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Jim Freeman - Leading the FBI's Hunt for the Unabomber | Part 1 · Heroes Behind the Badge

0:00
Ted opens the door just a crack.
0:02
He looks out and the
0:03
police officer says, "Hi, Ted.
0:05
I'm sorry, but I'll get here so early in
0:07
the morning when I got these gentlemen
0:09
from a mining company that are going to
0:11
survey the property.
0:12
We need to find your property markers on
0:15
posts at the corners of your property."
0:17
Ted says, "Well, they're out there.
0:19
They can just go.
0:20
Oh, look."
0:20
Police officer said, "No,
0:21
they're covered with snow.
0:22
We need you to come out and help."
0:24
By this time, Ted had opened his door and
0:26
he had stepped out on the
0:27
front little porch there.
0:28
He said, "Well, let me get my coat."
0:30
And so he turns around to go back in and
0:31
they boom, they grab him.
0:41
For 17 years, the FBI
0:43
chased the Unabomber.
0:44
This is the man who finally caught him.
0:47
I think this case is one of the most
0:49
famous cases ever in the United States.
0:52
The FBI spent some 17 years analyzing
0:56
Kaczynski and the
0:57
Unabomber about what he built.
0:59
But what I found interesting, Jim, is
1:01
that the way he got
1:03
caught is by what he said.
1:06
There seems to be a lot of controversy
1:09
about the manifesto.
1:11
I want to ask you about the manifesto
1:13
because it looks like you were one of the
1:15
key proponents of releasing and
1:18
publishing the manifesto, but there was
1:21
pushback from some powers that be at DOJ
1:24
and FBI and certainly the two
1:26
publications that he had requested.
1:29
I would love to know
1:30
the story behind that.
1:32
That was a risky, heroic move on your
1:36
part that could have failed.
1:38
Did you ever consider what might have
1:40
happened if that had backfired on you?
1:44
Oh, many times.
1:45
It definitely is what
1:46
would keep you awake at night.
1:49
But you talk about that
1:51
his is what let him down.
1:53
That's what got me into
1:55
the case because I had,
1:57
by coincidence, just to go back a little
1:59
bit, the Unabomber began in 1978 at the
2:02
same time I went to Miami in a
2:06
Miami office.
2:07
I was following his activities from afar
2:11
and hoping I would never ever have to
2:12
have the case in my division.
2:16
Some years later, in 1993,
2:20
I came to San Francisco and he had just
2:22
done two bombings in kind of awakening of
2:25
the Unabomber after six years, laying low
2:28
after an eyewitness had
2:29
spotted him up in Utah.
2:32
It was
2:35
a concern to me that a lot of my agents
2:39
were having to work on the case, yet we
2:41
had a task force here that was being
2:42
directed out of Washington.
2:45
I was okay that for a while because we
2:47
had activities going.
2:48
I came in, took over the San Francisco
2:50
office, and we had the Polly Klaas
2:53
kidnapping at that time,
2:55
and all felt it was busy.
2:56
When I resolved itself,
2:58
the next year in 1994,
3:01
I paid more attention to the case because
3:03
my agents were working.
3:05
We had three historical bombings here
3:08
before 1993, two of which were at the
3:12
University of California
3:13
in Berkeley, which was odd.
3:17
It was
3:20
about that time that I decided my men are
3:24
working on the case, my men and women are
3:25
working on the case more and more.
3:27
These temporary agents that are here in
3:29
the task force are trying to go home
3:30
because they got
3:31
their families and things.
3:32
I decided to
3:35
to work the case, direct the case, if
3:39
Director Louis Free would hear of that.
3:43
One day I called him accidentally.
3:46
I guess it was on April Fool's Day.
3:47
I didn't know that, but at the time I
3:49
didn't pay attention.
3:51
I volunteered for a
3:52
case, like you said, that was
3:54
kind of a loser case because for 17
3:56
years, well at that time 15 years,
4:01
there were a lot of-- Yeah,
4:05
and so, but it was his words that caused
4:08
me to say, I think we can catch this guy
4:10
because he wrote a letter to the New York
4:14
Times, an editor at the New York Times,
4:15
at the exact same time that he had mailed
4:18
two bombs from Sacramento and one blew up
4:21
in my hometown now Tiburon,
4:24
a doctor,
4:28
geneticist's home, and he survived that,
4:31
but it was really a bad
4:33
medical situation for him.
4:35
A couple days later, the second bomb went
4:37
off at the University of
4:39
Yale University in Connecticut.
4:43
It was the Unabomber announcing himself
4:45
back to the world, you know, on back
4:46
after six years and he had better bombs.
4:49
Suddenly, he broke his silence.
4:52
And all of a sudden, he's writing a
4:54
letter to the largest
4:55
newspaper and he's throwing out,
4:59
saying that he's with an anarchist group,
5:02
FC, and asked the
5:04
FBI, they know about FC.
5:05
So he's just going
5:07
from total silence to now
5:09
he's bringing about everything and
5:11
bringing the FBI up.
5:13
And I think, you know, I've known people,
5:15
criminals, bombers, et cetera, that talk
5:18
to the media, get a message out, and
5:20
they're in prison today
5:21
because they make a mistake.
