it sets a couple of blocks from here in the judiciary square. on the walls of that memorial are the names of 20,267 federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial law enforcement professionals who have given their lives in the line of duty. our latest initiative is to establish a national law enforcement museum, we have been working on this now since 2000. we have been working on it ever since and that museum will open in a few years from now. right across the street from the national memorial. but in many ways, our museum already exists, we have collected more than 17,000 artifacts. fascinating artifacts of american law enforcement history that will help us tell that

story. we have produced a number of educational and public programming events of which witness to history is part of that. this afternoon is certainly a good example, we bring together law enforcement professionals, experts who were involved in some of the most famous criminal cases in american history and today we bring together a fwrup of experts who worked so diligently and for so long on the unabomber investigation. one of the longest manhunts in american law enforcement history. >> i want to thank our friends from target for sponsoring today's event, i would like to turn our program over to john maynard, who will moderate today's program. >> thank you. >> good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and those of you watching on c-span. welcome to the museum, home of the unabomber's cabin.

i hope you have had a chance to see that in our concourse level. we're pleased to be partnering. for nearly two decades. beginning in 1978 an elusive criminal sent bombs that targeted universities and stores. the fbi branded him the unabomber. despite an investigation that spans 8 states. 35,000 word manifesto written by the unabomber brought an end to the reign of terror. the investigation was hampered by complex layers of bureaucracy and institutional pride and individual egos. today we talk to three fbi agents who were charged to the case by cutting through the procedures and breaking free of

bureaucratic restraints. their new book the unabomber, how the fbi broke its own rules details the investigation into the unabomber and how these three men worked together and in the agency. jim freeman was the special agent in charge of the multi-agency una bomb investigation and over saw strategic management. began as a special agent with the fbi in 1964. following the unabomber investigation he retired from the fbi in 1996 and joined charles schwab and recently retired as senior v.p. as global security. >> max knoll served as investigator on the unabomber task force. ultimately concentrating on

montana. served as an agent for 30 years and worked on numerous high profile investigations. the patty hurst kidnapping and the disappearance of jimmy hoffa. >> directed the task force between 1994 and 1998 on an operational level. he became inspector and led the task force in the hunt for olympic bomber rudolf. in 1999 named deputy assistant in the new counter terrorism division of the fbi and traveled extensively overseas, i should note in the book. jim writes that terry is the only fbi agent that he knows who got into a fight with a russian spy, when he wrestled a kgb agent to the ground on a brooklyn subway platform in 1986. so please welcome our panel.

[applause] >> jim, let's start with you. all three of you are listed as coauthors. the book is told from your perspective. tell us how it came together and what was your main objective for the book. >> thank you for kind comments. i want to point out that we represent dozens of fbi agents and atf agents and officers of the u.s. postal inspection service who all worked together for that task force over the last three years. you might have imagined how much work went into such a project. the book came about how the

investigation came about. i had volunteered, i think the only volunteer ever after 16 years of the inability to find him. i was already in san francisco and that's where the task force had been set up. so i wanted to take a shot at catching ted kaczynski. the investigation required that i look for a team that would bring together a strategic plan. i decided i wanted a different perspective, i wanted to shake it up. after 16 years, what could i do but shake it up, to do something different. in the fbi, there's definitely, what, at that time a wall between the national intelligence service and the

criminal investigative division for various reasons. i wanted to take advantage of the synergy of that by preparing a strategic plan and executing it. the book came together the same way. it was a matter of the three of us represent a unique perspective in the way the case was managed, and so we wrote in that manner. we didn't want to write a book that stood on its own as a -- as our own creation, we wanted to just do a definitive description of the investigation, which was very complex and had over the years had not been appropriately described in any of the many books that have been written about the unabomb case or mostly centered on ted kaczynski, we wrote the book to center on the investigation. >> tell us about your reaction when you were asked to join this kind of newly formed task force. >> i was stunned. i was very happy in palo alto.

