gary just described? >> the bombing was in 1985, and gary's bombing was

>> some of it is the way someone approach that. when gary walked up, you had the inclination to reach to the edge you moved it slightly, it exploded and the force went in a different direction. >> the final two bombs did result in deaths. >> they did. thomas muller sure was an advertising executive in caldwell, new jersey.

he got one of those in the mail. it was a week or two before christmas, and little kids were running around the kitchen. they were getting ready to go get a christmas tree. the mom called them at the last minute. mr. mosher had been out of town. the kids went to get their pajamas off and get ready to go, and there was a of mail that stacked up. the first thing he took was this package that had a san francisco return address on it. his wife heard this terrible noise and by the time she got down towards the kitchen there was smoke everywhere. this was so powerful in this videocassette container, that it had shrapnel, when it went off they had those copper skillets above this stove, and it went through some of the -- some of

the shrapnel went through. that was the power of this blast. esther mosher was killed almost instantly. finally, in april of 1995, right here in sacramento, a bomb had been sent in the mail addressed to mr. william dennison, the president of the cfa. he had been replaced by mr. gilbert murray. mr. murray was going to take this package up to mr. dennison in northern california, but when he went to open it, the same kind of bomb that mr. mosher received with all the power and destructive power, it just had no chance as he was sitting at his desk and opened that package. >> can you talk about what the unit bomber was doing to avoid

attention? >> i can. we were after somebody that knew a lot. that was certainly to smart to leave a trail. we had no idea how smart he was. theodore kaczynski was a genius. he went to a great deal of work and effort to make sure he didn't leave a trail behind. for example, all of these bombs were handmade. gary mentioned seeing something shiny, it was probably something fashion from chrome on an old junk car. he would start with the bombs. he would build them from scratch. when we try to trace things back from a bombing crime scene forensically, in these cases we couldn't trace them back to anything. he would take casings off the battery so you couldn't find where a battery had been bought.

it started with the bombs. he took sandpaper, and sanded his devices carefully to make sure that when those bombs were placed in the mail they didn't have any of his fingerprints on them. he wore gloves when he was putting them together. in one instance he went to the men's room at the bus station in montana, he got down on the floor and gathered hair from the floor of the bathroom, he took that hair back and then started putting it in between layers of tape on the bombs that he built. he would write that i did this because the fbi found hair at the crime scene, they would think it came from the person who built the bomb but it was just once he gathered. he would disguise himself. in one instance he reports, or talks about, going to a junk store in salt lake city.

he stuffed his nose with cotton and he had trimmed his hair died at black. he had on these weird glasses that he put on. he went in there and figured if anyone sees me they are not going to recognize me the way i look today. he did all these things in an effort to make sure he concealed his identity, and it helped him later if we started looking at him seriously as a suspect. >> there was a famous composite picture that was circulated, everyone was familiar with that. how did that come about? >> gary was part of a major turn a bond -- turning point in unabomber history. you saw the unit bomber -- you saw the unabomber. he was kneeling on the ground to arm the bomb you would come across. she noticed something was wrong. she is calling your dad, calling

mr. wright, she is watching literally theodore kaczynski set the bomb and motion so when someone walks along. then her attention is taken off of him and he leaves. he walks around the corner and is gone. almost immediately you happen to pull in. she described him. this is the first time we knew the unabomber appears is a male. we cap to getting the question, you sure it is a male? but she described him very well. this becomes one of the more embarrassing parts of this case for us. this happened in 1987. she described this man perfectly . subsequently, a composite was put together. that composite was distributed between 1987 and the time of our task force in 1984. tammy was never happy with that.