5:23
You know, I think he's making a mistake
5:27
that's going to have
5:28
paid for down the line.
5:30
What if the manifesto had been published?
5:34
Because apparently you had to struggle to
5:37
get the New York Times
5:38
and the Pokes to publish it.
5:39
They didn't want to do it.
5:40
They said, "We don't want
5:41
anything to do with this.
5:42
This would look like aiding the police."
5:45
How did you convince them finally to
5:47
publish his manifesto?
5:50
Well, actually, we had to convince our
5:52
own agents of that
5:53
first because, you know,
5:56
he had built a
5:59
case here that
6:03
was basically, "I'm going to kill people.
6:06
It's publisher Parrish.
6:07
Either we publish my manifesto or I'm
6:09
going to blow up a plane that's leaving
6:12
Los Angeles International
6:13
Airport within the next six days."
6:15
And he had already, years
6:17
before, tried to blow up a plane.
6:18
He put a bomb in a mail package of board
6:21
an American Airlines flight
6:22
from Chicago to Washington, D.C.
6:25
He had
6:27
rigged up an altimeter from a barometer
6:31
that would blow up at a certain altitude.
6:33
That worked.
6:35
The bomb fizzled and
6:36
created a fire and a hold.
6:37
An emergency landing is what saved the
6:39
passengers and crew.
6:40
But you had to take guys seriously.
6:42
This already attempted mass murder.
6:45
Now he's threatening.
6:47
That's extortion.
6:50
Policy of the US government was, "You
6:51
don't yield to terrorist demands or else
6:56
you'll get nothing but
6:58
terrorist demands after that."
6:59
So nobody wanted to do it.
7:02
And we had a long meeting among our task
7:04
force agents and I just let them talk and
7:09
talk and nobody wanted to do it.
7:11
And our recommendation was to go back to
7:13
Director Free that we have
7:15
other means to solve this case.
7:17
This is not the way to go.
7:19
But then the agents, after they told me
7:22
that, and then before we called the Free,
7:24
they had a change of heart.
7:26
Terry Turchie was my agent that was
7:29
managing day-to-day
7:30
operations of the task force and all.
7:32
He came to me in my office and he says,
7:35
"Tim, we want to change our mind here.
7:37
We think that somebody will actually
7:40
recognize the words that
7:42
are in this manifesto."
7:45
Because every one of us that had read it,
7:48
we had also at this
7:50
time, of course, his brother,
7:52
when he was able to read the manifesto,
7:54
he recognized the words too.
7:56
So we were true and correct on the right
7:59
track in saying somebody, whether it's a
8:01
professor, a college professor, a
8:02
roommate, family member.
8:04
We didn't know a family
8:05
member, but thank goodness.
8:07
Let me ask, did the brother see the
8:08
manifesto before it was published?
8:11
No, he did not.
8:12
So he actually saw it
8:14
because it was published?
8:15
Because, in fact, his wife had read it.
8:18
She talked to him and said, "You better
8:20
read this manifesto.
8:23
That sounds like your brother."
8:24
She'd never met Ted.
8:26
She had read his letters
8:28
that he sent back to his
8:30
brother.
8:31
He used a lot of the same words in those
8:34
letters back to David.
8:37
David picked out a few phrases in another
8:42
document that he
8:46
had published 20 years earlier and all.
8:48
It was sounding a lot like
8:49
the words in the manifesto.
8:50
So David was on board finally that I
8:54
think he's run afraid
8:56
that he's the Unabomber.
8:59
How did David feel about basically
9:01
turning in his own brother?
9:04
How did that go down?
9:06
Well,
9:08
he didn't think very much of it, but he
9:10
was so much concerned
9:12
knowing that people would die.
9:14
They had this threat that either
9:18
published it or I'm
9:19
going to blow up a plane.
9:22
We had every right to believe that that
9:24
actually would happen.
9:28
I heard about David by means of his
9:31
attorney in Washington, D.C., who called
9:33
me and said, "I have a client who thinks
9:36
his brother might be the Unabomber."
9:37
So we exchanged some
9:38
information about that.
9:40
He said, "I can't tell you if my client
9:43
won't let me divulge his name,
9:46
but what he wants is one thing.
9:48
He wants you to take the
9:49
death penalty off the table."
9:52
Wow.
9:53
Anyone knows an law enforcement...
9:55
That's quite a request.
9:56
Yeah.
9:57
First time I ever...
9:58
I didn't even know the subject's name and
10:01
I'm already being asked to take the death
10:02
penalty off and saying, "Of
10:03
course, I don't have the..."
10:04
The jurisdiction.
10:06
One other question I heard, and you can
10:09
either confirm or deny this, that
10:11
actually CBS News got a hold of Ted's
10:15
name before you guys were ready to move
10:18
and were threatening to run a story
10:21
before you were ready to go.
10:23
Is that true or false?
10:24
Oh, that's absolutely true.
10:26
Okay.
10:28
Yeah.
10:28
I had a
10:30
producer, actually a producer from 60
10:32
Minutes, who made a call into me and said
10:34
he wanted to meet right away and I'm in
10:38
Montana at the time, but I didn't want to
10:40
tell him I'm in Montana
10:42
because he didn't know where...