that's a pretty nice place to be. we had an office across the street from stanford. i was pretty settled for the rest of my career, at least i thought. until jim had this bizarre idea that he was going to solve the unabomber. so i got a one-day from our counter intelligence program. i just have a couple of questions to ask you how do you feel about coming up to the city and taking together the task force. jim is putting together a different structure and is interested in you doing that. my response was to laugh, thanks for the offer, but no thanks. so there was a pause and he said, i'm actually not joking and then i didn't know what to say. everybody tried to stay away from the corridor in the san francisco office where they had signs that said unabomber, no one wanted to go near there. i just said, well, i think i

would need a lot of time to close up everything down here and get up there, and he said, how much time do you need? >> i said i would probably need at least a month and i thought i would get a couple of weeks. he said how about a couple of hours. nothing went right from there until i met jim and realized he was very serious and had a chance to do things differently. >> unlike the other two, i was already on the task force and i saw jim's taking over the task force and reconfiguring it and bringing terry in as an opportunity to leave the task force and going back to what i did best. i submitted a memorandum to jim to that effect, please let me go back and do what i was doing before, which was organized crime and asian organized crime work, and unfortunately terry and jim had other ideas, and terry convinced me that i needed

stay. he went and saw jim. jim said i know he wants off, but he's not going, so i stayed. >> jim, for maybe our younger visitors, give us a brief overview of the unabomber. what were some of his targets. >> that's what made it so difficult to identify a suspect. the unabomber it became very clear early on, had to be a lone wolf. he was not talking to anyone. something would have come to light less than 16, 17 years. his early targets were against university professors, graduate students, bombs sent through the mail to specific professors, as well as bombs place in the corridor outside of a computer room in the university of ohio and that was repeated in other locations as well, at berkeley.

early on, his third bombing was against an american airlines flight. a mail bomb was placed on there with a rigged out barometer to explode at a certain altitude. it did detonate and it did ignite a fire, it didn't explode. even so the pilot recognized that smoke was coming into the cabins and he did an emergency landing saving people's lives. so airlines and universities were the early targets. the we did u.n. for university, a for aircraft and bomb, it became unabomb. unabomber a moniker that stuck. >> for both max and terry, when did you realize that this was a case that you would have to

adjust the normal protocol. the subtitle of the book is how the fbi broke its own rules. >> go through some of those rules. >> we had a meeting in jim's office. one of the first things he wanted was a strategy and he wasn't clear on exactly what he wanted. he knew he wanted it out of the box and really something we haven't tried before, and really made the impression that we want to solve this case, we're not just doing this for some process or to kind of baby sit here until someone else comes along. we're all here in san francisco and we're going to stay here until we try and do this. i talked to max and we had an m in of meetings over the next week and talked to them about what they thought some of our failings were, as far as what they thought we had overlooked and it became apparent that we

needed a different organization and a different structure and all of the things that came with that. at the end of the week, i gave jim a paper, here is what i think we should do based upon everybody that i talked to, and their input. number one, we had kind of a moral issue. they had worked hard and been there a long time and just tired. i recommended to jim that we center people choose a partner. we told everybody, have people get together and choose a partner and you're going to be with this person for a long, long time. that way when you have a down day, probably your partner will have an up day and you'll be more creative. that was biggest thing we did in

the internal mechanism. then all of the more complicated things. first, we needed to have an immediate component built into our strategy. we would actively use the media to get to the public. eventually we would have a specific message to tell the public. second a specific analytic component. third, we need to deal with the issue of profiling. again, you probably watched shows like criminal minds and that type of thing, but it doesn't exactly happen in real life. the way it happens on tv or in a couple of our movie. we needed to choose differently there. those are the essence of what i had passed along to jim. >> you mentioned the media. we're at the museum, so it is a natural question for me to ask.

