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CHAPTER XV

Let's look at some of my brother's attitudes over the years.

Over and over again his letters - those written before 1989, when he shacked up with Linda Patrik - show his hostility to the existing system of society. In fact, they express such hostility far more than my letters do. ¹ The reader has already seen examples of my brother's negative attitudes toward present-day society in some of his writings that we've quoted earlier. Here are a few more examples:

"The group of us made a visit to Ojinaga, Mexico, and I found myself liking the place very much. ... There is ... a lazyness [sic] about the place which contrasts with American busyness. ... [M]y comparative wealth felt like something to be ashamed of. I bought a beautiful straw hat worth 15-20 dollars in America, for $3, yet the pleasure I ordinarily feel at getting a good deal was complicated by my disgust for the American dollar, and some nebulous image of the sort [of] crimes against decency and proportion which it probably represents." ²

"If I had to pick some point of origin for my thoughts, as they presently stand, that origin would probably be your argument against technology. For it was only then that I began to discard the optimistic predilections of naive humanism. And it was important for me to appreciate that technology is not just machines, but a whole method of taking on experience, and moreover, a method which, for all intents and purposes, assumes a will of its own regardless of the human 'choices' which arise within its domain." ³

"I suppose the tendency to want to cover oneself against every remotely conceivable disaster is a characteristic I retain from my urban life. Perhaps all the different varieties of insurance which people buy reflects this same attitude. ... I expect the basis of anxiety in the urban attitude has little to do with empirical threats, so much as that the empirical threats are manufactured unwittingly to express (and yet to conceal) one's fear of being 'naked' in the world. The sense of being approached by all sorts of future threats, the ultimate of which is death, may be the way people sniff [sic; "snuff" is presumably intended] out, as you suggest, the essential nullity of the promises which draw them all their lives toward the future. Once those promises are seen as being null, then the present loses its justification too ... ." ⁴

"There's one old guy I really enjoy talking to. ... He'd no more go to live in San Antonio or Houston than shoot himself in the head, yet he wants them, or what they represent, in a manner of speaking to come to him. He sort of thinks you can choose the 'good' from the 'bad', without seriously reflecting on the possibility of achieving that choice, nor questioning whether the so-called 'good' by itself might not eventually change his whole life in dramatic and unexpected ways. For instance, he's an exponent of having our little ranch road paved, and for argument's sake he likes to count up the number of his eggs that get broken while driving back from town. So much is at stake, and he, of all people, can't seem to see farther than a few broken eggs!" ⁵

"Henry James, talking about electricity:'... the white light of convenience that he hated . . .'" ⁶

"[You should expect] at least in my experience and judgement, a far less noxious manifestation of culture in Mexico than in the U.S." ⁷ (My brother was referring here to rural and small-town areas of Mexico, not to the heavily-urbanized parts.)

"I assume there is a tendency to set up Russia as a straw man to deflect the possibility of introspecting seriously about our own society - i.e., to fuel the more-or-less uncritical assumption that the United States is a 'free country'. In other words, we exploit (probably, for the most part unconsciously) the image of Russia as a means of concealing from ourselves the conditions which rule our own way of life just about as rigorously. Viewed in a philosophical way (rather than in terms of private prerogatives which still may exist) our own situation may be more advanced and more hopeless, since our oppressors are not so easily objectified and they act with the subtlety of thought rather than with the awkwardness and crudeness of physical force." ⁸

"I don't think Joel is suffering acutely, or at least not a lot [sic] more than most of us are, afflicted with the craziness and senselessness of this modern form of life." ⁹

"Naturally [the Mexicans are] not any more reflective than the average person here, and consequently give little thought to what economic development of their country might cost them in terms of their tranquility, the beauty of the countryside, their intimacy with each other and with nature, and even their most prized cultural traditions. I wish I could give you a more optimistic picture, but I suspect that in time the Mexican people will either be debauched by progress or destroyed by the failure of it. At least as long as the population keeps growing rapidly, I don't see any other possibility." ¹⁰

On August 18, 1988, the Alpine Avalanche (newspaper) printed a letter from my brother that read, in part, as follows:

"I beg to differ with one of [Lucille Muchmore's] oft-repeated views, namely that the county road connecting Hwy. 118 with the Terlingua Ranch Lodge needs to be paved. ...

"Why anyone who felt the need for a paved road would purposely move to a place that didn't have one, I don't know. ... Apparently, some people have fled the crunch of development elsewhere only to realize at a later date that their preference intailed [sic] some cost. Now they would like to have their cake and eat it too... .

"...Now I only wish [Lucille Muchmore] had the consistency to realize that loving the desert truly means loving it as nearly as possible on its own terms." ¹¹

"It would be nice to think the organization of our kind of society is gradually breaking down, but I suppose that would be Pollyannaish." ¹²

This last extract is from a letter that my brother wrote me in June, 1988. Eight-and-a-half years later he told the Sacramento Bee, "If the government were to put my brother to death, my faith in the system would be shattered." ¹³

Whence comes this "faith in the system?" My brother's attitudes seem to have changed a great deal in eight years! But it doesn't surprise me. Dave has never had any fixed attitudes, beliefs, or principles. Whatever beliefs or principles he may profess are simply a matter of convenience; as his needs change, his beliefs and principles change with them. He will change his beliefs and principles in order to gain acceptance in a social milieu, to gratify his vanity, to avoid losing an argument, or to justify anything that he has done or wants to do. According to Time:

"'David is a straight arrow, sensitive and moral...' notes Father Melvin La Follette, an Episcopal priest and a friend." - ¹⁴

Father La Follette would naturally think this, since my brother undoubtedly professed a morality consistent with that of the social milieu to which he belonged in Texas. ¹⁵ At other times and places, his moral values have not been exactly what would be acceptable to an Episcopal priest.

