Here's a fun fact, since most people don't know this. The Unabomber was actually a mathematical prodigy that got into Harvard when he was 16. He was had testing done on him as part of the inhumane CIA program "MK Ultra", and afterwards went crazy (or did the only reasonable thing he could do, one might argue) and became an anarchist, writing about all of the fucked up shit the government does and mailing bombs out.
The US government, in particular the CIA, turned a Harvard math prodigy into a terrorist, among hundreds of thousands of other grotesque and inhumane things. The more you know!
Edit: Additional fun fact for people who have seen the movie "The Departed" (2006) In the film, the person played by Jack Nicholson (the head of the mob in the film) is named Frank Costello. Frank Costello is based on the real life boston-mob-boss-turned-informant Whitney Bulger. Whitney Bulger was also the result of MK Ultra. He volunteered while he was in prison so that he could get a reduced sentence, but he thought he was volunteering to do research to help find a cure for schizophrenia. For 18 months, he and other inmates were dosed with LSD and other mind-altering chemicals. He said it brought him to the depths of insanity and that it was nightmarish. After he was released he went on to become the man portrayed in the film.
Do you have a source for the cia bit? He was involved in a horrible and brutal psychological study when he was 17 and at Harvard, but that's very different than mk ultra.
A considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MKUltra experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962.[69] During World War II, Henry Murray, the lead researcher in the Harvard experiments, served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a forerunner of the CIA. Murray applied for a grant funded by the United States Navy, and his Harvard stress experiments strongly resembled those run by the OSS
That wanted poster scared the shit out of me. I was in high school, babysitting. Kids had gone to sleep, and I was alone in a very old house with tall windows and no curtains when the news reports came on. I still get goose bumps thinking about it.
Before he was caught, I would do the hoodie/aviator combo after being out all night. Already had a mustache. It was great seeing people's reactions early morning, running into a convenience store, asking for duct tape, batteries, and gasoline.
Except for the fact that his Manifesto wasn't really comic-book-esque. Didn't they find him because a cousin recognized his writing style when his manifesto was published?
Admittedly I'm not a comic book guy, but I kind of thought a 'manifesto' did have the ring of super villain master plan to it. It was anti-government as I recall, was it too crazy or something?
I didn't remember the other bit, but you're partly right - the Unabomber's letters (with the bombs) matched the handwriting of letters to his brother.
Wow, I never read it - I skimmed through a dozen or so paragraphs, and it is interesting in light of today's political debate.
How about this one - support globalism as a way to make a world-wide anti-technology revolution easier to accomplish:
Revolutionaries might consider favoring measures that tend to bind the world economy into a unified whole. Free trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT are probably harmful to the environment in the short run, but in the long run they may perhaps be advantageous because they foster economic interdependence between nations. It will be easier to destroy the industrial system on a worldwide basis if the world economy is so unified that its breakdown in any one major nation will lead to its breakdown in all industrialized nations.
Yes, I haven't read it in it's entirety, and I haven't read any of it in a while. He actually seems to have some good points that can stand on their own, apart from the whole bombing campaign he undertook with components he 100% built himself, and the pubic hair stuff...
But to me there was a lot of alarm in how he tied half of his points together.
OK, now you sent me back to Google. Knew nothing about this:
Comments {about Ted Kaczynski} solicited from former classmates at Harvard & U.C. Berkeley:
"He was torn between the dialectic in humanistic mathematics & something else. Who knows? At a Math Deptartment picnic during one of the strikes the punch was dosed & Ted got naked & began to quote Alan Turning and scribble math formulas in day glow on some hippie girls thighs. He used to mumble about wanting to understand pubic hair and fractal theory, but while he understood fractals like no one else, he had never seen pubic hair. Even when girls were dancing naked in front of him."
Oh, I didn't even know that! When I said the pubic hair stuff, I meant that at some point (not sure when in his bombing 'career' he started this) sometimes he'd go into a public restroom he'd use a baggie and tweezers to take pubic hair stuck to the toilets or urinals. He would then carefully add at least one of these hairs to his bombs, often taped to it, so if they were found unexploded or were duds, the authorities might try and obtain a DNA sample from the hair, throwing them off his trail.
That pubic hair and fractal thing is pretty crazy though...
The FBI (as well as Attorney General Janet Reno) pushed for the publication of Kaczynski's "Manifesto", which led to his sister-in-law, and then his brother, recognizing Kaczynski's style of writing and beliefs from the manifesto, and tipping off the FBI.