the fbi traditionally does play close to the vest when it comes to the media. what was the advantage in this case for you to shift the strategy, to be more media friendly. >> go ahead. >> well, we knew right away that we needed to have a consistent message to take to the public, and we also had to have a consistent spokesperson, so we decided to jim that he be our spokesperson, not fbi he headquarters, because jim would always have the latest information from the re-investigations. so we want to give a consistent message to the public. we started going to the public with one message and that message was, when you think about the unabomber, think about

chicago, between 1978 and 1980. then think about salt lake city between 1980 and 82 and 83, that seemed to be the focus of where there was a connection for the unabomber, and then after that time frame, from 1985 and on, think of the san francisco bay area. put those together, and then talking the about the composite, that became a significant part of that message. chicago, sat lake and then the san francisco area. when all of those pieces came together. we went back out to the public through jim with that message. i'll go back to that composite, because it is a fascinating story. >> the composite is the iconic picture of the man in the hooded

sweatshirt and the aviator sunglasses. >> early on in the investigation, you do a lot of monotonous tasks, we didn't have a lot of leads, reviewing the file and determining if things hadn't been done in the past. i was reviewing the file in regard to utah related bombings. there was a bombing in 1987 in salt lake city and it was the only time the unabomber was ever seen. he was seen by an employee very close. she was in three feet of him as he placed a bomb outside her left front tire of her car. she was interviewed afterwards by a police artist, an artist that they brought in to do a composite and she did the composite. when i reviewed the file, there were like five different composites by that same artist and that same witness on five different days and it was just unusual for me to see that.

why? so i found this particular witness, and went and interviewed her and asked her why. well, he wasn't capturing what i was trying to tell him. he kept getting the shape of the face wrong and some other things, and she was very adamant, and i said, well, tammy, how can you be so adamant about that, she said, well, i just reviewed my notes. i said what notes? there's no notes in the file from you. they instructed me the day i saw him to write down everything i saw and nobody ever came back and got it. she brought me her notes and she was very consistent with what she said. jim had just finished a case, supervising as the sac, a kidnapping case in san francisco, the kidnapping of a young woman who was snatched out of her bedroom at a slumber party and taken and raped and

killed. they i used a forensic artist, and it eventually led to the identification of a guy named richard allen davis. if you took his mugshot and you put jeanie bowlin's drawing and they were exact. you talk to a witness and you give them a book full of noses and types of faces and ears, and they plug all of these things together. and i always refer to those as mr. potatohead drawings, they capture the features, but not really the person. jeanie bowlin was a tremendous artist. she could interview a person and drive a real life-like picture.

go find her. we got jeanie and took her to utah. tammy fluey interviewed with jeanie for something like four hours to get a composite. everyone think the life of an fbi agent is interesting and do exciting things. during that four hour period of time, i got the privilege of playing with her three-year-old on the floor and watching lion king on the tv. the artist concept that resulted was a great artist concept. if you have the opportunity to look at the two different concepts, it is remarkable, after seven years, what tammy could describe and what jeanie could draw. if you take ted kaczynski's photograph, you see exactly the jaw line that she zdescribed.

we also did it in black and white. we thought he might be wearing a wig. we found he was wearing a yellow wig and throwing in yellow hairs when he didn't have blonde hair. >> give aus sense in the final years of the pressure you felt to catch this guy. i was reminded in the book, 1993 was the oklahoma city bombing. so talk about the pressures that you felt. >> one of the saddest things that happens, when you're all assembles and you think you have a great plan and someone else gets killed. that happened to us in 1995 and it happened to us in 1994.

while all of this was coming together and we thought we were make ago difference. and you can see the morale of people kind of start to dip. max and i commuted. we commuted from we live in the east bay over to san francisco. while everybody else chose their partner and we kind of became partners. we kept each other's morale up. people back here, because it is their job, the phones are ringing off the hook. the media has its own spin. the families and the victim of the families are on the phone and they want to talk to you. you do. you went and sat down with people and what do you say? i remember dr. charles epstine. he was a victim and took me out to meet them, and we sat in the living room and the apprehension