Back in Lombard in 1978 or '79, my brother had to take a driver's test, or had to get his license renewed, or at any rate had to do something or other at a driver's-license facility. He came back fuming with anger and frustration at the inefficiency of the facility and the long, unnecessary delays he'd had to put up with. As he was venting his complaints, I said in jest, "So let's go over there some night and throw a brick through their window." "Okay," said my brother, apparently in all seriousness, 'You wanna do that?" I declined. Needless to say, Dave had neither enough courage nor enough initiative to do it on his own.

Once in the spring of 1979, he remarked to me, "I'm not going to worry about morality any more. I used to think that morality was the most important thing in the world, but I'm not going to worry about it any more." As to his having previously thought that "morality was the most important thing in the world," I suspect that that had only been some passing fad of his, since he had never talked to me about morality.

My brother had a little Datsun car, and at about this same time (1978-79) he became very dissatisfied with the way his dealer was treating the service agreement - or something along those lines - anyway, whatever the source of his dissatisfaction was, he got angry enough at the dealer so that he said to me, "I would seriously consider going over there some night and vandalizing the place." I mentioned this in a letter to him a couple of years later: "[Y]ou never committed that vandalism against that Datsun dealer as you talked about doing." ¹⁶ How did I know that my brother hadn't committed the vandalism? He hadn't told me - I just knew that he had neither enough initiative nor enough courage to do it. I'm referring not so much to physical courage as to the courage to overcome trained-in inhibitions.

The inconsistencies in my brother's attitude toward morality don't necessarily imply conscious cynicism on his part. I think he believes more-or-less sincerely what he needs to believe at any given moment. I mentioned earlier that he seems to be unconscious of his own inconsistencies.

My brother's letters show that contact with nature was a very important source of fulfillment and satisfaction for him. For example:

"Yes, I do have a lot [sic] more energy when I'm in the desert. Or, to put it another way, a much greater capacity to feel engaged with things. ... It seems like in the city there are always demands which I am fending off with one hand, so to speak. Sometimes I buy cheese etc. for no other reason than because I don't want to spend 15 min. cooking rice, whereas in the desert, cooking involved a lot [sic] more 'trouble', but was a positive joy for me. Generally, I think I feel a lot [sic] more 'inward' in the city. My senses are kind of muted. ...

"Anyway, I find work in the city tends to involve maintaining on-going systems that show no response to me except by breaking down. Negative things happen if you don't do what is required of you. So my work accomplishes nothing but fending off nebulous disasters (or adding numbers to my bank account). But conversely, for instance, I had an unbelievably good experience digging my hole to sleep in [in the desert]. The impression it made on me was poetic ... ." ¹⁷

"[If I built a cabin t]he lure of indoor comfort would tend to distance me from appreciation of the elements. ... Part of the charm of my present dwelling [the hole in the ground] is that it is serviceable in many ways, but didn't cost me a penny. There's a beauty to the perfectly natural warming and cooling effect of the earth. My present dwelling hardly mars the landscape at all, and is surrounded by bushes so that you can't even see it from close by. Nestled in a sort of burrow, I feel a closer kinship with the way the animals live. ... I have found what you, also, seem to know so well: that with certain reservations, certain small luxuries, the more I simplify my living arrangements the more they seem to please me." ¹⁸

"I've been keeping more solitary myself this year,...in part because I want to learn something more myself from... the welcoming silence which the desert has been offering to me." ¹⁹

"I remember dark bird-calls at twilight; a swooping hawk breathing heavily after it landed in a tree one still evening. Having by now mostly overcome my nervousness about sleeping out alone, I enjoyed deep, calm sleeps and awakened in the morning refreshed to greet the bright, open, exquisite faces of the spring cactus-flowers.

"The evening of the third day I arrived, with my tongue dragging, at my beloved old campground on the Rio Grande, only to find it virtually doubled in size and crammed almost full with enormous RV's. Talk about a rude surprise! ... The experience seemed for me like a revelation of sharp despair... .

"... I had to get out of the campground next morning or risk defacing the memories I had so pleasantly stored up ... .

"I took off the next day on a trail I had hiked a few years earlier into the del Carmen mountain range. Here I saw bats at night and tiny humming-birds in the morning. The first evening, there were spectacular thunderheads but only a few drop of rain. ... Higher up, among the surrounding mountain peaks, hawks were visible gliding on currents of air. ... [T]he desert [is] a very safe place to be. Characteristically, I feel alert, calm, and open, which altogether [sic] I regard as a very enjoyable state of mind ." ²⁰

When my brother came to visit me in Montana in October, 1986, he was on his way back down to Texas after a summer of working as a bus-driver in Chicago. Soon after he arrived I remarked that he seemed unusually cheerful. He said that his cheerfulness was due to the fact that he was on his way back to the desert. He added "If you think I'm cheerful now, you should see me when I'm in the desert!"

