Jim Freeman - Leading the FBI's Hunt for the Unabomber | Part 1
Jim Freeman spent 32 years as an FBI Special Agent, rising to Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau's San Francisco field office. In the final two years of the 17-year hunt for the Unabomber, Freeman took direct control of the UNABOM Task Force — reporting straight to FBI Director Louis Freeh and Attorney General Janet Reno.
This episode centers on the case's most consequential turning point: the decision to publish Ted Kaczynski's 35,000-word manifesto in the New York Times and Washington Post. Freeman walks through the internal FBI debate over whether publishing would help catch a killer or simply give him what he wanted, and the moment Reno and Freeh personally authorized the risk.
From there, Freeman recounts how Kaczynski's own brother, David, recognized the language in the manifesto — and how that tip led investigators to a remote cabin outside Lincoln, Montana. What followed was a 40-day covert operation, culminating in Kaczynski's arrest by agents who, until hours before, weren't convinced the reclusive hermit in the woods could really be the man they'd been hunting for nearly two decades.
It's a story about a calculated gamble that worked — and about the ordinary caution, doubt, and bureaucracy that almost got in the way of catching one of the most notorious domestic terrorists in American history.
Part 1 ends the moment Kaczynski is finally in custody. In Part 2, Freeman takes us inside the cabin itself — and the evidence that sealed the case.
New episodes drop every other Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Learn more at citizensbehindthebadge.org.
Transcript
Ted opens the door just a crack.
Speaker:He looks out and the
Speaker:police officer says, "Hi, Ted.
Speaker:I'm sorry, but I'll get here so early in
Speaker:the morning when I got these gentlemen
Speaker:from a mining company that are going to
Speaker:survey the property.
Speaker:We need to find your property markers on
Speaker:posts at the corners of your property."
Speaker:Ted says, "Well, they're out there.
Speaker:They can just go.
Speaker:Oh, look."
Speaker:Police officer said, "No,
Speaker:they're covered with snow.
Speaker:We need you to come out and help."
Speaker:By this time, Ted had opened his door and
Speaker:he had stepped out on the
Speaker:front little porch there.
Speaker:He said, "Well, let me get my coat."
Speaker:And so he turns around to go back in and
Speaker:they boom, they grab him.
Speaker:For 17 years, the FBI
Speaker:chased the Unabomber.
Speaker:This is the man who finally caught him.
Speaker:I think this case is one of the most
Speaker:famous cases ever in the United States.
Speaker:The FBI spent some 17 years analyzing
Speaker:Kaczynski and the
Speaker:Unabomber about what he built.
Speaker:But what I found interesting, Jim, is
Speaker:that the way he got
Speaker:caught is by what he said.
Speaker:There seems to be a lot of controversy
Speaker:about the manifesto.
Speaker:I want to ask you about the manifesto
Speaker:because it looks like you were one of the
Speaker:key proponents of releasing and
Speaker:publishing the manifesto, but there was
Speaker:pushback from some powers that be at DOJ
Speaker:and FBI and certainly the two
Speaker:publications that he had requested.
Speaker:I would love to know
Speaker:the story behind that.
Speaker:That was a risky, heroic move on your
Speaker:part that could have failed.
Speaker:Did you ever consider what might have
Speaker:happened if that had backfired on you?
Speaker:Oh, many times.
Speaker:It definitely is what
Speaker:would keep you awake at night.
Speaker:But you talk about that
Speaker:his is what let him down.
Speaker:That's what got me into
Speaker:the case because I had,
Speaker:by coincidence, just to go back a little
Speaker:bit, the Unabomber began in 1978 at the
Speaker:same time I went to Miami in a
Speaker:Miami office.
Speaker:I was following his activities from afar
Speaker:and hoping I would never ever have to
Speaker:have the case in my division.
Speaker:Some years later, in 1993,
Speaker:I came to San Francisco and he had just
Speaker:done two bombings in kind of awakening of
Speaker:the Unabomber after six years, laying low
Speaker:after an eyewitness had
Speaker:spotted him up in Utah.
Speaker:It was
Speaker:a concern to me that a lot of my agents
Speaker:were having to work on the case, yet we
Speaker:had a task force here that was being
Speaker:directed out of Washington.
Speaker:I was okay that for a while because we
Speaker:had activities going.
Speaker:I came in, took over the San Francisco
Speaker:office, and we had the Polly Klaas
Speaker:kidnapping at that time,
Speaker:and all felt it was busy.
Speaker:When I resolved itself,
Speaker:the next year in 1994,
Speaker:I paid more attention to the case because
Speaker:my agents were working.
Speaker:We had three historical bombings here
Speaker:before 1993, two of which were at the
Speaker:University of California
Speaker:in Berkeley, which was odd.
Speaker:It was
Speaker:about that time that I decided my men are
Speaker:working on the case, my men and women are
Speaker:working on the case more and more.
Speaker:These temporary agents that are here in
Speaker:the task force are trying to go home
Speaker:because they got
Speaker:their families and things.
Speaker:I decided to
Speaker:to work the case, direct the case, if
Speaker:Director Louis Free would hear of that.
Speaker:One day I called him accidentally.
Speaker:I guess it was on April Fool's Day.
Speaker:I didn't know that, but at the time I
Speaker:didn't pay attention.
Speaker:I volunteered for a
Speaker:case, like you said, that was
Speaker:kind of a loser case because for 17
Speaker:years, well at that time 15 years,
Speaker:there were a lot of-- Yeah,
Speaker:and so, but it was his words that caused
Speaker:me to say, I think we can catch this guy
Speaker:because he wrote a letter to the New York
Speaker:Times, an editor at the New York Times,
Speaker:at the exact same time that he had mailed
Speaker:two bombs from Sacramento and one blew up
Speaker:in my hometown now Tiburon,
Speaker:a doctor,
Speaker:geneticist's home, and he survived that,
Speaker:but it was really a bad
Speaker:medical situation for him.