something dramatic at happened here in the bay area during that timeframe, the case of richard allen davis and the kidnapping and murder of poly class. if you have seen the picture of richard allen davis, and you see a composite put together by jeannie boylan, police artist you see the similarity in these 2. we started thinking as we were looking for different ideas to apply to the unabomber, why don't we redo the composite and use jeannie boylan. one of our supervisors met tammy and her young daughter was there , and jeannie boylan was want to sit down with tammy and go through the details of putting together this composite we had

ultimately distributed, and max likes to make sure people know , while jeannie boylan and tamura were in the other room doing the composite, max was trying to entertain the kids and watch multiple showings of the lion king to keep them busy. it turns out that composite the sweatshirt, we got that out in 1984. we put it out with a message, we were telling the public think of unabomber, and the devices since t in the 19 70's, think of two bombings, think of a nexus with the bay area, look at this composite. those are the things we were dealing with to bring people

into this big mystery. we had one other small detail, the original composite. you can't think of everything and please everybody all the time. the original composite, the artist's mother got mad that we pulled them put out another. we got a number of calls that she was there he disappointed we would do that. -- very disappointed we would do that. those are the things that happened along the way. >> the real break when you receive the manifesto. >> we wanted the piece that would pull all of this together. finally, the unabomber, after the murder of mr. murray, we keep in mind april 20 4, 19 95 we had the bombing of the federal building in oklahoma, all of this is on the news, we get letters from the unabomber

to the new york times, penthouse all kinds of different places washington post, and to us indirectly, that the unabomber group, the terrorist organization is preparing a manifesto, and they want the manifesto to be published and will eventually get a copy if we agree to their terms. the idea was that the new york times would publish the manifesto, possibly the washington post. if they didn't publish this manifesto, that we had not seen yet and april 1995, we would end up seeing more bombings. if they published it, the terrorist group with the cyst any more bombings. in september of 1995 we get to things happening. one is the second -- san francisco chronicle gets a letter saying this is the

terrorist group, i put a bomb on an airliner out of lax. that's done does and everyone is lit up everywhere. we are trying to figure out how to deal with this. the manifesto starts flooding into various places. several people got copies. it was coming by a letter saying one last joke, here is the manifesto. so, once we got it and started reading it, we had our profiler really die then -- dive in. it did two things, for some of us it seemed to be the piece to bring it all together. for many, they thought it might be a red herring. this had no relevance to the case. we had to decide how we were going to deal with that, and decide something else, this became our biggest decision. what kind of recommendation are

we going to make to the attorney general, janet reno, because what we are doing here no matter what we do, if you recommend that you publish a manifesto the big thing was, are we getting into -- giving in to terrorism, are we involved in an extortion transaction, is it against u.s. policy to negotiate with terrorists? that was the big issue that permeated our thinking between the time we got the manifesto in september, in april, and the time it was published in september. >> ultimately you decided it would be published. what considerations when into that? >> we through this around, and we came to a conclusion. there were six of us, jim freeman especially in charge of the sacramento -- san francisco office and myself, we through

this around back and forth and went to into another room and said, ok, our recommendation should be that we don't room -- recommend publication. we took off to write up how we were going to present this to the fbi director, and we started looking at each other, we had tony mollyaiat, we all look at each other, and we decide we made the wrong decision. we had to go back in or i didn't, and say i have some news here, we ought to change our minds. we have the discussions all over again. for one primary reason we felt that publication was the way to go. it was our missing piece. it was so detailed, 35,000 words, so passionate, so specific, we felt it represented the lifelong thinking of the

person we were looking for. if we could take this piece and put it with those two other pieces, the composite, the geographical sequencing, and read the manifesto, put them together, and call us if you know anyone like this. that is what we sold to the new york times, the fbi director. that is what they decided to do. the manifesto was published on september 19. between september 19 and april 3, the middle of february of 1996, we received 55,000 phone calls on the unabomber tip line. we had wives wanting to turn in their husbands. [laughter] girlfriends wanting to turn in their boyfriends. yet none of those people were the unabomber. until that call in the middle of february from david, he represented -- he was representing an unknown client.

they wanted to talk to us about some information the client had. >> steve the u.s. attorney's office, when did you become involved in the unabomber investigation? >> i became involved in april of 1993. i had just finished a prominent arson trial with atf. i was very much associated with atf, at the time doing a lot of their cases. greg barnett brought me this case, that had long been dormant. the unabomber hadn't been heard from in six years at that point. he said take a look at this. and, the reason he brought that to me was because there is typically a five-year statute of limitations on federal offenses.