10:43
He just knew that we were
10:45
focusing on a suspect out west
10:49
and his source was...
10:51
I still don't know who his source was,
10:52
but it was somebody that only had a
10:55
portion of the information and he seemed
10:58
to be getting it a little bit more every
11:01
few hours and the guy would call back and
11:03
say, "We think he's this.
11:05
We think he's in the
11:06
mountains of Montana."
11:07
He just starts getting closer and closer.
11:12
And Turchie was listening to this and he
11:15
had a computerization
11:16
project that was underway.
11:18
It was a huge thing because
11:22
this was in 1995,
11:24
1996.
11:26
By this time computers and
11:28
the FBI had just arrived.
11:30
The data was all corrupted
11:32
because it was every type of memo,
11:38
teletype, report,
11:40
laboratory report and all.
11:41
Nothing was standardized.
11:42
They could go into a computer.
11:43
So it was really slow to get the data in
11:46
there, but we're also throwing in data
11:49
from the universities that had been
11:50
targeted, the students that were there at
11:52
that time, faculty, everything.
11:56
And as soon as...
11:57
While we're working behind the scenes
11:59
while we're talking to this lawyer and
12:00
he's talking to Dave D'Incy and said,
12:03
"I'll call you back to see
12:05
if he'll agree to the terms."
12:08
We were still hung up on this tick tick,
12:10
the death penalty off the table.
12:13
And I said, "Well, I can't do that, but
12:16
here's what I'll do.
12:17
I'll send you a letter saying that I will
12:20
make a recommendation to the prosecutor
12:22
that this is what the brother wants.
12:24
I can go that far."
12:26
And I faxed him that letter and that's
12:28
what they're discussing about whether
12:32
David Kaczynski would agree
12:34
to divulge his brother's name.
12:36
And so in that interim,
12:40
Terry Turchie fed this information into
12:42
our computer and out popped the same name
12:45
that the attorney was giving me,
12:47
Ted Kaczynski, because he had said he had
12:51
been a professor at the University of
12:52
California, Berkeley.
12:53
He grew up in Chicago and really just on
12:55
those two points, we already had closer
12:57
data points that were in our haystack of
13:00
information from all the investigations
13:03
and other information we'd gathered.
13:05
And so we actually had...
13:07
When he got on the phone and said, "Okay,
13:08
we can give you the name," and I said,
13:10
"Is it Theodore Kaczynski?"
13:12
And it was.
13:13
They didn't, they had it.
13:15
What's the plan for running the story?
13:17
I mean, they were going to run it, but
13:18
apparently you made the arrest and later
13:21
that day they did their story.
13:23
Well, there was a lot of negotiation in
13:25
which often happens with cases where you
13:29
have imminent danger and all that.
13:30
The media will see the benefit of giving
13:34
law enforcement a little
13:36
thank God they did because
13:39
we didn't...
13:40
We had an affidavit for a search warrant
13:43
and or an arrest warrant.
13:46
And I'm talking to Louis Free, the
13:47
director, and he's a former
13:49
prosecutor himself and all.
13:51
And he says, "Jim, you have adequate
13:54
probable cause there for an arrest
13:57
warrant or a search warrant."
13:59
Then as the day progressed, Department of
14:01
Justice would not put their careers on
14:04
the line and say,
14:05
"Here's an arrest warrant."
14:06
So they gave me a search warrant.
14:09
The search warrant, how do you have a
14:12
bomber, a known murderer in a cabin,
14:15
isolated cabin, and serving a search
14:17
warrant, are you just supposed to go up
14:18
and knock on the doors, "Excuse me, Mr.
14:21
Kaczynski, we're here
14:22
to serve a warrant."
14:23
Like to have a chat.
14:24
You know, I want to jump in here because
14:26
I think this is a really good point to
14:28
share with the audience.
14:29
And a lot of people
14:30
may not be aware of this.
14:32
But the FBI, when you're doing an
14:34
investigation, and most investigations
14:37
oftentimes are these long-term
14:38
investigations, unlike local law
14:41
enforcement, local law enforcement can go
14:43
out based on probable cause
14:45
and they can lock somebody up.
14:46
And then the state attorneys, district
14:48
attorneys review the case later on.
14:51
You are a bit hamstrung by that because,
14:54
as you had just said, you
14:55
could get a search warrant.
14:56
But these prosecutors at
14:59
the US Attorney's Office
15:02
wouldn't give you an arrest warrant.
15:04
But you had already said you, even you
15:07
and the FBI director both
15:09
agreed that you had probable cause.
15:11
Maybe delve into that a little bit more.
15:14
I mean, I worked on a number of
15:16
multi-agency task forces with the feds.
15:21
And the local state and local, we could
15:24
go and initiate an arrest.
15:26
And oftentimes the feds would tell us,
15:28
you guys go grab that guy because you can
15:31
hook him up on probable cause.
15:33
We have to jump through these
15:34
bureaucratic hoops to go through the DOJ
15:38
and the US Attorney's
15:39
Office to make this happen.
15:42
Just maybe talk a little bit about that
15:44
and how that was a
15:46
hindrance or even if it wasn't.
15:50
Well, it definitely was
15:52
a hindrance bureaucracy.