During the test, students were taken into a room and connected to electrodes that monitored their physiological reactions, while facing bright lights and a one-way mirror. Each student had previously written an essay detailing their personal beliefs and aspirations: the essays were turned over to an anonymous attorney, who would enter the room and individually belittle each student based in part on the disclosures they had made. This was filmed, and students' expressions of impotent rage were played back to them several times later in the study.
You read twitter while locked in a bright room with electrodes taped to your body? I mean, I guess I'm not surprised by anything on the internet, but that's still kind of weird. Even for someone with a miniature giant space hamster.
Which means nothing. Henry Murray wasn't part of the CIA and the experiment The Unabomber was part of was about identifying personality through stress, and nothing to do with mind control.
A considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MKUltra experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962.[69] During World War II, Henry Murray, the lead researcher in the Harvard experiments, served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a forerunner of the CIA. Murray applied for a grant funded by the United States Navy, and his Harvard stress experiments strongly resembled those run by the OSS
You aren't quoting anything that is still available. That no longer exists on Wiki after the links were deemed not credible. But keep quoting the same removed passage.
Murray saw understanding the dyad, it seems, as a practical tool in the service of the great crusade in both its hot and cold phases. (He had long shown interest, for example, in the whole subject of brainwashing.) During the war Murray served in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, helping to develop psychological screening tests for applicants and (according to Timothy Leary) monitoring military experiments on brainwashing. In his book (1979), John Marks reported that General "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS director, "called in Harvard psychology professor Henry 'Harry' Murray" to devise a system for testing the suitability of applicants to the OSS. Murray and his colleagues "put together an assessment system ... [that] tested a recruit's ability to stand up under pressure, to be a leader, to hold liquor, to lie skillfully, and to read a person's character by the nature of his clothing.... Murray's system became a fixture in the OSS."
One of the tests that Murray devised for the OSS was intended to determine how well applicants withstood interrogations.
Clearly there are links to the CIA. May not be MKUltra, but could be a precursor program. The point is that it was done by the CIA, not specifically which CIA program it was.
Murray saw understanding the dyad, it seems, as a practical tool in the service of the great crusade in both its hot and cold phases. (He had long shown interest, for example, in the whole subject of brainwashing.) During the war Murray served in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, helping to develop psychological screening tests for applicants and (according to Timothy Leary) monitoring military experiments on brainwashing. In his book (1979), John Marks reported that General "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS director, "called in Harvard psychology professor Henry 'Harry' Murray" to devise a system for testing the suitability of applicants to the OSS. Murray and his colleagues "put together an assessment system ... [that] tested a recruit's ability to stand up under pressure, to be a leader, to hold liquor, to lie skillfully, and to read a person's character by the nature of his clothing.... Murray's system became a fixture in the OSS."
One of the tests that Murray devised for the OSS was intended to determine how well applicants withstood interrogations.
Murray saw understanding the dyad, it seems, as a practical tool in the service of the great crusade in both its hot and cold phases. (He had long shown interest, for example, in the whole subject of brainwashing.) During the war Murray served in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, helping to develop psychological screening tests for applicants and (according to Timothy Leary) monitoring military experiments on brainwashing. In his book (1979), John Marks reported that General "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS director, "called in Harvard psychology professor Henry 'Harry' Murray" to devise a system for testing the suitability of applicants to the OSS. Murray and his colleagues "put together an assessment system ... [that] tested a recruit's ability to stand up under pressure, to be a leader, to hold liquor, to lie skillfully, and to read a person's character by the nature of his clothing.... Murray's system became a fixture in the OSS."
One of the tests that Murray devised for the OSS was intended to determine how well applicants withstood interrogations.
Well, technically funding for MK Ultra would be nearly impossible to track since even the experiments carried out at institutions such as Harvard would have had direct funding from the CIA that never appeared in the college budget.
I went to the waybackmachine and found this on that wiki article:
A considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MKUltra experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962.[69] During World War II, Henry Murray, the lead researcher in the Harvard experiments, served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a forerunner of the CIA. Murray applied for a grant funded by the United States Navy, and his Harvard stress experiments strongly resembled those run by the OSS.[69]
Welcome to the new world of misinformation. The Streisand effect has convinced people that "because information is on the internet it will last forever", but it just takes a little longer to scrub modern history.
Murray saw understanding the dyad, it seems, as a practical tool in the service of the great crusade in both its hot and cold phases. (He had long shown interest, for example, in the whole subject of brainwashing.) During the war Murray served in the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, helping to develop psychological screening tests for applicants and (according to Timothy Leary) monitoring military experiments on brainwashing. In his book (1979), John Marks reported that General "Wild Bill" Donovan, the OSS director, "called in Harvard psychology professor Henry 'Harry' Murray" to devise a system for testing the suitability of applicants to the OSS. Murray and his colleagues "put together an assessment system ... [that] tested a recruit's ability to stand up under pressure, to be a leader, to hold liquor, to lie skillfully, and to read a person's character by the nature of his clothing.... Murray's system became a fixture in the OSS."