the statute we had had 12 the bombings of two that point, the statute had run on all 12 of those bombs with the exception of one. there is no statute of limitations on capital murder cases. hugh was killed in sacramento in 1995. that was the one case that was still subject to any kind of federal jurisdiction. then he was appropriated in sacramento. it was the only case where the case, where the case could be investigated. >> did you start to work on it at that time? >> i did. it seemed an important enough case. there were some working theories, not very good, about who the unabomber might be. some of which had been developed by atf agents in chicago. i wasn't aware at this point there was such a thing as the unabomber task force.

i dived into the case and started mastering the facts. >> did you get involved with the task force? >> it was shortly after that, for-six weeks after that i started attending task force meetings and kerry may have a better -- but shortly after that , june of 1993, we heard from the unabomber again. he mailed to bombs from sacramento, one went to a yale university professor in new haven, and the other went to a professor at uc san francisco. now we are off and running again. we have heard from the unabomber again. >> were you on the task force at the time the decision was made to publish the manifesto? >> yes. >> did you participate?

>> informally, yes. the decision was made by the fbi. there were several discussions we had combat -- had and we were, as i recall, i was certainly very strongly in favor of publishing. steve was also. it was a $35,000 -- 35,000 word writing sample. >> how did you learn about david kaczynski and his involvement? >> we, i think terry or max probably notified me that we had been contacted by an attorney, and if i'm not mistaken, that occurred in the fall -- >> it was february.

>> that is only put agents in montana. >> right. [indiscernible] >> interesting how you compress time. i had remembered it as occurring earlier than that. the bottom line is, we were contacted by tony, and he recounted how he had a client he was representing anonymously at that point, who believed he knew who the unabomber was. this client had hired a private investigator to check it out. the private investigator had come back with the conclusion that there was a 60% chance that ted kaczynski was the unabomber. he authorized him to go to the department of justice and release his information. it came with a price. david kaczynski was asking that in return for his diebold and

who this individual was he wanted the department of justice to forgo seeking the death penalty. did they do that? >> the department of justice rejected that offer. >> nevertheless did you receive information? >> yes. he gave us the information. i think one of the reasons he did, if you look at some of the diaries and journals from kaczynski, he had been estranged from david for some time. but he reached out to david, uncharacteristically initially in 1994, asked for $1000 in alone. david, being a compassionate person agreed. he thought ted was probably in declining health and needed it

for that. later, ted is back asking for another loan, this time $2000. david gave the money. when david started feeling that his brother might be the unabomber he started connecting the dots and came to believe that his loans to his brothers had financed the last two murders, bombs 15 and 16. that turned out to be correct. i think out of that sheer knowledge, david understood he couldn't sit on this information . he diebold yet. >> along with the other information he divulged how was the decision made to get a search warrant? >> we had a search warrant in various stages of preparation

all along. it was a massive search warrant. there was a lot of information we could include in the warned before we even knew who the unabomber was pretty had to put in information about the 16 devices, including the various components of the devices, so you know what you are searching for you when you execute the warrant. you have to put in basic facts that connect the 16 devices. that was already done. >> by your team? >> by ares members of the team. steve took the lead on that. in the final preparation when we knew who the warrant was going to be executed against steve, max terry, and others in a couple of -- and a couple of pieces spent an all nighter drafting the final version

of the war it and faxed it to the district of montana in the early morning hours. >> the judge in the district of montana issued the warrant. >> correct. >> what did you learn when the warrant was executed? >> you are asking about the search? the search lasted nine days and people wonder why does it take nine days to search a 10 by 12 foot cabin. the working assumption was when we went into this place it would be a bomb factory. protocols were in place to execute everything in place before they are moved. -- two x-ray everything in place before they are moved. in day 2 of the search we found a fully functional bomb under ted kaczynski's bed. everything stopped at that point. we got a tractor, --