Speaker:A couple days later, the second bomb went
Speaker:off at the University of
Speaker:Yale University in Connecticut.
Speaker:It was the Unabomber announcing himself
Speaker:back to the world, you know, on back
Speaker:after six years and he had better bombs.
Speaker:Suddenly, he broke his silence.
Speaker:And all of a sudden, he's writing a
Speaker:letter to the largest
Speaker:newspaper and he's throwing out,
Speaker:saying that he's with an anarchist group,
Speaker:FC, and asked the
Speaker:FBI, they know about FC.
Speaker:So he's just going
Speaker:from total silence to now
Speaker:he's bringing about everything and
Speaker:bringing the FBI up.
Speaker:And I think, you know, I've known people,
Speaker:criminals, bombers, et cetera, that talk
Speaker:to the media, get a message out, and
Speaker:they're in prison today
Speaker:because they make a mistake.
Speaker:You know, I think he's making a mistake
Speaker:that's going to have
Speaker:paid for down the line.
Speaker:What if the manifesto had been published?
Speaker:Because apparently you had to struggle to
Speaker:get the New York Times
Speaker:and the Pokes to publish it.
Speaker:They didn't want to do it.
Speaker:They said, "We don't want
Speaker:anything to do with this.
Speaker:This would look like aiding the police."
Speaker:How did you convince them finally to
Speaker:publish his manifesto?
Speaker:Well, actually, we had to convince our
Speaker:own agents of that
Speaker:first because, you know,
Speaker:he had built a
Speaker:case here that
Speaker:was basically, "I'm going to kill people.
Speaker:It's publisher Parrish.
Speaker:Either we publish my manifesto or I'm
Speaker:going to blow up a plane that's leaving
Speaker:Los Angeles International
Speaker:Airport within the next six days."
Speaker:And he had already, years
Speaker:before, tried to blow up a plane.
Speaker:He put a bomb in a mail package of board
Speaker:an American Airlines flight
Speaker:from Chicago to Washington, D.C.
Speaker:He had
Speaker:rigged up an altimeter from a barometer
Speaker:that would blow up at a certain altitude.
Speaker:That worked.
Speaker:The bomb fizzled and
Speaker:created a fire and a hold.
Speaker:An emergency landing is what saved the
Speaker:passengers and crew.
Speaker:But you had to take guys seriously.
Speaker:This already attempted mass murder.
Speaker:Now he's threatening.
Speaker:That's extortion.
Speaker:Policy of the US government was, "You
Speaker:don't yield to terrorist demands or else
Speaker:you'll get nothing but
Speaker:terrorist demands after that."
Speaker:So nobody wanted to do it.
Speaker:And we had a long meeting among our task
Speaker:force agents and I just let them talk and
Speaker:talk and nobody wanted to do it.
Speaker:And our recommendation was to go back to
Speaker:Director Free that we have
Speaker:other means to solve this case.
Speaker:This is not the way to go.
Speaker:But then the agents, after they told me
Speaker:that, and then before we called the Free,
Speaker:they had a change of heart.
Speaker:Terry Turchie was my agent that was
Speaker:managing day-to-day
Speaker:operations of the task force and all.
Speaker:He came to me in my office and he says,
Speaker:"Tim, we want to change our mind here.
Speaker:We think that somebody will actually
Speaker:recognize the words that
Speaker:are in this manifesto."
Speaker:Because every one of us that had read it,
Speaker:we had also at this
Speaker:time, of course, his brother,
Speaker:when he was able to read the manifesto,
Speaker:he recognized the words too.
Speaker:So we were true and correct on the right
Speaker:track in saying somebody, whether it's a
Speaker:professor, a college professor, a
Speaker:roommate, family member.
Speaker:We didn't know a family
Speaker:member, but thank goodness.
Speaker:Let me ask, did the brother see the
Speaker:manifesto before it was published?
Speaker:No, he did not.
Speaker:So he actually saw it
Speaker:because it was published?
Speaker:Because, in fact, his wife had read it.
Speaker:She talked to him and said, "You better
Speaker:read this manifesto.
Speaker:That sounds like your brother."
Speaker:She'd never met Ted.
Speaker:She had read his letters
Speaker:that he sent back to his
Speaker:brother.
Speaker:He used a lot of the same words in those
Speaker:letters back to David.
Speaker:David picked out a few phrases in another
Speaker:document that he
Speaker:had published 20 years earlier and all.
Speaker:It was sounding a lot like
Speaker:the words in the manifesto.
Speaker:So David was on board finally that I
Speaker:think he's run afraid
Speaker:that he's the Unabomber.
Speaker:How did David feel about basically
Speaker:turning in his own brother?
Speaker:How did that go down?
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:he didn't think very much of it, but he
Speaker:was so much concerned
Speaker:knowing that people would die.
Speaker:They had this threat that either
Speaker:published it or I'm
Speaker:going to blow up a plane.
Speaker:We had every right to believe that that
Speaker:actually would happen.
Speaker:I heard about David by means of his
Speaker:attorney in Washington, D.C., who called
Speaker:me and said, "I have a client who thinks
Speaker:his brother might be the Unabomber."
Speaker:So we exchanged some
Speaker:information about that.
Speaker:He said, "I can't tell you if my client
Speaker:won't let me divulge his name,
Speaker:but what he wants is one thing.
Speaker:He wants you to take the
Speaker:death penalty off the table."