15:53
It was a hindrance
15:54
from day one on this case.
15:58
In the FBI and our headquarters and
16:00
supervisory staff, everything operated
16:04
kind of on a work,
16:06
individual cases, a whole variety.
16:10
But you get into a mindset on these
16:13
various types of crimes
16:15
that one size fits all.
16:17
You have the statute, you have this fax,
16:20
and you put it together, and it
16:48
all works out the same way. But that wasn't the case for the inev
16:50
work in their murder case. The New Jersey Police Department working their murder case, we're going to bring
16:52
it all together, and
16:55
it's going to be singular.
16:56
And nobody's going to talk to me talking
16:59
about the leak and all.
17:00
Nobody's going to talk
17:01
to the media except me.
17:02
I became the media point for the two
17:06
years that I had the case.
17:07
And so we had a deal where we're actually
17:12
bypassing bureaucracy at headquarters.
17:14
And we're talking directly to the
17:15
director, we're talking directly to
17:17
Attorney General Janet Reno.
17:19
And it was with them that Terry and I
17:24
went with them to meet with the
17:26
publishers to convince the publishers
17:28
that there was a law enforcement purpose
17:32
that would
17:34
make it worthwhile to
17:36
set aside the requirement that you don't
17:39
yield to a terroristic threat.
17:43
We think by publishing the manifesto, it
17:46
will serve the purpose people will
17:48
recognize because it's such a unique
17:51
subject matter,
17:52
somebody will recognize it.
17:54
So we kind of put our
17:55
reputation on the line on that.
17:58
How hard was that conversation?
17:59
I mean, did those publishers push back
18:01
pretty hard, or were you
18:03
able to win them over easily?
18:05
That was very interesting meeting.
18:06
I'll say this.
18:07
He has the publishers, you know, from the
18:09
New York Times and Washington Post and
18:11
their editorial staff they brought with
18:13
them in a conference room at FBI
18:16
headquarters and Janet Reno walked across
18:18
the street to be there.
18:20
And it was very interesting.
18:24
And they were, they first were not
18:26
interested in being a tool of the law
18:29
enforcement and the federal government.
18:31
You can't, you know, you're not going to
18:32
be telling us what to do.
18:33
We're going to make our own decision, but
18:35
give us please give us the facts that
18:37
would cause you to want,
18:38
you know, to want to do this.
18:40
And so we went through
18:41
that whole presentation and
18:45
they came up with,
18:46
well, okay, if we, you know,
18:49
hypotheticals, if we decide to do this,
18:51
what if he then continues bombing?
18:53
And, you know, our
18:57
psychologists and all that we had on the
18:59
case would say he will continue bombing.
19:01
You can't trust him.
19:02
Even if he turn, even if you do what he
19:04
says and publish, he might still bomb.
19:06
Right.
19:07
And so that is a risk.
19:09
And it's the risk to the publishers, but
19:11
it's a risk to Janet Reno, to the
19:14
director FBI, to the publisher,
19:17
so
19:18
the publisher turns, turns into
19:23
the attorney general and to the Louis
19:25
free and said, what if we
19:26
publish and he bombs what then?
19:29
And to her credit, Janet Reno sat up
19:32
straight and said, you can say that the
19:34
attorney general of the United States
19:36
authorized this course
19:38
of action and is for,
19:41
you know, is to help out law enforcement.
19:43
And Louis Free jumped right in behind
19:46
that and said, then you can
19:47
say the director of the FBI
19:50
approves of it because it serves a law
19:51
enforcement purpose.
19:53
And that was.
19:54
Wow.
19:55
Janet stood up and Louis
19:57
backed up right behind her.
19:59
Did
20:02
they agree right then and there or did
20:05
they waver and, you know, kind of, you
20:07
know, to me, it just it's insane that the
20:11
news media wouldn't want to cooperate.
20:15
I mean, what's their
20:16
liability at that point?
20:17
It'd be interesting to like, was there
20:20
really some battle going on beside behind
20:24
the scenes like, you know, just people
20:26
losing their cool and saying, you know,
20:28
what in the hell are
20:29
you even thinking here?
20:30
This is there's people's lives at stake
20:33
and, you know,
20:34
conversations to that effect.
20:37
That was all going all of that was going
20:40
on, but not not in this close knit group
20:43
that actually making decisions.
20:45
And those decisions were
20:46
made in that room that day.
20:47
And they, you know, the publishers, you
20:50
know, they said, well, give us a moment.
20:52
And they talked among themselves, you
20:53
know, well, this is 35000
20:56
page manifesto or document.
20:59
It's it's a small book.
21:01
Public newspapers, we
21:02
don't publish books.
21:03
So how are we going to do this?
21:04
So there was talking about, well, maybe
21:06
we should and we thought this might be a
21:08
good idea to kind of serialize it over a
21:12
period of days instead of
21:13
just publishing the entire thing.
21:15
And they kind of like that idea.
21:17
And they actually worked out well,
21:19
Washington Post can pay for
21:21
this and we'll pay for that.
21:23
That all happened right there and around
21:25
the conference table.
21:26
And when they left, it was
21:29
everybody was on the same page.
21:31
Jim, the publishing of the manifesto
21:34
seems to be the key moment in this case
21:37
that helped us solve it.