of going in there, one of the first families i met when i started to do this. we sat down and it was not at all what i expected. this is what got us through the days. they were more would a worried e and if i was getting enough sleep than what happened to him. as we felt with the victims' families over the year. they were all that way. in the darkest days, they would be sitting down with you and saying you got to make sure you stay focused and stay rested and know we have confidence in you. it is hard to convey how you feel. i'm tell you, i know how i think everybody feels today that's looking at the world and responsible on being on the front lines of counter terrorism. i think you worry a lot and work long hours and it is very

difficult to put it down. we used to say and i know they still say. like if you're a baseball player and you bat .500 you're just about the greatest in the world. we can't afford to bat .500 or .900. one person getting through can be not just a tragedy, but perhaps going forward could literally affect the sovereignty of our country. that's how serious it became and that's how we took this when we spent the days together. >> june of 1995, the unabomber sent out his manifesto. but also scientific american and penthouse, i did not know that. >> for me it was a major break.

back up a little bit. the thing i was concerned about the unabomber. the difficult to catch any criminal that's not communicating, it makes it difficult. once they communicate, you have the opportunity for lead material to develop. the unabomber had been quiet for almost seven years. in '94 it continued and he started writing letters. he wrote a letter to the editor at the new york times to begin with. and then leading up to suddenly he comes forward, a gushing 35,000 word manifesto, i thought hallelujah this is the right direction. he attached a threat to the newspapers and he followed that closely with i'm going to blow up, he was claiming to have a terrorist group behind him.

we're going to blow up an airliner if you don't publish the manifesto. a few days later he came later that i was just kidding about that. which we didn't think was very funny. when the manifesto came, we read it intense itly and looking fory clues. we had experts, linguistic experts and everything. terry would -- i would like to you address how we brought that to a conclusion to where we made use of the manifesto to bring the public's attention to it. >> sure. when we got the manifesto and all 35,000 words, there were a number of people on the task force who thought it would be a great project to go back and try to source what time was this

person who educated this and wrote this. what could we tell about the four books that were efference are -- referenced in the manifesto. in 1985. one of the things that happened in november, was that a professor in michigan. university of michigan got a bomb in the mail. professor mcconnell, and it was a bomb that was built in a three-ring binder. the letter said hey, this is my thesis statement on the history of science. i would like you to take a look at this and then maybe tell me what you think. kind of sponsor my thesis. when the professor opened up this binder, it was actually a bomb that went off. so we were really fascinating in 1994. a couple of postal inspectors were fascinated and proposed a project to focus in on this history of science, and what

does it mean. we had done a lot of work on that university campuses and by the time the manifesto came, a lot of the information from knowing all of those professors and able to go back to them and drilling down and bringing more details together. about the brooks that were referenced and the language and how it might relate, we spent months really trying to get to know, and understanding and reading the manifesto, and by the time we had someone step forward, that could help us bring it together. we had already been on those trails and able to then go back and pull a lot of pieces together. >> there was debate about whether or not to publish the manifesto. the washington post ultimately did. i believe there's a meeting that you can maybe describe where at first, you said, well, no, don't publish it, but changed your

mind quickly. tell us about that meeting. >> there was a meeting at the task force in san francisco, and the knee-jerk reaction was there's a national policy against doing business with terrorist and we have extortionate demand and we really should keep that in mind and we'll recommend to the director of the fbi, they should not publish and took about an hour to turn that decision around, and the task force members, say, you know, we really should look at this from a law enforcement operational perspective and let washington deal with the national policy issues and if it will move the investigation forward, and give us an opportunity to make an arrest in this case. doesn't that outweigh a broad national policy. we changed the recommendation to me and terry and i went back --

came back here and met with him and he agreed with us. we went back to the attorney general at the time and she agreed and the next day, i was amazed, but when the attorney general calls, director calls, busy people made themselves available and we had the publishers of the new york times and the post at at meeting. >> terry, you want to comment. >> we're all sitting on opposite side of the table. we thought it would have to do with talking about unabomb and publication. we have this scenario, where we think if you published it, one of the things we would do is we would be surveilling news stand in san francisco and other cities, our profilers tell us that perhaps the unabomber will show up at one of these and get a trophy copy of the paper.