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Anyone knows an law enforcement...
Speaker:That's quite a request.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:First time I ever...
Speaker:I didn't even know the subject's name and
Speaker:I'm already being asked to take the death
Speaker:penalty off and saying, "Of
Speaker:course, I don't have the..."
Speaker:The jurisdiction.
Speaker:One other question I heard, and you can
Speaker:either confirm or deny this, that
Speaker:actually CBS News got a hold of Ted's
Speaker:name before you guys were ready to move
Speaker:and were threatening to run a story
Speaker:before you were ready to go.
Speaker:Is that true or false?
Speaker:Oh, that's absolutely true.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I had a
Speaker:producer, actually a producer from 60
Speaker:Minutes, who made a call into me and said
Speaker:he wanted to meet right away and I'm in
Speaker:Montana at the time, but I didn't want to
Speaker:tell him I'm in Montana
Speaker:because he didn't know where...
Speaker:He just knew that we were
Speaker:focusing on a suspect out west
Speaker:and his source was...
Speaker:I still don't know who his source was,
Speaker:but it was somebody that only had a
Speaker:portion of the information and he seemed
Speaker:to be getting it a little bit more every
Speaker:few hours and the guy would call back and
Speaker:say, "We think he's this.
Speaker:We think he's in the
Speaker:mountains of Montana."
Speaker:He just starts getting closer and closer.
Speaker:And Turchie was listening to this and he
Speaker:had a computerization
Speaker:project that was underway.
Speaker:It was a huge thing because
Speaker:this was in 1995,
Speaker:1996.
Speaker:By this time computers and
Speaker:the FBI had just arrived.
Speaker:The data was all corrupted
Speaker:because it was every type of memo,
Speaker:teletype, report,
Speaker:laboratory report and all.
Speaker:Nothing was standardized.
Speaker:They could go into a computer.
Speaker:So it was really slow to get the data in
Speaker:there, but we're also throwing in data
Speaker:from the universities that had been
Speaker:targeted, the students that were there at
Speaker:that time, faculty, everything.
Speaker:And as soon as...
Speaker:While we're working behind the scenes
Speaker:while we're talking to this lawyer and
Speaker:he's talking to Dave D'Incy and said,
Speaker:"I'll call you back to see
Speaker:if he'll agree to the terms."
Speaker:We were still hung up on this tick tick,
Speaker:the death penalty off the table.
Speaker:And I said, "Well, I can't do that, but
Speaker:here's what I'll do.
Speaker:I'll send you a letter saying that I will
Speaker:make a recommendation to the prosecutor
Speaker:that this is what the brother wants.
Speaker:I can go that far."
Speaker:And I faxed him that letter and that's
Speaker:what they're discussing about whether
Speaker:David Kaczynski would agree
Speaker:to divulge his brother's name.
Speaker:And so in that interim,
Speaker:Terry Turchie fed this information into
Speaker:our computer and out popped the same name
Speaker:that the attorney was giving me,
Speaker:Ted Kaczynski, because he had said he had
Speaker:been a professor at the University of
Speaker:California, Berkeley.
Speaker:He grew up in Chicago and really just on
Speaker:those two points, we already had closer
Speaker:data points that were in our haystack of
Speaker:information from all the investigations
Speaker:and other information we'd gathered.
Speaker:And so we actually had...
Speaker:When he got on the phone and said, "Okay,
Speaker:we can give you the name," and I said,
Speaker:"Is it Theodore Kaczynski?"
Speaker:And it was.
Speaker:They didn't, they had it.
Speaker:What's the plan for running the story?
Speaker:I mean, they were going to run it, but
Speaker:apparently you made the arrest and later
Speaker:that day they did their story.
Speaker:Well, there was a lot of negotiation in
Speaker:which often happens with cases where you
Speaker:have imminent danger and all that.
Speaker:The media will see the benefit of giving
Speaker:law enforcement a little
Speaker:thank God they did because
Speaker:we didn't...
Speaker:We had an affidavit for a search warrant
Speaker:and or an arrest warrant.
Speaker:And I'm talking to Louis Free, the
Speaker:director, and he's a former
Speaker:prosecutor himself and all.
Speaker:And he says, "Jim, you have adequate
Speaker:probable cause there for an arrest
Speaker:warrant or a search warrant."
Speaker:Then as the day progressed, Department of
Speaker:Justice would not put their careers on
Speaker:the line and say,
Speaker:"Here's an arrest warrant."
Speaker:So they gave me a search warrant.
Speaker:The search warrant, how do you have a
Speaker:bomber, a known murderer in a cabin,
Speaker:isolated cabin, and serving a search
Speaker:warrant, are you just supposed to go up
Speaker:and knock on the doors, "Excuse me, Mr.
Speaker:Kaczynski, we're here
Speaker:to serve a warrant."
Speaker:Like to have a chat.
Speaker:You know, I want to jump in here because
Speaker:I think this is a really good point to
Speaker:share with the audience.
Speaker:And a lot of people
Speaker:may not be aware of this.
Speaker:But the FBI, when you're doing an
Speaker:investigation, and most investigations
Speaker:oftentimes are these long-term
Speaker:investigations, unlike local law
Speaker:enforcement, local law enforcement can go
Speaker:out based on probable cause
Speaker:and they can lock somebody up.
Speaker:And then the state attorneys, district
Speaker:attorneys review the case later on.
Speaker:You are a bit hamstrung by that because,
Speaker:as you had just said, you
Speaker:could get a search warrant.
Speaker:But these prosecutors at
Speaker:the US Attorney's Office
Speaker:wouldn't give you an arrest warrant.