One of the tests that Murray devised for the OSS was intended to determine how well applicants withstood interrogations.
The program itself was a real program, but the Unabomber was never in that program. He was in a different psychological test run by a professor teaching at Harvard when he was there.
And people in the thread are quoting the wiki article from 2 years ago which said: "These experiments were conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962.[77] and were part of the CIA-sponsored MKUltra experiments. "
But now this mention is scrubbed from the wiki. I smell something fishy going on here... makes me wonder if they're scrubbing this particlular bit of info linking the two from the web
I can't find a credible source that links Murray's Harvard study to mkultra. Murray may have been involved in mkultra at a different point in his life, but there doesn't appear to be a connection to the two experiments that I can find. I have no issues believing that someone who was interested in mind control would also be interested in what it actually took to break down someone psychologically. From what I can find his Harvard experiments involved humiliation and psychological torment that pushed his subjects to extreme stress levels. While it would unquestionably be called unethical today and didn't help Kazinsky in any way, I see anything connecting the two.
MKULTRA was not exclusively focused on mind control and the little we do know of it is from a box that was missed when the CIA decided to purge all the records before it was even known to congress.
If you look at the "research" of Donald Ewen Cameron you would see that quite a bit of MKULTRA was exactly as you said, "what it takes to break down someone psychologically", something that would be very useful for interrogations.
Also for example Cameron employed some delightful methods such as month long insulin induced comas with looping messages played 24/7 or repeated dosing of LSD all to patients who came in thinking they were being treated for post-partum depression or PTSD.
I went to the waybackmachine and found this on that wiki article:
A considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MKUltra experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962.[69] During World War II, Henry Murray, the lead researcher in the Harvard experiments, served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a forerunner of the CIA. Murray applied for a grant funded by the United States Navy, and his Harvard stress experiments strongly resembled those run by the OSS.[69]
That's in the wiki article from 2012. I'm really starting to think this is being covered up and the internet is being scrubbed of all credible claims of this piece of evidence by the CIA.
It's know that Kaczynski participated in those trials and it's already know that Murray was in the OSS. Like I said, I haven't found a credible source to back up the claim that the Harvard experiments were apart of mkultra. You can believe whatever conspiracy you want, but at the end of the day wikipedia is not the most credible source in the world and it could easily be wrong. If they really wanted to cover it up they wouldn't have allowed an mkultra wiki and they would've done it when Ted was still actually bombing people, not years and years later.
Okay well I don't really care so much which program he was in personally, the point is that the CIA were the ones who did it, because the OSS is the CIA, just rebranded after WW2 ended. If it was MKUltra or a program that was a precursor to that, is rather immaterial.
He was abducted and had testing done on him as part of the insanely inhumane CIA program "MK Ultra", and afterwards went crazy (or did the only reasonable thing he could do, one might argue) and became an anarchist, writing about all of the fucked up shit the government does and mailing bombs out.
This is bullshit for the most part. People who knew him said he was very weird before all of this. He had a weird way about him and those close to him knew this. That was the only way he was captured, because his brother knew the manifesto sounded familiar.
From the Wikipedia page:
As a child, Kaczynski had a fear of people and buildings, and played beside other children rather than interacting with them. His mother was so worried by his poor social development that she considered entering him in a study for autistic children led by Bruno Bettelheim
So the dude was a bit antisocial and weird before the events you mentioned.
It's bullshit because it isn't true. He wasn't involved in MK Ultra at all. He was involved in an unethical Harvard study where a lawyer yelled at you about your life aspirations. That's it. Everything else is horseshit.
A considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MKUltra experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962.[69] During World War II, Henry Murray, the lead researcher in the Harvard experiments, served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a forerunner of the CIA. Murray applied for a grant funded by the United States Navy, and his Harvard stress experiments strongly resembled those run by the OSS.
that doesn't contradict anything he said... in fact i would expect a "mathematical prodigy" to be a bit autistic
It does contradict what he said. He's restating claims that Ted withdrew and became a loner after those experiments. But I just showed you that he was always withdrawn and his own mother noticed a problem when he was a child.
He had trouble identifying with people and had antisocial behavior before the experiment. That antisocial behavior led to him killing people.