There is no doubt in my mind that my brother's appreciation of nature was genuine, and that his times in the desert provided the richest and most fulfilling experiences of his life. Yet when he decided to shack up with Linda Patrik in order to satisfy whatever need of his own (see Chapter XIV, p. 385), he did not hesitate to sell out to the system and betray the wilderness by becoming part of the consumer society that, a short time before, he had abhorred. He had written me at some time between February and April of 1988:

"I found myself drawing parallels to our own society. The cycle of credit and consumption; the addiction to a lifestyle that hinders any fuller self-realization; a resulting spiritual brutalization ... ." ²¹

Less than two years later, Ralph Meister informed me by letter that Dave had bought himself a brand-new pickup truck. ²² At the same time my brother began wearing forty-five-dollar shirts and other expensive clothing that Linda bought for him. ²³ At some point he had electricity installed at his cabin so that Linda could use her computer there, and he put in a driveway. ²⁴ He cut off his beard and long hair, and a published photograph shows him with hair that appears to have been "done" by a professional stylist. ²⁵

(I recall my brother making contemptuous remarks at some point between 1978 and 1981 about rebels of the 1960's who had later sold out and adopted a bourgeois life-style. See Chapter VIII, pp. 232, 233.)

******

Dave has told the media that he brought me to the attention of the FBI in order to protect human life:

"[T]he thought that a family member - our flesh and blood - may have been responsible for harming other people; destroying families, is - it - it brings such deep regret and sorrow." ²⁶

"[I]f, God forbid, I were in a position to prevent more lives from being lost, I couldn't do otherwise." ²⁷

"Certainly my interest from the beginning was to protect life." ¹³

"Violence and the taking of human life is not a way to resolve human problems. It can't work ." ¹³

As a matter of fact, history shows that it very often does work. Be that as it may, my brother's explanations of his motive for going to the FBI come across as a string of stereotypical platitudes. It is a curious fact that when my brother describes his feelings with complete sincerity, his speech and writing are never trite or stereotyped; instead, his language is often vividly expressive. But when vanity interferes with sincerity in his "creative" writing, he sometimes uses hackneyed turns of speech. Much more marked is the triteness of his language when he is trying to deceive himself or others about his own feelings; in such cases, his expression often, though not always, becomes distinctly flat and stereotyped. Compare the passages we've just quoted with the extracts from my brother's letters that we've reproduced in this and earlier chapters.

In face-to-face relations, my brother is generally compassionate, and I indicated at the end of the last chapter that he has sometimes shown himself to be quite squeamish at the sight of suffering or gruesomeness. But I can't recall any instance in which he ever expressed concern about suffering that he didn't witness personally and that wasn't inflicted on anyone he knew. I don't remember him ever expressing regret at assassinations, disasters, or even the brutality of war. It is certain that through most of his life he has not had any principled opposition to violence.

For a brief time after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, he expressed fervent admiration for Sirhan Sirhan. He said that he envied Sirhan's fanatical commitment to a purpose for which he was prepared to sacrifice everything. One evening at his apartment in Great Falls, he casually remarked, "I should become a criminal - of the senseless kind." (This, of course, was only a fantasy; I knew and I think my brother knew that he would never take any practical steps toward putting it into effect.) After John Hinckley's attempt to assassinate President Reagan, Dave wrote me:

"Reagan has recovered, I regret to inform you. ... Another bullet hit Reagan's secretary in the head. Naturally, he's alright." ²⁸ (Translated from bad Spanish.)

When he visited me in Montana in 1986, my brother expressed satisfaction at the Challenger disaster, even though several astronauts had been killed, because it was a blow to the pretensions of the space program. Knowing him as I do, I am certain that if Dave had known of the Unabomber before 1989, he would have regarded him as a hero.

Dave's claim that he and Linda went to the FBI in order to "save lives" is further undercut by the fact that the Unabomber had promised to stop the bombings if his conditions were met. Dave and Linda must have known about the promise, since it was well publicized. In fact, the New York Times wrote:

"Professor Patrik...read a surge of news accounts about the Unabomber. The articles told of...the Unabomber's promise to cease the bombings if the manuscript was published." ²⁹

My brother knew that I am reliable about keeping promises and that, if I were the Unabomber, there would be no more bombings as long as the conditions were met. Since the Manifesto had already been published, the Unabomber was not to resume his attacks unless the media refused to publish his three follow-up messages; ³⁰ which was unlikely given that they had published the manifesto. In any case, if my brother was worried about that possibility, he could have sent me a message (an anonymous one, if he thought that necessary) stating that he suspected me of being the Unabomber and that he would give my name to the FBI if there were any more bombings. If I were the Unabomber, that would have been an effective deterrent.

So why did Dave and Linda denounce me to the FBI? I know my brother well enough to be fairly confident in guessing - to an approximation, anyway - what his motives were. Since Dave's lack of initiative is such that he doesn't take decisive action until prodded by someone else, the first impulse would have been provided by Linda. This is supported by media reports, for whatever they may be worth. ³¹ Linda's motive likely would have been vindictive: she had probably hated me ever since reading what I wrote about her in my 1989 letter to Dave (FL #401, reproduced in Chapter XIV).

Once well embarked on the course that Linda had set for him, Dave would have held to it tenaciously until - barring clear proof that I was not the Unabomber - he ended by bringing me to the attention of the FBI. This is confirmed by a letter that Susan Swanson (Dave's and Linda's investigator) sent to Newsweek:

"YOUR ARTICLE ON DAVID KACZYNSKI...conveyed the mistaken impression that he had to be pushed into contacting the FBI regarding his suspicions about his brother, Ted. ... I would like to set the record straight. ... [H]e never waffled or stalled." ³²

Dave was motivated by his tendency to see me as a tyrannical aggressor in any conflict in which I was involved (see Chapter IX, pp. 254-256) and by the (probably unadmitted) hatred that he bore me because of his own sense of inferiority and because of the fact that, to my shame, I had many times said things that hurt him cruelly. Above all, I think he wanted to exert power over me and feel that he was victorious over me.