i'm telling this story and they are listening and finally i said, we really think if the post or the times published this, we would set up on your news stands. in san francisco, there's only a couple of places where the same day washington post is actually published. i mean, sold. we think that would be the perfect way, because the new york times is everywhere. the perfect way to publish it and we can kind of stand up on those two places and then someone, i don't remember if it was from the post or the times, said, by the way, who sells more papers in san francisco, the post or the times? i had no answer. i didn't know what i should do, and so louis kind of looks up and he says, go ahead tell him. we all kind of left, because the washington post sells nothing in san francisco. he then said well, i wouldn't have been

surprised by that. who reads the washington post. so we had a good moment there, but ultimately, they shared the cost of publication and on september 19th, the washington post published the unabomber manifesto, we then implemented our plan. max and i were going home one night. had it already, all kinds of people coming to set up on news stands. we needed four or five to watch these locations. at 3:00 in the morning, we got a call before we ever started the commute, and they told us we have already got lines around the block at these places, we have hundreds of people waiting to buy the post, and you know, we needed more agents, so that's what we had to do. >> there turned out to be a real demand as far as for the information that was there and

we got the help of the media by publishing it and then i did numerous press conferences, urging the public to come forward, and there was a million dollar reward, that had existed for a few years, and 1-800 telephone line that people were calling in, in their potential suspects, ex-wives were reporting their husbands, like 52, or 54 brothers reported their brothers were the unabomber, and we were just looking for the one tip that would be the one that made good, and that is what happened. >> that's exactly what i was going to lead to. tell us about that tip. >> max, do you want to talk about that tip? >> we got a call from an an

attorney. who was trying to broker a deal with us about a client he had. he was a washington, d.c. attorney. things don't happen like they appeared to have happened. this attorney had a good working relationship with an fbi agent in washington, d.c. he was no longer here, he was in south carolina. i'll give you to a washington, d.c. conflict. this young agent molly flynn met with him and got a 20, 21-page document to read and it was typed on an antique typewriter. we had one piece of forensic evidence that we were looking for. 2.45 spacing. that's the one thing that connected all of these cases together over the years. >> so molly got it, took it to our laboratory, they examined it and said no, it is not that

typewriter. so they sent is back to molly and molly was a good agent. she knew how massive this case was. this case was not the normal case. you ask about the unafile. 59,000 volumes of information. she knew that. she called out to another supervisor on the unabomb case and she told him she had this document, she was sending it, but she didn't want it to get lost in all of the stuff coming in. pay attention to it, even though the typewriter isn't the same one, the ideas here are the exact idea in the manifesto. so joel got it and read it and got excited. he took it to terry and they got excited. terry and jim were going to lunch, they took it to terry and

terry said, oh, my god. we need to talk about this. he cancelled his meeting with jim, gave him some lame excuse that he couldn't go with him and we went to lunch together with the document. as we're having lunch and reading the document. who walks in but jim, he kind of looked at jerry, you know, so anyway. everyone got real excited about it. our task force, you have to understand, it relates to a question you ask before. we had just come off a very compelling suspect that jim had determined could not possibly be the unabomber. the task force members, a lot of them believed sincerely it was. they worked, hard, long, exhausting hours. we said, man, we need to give them a break, before we start on this again. and so, we do a little recognizance, terry does, jim is

gone, he won't be back. perfect. i'll lay it on his desk with a little yellow on it and say we need to talk about this on monday morning. >> we go downstairs in the federal building and relax. we hadn't been there 15 minutes and his pager is going off like crazy with the signal number there that the boss wants to see you. guess what, he didn't go home, he came back and the minute he read it, he got excited and we went back up and terry talked to him and jim said this is the man. this is the unabomber. we're turning the ship and we're going. we had 2417 actual suspects. not just people of interest, but actual suspects. so he was very perceptive. >> 1973, is that the date it was written? >> 1971. >> a treatise that ted kaczynski