>> we had a bomb disposal, a piece of equipment that had been designed gear to unit bomb -- unabomber devices. this was ready and was flown up from riverside, california, and deploy to bring the bomb out of the cabin. >> everything comes to a screeching halt. the bomb is removed. the search continues, and basically what we set under were broad categories of evidence 40,000 pages of tech's and ski's writings, which included emissions to all of his bombs. we found diary entries that explained his motivations for killing. we found experiment binders containing 240 experiments that

kaczynski had done over the years to perfect his bomb making techniques. we found physical items in the cabin, relating back to bombs in particular there was a specific signature piece of kaczynski's bombs. these flip switch, the mechanism that completes the electrical circuit and brings two pieces of metal together to complete the electrical circuit, to detonate the bomb. very unusual design characteristic of the unit bomb . it was made of a piece avoid hickory i think. fashioned out of a hammer handle. we found an oatmeal canister that contained 17 flip switches. they were, you put them side by

side, they are identical to ones we had found in unabomberb devices. one of the most important pieces we found, we said if we want anything in the world, this is the thing that we want and lc smith corona typewriter. since 1982 the unabomber had used and lc smith corona typewriter, that the fbi lab had estimated was manufactured in 1934 with 2.4 spacing tomasson matters between the letters -- spacing, the centimeters between the letters. this is the typewriter the unabomber used to type the manifesto and everything from envelopes, that accompanied his bombs, to terry talked about the

letter that preceded the percy woood devise. if we found that typewriter that would connect kaczynski to all of the devices. we found one old typewriter in the cabin. it wasn't the one. we found a second one, not the one according to the experts. on the last day of the surge, we found in an ammo canister, lc smith corona typewriter manufactured in 1935, 2 .54 spacing. that was the typewriter pre->> with all of the information you found you would have no doubt you would be able to prove a case. >> we thought you could parse out the evidence 10 different ways and convict 10 different times. it was not a case that we thought was lacking in proof.

>> the decision to prosecute in this district is interesting. can you tell us why that was ultimately made to prosecute the case here? >> the statute of limitations is five years for most federal offenses. by the time we got to 1996 when the unabomber is captured, we have a statute of limitations on five devices. three murders, and the devices in 1993 that were mailed from sacramento, but went to separate parts of the country. as of 1996 sacramento from the district of california had then you over four of the five devices. two of them because the bombs had gone off here, two of them because the bombs had been made here. the only devise we didn't have then you over was the one that was sent from san francisco to

new jersey. that was separately indicted in new jersey. >> who made the decision to prosecute here? >> attorney general janet reno made the decision. we went to washington and made a presentation to her. we steve was part of that discussion, bob cleary from new jersey we basically laid out the case for her, the competing concerns. >> was their disagreement? >> there wasn't. there was harmony here. it was an easy decision to make for the reasons i stated. we have the choice of prosecuting the case and 2 locales or 4. with four of them being in one location. it was really from a lawyer standpoint and easy decision to

make. >> how was the decision made to to seek the death penalty? >> that was made through the department of justice's normal operating protocols. there is a death penalty review where the u.s. wants to seek the death penalty. that is composed of high level department of justice officials. the prosecution is required to submit a package to that death penalty committee setting forth all of the information you would expect, the basic facts of the case, the aggravating and mitigating factors that would warrant seeking the death penalty, of course the statutory basis for seeking the death penalty, such as the laying in wait or deliberation, things like that. the defense was also invited to

make their submission stating whatever mitigating factors they believe. in this particular case, david kaczynski was invited to participate and the death penalty review committee. >> what position did he take? >> surprisingly, he was asking for his brother to be saved. spared the death penalty. his position was twofold. he basically said, look, and his view, these crimes had been motivated by his brother's mental illness, and not by true criminal behavior. he also made a pitch that if the department of justice sought the death penalty, the blood would be on his hands. david's hands, because he is -- he has come forward to provide information necessary to

find his brother, and david felt a great deal of responsibility as any brother would. >> were you actually the federal defender for this district when ted kaczynski was arrested? >> >> i had? how have you learned he had been arrested? >> i read about it. >> >> did you take any steps to be represented even though you were not the federal defender yet? >> i contacted the federal defender, and told him that i would like to be appointed under the criminal justice act to represent ted, since he had not been arrested. he approached the court and i was appointed and took it up from their pre->> what we're thought processes to be

appointed to represent him yourself? >> i felt that if the case did come to sacramento that the federal defenders office should take the lead. there had been a case, the oklahoma city bombing where the local office had deferred and had private attorneys handle the case. i had been a county public defender, i was going to be the febrile -- federal public defender public offices should do the hardest cases, the biggest cases, and thought the entire office should take care of it. >> did you go back to montana to interview ted kaczynski? >> there was an early meeting where it was unclear where this case would be brought, where the federal defender from san francisco, the federal defender from new jersey, the federal defender in montana and we met to talk about where things might go, and things of that nature.