Speaker:But you had already said you, even you
Speaker:and the FBI director both
Speaker:agreed that you had probable cause.
Speaker:Maybe delve into that a little bit more.
Speaker:I mean, I worked on a number of
Speaker:multi-agency task forces with the feds.
Speaker:And the local state and local, we could
Speaker:go and initiate an arrest.
Speaker:And oftentimes the feds would tell us,
Speaker:you guys go grab that guy because you can
Speaker:hook him up on probable cause.
Speaker:We have to jump through these
Speaker:bureaucratic hoops to go through the DOJ
Speaker:and the US Attorney's
Speaker:Office to make this happen.
Speaker:Just maybe talk a little bit about that
Speaker:and how that was a
Speaker:hindrance or even if it wasn't.
Speaker:Well, it definitely was
Speaker:a hindrance bureaucracy.
Speaker:It was a hindrance
Speaker:from day one on this case.
Speaker:In the FBI and our headquarters and
Speaker:supervisory staff, everything operated
Speaker:kind of on a work,
Speaker:individual cases, a whole variety.
Speaker:But you get into a mindset on these
Speaker:various types of crimes
Speaker:that one size fits all.
Speaker:You have the statute, you have this fax,
Speaker:and you put it together, and it
Speaker:all works out the same way. But that wasn't the case for the inev
Speaker:work in their murder case. The New Jersey Police Department working their murder case, we're going to bring
Speaker:it all together, and
Speaker:it's going to be singular.
Speaker:And nobody's going to talk to me talking
Speaker:about the leak and all.
Speaker:Nobody's going to talk
Speaker:to the media except me.
Speaker:I became the media point for the two
Speaker:years that I had the case.
Speaker:And so we had a deal where we're actually
Speaker:bypassing bureaucracy at headquarters.
Speaker:And we're talking directly to the
Speaker:director, we're talking directly to
Speaker:Attorney General Janet Reno.
Speaker:And it was with them that Terry and I
Speaker:went with them to meet with the
Speaker:publishers to convince the publishers
Speaker:that there was a law enforcement purpose
Speaker:that would
Speaker:make it worthwhile to
Speaker:set aside the requirement that you don't
Speaker:yield to a terroristic threat.
Speaker:We think by publishing the manifesto, it
Speaker:will serve the purpose people will
Speaker:recognize because it's such a unique
Speaker:subject matter,
Speaker:somebody will recognize it.
Speaker:So we kind of put our
Speaker:reputation on the line on that.
Speaker:How hard was that conversation?
Speaker:I mean, did those publishers push back
Speaker:pretty hard, or were you
Speaker:able to win them over easily?
Speaker:That was very interesting meeting.
Speaker:I'll say this.
Speaker:He has the publishers, you know, from the
Speaker:New York Times and Washington Post and
Speaker:their editorial staff they brought with
Speaker:them in a conference room at FBI
Speaker:headquarters and Janet Reno walked across
Speaker:the street to be there.
Speaker:And it was very interesting.
Speaker:And they were, they first were not
Speaker:interested in being a tool of the law
Speaker:enforcement and the federal government.
Speaker:You can't, you know, you're not going to
Speaker:be telling us what to do.
Speaker:We're going to make our own decision, but
Speaker:give us please give us the facts that
Speaker:would cause you to want,
Speaker:you know, to want to do this.
Speaker:And so we went through
Speaker:that whole presentation and
Speaker:they came up with,
Speaker:well, okay, if we, you know,
Speaker:hypotheticals, if we decide to do this,
Speaker:what if he then continues bombing?
Speaker:And, you know, our
Speaker:psychologists and all that we had on the
Speaker:case would say he will continue bombing.
Speaker:You can't trust him.
Speaker:Even if he turn, even if you do what he
Speaker:says and publish, he might still bomb.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And so that is a risk.
Speaker:And it's the risk to the publishers, but
Speaker:it's a risk to Janet Reno, to the
Speaker:director FBI, to the publisher,
Speaker:so
Speaker:the publisher turns, turns into
Speaker:the attorney general and to the Louis
Speaker:free and said, what if we
Speaker:publish and he bombs what then?
Speaker:And to her credit, Janet Reno sat up
Speaker:straight and said, you can say that the
Speaker:attorney general of the United States
Speaker:authorized this course
Speaker:of action and is for,
Speaker:you know, is to help out law enforcement.
Speaker:And Louis Free jumped right in behind
Speaker:that and said, then you can
Speaker:say the director of the FBI
Speaker:approves of it because it serves a law
Speaker:enforcement purpose.
Speaker:And that was.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Janet stood up and Louis
Speaker:backed up right behind her.
Speaker:Did
Speaker:they agree right then and there or did
Speaker:they waver and, you know, kind of, you
Speaker:know, to me, it just it's insane that the
Speaker:news media wouldn't want to cooperate.
Speaker:I mean, what's their
Speaker:liability at that point?
Speaker:It'd be interesting to like, was there
Speaker:really some battle going on beside behind
Speaker:the scenes like, you know, just people
Speaker:losing their cool and saying, you know,
Speaker:what in the hell are
Speaker:you even thinking here?
Speaker:This is there's people's lives at stake
Speaker:and, you know,
Speaker:conversations to that effect.
Speaker:That was all going all of that was going
Speaker:on, but not not in this close knit group
Speaker:that actually making decisions.
Speaker:And those decisions were
Speaker:made in that room that day.
Speaker:And they, you know, the publishers, you
Speaker:know, they said, well, give us a moment.
Speaker:And they talked among themselves, you
Speaker:know, well, this is 35000
Speaker:page manifesto or document.
Speaker:It's it's a small book.