21:39
There are so many other details and we
21:40
can go back and talk about the beginning
21:42
of the case and how
21:43
everything transpired.
21:45
But since we're at this point already,
21:47
OK, the manifesto gets published.
21:49
You've talked about the brother
21:50
recognizes that those are the words of
21:52
his brother, Ted Kaczynski.
21:55
And now you've got your suspect.
21:57
You even came up with the same name
21:59
through other means.
22:01
So take us now through
22:03
that part of the process.
22:04
The case is now broken.
22:06
How do you arrest Ted Kaczynski?
22:09
He lives in the mountains in Montana.
22:11
How do you even find him number one?
22:13
And then how did the
22:14
arrest actually go down?
22:17
OK, well, the correct one thing, the case
22:19
had not broken in the sense that the
22:21
public didn't know yet.
22:23
So this was very much
22:24
a tightly held secret.
22:26
Broke with you.
22:28
Yeah.
22:28
Even within, you know, it
22:30
was a need to know basis.
22:32
So even agents on the periphery of the
22:35
Unibom investigation were not told that
22:38
we now have we're locked in on a suspect.
22:42
We're sending a group of people and a
22:44
supervisor, Max Knoll, to Montana
22:48
to start investigating this suspect.
22:51
We didn't tell our own office in Salt
22:54
Lake City that actually had
22:55
administrative for Montana.
22:58
And we set up a and I went
23:00
there, Terry Turchie went there.
23:01
We set up a little field, many field
23:03
office in Helena, Montana.
23:05
We rented office space.
23:06
We were there for 40 days, actually, kind
23:08
of biblical in sense, but it was 40 days
23:12
from the first time that we landed in in
23:15
Helena, Montana,
23:17
until we made the arrest.
23:18
And in those 40 days,
23:22
we had to come up with convincing
23:24
evidence because Max Knoll, the
23:27
supervisor there, had gone out with the
23:30
we've made a contact of the neighbor that
23:32
ran a lot of sawmill
23:34
next to the his cabin.
23:37
He knew him personally.
23:39
And he told the, it's the same day that
23:42
Max introduced himself to this
23:46
owner of the property.
23:47
And the guy offered, "Let's just walk up
23:49
the trail here and I'll just show you
23:53
what you're dealing with in
23:54
terms of the cabin and all."
23:55
Ted still, it was March at this time and
23:59
snow was still everywhere.
24:01
And he'd been, you know, he'd been locked
24:04
in there by snow and ice for since the
24:07
first snow, I guess, in the winter.
24:09
So, but it was getting enough time.
24:13
It happened that as they walked out
24:15
there, Ted opened his door and saw them.
24:18
And with a,
24:25
it was such that he was in the same garb
24:29
that he was wearing when we arrest him.
24:31
He was looking really old tattered
24:32
clothes and beard and everything.
24:35
And Max just gets a
24:37
look at him and with the,
24:41
with this guy that Ted know,
24:43
Ted would know him by sight.
24:45
And they just said, "Oh, hi, Ted.
24:46
We're just taking a look around."
24:48
And Ted just went back in his cabin,
24:50
thought nothing of it.
24:51
But Max looked at this guy and he said,
24:52
"Oh my God, is this what we've been
24:54
looking for all this time?"
24:56
And he came back and he was absolutely
24:58
convinced to Terry and I, this guy, this
25:01
hermit, snowbound hermit
25:04
cannot be the Unabomber.
25:06
He was adamant about that.
25:07
And he was like the most experienced
25:09
criminal agent you would have.
25:12
And so we ended up
25:14
going through this thing.
25:16
Well, we have to, you know, we have a lot
25:19
of work ahead of us.
25:20
And Max also had another great quote.
25:22
He said, "A snowbound hermit is going to
25:25
be one heck of a hard
25:27
sell as the Unabomber."
25:29
And that proved true day in and day out.
25:32
And so we knew our
25:32
work was really cut out.
25:33
And so we brought more agents
25:35
in, rented cars, playing cars.
25:38
And we were going around and we put
25:40
Lincoln, Montana off limits.
25:41
Nobody could go in
25:42
there too small of a town.
25:43
They'll know the FBI's there.
25:45
So they were working in the towns that
25:47
surrounded, which was held on kind of on
25:49
one side, Missoula,
25:50
Montana, and the other.
25:51
And they were about 80 or
25:52
90 miles away from Lincoln.
25:55
And they started going to
25:56
motels, checking lectures.
26:00
And we had another whole project going on
26:03
to where, where did we know that the
26:06
Unabomber was on any given day?
26:08
So he had started not only mailing
26:11
package bombs, where he had to go into a
26:13
post office and mail it.
26:15
So we know that he was in Sacramento on
26:17
that date when the bomb was mailed to
26:19
Tiburon, California,
26:20
and to Yale University.
26:23
So if we have a suspect, yes, he can't be
26:27
somewhere else except in Sacramento on
26:29
that day, because that's
26:29
where we know the Unabomber was.
26:31
And we were building
26:32
up this entire thing.
26:34
And we had all the letters that David
26:36
Kaczynski had saved, every letter had
26:38
ever written to him, including the
26:40
envelopes that had a postmark date.