had written and gave to his brother and when you read it and compared it to the reading of the manifesto. i came to the conclusion that the same person wrote it. you can't take that to the bank. that does not get you a federal search warrant or federal warrant. a lot more work to be done than that. but gut feeling was there. we started a linguistics study and started developing common phrases, as well as thoughts common to both documents, as well as the letters being written by the unabomber and then comparing then as we did with all potential suspects, with a timeline we had prepared, we knew the unabomber had been in sacramento on a certain date. fortunately david kaczynski

saved all of his letters. the unabomber had to be in these cities at that time. we had this unabomb timeline and a ted kaczynski timeline. they started to jive well. >> once we got the toumedocumenm the attorney. then in turn, david kaczynski and his wife agreed to meet with the agents and they in turn agreed to take the agents to chicago and talk with the mother and get all of these other letters and documents over the years and another investigation was going on. i was fortunate or unfortunate enough to be sent later by these guys to montana in february to head the investigation there. while they were in the warmth and comfort of northern

california. anyway. a lot of these things going on all over the country an being pulled together. >> i want to make sure we get the audience into the conversation, we have a staffer there with a microphone. if you have a question, raise your hand and she'll come to you. i do want to maybe jump forward a little bit. once you had identified ted kaczynski and you knew where he was. there was another race against the clock, against the media, which was cbs. tell us about what they had, and your negotiations with them about not releasing it. >> wow. >> that was an interesting time, because we were under very serious time constraints. once we had focused in, or terry and i had come to the conclusion, that yes, ted

kaczynski as a suspect is our man. you identify the perpetrator and put together all of the evidence that can stand up in court and prove it. when we looked at ted kaczynski and max saw him first in montana. here is this hermit living in a 10 by 12 cabin, no running water, no electricity. no means of heating other than a pot-bellied stove. our laboratories had told us he put components in these bombs where he's melting the elements. he would need electric to run that. instead we found out he was doing it in the pot belly stove. it didn't fit how this man travelled to all of these places and carried bombs, when all he had for transportation was a little bicycle.

and then to see him with his clothes literally falling off him and an absolute hermit. how did he target university professors and heads of corporations, it didn't fit. not everyone on our staff believed ted was a viable suspect. >> max was a hold out until the week before. >> i wondered if you felt that the manifesto was released as sort of a feeling from ted kaczynski that he was in competition with the terrorists who bombed the trade center and timothy mcveigh. >> we certainly thought that might be the case and we p you are sued -- pursued that. >> one of the first calls we made was after the mcveigh bombing of the federal building. she pointed out to us quickly

this was done by somebody who wants to be a mass killer. as opposed to the unabomber who kills from afar. those distinctions, while at that time, if seem to be something we could make a final conclusion on, were enough to convince most people, these were separate bombings. kaczynski had put his plan in motion as mcveigh put his plan in motion, it was totally coincidental. if you think back to 9-11 and the terrible tragedy of the twin towers. it was only a week later that up and down the coast that you had anthrax attacks. people wanted certain actions to take place, which would have released weapons and issues. they thought the anthrax was all connected saddam hussein in iraq. these are the kinds of things that go on and if you look at

the history of terrorism, you can see a lot of coincidences when something else is happening on another track. putting bombs on 11 airplanes coming across the pacific about the same time that theodore kaczynski and threatening to put a bomb on a plane coming out of the l.a.x. >> he had no knowledge of oklahoma city. >> i think you misunderstood my question. did you feel that kaczynski was in competition, in that he fell he wasn't being noticed like the others that were receiving all of the media coverage? >> we did feel that way. >> but he didn't even know about oklahoma city, so that wasn't a competition thing for him. he was just already setting his

own plan in motion. great we'll take a second question right there. >> very few vacations, long days and so forth. the other part of your question was -- >> how many bombings before you realized they were connected. law enforcement in the late 70s. didn't even know about the existence of a serial bomber until actually the 4th bombing. they concluded the third bombing. if you follow this case at all. you know that some of these