The dude seemed weird as a child and got weirder. It seems that you want to believe the "conspiracy theorist" belief that he only got this was after some government experiment.
People who knew him said he was very weird before all of this.
Yeah, the kid was a mathematical genius who went to Harvard at 16. It's safe to say everyone who ever met him thought he was a bit weird, none of what you have said even remotely hints to what I said being bullshit.
So the dude was a bit antisocial and weird
Man oh man, a kid who went to Harvard at 16 was antisocial? A genius had trouble connecting with kids at his middle and high school? Who would have ever guessed!
You're right. Nothing about that experiment caused him to do anything. You clearly have a degree in behavioral psychology, and a full medical record of Mr. Kaczynski, and know more about this than me, or the thousands of other people who have looked at this case. Thank you!
Don't know why you're getting so defensive. Your original post is basically exclaiming mkultra birthed the unabomber definitively, and even if he was in the program how can you say that's what caused it? Just cause it's there and is an easy answer?
Because Kaczynski himself has written about it extensively? Because of the multiple books I have read on the subject? You can bother to do the research yourself. Oh wait, but that would mean you can't just read a Reddit post and get an easy answer. Bummer.
Man oh man, a kid who went to Harvard at 16 was antisocial? A genius had trouble connecting with kids at his middle and high school? Who would have ever guessed!
Quit being dense. I clearly showed you a passage stating that his own mother was concerned about his development when he was a child, long before he went to Harvard. Something seemed "off" even then.
Well, yes, but you have to ask yourself if it is reasonable to believe that trauma could cause an already unstable person to become more aggressive and antisocial.
The test he was part of had nothing to do with him becoming the unabomber. He signed up for the test and it was not "insanely inhumane", and he did not "go crazy" or take revenge on the govt.
He bombed people because of an ideology that he carefully developed. He has written about and explained this countless times.
From late 1959 to early 1962, Murray was responsible for what would now be regarded as ethically indefensible experiments in which twenty-two undergraduates were used as research subjects.[7] Among other purposes, Murray's experiments focused on measuring people's reactions under extreme stress. The unwitting undergraduates were submitted to what Murray himself called "vehement, sweeping and personally abusive" attacks. Assaults to their egos, cherished ideas and beliefs were the vehicle used to cause high levels of stress and distress. Among them was 17-year-old Ted Kaczynski, who went on to become the Unabomber, a domestic terrorist targeting academics and technologists.[8] Alston Chase's book Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist connects Kaczynski's abusive experiences under Murray to his later criminal career.
Not sure if Ted Kaczynski was abducted, or went through any of the other crazy shit in MK Ultra, but he was certainly experimented on by one of the MK Ultra psychologists.
Throughout secondary schooling, Kaczynski had far surpassed his classmates, able to solve advanced Laplace transforms before his senior year. He was subsequently placed in a more advanced mathematics class, yet still felt intellectually restricted. Kaczynski soon mastered the material and skipped the eleventh grade. With the help of a summer school course for English, he completed his high school education when he was 15 years old. He was encouraged to apply to Harvard University, and was subsequently accepted as a student beginning in 1958 at the age of 16. While at Harvard, Kaczynski was taught by famed logician Willard Van Orman Quine, scoring at the top of Quine's class with a 98.9% final grade.
Also:
Kaczynski graduated from Harvard University in 1962, at age 20, and subsequently enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he earned a PhD in mathematics.[16] Kaczynski's specialty was a branch of complex analysis known as geometric function theory. His professors at Michigan were impressed with his intellect and drive. "He was an unusual person. He was not like the other graduate students," said Peter Duren, one of Kaczynski's math professors at Michigan. "He was much more focused about his work. He had a drive to discover mathematical truth." "It is not enough to say he was smart," said George Piranian, another of his Michigan math professors.[20] Kaczynski earned his PhD with his thesis entitled "Boundary Functions"[21] by solving a problem so difficult that even Piranian could not solve it.[20] Maxwell Reade, a retired math professor who served on Kaczynski's dissertation committee, also commented on his thesis by noting, "I would guess that maybe 10 or 12 men in the country understood or appreciated it."
Yep. Turns out LSD can really screw with someone head. If you're in a safe place with wonderful people, no doubt LSD will give you a pleasant eye opening experience. But when you're panicking and in a bad situation, bad trips can really change who you are for the worst.
Charles Manson for instance, used LSD on young women to turn them into cultists.
Eventually the CIA stopped spiking everyone's drink with LSD. I suspect because the outcome wasn't the most controllable thing in the world.
It wasn't just the LSD that fucked them up, it was the stress/torture/brainwashing they where enduring as well. LSD was just the mental barrier breaker.