Speaker:Public newspapers, we
Speaker:don't publish books.
Speaker:So how are we going to do this?
Speaker:So there was talking about, well, maybe
Speaker:we should and we thought this might be a
Speaker:good idea to kind of serialize it over a
Speaker:period of days instead of
Speaker:just publishing the entire thing.
Speaker:And they kind of like that idea.
Speaker:And they actually worked out well,
Speaker:Washington Post can pay for
Speaker:this and we'll pay for that.
Speaker:That all happened right there and around
Speaker:the conference table.
Speaker:And when they left, it was
Speaker:everybody was on the same page.
Speaker:Jim, the publishing of the manifesto
Speaker:seems to be the key moment in this case
Speaker:that helped us solve it.
Speaker:There are so many other details and we
Speaker:can go back and talk about the beginning
Speaker:of the case and how
Speaker:everything transpired.
Speaker:But since we're at this point already,
Speaker:OK, the manifesto gets published.
Speaker:You've talked about the brother
Speaker:recognizes that those are the words of
Speaker:his brother, Ted Kaczynski.
Speaker:And now you've got your suspect.
Speaker:You even came up with the same name
Speaker:through other means.
Speaker:So take us now through
Speaker:that part of the process.
Speaker:The case is now broken.
Speaker:How do you arrest Ted Kaczynski?
Speaker:He lives in the mountains in Montana.
Speaker:How do you even find him number one?
Speaker:And then how did the
Speaker:arrest actually go down?
Speaker:OK, well, the correct one thing, the case
Speaker:had not broken in the sense that the
Speaker:public didn't know yet.
Speaker:So this was very much
Speaker:a tightly held secret.
Speaker:Broke with you.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Even within, you know, it
Speaker:was a need to know basis.
Speaker:So even agents on the periphery of the
Speaker:Unibom investigation were not told that
Speaker:we now have we're locked in on a suspect.
Speaker:We're sending a group of people and a
Speaker:supervisor, Max Knoll, to Montana
Speaker:to start investigating this suspect.
Speaker:We didn't tell our own office in Salt
Speaker:Lake City that actually had
Speaker:administrative for Montana.
Speaker:And we set up a and I went
Speaker:there, Terry Turchie went there.
Speaker:We set up a little field, many field
Speaker:office in Helena, Montana.
Speaker:We rented office space.
Speaker:We were there for 40 days, actually, kind
Speaker:of biblical in sense, but it was 40 days
Speaker:from the first time that we landed in in
Speaker:Helena, Montana,
Speaker:until we made the arrest.
Speaker:And in those 40 days,
Speaker:we had to come up with convincing
Speaker:evidence because Max Knoll, the
Speaker:supervisor there, had gone out with the
Speaker:we've made a contact of the neighbor that
Speaker:ran a lot of sawmill
Speaker:next to the his cabin.
Speaker:He knew him personally.
Speaker:And he told the, it's the same day that
Speaker:Max introduced himself to this
Speaker:owner of the property.
Speaker:And the guy offered, "Let's just walk up
Speaker:the trail here and I'll just show you
Speaker:what you're dealing with in
Speaker:terms of the cabin and all."
Speaker:Ted still, it was March at this time and
Speaker:snow was still everywhere.
Speaker:And he'd been, you know, he'd been locked
Speaker:in there by snow and ice for since the
Speaker:first snow, I guess, in the winter.
Speaker:So, but it was getting enough time.
Speaker:It happened that as they walked out
Speaker:there, Ted opened his door and saw them.
Speaker:And with a,
Speaker:it was such that he was in the same garb
Speaker:that he was wearing when we arrest him.
Speaker:He was looking really old tattered
Speaker:clothes and beard and everything.
Speaker:And Max just gets a
Speaker:look at him and with the,
Speaker:with this guy that Ted know,
Speaker:Ted would know him by sight.
Speaker:And they just said, "Oh, hi, Ted.
Speaker:We're just taking a look around."
Speaker:And Ted just went back in his cabin,
Speaker:thought nothing of it.
Speaker:But Max looked at this guy and he said,
Speaker:"Oh my God, is this what we've been
Speaker:looking for all this time?"
Speaker:And he came back and he was absolutely
Speaker:convinced to Terry and I, this guy, this
Speaker:hermit, snowbound hermit
Speaker:cannot be the Unabomber.
Speaker:He was adamant about that.
Speaker:And he was like the most experienced
Speaker:criminal agent you would have.
Speaker:And so we ended up
Speaker:going through this thing.
Speaker:Well, we have to, you know, we have a lot
Speaker:of work ahead of us.
Speaker:And Max also had another great quote.
Speaker:He said, "A snowbound hermit is going to
Speaker:be one heck of a hard
Speaker:sell as the Unabomber."
Speaker:And that proved true day in and day out.
Speaker:And so we knew our
Speaker:work was really cut out.
Speaker:And so we brought more agents
Speaker:in, rented cars, playing cars.
Speaker:And we were going around and we put
Speaker:Lincoln, Montana off limits.
Speaker:Nobody could go in
Speaker:there too small of a town.
Speaker:They'll know the FBI's there.
Speaker:So they were working in the towns that
Speaker:surrounded, which was held on kind of on
Speaker:one side, Missoula,
Speaker:Montana, and the other.
Speaker:And they were about 80 or
Speaker:90 miles away from Lincoln.
Speaker:And they started going to
Speaker:motels, checking lectures.
Speaker:And we had another whole project going on
Speaker:to where, where did we know that the
Speaker:Unabomber was on any given day?
Speaker:So he had started not only mailing
Speaker:package bombs, where he had to go into a
Speaker:post office and mail it.