early bombs. the unabomber starting putting metal tags with the letters fc in this. the reason he did that was that law enforcement wasn't connecting the bombs he had left. rather than depend upon law enforcement to connect him. he started putting his calling card in there. so he would get his credit for what he was doing. >> all right. >> i'm a retired customs agent. you have an amazing organization an investigative capability. i would like to ask a question that's related to mentions of sovereignty and national policy, it takes precedence. we have a recurring theme of the lone bomber and the lone assassin. in this case you did an amazing job. the osama bin laden, the sole

person who guided 9-11. world trade center number 7 collapsed in 7 seconds. the third tower that collapsed that day. how did osama bin laden do that? i would ask you are you confident that there weren't explosive devices used. and also as we approached the 50th anniversary of the commission. e. howard hunt, watergate convict, confessed to being part of the plot as involved in the kennedy assassination before he di died. would you believe lee harvey oswald was a lone assassin in that matter. >> we're going to stop it there. if you want to take that. >> well, you asked a lot. i think you kind of put your fingers on a lot of cases where many people have many questions,

and i would not even pretend to try and answer and give some sort of comfort. it looked to me like they had covered a lot. i think everybody who is interested in this, should go back and look at the cases you mentioned. they can make up their mind. i think that bottom line for us, as far as things like the world trade center, we have an indictment on a number of people because of the world trade center. we have indictments going back to the embassy bombings. the reason i bring it up, you can see a lot of interconnections between the cast of characters that led from year to year in what eventually became 9-11. i think that's what i would suggest. >> back to the unabomber.

tell us about that first moment. the first of the three of you to actually see them. once you are surrounding the cabin, what was the lure to get them out. >> well, first of all, i saw him a month before we actually took him into custody. i developed a good source of information and who owned the property around him. we were trying to get a physical description of the cabin for the search warrant affidavit or arrest warrant affidavit and we had to have the specificity of what the cabin looked like and exactly where it was located. that was one of the jobs that jim asked me to do, and i walked up along with one of his neighbors up a skid road that brought lumber and trees out of the forest above him for milling at a lumber mill. we were about 40 yards away from his cabin. he opened the door in his cabin and stuck his head out.

my first response was, my god is that we we have been looking for all of these years. he was a wild looking person. he had on an orange knit cap. you conjure up an image of who you think you're looking for. here is a guy living in this little cabin, it just amazed me. with that perspective in mind. when jim made the decision to take them out of the cabin. another job that he had given me was to develop an arrest plan. we haven't a ruby ridge or a waco standoff in which he would be killed? we had to develop a plan.

in my estimation the plan was pretty simple. he had to come out of that cabin sometime, all of the time i was up there, he wasn't coming out of the cabin. he was staying in close proximity.

he would introduce us as people .rom a mining company

he had told ted kaczynski that he had done that in december, and ted was not happy. he insured ted that he would see to it that this landing company would stay off of ted's property when he came up. but he did not know the reason ted kaczynski did not want people around because he was experimenting with bombs and so forth. we got up to the cap and he opened the door. jerry burns, the police officer, said i'm a high, i am here with these two gentlemen from the mining company and we need to see where your corner posts are so they will ensure their employees do not trespass on your land this summer when they come up here. he said, well, my corner posts are adequately marked. they said carmen know, we have

got to be helped with this spirit he said, ok, he opened the door and took one step towards jerry, a sizable guard -- guy, and that was a big mistake to jerry grabbed him. it was very dramatic. he started wrestling and fighting. big taught mcdaniel, a big man, --t him -- wrapped him up taking my credentials out and saying, mr. kaczynski, fbi, and he looked at my weapon staring him in the nose from six inches and completely complied. so it was very not dramatic. it was very easy and simple. it went like we planned it, think god. i was wondering if you could comment a little more on the manifesto itself. i have not read the full my understanding is that it is a lot about