26:42
So we know we started to build a
26:46
library of known facts about the
26:49
whereabouts of the Unabomber.
26:51
And so that was giving us a
26:52
lot of things to look for.
26:53
They could go in and say, if Ted was the
26:56
Unabomber and he went to Sacramento, he
26:59
had to go through Missoula.
27:00
And the only way he had no vehicles, he
27:02
only had a bicycle, the only way you
27:04
could get there is on the
27:05
Greyhound bus out of Lincoln.
27:08
Because no Uber, no taxis,
27:10
no, it was a really small
27:13
mountain town.
27:15
And so we had to go to Missoula.
27:17
So we started checking motels and all in
27:19
there and along the bus
27:21
route back to Sacramento.
27:24
They started getting hits because this
27:26
time we had photographs of
27:27
Ted Kaczynski, our suspect.
27:29
And even a bus driver
27:31
recognized him on a given day.
27:34
We go into motel records
27:37
and used his true name.
27:39
And so we're gathering all this data.
27:42
And in those weeks that
27:44
we had to operate secretly,
27:49
we built up one heck of a library of
27:54
evidence that we have a suspect and
27:58
he's in every place that the Unabomber
28:00
is known to have been, no
28:02
conflict in any of those dates.
28:03
And that was
28:05
a big element in our search warrant.
28:07
And then
28:10
as we became more acquainted with
28:14
David Kaczynski and his family, David's
28:16
mother would finally interviewed her only
28:19
like two or three days
28:20
before we made the arrest.
28:23
And Kathy Puckett, our FBI agent who was
28:27
also a PhD in psychology, she became
28:30
really good friends with
28:32
Ted
28:34
and David's mother.
28:35
And she pulled out a trunk of
28:37
documents and found even more
28:39
documents to go through
28:41
that were known documents.
28:41
Written by Ted Kaczynski and we could
28:44
have then experts compare words and
28:47
things with the actual manifesto and
28:49
coming up with all of that.
28:52
But the mother at this time, Jim, did the
28:54
mother at this point three days before
28:56
her son was arrested, did she know he was
28:59
the suspect as the Unabomber?
29:01
Yes.
29:01
And David had shared that with her and
29:04
the family were becoming very concerned
29:06
because we start asking, well, how does
29:10
Ted come up with the money even by a bus
29:12
ticket to go anywhere
29:14
because he had no means of support?
29:17
And they're saying, well, Teddy would
29:19
sometimes call and say, or write a letter
29:22
and say, I need to even never call.
29:24
He would write a letter and say,
29:26
I need money to do this or do that
29:28
medical things or whatever.
29:30
And they would send him four or $500
29:33
at a time.
29:33
And so then they, we looked at the dates
29:35
of that and it was starting to coincide
29:38
with the timeframe of bombings that where
29:41
he needed to be in Salt Lake City or need
29:43
to be in Sacramento or in
29:45
San Francisco on those dates.
29:47
And we'd look and see, well, he asked for
29:50
money just like a month before.
29:53
So he had money we found in a bank
29:55
account that he had in Missoula.
29:57
So, you know, we're starting to build a
30:00
whole real solid case around him, but
30:04
nothing, he didn't have anything, but
30:06
like a prosecutor says, I saw him, you
30:10
know, put this bomb down.
30:11
We didn't have one eyewitness, by the
30:12
way, that dates back to 1987.
30:14
We show her the picture
30:15
and she couldn't make it.
30:17
So it's like, all that needs to go over
30:20
your eyewitnesses, your worst piece.
30:22
Really, what did the family tell you?
30:24
What triggered him to become radicalized?
30:27
How he went from, you know, functioning
30:30
in society, working as
30:32
a university professor.
30:33
Now he's completely off the grid as like
30:36
you said, as a hermit in
30:37
this mountainous Montana cabin.
30:41
What transpired there, do you recall?
30:46
Well,
30:48
the realization came through the
30:50
manifesto again, because as
30:54
David Kaczynski read through that
30:56
manifesto, he kept
30:57
pulling out ideas and all that.
31:00
This certainly sounds like Ted and I
31:02
remember when he pulled out a letter and
31:04
all here, this is from Ted, he's saying
31:06
kind of the same thing about
31:09
society and
31:13
enough to where it really, the more David
31:15
looked at the comparison of words and
31:19
letters he had and what he'd written in a
31:21
manifesto, he became
31:22
more and more convinced.
31:23
And it was really bothering him that the
31:27
family had given money that might have
31:29
financed trips for Ted
31:30
to go and murder somebody.
31:33
That's possible.
31:34
And by this time he had
31:36
assassinated, you know, three
31:39
people. 123 others.
31:41
Yeah.
31:42
But okay, so you've got
31:43
us hanging now on the edge.
31:45
Three days before he's arrested, the mom
31:48
is pulling out all these letters and
31:50
other writings and you're just nailing
31:52
all the evidence against him.
31:54
And somehow in three days, the arrest
31:57
occurs and it's up in this mountain and
32:00
he hates people and he
32:01
doesn't want to talk to anybody.
32:03
And you didn't have, I guess you had the
32:06
warrants you needed at that point.
32:07
So who goes in there
32:08
and makes the arrest?