Speaker:So we know that he was in Sacramento on
Speaker:that date when the bomb was mailed to
Speaker:Tiburon, California,
Speaker:and to Yale University.
Speaker:So if we have a suspect, yes, he can't be
Speaker:somewhere else except in Sacramento on
Speaker:that day, because that's
Speaker:where we know the Unabomber was.
Speaker:And we were building
Speaker:up this entire thing.
Speaker:And we had all the letters that David
Speaker:Kaczynski had saved, every letter had
Speaker:ever written to him, including the
Speaker:envelopes that had a postmark date.
Speaker:So we know we started to build a
Speaker:library of known facts about the
Speaker:whereabouts of the Unabomber.
Speaker:And so that was giving us a
Speaker:lot of things to look for.
Speaker:They could go in and say, if Ted was the
Speaker:Unabomber and he went to Sacramento, he
Speaker:had to go through Missoula.
Speaker:And the only way he had no vehicles, he
Speaker:only had a bicycle, the only way you
Speaker:could get there is on the
Speaker:Greyhound bus out of Lincoln.
Speaker:Because no Uber, no taxis,
Speaker:no, it was a really small
Speaker:mountain town.
Speaker:And so we had to go to Missoula.
Speaker:So we started checking motels and all in
Speaker:there and along the bus
Speaker:route back to Sacramento.
Speaker:They started getting hits because this
Speaker:time we had photographs of
Speaker:Ted Kaczynski, our suspect.
Speaker:And even a bus driver
Speaker:recognized him on a given day.
Speaker:We go into motel records
Speaker:and used his true name.
Speaker:And so we're gathering all this data.
Speaker:And in those weeks that
Speaker:we had to operate secretly,
Speaker:we built up one heck of a library of
Speaker:evidence that we have a suspect and
Speaker:he's in every place that the Unabomber
Speaker:is known to have been, no
Speaker:conflict in any of those dates.
Speaker:And that was
Speaker:a big element in our search warrant.
Speaker:And then
Speaker:as we became more acquainted with
Speaker:David Kaczynski and his family, David's
Speaker:mother would finally interviewed her only
Speaker:like two or three days
Speaker:before we made the arrest.
Speaker:And Kathy Puckett, our FBI agent who was
Speaker:also a PhD in psychology, she became
Speaker:really good friends with
Speaker:Ted
Speaker:and David's mother.
Speaker:And she pulled out a trunk of
Speaker:documents and found even more
Speaker:documents to go through
Speaker:that were known documents.
Speaker:Written by Ted Kaczynski and we could
Speaker:have then experts compare words and
Speaker:things with the actual manifesto and
Speaker:coming up with all of that.
Speaker:But the mother at this time, Jim, did the
Speaker:mother at this point three days before
Speaker:her son was arrested, did she know he was
Speaker:the suspect as the Unabomber?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And David had shared that with her and
Speaker:the family were becoming very concerned
Speaker:because we start asking, well, how does
Speaker:Ted come up with the money even by a bus
Speaker:ticket to go anywhere
Speaker:because he had no means of support?
Speaker:And they're saying, well, Teddy would
Speaker:sometimes call and say, or write a letter
Speaker:and say, I need to even never call.
Speaker:He would write a letter and say,
Speaker:I need money to do this or do that
Speaker:medical things or whatever.
Speaker:And they would send him four or $500
Speaker:at a time.
Speaker:And so then they, we looked at the dates
Speaker:of that and it was starting to coincide
Speaker:with the timeframe of bombings that where
Speaker:he needed to be in Salt Lake City or need
Speaker:to be in Sacramento or in
Speaker:San Francisco on those dates.
Speaker:And we'd look and see, well, he asked for
Speaker:money just like a month before.
Speaker:So he had money we found in a bank
Speaker:account that he had in Missoula.
Speaker:So, you know, we're starting to build a
Speaker:whole real solid case around him, but
Speaker:nothing, he didn't have anything, but
Speaker:like a prosecutor says, I saw him, you
Speaker:know, put this bomb down.
Speaker:We didn't have one eyewitness, by the
Speaker:way, that dates back to 1987.
Speaker:We show her the picture
Speaker:and she couldn't make it.
Speaker:So it's like, all that needs to go over
Speaker:your eyewitnesses, your worst piece.
Speaker:Really, what did the family tell you?
Speaker:What triggered him to become radicalized?
Speaker:How he went from, you know, functioning
Speaker:in society, working as
Speaker:a university professor.
Speaker:Now he's completely off the grid as like
Speaker:you said, as a hermit in
Speaker:this mountainous Montana cabin.
Speaker:What transpired there, do you recall?
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:the realization came through the
Speaker:manifesto again, because as
Speaker:David Kaczynski read through that
Speaker:manifesto, he kept
Speaker:pulling out ideas and all that.
Speaker:This certainly sounds like Ted and I
Speaker:remember when he pulled out a letter and
Speaker:all here, this is from Ted, he's saying
Speaker:kind of the same thing about
Speaker:society and
Speaker:enough to where it really, the more David
Speaker:looked at the comparison of words and
Speaker:letters he had and what he'd written in a
Speaker:manifesto, he became
Speaker:more and more convinced.
Speaker:And it was really bothering him that the
Speaker:family had given money that might have
Speaker:financed trips for Ted
Speaker:to go and murder somebody.
Speaker:That's possible.
Speaker:And by this time he had
Speaker:assassinated, you know, three
Speaker:people. 123 others.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:But okay, so you've got
Speaker:us hanging now on the edge.
Speaker:Three days before he's arrested, the mom
Speaker:is pulling out all these letters and
Speaker:other writings and you're just nailing
Speaker:all the evidence against him.
