline officials, and on November 15, 1979, a bomb was placed in the cargo hold of American Airlines Flight 444, a Boeing 727 flying from Chicago to Washington, DC. A faulty timing mechanism prevented the bomb from exploding, but it released smoke, which forced an emergency landing. Authorities said it had enough power to ‘obliterate the plane’ had it exploded.

Kaczynski left false clues in every bomb, which he made hard to find to make them believable. The first clue was a metal plate stamped with the initials FC hidden somewhere (usually in the pipe end cap) in every bomb. Another clue included a note left in a bomb that did not detonate; it read ‘Wu—It works! I told you it would—RV’. Another clue was the Eugene O’Neill $1 stamps used to send his boxes. He sent one bomb embedded in a copy of Sloan Wilson’s novel Ice Brothers. The FBI theorized that Kaczynski had a theme of nature, trees and wood in his crimes. He often included bits of tree branch and bark in his bombs, and targets selected included Percy Wood and Professor Leroy Wood. Crime writer Robert Graysmith noted that his ‘obsession with wood’ was ‘a large factor’.

After his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski tried unsuccessfully to dismiss his court-appointed lawyers because they wanted him to plead insanity in order to avoid the death penalty, and he did not believe he was insane. In 1998 a plea bargain was reached, under which he pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. A federal grand jury indicted Kaczynski on ten counts of illegally transporting, mailing, and using bombs, and three counts of murder.

Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.

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