This does not mean that he had no conflicting feelings about his course of action. On the contrary, his resentful impulses had to overcome his very real affection for me and a strong sense of guilt over what he was doing. This guilt is indicated, for example, by his having tried to get the FBI to conceal permanently the fact that it was he who brought my name to their attention. ³³ Apparently he was ashamed of what he was doing.

Very likely Linda kept prodding him along, and this would have been important to him in that it provided him with support and enabled him to feel that he alone was not responsible for the action that was being taken. He also turned for support to his friend Dale Es. ³⁴

But, in my opinion, even without any support from anyone, once Dave felt that a decisive victory over big brother was within his grasp, he would have carried the affair through to a conclusion - though without admitting to himself that he was impelled by resentment. Being an adept rationalizer, he would have had no difficulty in providing himself with an unselfish motive.

Of course, after the FBI had been contacted, the matter was out of his hands, and from that point on he was simply manipulated by the Feds. His deposition shows how naive he was and how easily he swallowed the FBI's lies. ³⁵

Though I'm fairly sure that the foregoing reconstruction of what went on in my brother's mind is more or less correct, I have to admit that it is to a degree speculative, so the reader is at liberty to remain skeptical about it.

But we have clearly established in the course of this book that my brother does have a very real and strong (though perhaps unconscious) resentment of me, and we showed a few pages back that a concern for human life was not likely to be the major part of his motive for denouncing me to the FBI. He claims that his motive for representing me in the media as mentally ill is to save me from the death penalty, and the implication is that he is impelled by concern for my welfare, but here again his motives are not exactly what he pretends.

It's quite true that Dave doesn't want me to get the death penalty, but the reason has little to do with concern for my welfare. He knows very well that imprisonment is to me an unspeakable humiliation and that I would unhesitatingly choose death over incarceration. In his story, "El Cibolo," he shows that he understands and appreciates this point of view:

"So this, El Cibolo thought, was imprisonment: the denial of every gift, especially beauty and space ... ." ³⁶

"[El Cibolo] would be expecting death hourly, and even supposing the indictment intended exactly what it said, what were the probabilities he could survive the deliberations of a court that was notoriously ruthless in defending the interests of the empire? If justice were a sham, perhaps it was just as well to abbreviate [with death] the inevitable misery and humiliation, for at least now he could be consoled that he went to his grave in the full flower of his dignity and manhood." ³⁷

Precisely what my brother wants is to deprive me of my dignity and manhood, to humiliate me and bring me low, in revenge for his own feelings of inferiority and humiliation; feelings for which I was partly (but only partly) responsible through the way I had treated him when we were kids and through the cutting things I had said to him on certain occasions in adulthood.

He did not want me to die, but that was not from concern for me, it was simply because he is chicken-hearted. As I pointed out at the end of Chapter XIV, he is frightened of the crude and obvious cruelty of death. In his statements to the media he repeatedly mentioned how terrible he would feel if I were put to death; he made no reference to my feelings on the subject. It was his own pain and not mine that he was worrying about:

"'It would be very, very difficult to live with myself,' David said, 'Knowing that I had delivered my injured, disturbed brother over to be killed .'" ³⁸

"David, for his part, said he would 'suffer in the extreme' if his brother were given the death penalty.

"'I would be plunged into hell for the rest of my life,' he said, 'and I don't think I deserve that.'" ³⁹

But my brother's motive for lying about me to the media was not only to save me from the death penalty. In fact, that motive was less important than his desire to inflict further humiliation on me. This can be shown in four ways.

First. Some of the things he said to the media could only have increased my risk of getting the death penalty. For instance, the fact that I was abused psychologically by my parents would win sympathy for me that presumably would decrease the likelihood of my being sentenced to death, yet we saw near the end of Chapter III that my brother went out of his way to deny that the abuse had occurred, even though he knew very well that it had. Did he do this in order to protect our mother from public embarrassment? If so, then he was weighing our mother's mere embarrassment against my life or death. Since our mother had clearly wronged me, one would think that she ought to be expected to put up with the embarrassment of having the truth revealed, especially since my life was at stake.

In addition, my brother denied our father's abuse of me, even though our father was dead. If he thought it would be too cruel to our mother to have even our father's abusiveness revealed, he could at least have had the grace to remain silent on the subject; but instead he described our father as "always generous" ⁴⁰ and said that "Both parents were warm and nurturing." ⁴¹ There is no way this could have been motivated by a desire either to save me from the death penalty or to protect our mother.

Besides denying the abuse, my brother made a number of statements about me that made me look mean and therefore, one would suppose, increased my risk of receiving the death penalty. For example, according to the New York Times, he described me as "overbearing" ⁴⁰ and "incapable of sympathy, insight, or simple connection with people," ⁴⁰ and he accused me of "imperious put-downs." ⁴² And, as I showed in Chapter X, pp. 290, 291, he took a "hard line" in portraying to the media my role in the Ellen Tarmichael affair, rather than admitting (as he'd done earlier by implication) that there were circumstances that mitigated my behavior. He claimed he was trying to "humanize" me, ⁴³ but he said only a few things that tended to do that; his portrait of me was on balance repellent and hardly likely to win the sympathy of a jury.

Second: After my brother's and mother's interviews with the New York Times and the Washington Post, and on 60 Minutes, my attorneys made it quite clear to Dave that by giving media interviews he was not helping but harming my legal position: On October 24, 1996, in Investigator #3's office in San Francisco, with Dr. K. present, Investigator #3 told Dave that the kind of publicity he was creating was causing me emotional distress to such an extent that it was interfering with my ability to cooperate with my lawyers in preparing my defense. Dave seemed to acknowledge that he heard and understood. ⁴⁴

Yet in January, 1997, my brother gave another media interview of the same kind as the earlier ones. ⁴⁵ At this point he could hardly have claimed that he didn't know he was harming me.