32:11
Well,
32:13
just to back up just a bit,
32:16
we talked about the leak and the leak,
32:18
you know, we wish we'd had another cell.
32:21
The CBS
32:22
leak, yeah.
32:23
To get all this information together.
32:25
And those words had never
32:26
been used in federal court.
32:27
They never actually used a word
32:29
comparison as official
32:33
evidence
32:35
that would link somebody to a crime.
32:37
So this would be a first that the
32:38
Department of Justice was
32:40
also having to hang their hat on.
32:42
And remember, there are visions of Ted in
32:44
a snowbound cabin, no
32:47
running water, no electricity.
32:51
Our laboratory said he
32:53
melted scrap aluminum.
32:55
He would need a portable kiln, electrical
32:57
kiln that actually do
32:59
that to get the temperature.
33:00
We don't do that in Ted's cabin.
33:03
There was a potbellied stove.
33:06
That was the only heat
33:06
source we had in that cabin.
33:09
I guess he melted in the stove.
33:10
I don't know, but he did it.
33:13
But there was just, there was a lot of
33:15
things that were contradictory.
33:16
Like how could he possibly do this?
33:19
And it was the, actually the leak,
33:25
although it was forcing us into
33:27
accelerated action, it
33:28
actually served our purpose.
33:30
You know, the people on the ground, we
33:32
want to get this done.
33:34
And we all these
33:35
questions being asked and
33:38
had to have ironclad evidence before they
33:41
would sign off on anything.
33:42
And so it was the leak that pushed us
33:47
into a 20, they gave us a 24 hour
33:50
deadline before they would publish.
33:52
And
33:54
I said to Louis Free, I get him on the
33:56
phone and I was saying,
33:59
we've got to get
33:59
people from San Francisco.
34:01
I wanted a SWAT team here not to hit the
34:03
cabin, just to encircle it
34:04
to make sure that he didn't
34:07
run out and escape over the
34:09
mountains and this sort of thing.
34:10
Or to respond
34:13
retroactively if he started shooting or
34:17
trying to harm himself.
34:18
Yeah, I mean, I would imagine at that
34:20
point, you're kind of thinking, okay,
34:22
well, if this guy's living remotely out
34:24
in this cabin, he's
34:25
kind of a survivalist.
34:26
So you're thinking maybe he's a type or
34:29
something like that as a survivalist
34:31
that's got, you know, rifles and knives
34:34
and any number of things.
34:36
So I guess that's how you approached it.
34:38
Well, we knew that from a neighbor that
34:40
he had at least a rifle in there because
34:42
he hunted, he poached deer all the time.
34:45
And, you know, he lived
34:47
off the land, you know?
34:49
So yeah, he definitely had
34:52
guns.
34:53
But that
34:55
had to be his bomb making
34:57
laboratory, his cabin, you know?
34:59
What are the chances that
35:01
he has a bomb or maybe booby traps to
35:05
blow up if somebody forces
35:07
in the door or something?
35:08
Well, and I was going
35:09
to ask you that too.
35:09
I mean, what countermeasures or
35:12
procedures did you guys go about when you
35:14
were even approaching it?
35:15
Because it could be very likely from his
35:18
bomb making experience that he did have
35:21
some kind of booby traps.
35:23
Right.
35:23
And all I have is a search warrant.
35:25
Yeah.
35:27
And were there any booby traps on the
35:30
trails or the surrounding areas of that?
35:33
Very much a concern and
35:34
we didn't know at the time.
35:36
And you talked before about local law
35:38
enforcement can act on this probable
35:40
cause and what they could see.
35:41
Actually,
35:43
FBI agents, any federal agent can
35:45
actually do that as well.
35:46
But the preponderance of
35:48
legal advice is not to do so,
35:52
you know, unless you
35:52
just absolutely have to.
35:54
So I actually authorized
35:56
Ted's arrest based on evidence.
35:58
I did not have any prosecutor's authority
36:01
to arrest Ted and we did.
36:03
But backing up a little bit,
36:06
we brought in, you know, overnight,
36:10
Louis Freeh was able to talk to the head
36:12
of CBS News and bias like an extra 12
36:14
hours or something so I could get people.
36:16
I think we filled up every Delta flight
36:18
from San Francisco flying into Salt Lake
36:21
City and then another
36:22
flight into Helena, Montana.
36:24
And we brought dozens of agents in just
36:29
in the open nights landing
36:30
all night long or landing.
36:32
And we were going to go the next morning.
36:36
We had
36:38
resourceful people there that had gone
36:40
out and actually rented a seven up seven
36:44
up ranch, which was like a tourist thing
36:46
with little, little bungalows and all but
36:48
it was closed for the season, but they're
36:49
reopening for the Easter weekend because
36:52
he had a restaurant there.
36:54
And so I talked to them
36:56
and rented the whole place
36:58
for several days.
37:01
And it was like five
37:03
out of Lincoln, Montana.
37:04
And we had a covered
37:05
story for why we were there.
37:08
And, you know, like a corporate retreat
37:12
or something, I forgot what it was.
37:13
But anyway, if anybody
37:15
asked, this is what you tell them.
37:16
And the people in the in that location
37:20
were very cooperative and
37:21
worked worked with us very well.