Speaker:And somehow in three days, the arrest
Speaker:occurs and it's up in this mountain and
Speaker:he hates people and he
Speaker:doesn't want to talk to anybody.
Speaker:And you didn't have, I guess you had the
Speaker:warrants you needed at that point.
Speaker:So who goes in there
Speaker:and makes the arrest?
Speaker:Well,
Speaker:just to back up just a bit,
Speaker:we talked about the leak and the leak,
Speaker:you know, we wish we'd had another cell.
Speaker:The CBS
Speaker:leak, yeah.
Speaker:To get all this information together.
Speaker:And those words had never
Speaker:been used in federal court.
Speaker:They never actually used a word
Speaker:comparison as official
Speaker:evidence
Speaker:that would link somebody to a crime.
Speaker:So this would be a first that the
Speaker:Department of Justice was
Speaker:also having to hang their hat on.
Speaker:And remember, there are visions of Ted in
Speaker:a snowbound cabin, no
Speaker:running water, no electricity.
Speaker:Our laboratory said he
Speaker:melted scrap aluminum.
Speaker:He would need a portable kiln, electrical
Speaker:kiln that actually do
Speaker:that to get the temperature.
Speaker:We don't do that in Ted's cabin.
Speaker:There was a potbellied stove.
Speaker:That was the only heat
Speaker:source we had in that cabin.
Speaker:I guess he melted in the stove.
Speaker:I don't know, but he did it.
Speaker:But there was just, there was a lot of
Speaker:things that were contradictory.
Speaker:Like how could he possibly do this?
Speaker:And it was the, actually the leak,
Speaker:although it was forcing us into
Speaker:accelerated action, it
Speaker:actually served our purpose.
Speaker:You know, the people on the ground, we
Speaker:want to get this done.
Speaker:And we all these
Speaker:questions being asked and
Speaker:had to have ironclad evidence before they
Speaker:would sign off on anything.
Speaker:And so it was the leak that pushed us
Speaker:into a 20, they gave us a 24 hour
Speaker:deadline before they would publish.
Speaker:And
Speaker:I said to Louis Free, I get him on the
Speaker:phone and I was saying,
Speaker:we've got to get
Speaker:people from San Francisco.
Speaker:I wanted a SWAT team here not to hit the
Speaker:cabin, just to encircle it
Speaker:to make sure that he didn't
Speaker:run out and escape over the
Speaker:mountains and this sort of thing.
Speaker:Or to respond
Speaker:retroactively if he started shooting or
Speaker:trying to harm himself.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, I would imagine at that
Speaker:point, you're kind of thinking, okay,
Speaker:well, if this guy's living remotely out
Speaker:in this cabin, he's
Speaker:kind of a survivalist.
Speaker:So you're thinking maybe he's a type or
Speaker:something like that as a survivalist
Speaker:that's got, you know, rifles and knives
Speaker:and any number of things.
Speaker:So I guess that's how you approached it.
Speaker:Well, we knew that from a neighbor that
Speaker:he had at least a rifle in there because
Speaker:he hunted, he poached deer all the time.
Speaker:And, you know, he lived
Speaker:off the land, you know?
Speaker:So yeah, he definitely had
Speaker:guns.
Speaker:But that
Speaker:had to be his bomb making
Speaker:laboratory, his cabin, you know?
Speaker:What are the chances that
Speaker:he has a bomb or maybe booby traps to
Speaker:blow up if somebody forces
Speaker:in the door or something?
Speaker:Well, and I was going
Speaker:to ask you that too.
Speaker:I mean, what countermeasures or
Speaker:procedures did you guys go about when you
Speaker:were even approaching it?
Speaker:Because it could be very likely from his
Speaker:bomb making experience that he did have
Speaker:some kind of booby traps.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And all I have is a search warrant.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And were there any booby traps on the
Speaker:trails or the surrounding areas of that?
Speaker:Very much a concern and
Speaker:we didn't know at the time.
Speaker:And you talked before about local law
Speaker:enforcement can act on this probable
Speaker:cause and what they could see.
Speaker:Actually,
Speaker:FBI agents, any federal agent can
Speaker:actually do that as well.
Speaker:But the preponderance of
Speaker:legal advice is not to do so,
Speaker:you know, unless you
Speaker:just absolutely have to.
Speaker:So I actually authorized
Speaker:Ted's arrest based on evidence.
Speaker:I did not have any prosecutor's authority
Speaker:to arrest Ted and we did.
Speaker:But backing up a little bit,
Speaker:we brought in, you know, overnight,
Speaker:Louis Freeh was able to talk to the head
Speaker:of CBS News and bias like an extra 12
Speaker:hours or something so I could get people.
Speaker:I think we filled up every Delta flight
Speaker:from San Francisco flying into Salt Lake
Speaker:City and then another
Speaker:flight into Helena, Montana.
Speaker:And we brought dozens of agents in just
Speaker:in the open nights landing
Speaker:all night long or landing.
Speaker:And we were going to go the next morning.
Speaker:We had
Speaker:resourceful people there that had gone
Speaker:out and actually rented a seven up seven
Speaker:up ranch, which was like a tourist thing
Speaker:with little, little bungalows and all but
Speaker:it was closed for the season, but they're
Speaker:reopening for the Easter weekend because
Speaker:he had a restaurant there.
Speaker:And so I talked to them
Speaker:and rented the whole place
Speaker:for several days.
Speaker:And it was like five
Speaker:out of Lincoln, Montana.
Speaker:And we had a covered
Speaker:story for why we were there.
Speaker:And, you know, like a corporate retreat
Speaker:or something, I forgot what it was.