Third: Since agreeing to a plea bargain in January 1998, I have been out of danger of the death penalty, yet at this writing (April 21, 1998), my brother has not to my knowledge retracted publicly any of the false statements that he made about me and our family, though he well knows how important to me such a retraction would be.

Fourth: In his media interviews, Dave described events in language that seemed to have been chosen to make me appear guilty. In fact, the prosecuting attorneys in my case quoted his statements to the media several times in their brief opposing the Motion to Suppress Evidence that my attorneys filed in my behalf:

"The truthfulness of the affidavit and its supporting reports is strongly supported by David Kaczynski's post-search public statements. For example, about two weeks [sic; actually it was twenty days, or nearly three weeks] before David executed his declaration in this case, the Sacramento Bee quoted him as discussing the phrase 'cool-headed logician' as follows: 'I thought, "Who else have I ever heard use that expression but Ted?" No one. * * * It's got to be him.' See Cynthia Hubert, Role in Capture Haunts Kaczynski's Brother, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 19, 1997 at A1 (attached as Exhibit 33). During an interview with the New York Times printed on May 26, 1996, David stated that when he first read the introductory section of the UNABOM manuscript his 'jaw dropped,' and he experienced 'chills,' because 'it sounded enough like him that I was really upset that it could be him.' See David Johnson & Janny Scott, UNABOM Manifesto Horrified Brother, Sacramento Bee, May 26, 1996 (reprinted from N. Y. Times)... ." ⁴⁶

Thus it is clear that my brother did not give his media interviews in order to "help" me, but because merely bringing about my arrest was not a sufficient revenge for him - he had to rub shit in my face by subjecting me to public humiliation.

Nevertheless - my brother has cooperated with my attorneys by participating in several interviews with them and with Dr. K., and he signed for them a declaration that they used with their Motion to Suppress Evidence. And after one of my attorneys had described to him the miseries of being in jail, Dave wrote me a letter (October 30, 1996) in which he said:

"I both fear and in a gut sense know the effect this must be having on you. I know that I am the immediate cause of this suffering. I've passed through periods of denial, in which I tried to convince myself that my actions might even have helped you. But all of that is over now. I have had to glimpse my own cruelty... . I'm so, so sorry for what I've done and for how it hurts you." ⁴⁷

My brother is a ship without a rudder, blown this way and that way by the wind. His attitudes, beliefs, behavior, and professed principles change in accord with the emotions of the moment and the influence of the people he is among at any given time. After recovering from the paroxysm of guilt that was expressed in the foregoing letter, he gave the interview to the Sacramento Bee even though, as was noted earlier, he knew that by doing so he was harming me emotionally and interfering with the preparation of my defense. While he was with people who supported me, that is my attorneys, he was overcome with remorse, but when he got back to Linda, Wanda, and their circle of friends in Schenectady - people who probably told him he was a "hero" for denouncing his brother - he regained his nerve and treated himself to another round of rubbing shit in my face with the Bee interview. ⁴⁸

The fact that my brother both loves me and hates me is not very remarkable in itself. It is not uncommon for people to have strongly conflicting feelings toward one another, or for relationships to alternate between hostility and affection. What is remarkable is the seeming lack of connection between the two aspects of my brother's personality; they do not seem to be integrated with one another. When he is being friendly with me or generous toward me he speaks and acts as if his resentment did not exist, and it is possible that he is completely unconscious of that aspect of his feelings toward me. At any rate, it seems clear that he is unwilling to face up to it and think about it or talk about it. Though I mentioned in my letters the indications of his resentment toward me, ⁴⁹ he never discussed the issue and never denied or clearly admitted that he had any such resentment. The nearest he ever came to admitting even that the issue existed was after my first apology ⁵⁰ for having harassed him when we were kids. He then wrote:

"I thank you for...your sympathetic understanding of what may have surfaced at times as resentment on my part." ⁵¹

And that was all he ever said about his resentment.

It is possible that my brother's hatred is "dissociated" in the psychiatric sense of the word. ⁵² But, not being a shrink, I will speculate no further in that direction.

******

What then shall we make of David Kaczynski? Is he a hero or a villain? To the convinced and committed bourgeois, terrified by the social instability that threatens his comfortable servitude, Dave seems to be a hero. Many other people will feel equally strongly that he is a villain: Not only was he motivated by malice that grew in large part out of his own sense of inferiority to his brother, but his revenge was a despicable one that cost him neither risk nor effort, and he apparently has not even had the courage to face up to his own motive.

To me the issue is not so simple. In the first place, while covert ⁵² malice was undoubtedly my brother's main motive for lying about me in the media, it may have been only part of his motive for denouncing me to the FBI. Since he readily absorbs the values of the people around him, it may be that after living for several years in an essentially conventional milieu he was sincerely shocked by the suspicion that I might be the Unabomber.

Moreover, my brother is for the most part a generous and kindly person. Statements and writings of his that I've quoted in this chapter and in Chapter XIV indicate that he has at times had fantasies of doing violence to people and to property, but in practice, as far as I know, he has never done harm of any kind to anyone but me.

And as for what he's done to me, I can't claim it is completely unjustified. I suppose I ought to be excused for the way I abused him verbally during my adolescence, since I was too young to understand what I was doing. But the cruel things that I said to him on certain occasions in adulthood are another matter. Even though I didn't know how badly I was hurting him, I did know that I was hurting him. (See Chapter XI.)

