The Harvard Experiment That Created The Terrorist Unabomber

Ted Kaczynski is said to have one of the most brilliant minds today. Between 1976 and 1995, however, he sent 16 homemade bombs to protest technological progress. He was known to the FBI as Unabomber, a terrorist who participated in a Harvard experiment on psychological control overseen by the CIA, known in turn as MK Ultra.

Ted Kaczynski has been serving time since 1996 at a maximum security prison in Colorado. In prison, he does an intense work of writing through letters that serve to spread his ideas, the same ones he published in the “Manifesto on industrial progress and its future”. This work was published by one of the most prestigious newspapers in the United States a year before his capture, in a desperate attempt by the FBI to identify him. With mass publishing, one could recognize his both radical and quirky ideas about society and denounce him. That is what happened.

The strategy achieved its goal and after more than 20 years of investigation, 3 dead and 11 wounded, Kaczynski was tried and convicted. His commitment to getting his message across has not diminished at all, however. This Harvard mathematician and philosopher continues to transmit his sophisticated thinking to the world. All of his letters are kept and studied at the University of Michigan, as well as his famous manifesto, which has already been translated into several languages ​​and remains a very fascinating material for the psychology, economics and sociology community.

Now, it was only in 2003 that an aspect not known until that moment, but quite important, about the Unabomber came to light. Historian Alston Chase published a revealing investigation in which he announced a painful truth: this terrorist and brilliant mathematician was part of an experiment at Harvard that lasted nearly 3 years, the MK Ultra.

The Harvard Experiment and the Unabomber

It took the FBI over 20 years to find out who this terrorist was. He managed, patiently, to place 16 bombs during all this time at determined and well-studied points. The name they gave it, Unabomber, was due to its methodology and specific objectives : “University and Airline Bomber”. The name in English means Terrorist of Universities and Airlines, in Portuguese.

Rumor has it that the investigation was one of the most expensive ever carried out in the United States and that for years there was no result. It wasn’t until the arrival of a brilliant criminalist, agent James R. Fitzgerald, that Kaczynski himself found himself denouncing his steps, with the agent on his tail until he finally discovered his identity. Now, when the population discovered the name that was behind all those acts, everyone was perplexed. No one could understand why a Harvard math professor who had multiple awards and recognition for his work had crossed the line between a good citizen with high academic distinction and a wanted criminal by the FBI.

Schizophrenia, paranoia, antisocial personality disorder… for several years these diagnoses haunted Kaczynski. They were ideas to reassure the population, to offer a reason for something that no one could understand. However, in 2003 several news items were published that caught the attention of all those who were still interested in the Unabomber case.

Theodore Kaczynski entered Harvard University when he was just over 15 years old. He was a gifted boy, but he was also emotionally vulnerable and too young to deal with what was to come. The CIA took its program of studies on mind control to that same University, using a variety of techniques to study the subject: substance administration, hypnosis, electrical discharges, and the most sophisticated techniques of psychological control.

This Harvard experiment lasted almost 3 years, with Kaczynski being one of many experimental subjects. It was chosen for being easily manipulated, since it was still very young, and for its high IQ.

Was the Harvard experiment related to your later criminal acts?

The question of whether the Harvard experiment had an influence on their antisocial and reactive behavior that culminated in the manufacture of various bombs to attack progress and technology cannot be answered with a cause-and-effect attribution of responsibility. In fact, there are many causes that led the Unabomber to their behavior.

Kaczynski was a remarkable child, but he never fit into any setting in his life. He was always the youngest student from where he studied, a child who arrived at university as a teenager and who had to face abuse, contempt, bullying and even this government program, which far from bringing any academic benefit to him and the other students, left him traumatized.

The theory that this philosopher and mathematician ended up developing after going through this experiment at Harvard and also other experiences is that technology, far from being a facilitator, is an attempt against humanity itself. According to him, people are slaves to all technological advances, becoming entities manipulated by a consumer society in which we all lose our capacity and possibility of choice.

After leaving the university where he worked as a professor, Kaczynski built himself a cabin in the woods near the American city of Lincoln, to live as a hermit. It was there that he put his ideals into practice, where he wrote his manifesto with an old typewriter and where he manufactured the sophisticated bombs with which he murdered 3 people and injured so many others.

Today, her figure continues to inspire books and television series. Despite being 75 years old, they say that his mind is more active than ever, and that he remains committed to his personal project of revolution: to end techno-industrial society.