Speaker:But anyway, if anybody
Speaker:asked, this is what you tell them.
Speaker:And the people in the in that location
Speaker:were very cooperative and
Speaker:worked worked with us very well.
Speaker:And so we had we had a staging area and
Speaker:everybody was coming into that staging
Speaker:area that next morning,
Speaker:like from before dawn.
Speaker:And
Speaker:we're just making plans on the fly.
Speaker:And I had about a week earlier, I talked
Speaker:to Max Knoll, the supervisor there.
Speaker:And he's a guy that
Speaker:had criminal experience.
Speaker:I mean, he had been on a SWAT team that
Speaker:killed the airline hijacker and SFO, some
Speaker:Eastern European guy that
Speaker:did that like decades before.
Speaker:I mean, he'd been there and done, you
Speaker:know, in all kinds of cases.
Speaker:And I said, Max,
Speaker:we got a plan for eventually we're going
Speaker:to get an arrest warrant for this guy.
Speaker:And then we're going to go in there and
Speaker:we praise, you know, we thought
Speaker:everything you talked about, booby
Speaker:trapped cabin, booby trapped
Speaker:access areas to the cabin, you know,
Speaker:thinking about all that.
Speaker:So we got to take him
Speaker:outside the cabin, obviously.
Speaker:And so our first plan was to well, when
Speaker:he finally goes into town, he goes in for
Speaker:provisions every spring after he comes
Speaker:out, so he's starting to
Speaker:come out of his cabin now.
Speaker:So we can just wait for
Speaker:him and we'll just take him.
Speaker:Well, we couldn't do all that because of
Speaker:the leak and we had this deadline.
Speaker:So we have to do it
Speaker:within the next 12 hours.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Put a crimp on that.
Speaker:So we came up with there was a Forest
Speaker:Service police officer in a regular
Speaker:police uniform that new Ted
Speaker:worked there with him for years.
Speaker:So we put him in the
Speaker:team of three people, Max Knoll, the
Speaker:supervisor and FBI agent from Helena,
Speaker:Montana, and this police officer.
Speaker:It took 40 days to get here.
Speaker:This is the moment we opened on.
Speaker:They found out that from that property
Speaker:owner next door, that there had been a
Speaker:company that was looking at mining leases
Speaker:from the previous fall and that they had
Speaker:signed up actually gold and silver mining
Speaker:leases in that area.
Speaker:So the risk was going to be that
Speaker:this police officer knows Ted, the three
Speaker:of them will walk down to the cabin,
Speaker:making all kinds of
Speaker:noise, talking loudly,
Speaker:so that Ted would hear them coming and
Speaker:not be frightened, and would recognize
Speaker:this police officer.
Speaker:And then
Speaker:what happened is
Speaker:that's where we went out.
Speaker:We had deployed the
Speaker:SWAT team all around the cabin, but the
Speaker:lake, you know, 50 yards away behind
Speaker:trees and stuff, just in case they needed
Speaker:backup because they're going up there.
Speaker:And I'm with the SWAT guy at another
Speaker:cabin about 200 yards away,
Speaker:and with a radio link to
Speaker:those guys, and also to,
Speaker:but not to Max and him, that team, they
Speaker:were in communicado once
Speaker:they started walking in there.
Speaker:And so Max is, they keep walking up there
Speaker:and they're talking loud, and nothing's
Speaker:happening in the cabin.
Speaker:And they get all the way up to the cabin,
Speaker:they finally hear some rustling around
Speaker:inside, and Ted opens
Speaker:the door just a crack.
Speaker:And he looks out and the
Speaker:police officer says, "Hi, Ted.
Speaker:I'm sorry, but you know, I'll get here so
Speaker:early in the morning when I got these
Speaker:gentlemen from a mining company that are
Speaker:going to survey the property, and we need
Speaker:to find your property markers on your
Speaker:posts at the corners of your and Ted
Speaker:says, "Well, they're out there.
Speaker:They can just go look."
Speaker:And the police officer said,
Speaker:"No, they're covered with snow.
Speaker:We need you to come out and help."
Speaker:By this time, Ted had opened his door and
Speaker:he had stepped out on the
Speaker:front little porch there.
Speaker:And he said, "Well, let me get my coat."
Speaker:And so he turns around to go back in and
Speaker:they boom, they grab him, and they're
Speaker:rustling like this,
Speaker:you know, just bear them.
Speaker:This one agent from Helme is a big guy
Speaker:and gives him like a big bear hug.
Speaker:Well, they start wobbling around and it's
Speaker:icy and it looks like they're going to
Speaker:almost fall off the porch.
Speaker:Max comes around and he puts his weapon
Speaker:right in Ted's face.
Speaker:And I just says, "I'm special agent Max
Speaker:Knoll, the FBI, and I'm
Speaker:here to search your cabin."
Speaker:Hello.
Speaker:And he puts a-- Friendly bear hug, yeah.
Speaker:And he puts handcuffs on him and move
Speaker:them off to a-- we prearranged.
Speaker:There was an elk hunter's cabin with no
Speaker:electors or anything that
Speaker:was within walking distance.
Speaker:So that was the whole thing that was set
Speaker:up to be where we would take him.
Speaker:And he did.
Speaker:And it just--
Speaker:that was the moment of detention.
Speaker:It was not officially under arrest.
Speaker:That's the moment they finally had him.
Speaker:But catching Ted
Speaker:Kaczynski was only half the story.
Speaker:In part two, we go inside the cabin,
Speaker:uncover the evidence that sealed the
Speaker:case, including a live he was sleeping on
Speaker:top of, and hear what
Speaker:finally drove him to kill.
Speaker:Hit subscribe so you don't miss it.