My brother's personality has its radically disparate aspects; when I think of him as the gentle, generous man who truly appreciated nature and wrote so beautifully in his letters about his experiences in the desert, I feel sharp regret at many of the things I said to him; my resentment is muted, and I feel that he had a right to retaliate against me. When I think about his ugly side, about the covertness of his resentment, about the way he has subordinated himself to a selfish, vindictive woman, about the lying, underhand nature of his revenge, and about the fact that his resentment grew at least in part out of his own self-inflicted psychological subordination to me, I feel very bitter against him.

On balance I condemn him, because his revenge seems to me to be far out of proportion to my offense.

At the same time, I realize that I am not in a position to judge him objectively. Some people who are sufficiently detached from the situation to be free of bias, and who understand the lasting pain and injury that can be inflicted by verbal cruelty, may well feel that my brother's retaliation has been no more than an eye for an eye.

******

But Dave's personal betrayal of me is much less important than his betrayal of an ideal, his selling out to an evil kind of society that is destroying, among other things, the wilderness that gave him the richest experiences of his life. A traitor is always hated far more than a straightforward enemy, and is an object of contempt to everyone except those who expect their side to gain some advantage from his treason. I distinguish between a traitor and a defector. By a defector I understand one who changes his ideology and his loyalty as a result of an extended period of serious soul-searching. By a traitor I mean one who switches sides as a mere matter of convenience, or in order to gain some personal advantage, whether material or psychological. My brother is unquestionably a traitor. There is not the slightest evidence that he did any serious soul-searching before selling out. As soon as Linda Patrik offered him the opportunity, he unhesitatingly made himself her acolyte in order to satisfy his own peculiar psychological needs. In doing so he left the desert, promptly joined the consumer society, adopted its values, and even, as would appear from his Bee interview, acquired "faith in the system." ¹³ His denouncing me to the FBI was not only a personal betrayal of me, it was an act of commitment to the system, its values, and its power. To those of us who regard the system as evil, my brother is another Judas Iscariot, except that, unlike the original Judas, he doesn't even have enough courage to go and hang himself. ⁵⁴

******

In a recent telephone conversation with one of my investigators, Dave asked whether it was possible that I could ever forgive him. But he did not offer to retract publicly the lies he had told about me or to do anything else to make up for what he had done.

Repentance is cheap - even sincere repentance - if it is not accompanied by any difficult act of reparation. ⁵⁵ Some years ago I read the Spandau Diaries of the former Nazi Albert Speer. ⁵⁶ Speer's ruminations about his own guilt were fairly impressive as evidence of thoughtfulness and sensitivity, but I did notice that the book gave no indication that Speer had done, or intended to do, anything to make up for his actions as a Nazi. He apparently was in a comfortable position financially and he might, for example, have devoted large amounts of money or of personal effort to helping former victims of the Nazi regime, or their families, or victims of tyranny in some other part of the world. It seemed to me that it must have been rather easy for Speer to sit in his safe and comfortable study and write a book about his guilt (for which he was probably well paid). ⁵⁷

To answer my brother's question, yes, I could forgive him - under certain conditions. Basically he would have to undo his treason by detaching himself permanently from the consumer society, from the system and everything that it represents. In order to do this he would have to break off all connection with Linda Patrik, because her dominance over him is such that he could never make a lasting change in himself as long as he maintained a relationship with her.

Two possible courses of action would be open to him. He could go back to his Texas desert, rip the electrical wiring out of his cabin, and return to his former way of life; or he could join some group that is fighting the system - for example, some group of radical environmentalists of the Earth First type. I think the second alternative would be the only safe one for him. My brother does not easily adhere to any consistent line of thought or action without support from other people. If he went back to Texas, it's more than possible that he would fall again under the influence of the people he knows there, such as the Episcopal priest. Or, if Linda Patrik wanted him back, she could go down there to fetch him, and it's not likely that he would resist her. But if he immersed himself in a radical milieu, the influence of the people around him would help him to stay on a steady course. In this way he would not only earn my personal forgiveness; ⁵⁸ what is more important, he would be cleansed and redeemed of his treason against the values that he once held in common with me and many other people. I know how to put him in touch with environmental radicals, and I believe they would accept him if he came to them repentant.

But, unfortunately, I think it's unlikely that my brother will break away from Linda Patrik or from the consumer society. I think his submerged hatred of me and his strange need for his servile relationship with Linda are too strong; and beyond that I think he is simply too lazy. If he does not redeem himself, then as far as I am concerned he is the lowest sort of scum and the sooner he dies, the better.

******

Yet the opportunity for redemption is there if he wants to take it. The wild country is waiting for him, and it always forgives those who are truly repentant.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XV