socialization and political theories in the psychology. i am wondering, what was the importance of the manifesto to ted kaczynski? and how does it relate to the bombing itself? >> it was a philosophy against technology. the philosophy itself was not unique to ted kaczynski by any means. but the way he expressed it was what was unique. that is what helped us out in the investigation. >> it is called industrial society and its future. there was very little technology in his living. ted kaczynski, a of people ask, can -- ted kaczynski was anger, revenge-motivated to we did huge studies trying to connect victims in this. what was the commonality? there was no commonality. kaczynski selected victims

who represent in things he did not like it he did not like university professors or graduate students, did not like airlines, do not like computers and technology. he did not like psychologist's. i called him an equal opportunity hater. he hated everything and anything that was not him. he would act on it. we know exactly why he did what he did, no question about it at he wrote it down and says very specifically that i have a lot of hatred in me and i am doing this for no particular purpose other than revenge and anger. actually inserted in our , and each chapter has a quotation of ted's own words describing his motivations and reaction to people he had killed or people he did not kill, the bomb malfunctioning, and he expressed regret that he did not kill them. i think it adds an interesting flavor or description to the

investigation. when we had him as a suspect and had him arrested, we went back and were able to find he had written editorials to the "chicago tribune" and other in 19 70 had we thought about going back and checking paper and been lucky enough to find some of these, it looked just like the manifesto. he had been having these thoughts and had a brand vision of the way life could be for many, many years. >> ted kaczynski had an iq of about 70 p or d graduated -- of 170 p he graduated from harvard and went to the university of michigan. when he was at michigan, he wrote that he was dedicating his life to go in to the wilderness after he graduated and accumulated enough money to do this, going to the wilderness and beginning his campaign of

terrorism and killing people he did not like. so this was not something that just occurred spontaneously to he had been formatting this idea for many, many years. >> unfortunately, we are out of time. but we invite you all to the dining room where you can ask further questions to our panel. and there will also be light refreshments. most importantly, we will be selling copies of the book "unit bomber." bomber." bomber thank you for joining us. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by national captioning institute]

>> tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern, we will hear president ford's neck and 74 testimony before house judiciary subcommittee on why he pardoned former president next and. nixon had resigned two months earlier to avoid impeachment on charges stemming from the watergate scandal. presidential historian richard norton smith provides background on the congressional testimony.

that is today at 8:00 p.m. eastern here on "american history tv." >> next, military history professor christopher gabel discusses the importance of railroads and steam powered locomotives to the union and confederate army to he explains how railroads made the scale of the civil war possible and described how and why the confederacy's powerful railroad system broke down as the war progressed. the kansas city public library hosted this hour-long event. very much for the kind introduction, and thank you all for being here. folks, you know when we look back at the onset of the american civil war, we view it through the lens of the war, itself. that shapes what we're looking at. if you view the onset of the civil war a little more objectively instead of being all

-- seeing all of the differences between north and south, you'll tend to spot all the similarities. think about it. the two sides in this conflict. it was a war of brother against brother and in some cases literally so. the two sides shared a common language. they had similar cultures and religions. they shared a very similar political philosophy. in the military, the north and south employed virtually identical weapon. they used the same tactics. their top commanders all graduated from the same military academy. wherever the union put an army in this war, the confederacy put an army as well. now, it might not have been as large and well supplied, but an army is there, nonetheless. in other words, folks, this is a surprisingly symetrical war at its outset.

in fact, it's hard to think of a more symetrical war. but what about data such as these, that you've all seen? if you've ever read a book on the civil war you've seen , figures like this. showing a preponderance of resources that the north had over the south in everything except cotton. well, folks, i put it to you. if these statistics were really that important, the war should have been over in a month, right? consider this one right here. firearms production. 32-1 advantage in the north. i defy anybody to prove to me that the confederacy lost the war because they ran out of guns. that statistic apparently just isn't all that important. and so when we look over here at railroad mileage, 2.4 to 1