37:22
And so we had we had a staging area and
37:27
everybody was coming into that staging
37:28
area that next morning,
37:30
like from before dawn.
37:32
And
37:34
we're just making plans on the fly.
37:36
And I had about a week earlier, I talked
37:39
to Max Knoll, the supervisor there.
37:42
And he's a guy that
37:43
had criminal experience.
37:44
I mean, he had been on a SWAT team that
37:46
killed the airline hijacker and SFO, some
37:50
Eastern European guy that
37:52
did that like decades before.
37:54
I mean, he'd been there and done, you
37:55
know, in all kinds of cases.
37:57
And I said, Max,
37:59
we got a plan for eventually we're going
38:02
to get an arrest warrant for this guy.
38:03
And then we're going to go in there and
38:05
we praise, you know, we thought
38:07
everything you talked about, booby
38:09
trapped cabin, booby trapped
38:11
access areas to the cabin, you know,
38:13
thinking about all that.
38:16
So we got to take him
38:17
outside the cabin, obviously.
38:19
And so our first plan was to well, when
38:22
he finally goes into town, he goes in for
38:25
provisions every spring after he comes
38:27
out, so he's starting to
38:27
come out of his cabin now.
38:29
So we can just wait for
38:30
him and we'll just take him.
38:32
Well, we couldn't do all that because of
38:34
the leak and we had this deadline.
38:35
So we have to do it
38:36
within the next 12 hours.
38:37
Yeah.
38:39
Put a crimp on that.
38:40
So we came up with there was a Forest
38:44
Service police officer in a regular
38:46
police uniform that new Ted
38:48
worked there with him for years.
38:50
So we put him in the
38:54
team of three people, Max Knoll, the
38:57
supervisor and FBI agent from Helena,
39:00
Montana, and this police officer.
39:03
It took 40 days to get here.
39:05
This is the moment we opened on.
39:07
They found out that from that property
39:10
owner next door, that there had been a
39:11
company that was looking at mining leases
39:15
from the previous fall and that they had
39:17
signed up actually gold and silver mining
39:20
leases in that area.
39:22
So the risk was going to be that
39:25
this police officer knows Ted, the three
39:27
of them will walk down to the cabin,
39:29
making all kinds of
39:30
noise, talking loudly,
39:34
so that Ted would hear them coming and
39:38
not be frightened, and would recognize
39:40
this police officer.
39:41
And then
39:43
what happened is
39:45
that's where we went out.
39:46
We had deployed the
39:48
SWAT team all around the cabin, but the
39:51
lake, you know, 50 yards away behind
39:53
trees and stuff, just in case they needed
39:56
backup because they're going up there.
39:58
And I'm with the SWAT guy at another
40:00
cabin about 200 yards away,
40:04
and with a radio link to
40:06
those guys, and also to,
40:10
but not to Max and him, that team, they
40:13
were in communicado once
40:15
they started walking in there.
40:16
And so Max is, they keep walking up there
40:20
and they're talking loud, and nothing's
40:22
happening in the cabin.
40:23
And they get all the way up to the cabin,
40:25
they finally hear some rustling around
40:26
inside, and Ted opens
40:30
the door just a crack.
40:32
And he looks out and the
40:35
police officer says, "Hi, Ted.
40:38
I'm sorry, but you know, I'll get here so
40:39
early in the morning when I got these
40:40
gentlemen from a mining company that are
40:43
going to survey the property, and we need
40:45
to find your property markers on your
40:49
posts at the corners of your and Ted
40:52
says, "Well, they're out there.
40:53
They can just go look."
40:55
And the police officer said,
40:56
"No, they're covered with snow.
40:58
We need you to come out and help."
40:59
By this time, Ted had opened his door and
41:02
he had stepped out on the
41:03
front little porch there.
41:05
And he said, "Well, let me get my coat."
41:08
And so he turns around to go back in and
41:09
they boom, they grab him, and they're
41:11
rustling like this,
41:12
you know, just bear them.
41:14
This one agent from Helme is a big guy
41:16
and gives him like a big bear hug.
41:18
Well, they start wobbling around and it's
41:20
icy and it looks like they're going to
41:22
almost fall off the porch.
41:24
Max comes around and he puts his weapon
41:27
right in Ted's face.
41:28
And I just says, "I'm special agent Max
41:31
Knoll, the FBI, and I'm
41:32
here to search your cabin."
41:36
Hello.
41:38
And he puts a-- Friendly bear hug, yeah.
41:40
And he puts handcuffs on him and move
41:41
them off to a-- we prearranged.
41:43
There was an elk hunter's cabin with no
41:46
electors or anything that
41:47
was within walking distance.
41:49
So that was the whole thing that was set
41:50
up to be where we would take him.
41:52
And he did.
41:53
And it just--
41:57
that was the moment of detention.
41:59
It was not officially under arrest.
42:01
That's the moment they finally had him.
42:03
But catching Ted
42:04
Kaczynski was only half the story.
42:07
In part two, we go inside the cabin,
42:10
uncover the evidence that sealed the
42:11
case, including a live he was sleeping on
42:14
top of, and hear what
42:15
finally drove him to kill.
42:17
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