This is on the basis of a subjective assessment. I have not actually made a count of the number of times my brother and I expressed negative opinions, in the surviving letters, about modern society.
(Ca) FL #216, letter from David Kaczynski to me, between 1981 and 1985.
(Ca) FL #247, letter from David Kaczynski to me, summer or fall of 1981, p. 4.
(Ca) FL #283, letter from David Kaczynski to me, between January and May, 1984, pp. 1, 2.
(Ca) FL #298, letter from David Kaczynski to me, December, 1984, p. 4.
(Ca) FL #300, letter from David Kaczynski to me, March or April, 1985, p. 7 (note in margin).
(Ca) FL #302, letter from David Kaczynski to me, April or May, 1985, pp. 3, 4.
(Ca) FL #330, letter from David Kaczynski to me, late March or early April, 1986, p. 4.
(Ca) FL #347, letter from David Kaczynski to me, August, 1986, p. 6.
(Ca) FL #363, letter from David Kaczynski to me, August, 1987, p. 2.
(Ca) FL #380, newspaper clipping sent to me by my mother in late summer or fall of 1988. (Date of clipping appears to be 1988, but legibility of the last digit is poor on the Xerox copy that I have, and the date could conceivably be 1989.)
(Ca) FL #377, letter from David Kaczynski to me, June, 1988, p. 2.
(Hc) Sacramento Bee, January 19, 1997, p. A16, column 6.
(Hg) Time, April 22, 1996, pp. 44, 45.
My brother has always been well liked wherever he has been, and I think part of the reason for this is that he is a chameleon who automatically and unconsciously changes his behavior, speech, and opinions in such a way as to make himself acceptable and pleasing to whatever social milieu he happens to be absorbed in at any given time.
(Ca) FL #248, letter from me to David Kaczynski, late summer or fall of 1981, p. 16.
(Ca) FL #278, letter from David Kaczynski to me, October, 1983, pp. 4, 5.
(Ca) FL #280, letter from David Kaczynski to me, December, 1983 or January, 1984, pp. 3, 4.
(Ca) FL #281, letter from David Kaczynski to me, December, 1983, or January, 1984, p. 4.
(Ca) FL #300, letter from David Kaczynski to me, March or April, 1985, pp. 4, 5, 8, 9.
(Ca) FL #374, letter from David Kaczynski to me, between February and April, 1988, p. 2.
I did not save this letter from Ralph Meister, but my brother himself confirmed that he did buy a new pickup truck at about the time he started living with Linda. (Qc) Written Reports by Investigator #2; p. 1.
On September 3, 1996, I obtained from Investigator #2 oral information to the effect that "Since their marriage, Linda has been buying very expensive, stylish clothes for my brother, which he wears." This is a direct quote from (Qe) Investigator Note #2, which was written by me; it is not a verbatim quote of the statement of Investigator #2. However, on October 8, 1997, Investigator #2 and I reviewed a verbatim transcript of Investigator Note #2, and Investigator #2 confirmed orally that this item of information was correct. This is reported in (Qe) Investigator Note #1.

At some point Investigator #2 had told me that Dave wore shirts costing forty or fifty dollars that Linda bought for him. Later I asked Investigator #2 to confirm this, and he/she told me orally on October 8, 1997, that Linda buys Dave forty-five dollar shirts and he wears them. (Qa) Oral Report from Investigator #2, October 8, 1997.

Still later I asked Investigator #2 to give me written confirmation of this, and he/she wrote: "On October 7, 1997...David also confirmed that he occasionally wears shirts that cost around forty-five dollars which Linda has bought for him." (Qc) Written Reports by Investigator #2, p. 1. The word "occasionally" had not been included in the oral report of the October 7, 1997 interview of David that Investigator #2 had given me.
The statement that Dave had electricity installed so that Linda could use her computer, and that he put in a driveway, comes from (Ja) Mad Genius, pp. 61, 121. But this book is so riddled with inaccuracies that the information is of doubtful value. However, Dave was interviewed by an investigator on October 7, 1997, and on October 8 Investigator #2 informed me orally that Dave had confirmed that he did have electricity put in his cabin for Linda, and he did install a driveway. (Qa) Oral Report from Investigator #2, October 8, 1997. Later I asked Investigator #2 to give me written confirmation of the part about the electricity, and he/she wrote: "On October 7, 1997, David Kaczynski confirmed that...[he] installed electricity in his cabin for his own convenience as well as Linda's." (Qc) Written Reports by Investigator #2, p. 1.

It is worth noting that (Ca) FL #482, letter from David Kaczynski to me, November 20, 1995, appears to have been prepared on a computer. When Dave visited me in Montana in 1986, we spent some time with his friend Al Nc. Al mentioned that he'd taken a course on computers, and Dave responded that computers were the aspect of technology that he found most repellent.
(Ja) Mad Genius, p. 61, states that Dave cut off his long hair and beard on shacking up with Linda Patrik, and this particular item of information does seem to be correct, because one of the photographs inserted between p. 116 and p. 117 of Mad Genius shows him with no beard and with hair that appears to have been "styled."
(He) 60 Minutes, September 15, 1996, Part Two, p. 11.
(Ha) NY Times Nat., May 26, 1996, p. 25, column 4.
(Ca) FL #234, letter from David Kaczynski to me, March or April, 1981. The Spanish original is: "Reagan ha recobro, lamento te informar. ...Una otra bala atino al secretario de Reagan en la cabeza. Naturalmente esta bien." I'm uncertain as to why Dave said that Brady was "alright."
(Ha) NY Times Nat., May 26, 1996, p. 25, columns 3, 4.
As conditions for permanently stopping his attacks, the Unabomber demanded publication of the manifesto and of three much shorter annual follow-up messages. He also reserved the right to use violence if the authorities ever succeeded in tracking him down. (Ha) NY Times Nat., April 26, 1995, p. A16.