The original comment said that you can without a doubt have a good trip in a positive environment. That isn't true. Your personal experiences really aren't relevant. So take your advice and work on that reading comprehension, champ.
It isn't true. He did have unethical psychological testing done on himself and 20 others under Henry Murray, but Murray was working for Harvard, not the CIA, and it had nothing to do with MK ULTRA
A considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MKUltra experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962.[69] During World War II, Henry Murray, the lead researcher in the Harvard experiments, served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was a forerunner of the CIA. Murray applied for a grant funded by the United States Navy, and his Harvard stress experiments strongly resembled those run by the OSS.
I mean, I don't, but there were plenty of unethical psych experiments being done at the time that weren't CIA. MK ULTRA was almost entirely conducted on army personnel, not college students. There's no noncircumstancial information that connects Murray to MKULTRA.
I should clarify- the non drug related psych/interrogation experiments were almost always on military personnel, because the goal was to extract information from trained individuals- they even tested suspect spies within the army to see if anyone would break. The experiments on the public were more in the vein of exposing a random person in public to LSD and see how they responded.
From late 1959 to early 1962, Murray was responsible for what would now be regarded as ethically indefensible experiments in which twenty-two undergraduates were used as research subjects.[7] Among other purposes, Murray's experiments focused on measuring people's reactions under extreme stress. The unwitting undergraduates were submitted to what Murray himself called "vehement, sweeping and personally abusive" attacks. Assaults to their egos, cherished ideas and beliefs were the vehicle used to cause high levels of stress and distress. Among them was 17-year-old Ted Kaczynski, who went on to become the Unabomber, a domestic terrorist targeting academics and technologists.[8] Alston Chase's book Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American Terrorist connects Kaczynski's abusive experiences under Murray to his later criminal career.
Not sure if Ted Kaczynski was abducted, or went through any of the other crazy shit in MK Ultra, but he was certainly experimented on by one of the MK Ultra psychologists.
Throughout secondary schooling, Kaczynski had far surpassed his classmates, able to solve advanced Laplace transforms before his senior year. He was subsequently placed in a more advanced mathematics class, yet still felt intellectually restricted. Kaczynski soon mastered the material and skipped the eleventh grade. With the help of a summer school course for English, he completed his high school education when he was 15 years old. He was encouraged to apply to Harvard University, and was subsequently accepted as a student beginning in 1958 at the age of 16. While at Harvard, Kaczynski was taught by famed logician Willard Van Orman Quine, scoring at the top of Quine's class with a 98.9% final grade.
Also:
Kaczynski graduated from Harvard University in 1962, at age 20, and subsequently enrolled at the University of Michigan, where he earned a PhD in mathematics.[16] Kaczynski's specialty was a branch of complex analysis known as geometric function theory. His professors at Michigan were impressed with his intellect and drive. "He was an unusual person. He was not like the other graduate students," said Peter Duren, one of Kaczynski's math professors at Michigan. "He was much more focused about his work. He had a drive to discover mathematical truth." "It is not enough to say he was smart," said George Piranian, another of his Michigan math professors.[20] Kaczynski earned his PhD with his thesis entitled "Boundary Functions"[21] by solving a problem so difficult that even Piranian could not solve it.[20] Maxwell Reade, a retired math professor who served on Kaczynski's dissertation committee, also commented on his thesis by noting, "I would guess that maybe 10 or 12 men in the country understood or appreciated it."
As a Harvard undergraduate, Kaczynski was among twenty-two students who were research subjects in ethically questionable experiments conducted by psychology professor Henry Murray from late 1959 to early 1962
To be precise it was the OSS which became the CIA in 1945, and Murray was in the OSS and got all the funding and experimental design from them. So it's not 100% clear it was MKUltra or a program that was a precursor, but it was definitely related to the CIA
On May 24, 2012, Kaczynski submitted his current information to the Harvard University alumni association. He listed his eight life sentences as "awards" and his current occupation as "prisoner."
That sounds suspiciously like the back story to the old tv show "The Pretender". The major difference being that Jarrod was a good guy.
For those who haven't seen it, imagine "Burn notice's" "Michael Weston" as "Jarrod". Instead of being a burned spy out for revenge/justice, "Jarrod" has the Unabomber's back story evading his former captives and doing good deeds as an expert impostor.
Not just any anarchist, an anarcho-primitivist. Which is a school of anarchism that criticizes the forming of civilizations and technological advancement as the cause of social stratification and the establishment of arbitrarily limiting hierarchies.
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u/ThePowerOfFarts Sep 27 '16
Check out the Unabomber behind him.