We never did hear from the Unabomber—although you can bet we will. The sequel to The Manifesto will be produced by him or others he inspired. Not bad for someone so sentimentally depicted by the press. They saved the man who conceived and implemented 16 bomb attacks in 17 years from the death penalty. And as soon as Ted Kaczynski figures out he got fixed, he'll be madder than hell.
Once, the Unabomber was heralded for his calculation, planning, and dark genius. Nothing prepared us, however, for the unmasking of the dirt covered hermit who emerged from the Montana woods. Suddenly, the war on terrorism had met its match, the intangible advantage of public support for the underdog.
Underdog? You might consider a mathematician defendant with an IQ reportedly approaching 170, probably higher than his own attorneys'. To be as much the underdog as Big Blue in a chess match. But the clear decline of this function in adult life suggested schizophrenia. For this analytical mind with little humanity beyond calculating, the defense was, naturally, to throw up the psychiatric verbiage to see what might stick. It wasn't long before the public's misconceptions that schizophrenics function at a level akin to the profoundly mentally retarded added to the pressure for a battle over the insanity defense, however irrelevant to this case. With no family (that he wants), no love, no money, no home, and no friends, Mr. Kaczynski fought to protect the most precious thing he had—his ideas. To Mr. Kaczynski, it was worth representing himself rather than plead insanity, and to negate his life's beliefs.
The defense attorneys wanted to ensure that the Unabomber did not receive the death penalty for his seventeen years of serial killing and inflicting terror in the name of his perverse ideology. The prosecution wanted to keep this defendant from inspiring any more alienated misanthropes than he already had. Judge Garland Burrell wanted to avoid the ridiculous specter of a show trial. And the Unabomber wanted to avoid being labeled as a "sickie." How, indeed, do you pull this off?
Enter the psychiatrist, supported by reports of a suicide attempt that sounded like they had been issued by Pravda. After all Kaczynski had not been discovered by prisoners or officers, no statement was made by him to this effect, and courtroom observers couldn't see the alleged "red marks." And how did they know he wasn't wearing any underwear, anyway?
The stakes were simple: competent to stand trial means competent to plead guilty. And forcing a competency interview gave the court-ordered psychiatrist the opportunity to question Ted Kaczynski, who had rebuffed experienced prosecution doctors' efforts. How do you trick a defendant with an IQ of 170? Fifteen to twenty hours were spent with Ted Kaczynski. My colleagues and I find it impossible to conceive of a competency exam lasting more than three hours of face-to-face interviewing unless the defendant refuses to communicate. The U.S. Supreme Court in Estelle v. Smith limited how inclusive the questioning of a mentally ill defendant can be. Mr. Kaczynski had a right to refuse questions about his psychiatric history. Did he know that? And with his attorneys on the scene for every minute of the lengthy interviews, was he told that this information was being assembled into the portrayal of a sickie?
And so, the psychiatric exam wove a 47-page quilt of piles of jargon. I'm still trying to find a colleague who has ever written a report, strictly for competency, that lasted longer than 15 pages. What else was in there? Translation: the Justice Department, having received mountainous psychiatric certification that he is really, really, really sick, can sweep Mr. Kaczynski away from the death penalty without a Terry Nichols backlash.
Unfortunately, despite the effort to craft a happy ending so that no one has to come face-to-face with the evil of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber and everything he represents is still with us. He never had to face up to the very horrors which should inspire his remorse. Now that this man, long isolated by poverty and schizophrenia, is imprisoned, are we to assume that he and his 170 IQ are therefore any less motivated to grandiose evil than other imprisoned luminaries who fashion themselves as terrorists?
The look back at the saga of the Unabomber taught us he was not delusional at all when he expressed that his greatest fear was psychiatry. Using a psychiatrist as a fixer makes one wonder how much our tailoring our involvement in cases to suit political agendas detracts from the science of this profession.
Ted Kaczynski takes evil with him to prison. There he will refill with a familiar hatred now most intensely directed at his zealous attorneys and the psychiatrist who used the very weapon of his grandiosity—his mind—and redefined him as a hapless nutcase. He won't be the first with a terribly distorted political philosophy who emerges as a political prisoner to peep just looking for a Waco lightning rod. As long as this man is alive, keep me out of the mailroom.