Thus, by helping the FBI to find the Unabomber, my brother would have been increasing the risk of further violence - if I were the Unabomber.
(Ha) NY Times Nat., May 26, 1996, p. 25, columns 3, 4; (He) 60 Minutes, September 15, 1996, Part Two, p. (ii): "LESLIE STAHL: ...Linda dragged David to the local library to read the manifesto." P. 4: MIKE WALLACE: ... Linda turned to a childhood friend, Susan Swanson, a private investigator in Chicago, to find an expert to compare Ted's letters with the Unabomber's Manifesto."
(Hf) Newsweek, June 3, 1996, LETTERS section.
(Db) Dave's Deposition, pp. 159-163.
Same, pp. 21-23. Dale Es. declined to give Dave any opinion as to whether I might be the Unabomber, but he did suggest to Dave that he ought to visit me. Accordingly, my brother wrote me a letter (Ca) FL #482, November 20, 1995, in which he said he would like to come and see me. This letter was an interesting exercise in hypocrisy. It was carefully formulated to avoid giving any hint that Dave suspected me of being the Unabomber or that anything else unusual was happening; it rambled along nostalgically about how much he cared for me, and concluded: 'I'd like to see you because we're brothers, with shared memories and a bond of genuine affection between us." This at a time when he was contemplating denouncing me to the FBI. The expressions of feeling in this letter do not have the flat, stereotyped quality that my brother's language often shows when he is being insincere; perhaps because he took his time and prepared the letter carefully. I'm reminded of the way he used to take me in by telling little lies as a kid. He's a very good liar when he takes the trouble to put out the necessary effort.

Since I had made it emphatically clear that I wanted to separate myself permanently from the family ((Ca) FL #461, letter from me to David Kaczynski, July 20, 1991; FL#466, letter from me to David Kaczynski, August 13, 1991), I don't know how he could have expected me to let him come and visit.

In my answering letter (Ca) FL #483, letter from me to David Kaczynski, November 30, 1995,1 reminded him in strong terms that I never wanted to see or hear from him or any member of that stinking family again - but with this qualification: I reaffirmed my commitment to help him if he were ever in desperate straits; if he needed such help he could contact me.
For example, an FBI agent named Kathleen Puckett who had a degree in psychology told my brother that I would be happier if I were permanently imprisoned, and he apparently swallowed it. (Db) Dave's Deposition, pp. 114, 115. Dave is well aware of my powerful need for personal freedom, and only an incredible degree of both gullibility and self-deception could have enabled him to believe that garbage. Of course, he wanted to believe it because it helped him resolve his conflict. Also see (Db) Dave's Deposition, p. 120.
(Mc) Story by David Kaczynski, "El Cibolo," p. 178.
Same, p. 180.
(Hb) Washington Post, June 16, 1996, p. A21.
(Hc) Sacramento Bee, January 19, 1997, p. A16, column 5. Also see (Ha) NY Times Nat., May 26, 1996, p. 25, column 3.
(Ha) NY Times Nat., May 26, 1996, p. 22, column 1.
(Hc) Sacramento Bee, January 19, 1997, p. A16, column 1. In this Bee interview, my brother does a great deal of whining over how awful he feels about the fact that he had to denounce me to the FBI, but a photograph on p. 1 of the Bee, apparently taken at the time of the interview, shows him with an expression so self-satisfied that two members of my defense team independently expressed annoyance at his smug appearance. It's quite true that he is troubled by guilt over what he's done, but I think his sense of guilt is outweighed by his satisfaction at having finally gotten revenge on big brother.
(Ha) NY Times Nat., May 26, 1996, p. 22, column 2.
Same, p. 1, column 1.
(Qc) Written Reports by Investigator #2, p. 1. This information must have been conveyed to Investigator #2 by Investigator #3.
(Hc) Sacramento Bee, January 19, 1997, pp. A1, A16.
(Pf) Government's Opposition to Motion to Suppress, p. 66. The prosecuting attorneys quoted my brother's statements to the media also on p. 43 (footnote).

In fairness to my brother, I should point out that immediately after the words "It's got to be him," the Bee article continued: "But [Dave] 'went back and forth' with his suspicions ...," a statement that the prosecutors found convenient to omit. (Hc) Sacramento Bee, January 19,1997, p. A16, column 4. Even so, the way my brother described to the media his role in my arrest clearly tended to encourage a presumption that I was guilty.
(Cb) FL Supplementary Item #3. Notice how trite that last sentence is: "I'm so, so sorry... ." Do we glimpse here the flat, stereotyped mode of expression that often marks my brother when he is being insincere? Maybe, maybe not. But I have no doubt that most of the letter is quite sincere.
(Hc) Sacramento Bee, January 19, 1997, p. A16, column 2: "David... acknowledg[ed] that he has had bouts of depression in recent months. ... But with the support of his family and friends, he said, 'I have bounced back.'"
For example, (Ca) FL #248, letter from me to David Kaczynski, late summer or fall of 1981, pp. 17-20.
(Ca) FL #263, letter from me to David Kaczynski, July 30, 1982.
(Ca) FL #264, letter from David Kaczynski to me, Summer, 1982, p. 1.
See latter half of Chapter II.
"Covert" in the sense that he probably hides it even from himself.
"Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,

"Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.

"And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself."

Matthew 27: 3, 4, 5.

I trust my readers will realize that, in comparing my brother to Judas Iscariot, I do not intend any comparison of myself with Jesus Christ.
This, of course, is true also of my own repentance over the things I sometimes said to my brother; but, under the circumstances, I don't think I owe him any reparation.
Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, 1977
In fairness to Speer, I should mention that he had spent twenty years in prison as a war criminal, which certainly was not easy; but it was of no practical use to former victims of the Nazis.
When I say that he would have my forgiveness, I mean that I would no longer bear him any ill will and that I would regard all accounts between us as having been squared. But under no circumstances will I ever again hold amicable conversation or maintain a personal relationship with him. Any such relationship would be bad for both of us.

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CHAPTER XV

NOTES TO CHAPTER XV

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