we met with tickets and ski at that point. >> did you participate in the proceedings to determine whether they would seek the death penalty? >> we did. the question of whether the government would seek the death penalty was not decided at the time of the arrest it was decided months beyond that. the department of justice allows the defense time to put together a case for mitigation, and we took advantage of that for some amount of time and went back and presented that case to this capital review committee. david kaczynski made 2 other points, one was he said if you execute my brother after i was the one that brought him in, no one will ever bring anybody in again. and the second thing he said, steve is right, because i wasn't there when tony first approached

the government about an agreement, no death penalty if david cooperates. that was turned down. david said later he was told during the course of this, that it would be a good thing for their two -- for ted to be arrested because he would not do other damage. which really worried david more than guilt about he had helped on 2 other ones. he worried yet information about who was doing this the person may continue to do it. he thought something to the effect of, and it will be better off for him. he took that to mean that there would be some consideration. he made a presentation. we made a presentation. all cases where the death penalty is even possible goes to that committee with a recommendation from the local

u.s. attorney one way or the other. the committee recommended that the attorney general approved the authorization of the death penalty. that is what happened. >> what steps did you take to put together a defense team after you learn the government was going to seek the death penalty? >> we put the defense team together as soon as we found out the case was coming here. i wanted people to be involved in this presentation, the mitigation of the capital review committee. i thought that in the office i was the one that was the most qualified to be the lead counsel, though i had not tried a capital case, i had been involved in a number of capital cases in various roles. i wanted to get another attorney, so we would be two of us working together. i felt again we should look in the federal defender system for the second attorney. we have the resources there.

i had several months earlier been at a death penalty conference in houston, and one of the people there was judy clark, who was the federal defender for eastern washington and idaho. she had taken part in this. i was impressed by what she said. we went out to the airport together. we had a couple of beers, flew to denver and never saw each other again. she was well thought of for her trial work and for her legal skills. she had recently handled her first capital case. she had gone back on her own time, taking a leave of absence from her job to cocounsel a case in south carolina, or north carolina the susan smith case, a woman who had driven a car into a lake and her children had died.

she had done that with david brock, one of the best defense attorneys in the country. i knew she was a tireless worker , literally tireless. i am not tireless. i approached her and she said she would be willing to do it. >> who else was on the team? >> we won an attorney to take over the role of developing the mitigation teams. in a normal case, a noncapital case, you have a trial where the only question is, did he do it, and what did he do? then it goes to a judge who could hear evidence, or something along those lines to make a decision as to what a sentence could be. in a capital case you have a separate penalty phase where they will decide the penalty. the penalty was going to be either the death penalty or life without possibility of release. that is the federal phrase.

what developed over time in the capital defense community was the idea that the government is going to have the gall -- guilt phase focus on the offense, they are going to prove the offense and who did it, and then you will shift to the penalty phase where the defense has to bring the focus on the offender the person who has been convicted of the crime, and to present to the jury every possible theme fact, prediction, hope, as the reason why they would say we could let this person live and die in prison rather than being executed by the government. there are a number of people who have worked in those areas. one of them was a lawyer in san francisco. he had been with the california appellate project. we asked him to come on is the mitigation attorney. there is -- there are these

specialized investigators who have a lot of experience is. they become mitigation specialist. they are investigators who specialize in presenting mitigation teams. searching everywhere about the person's background, everything you can to find things to present to the jury. one of the best, and the one who started that whole craft was a woman by the name of charbon holdmen. they needed people to talk to everybody, everyone who knew ted, go to lincoln, go to harvard, go to michigan, go to berkeley, talk to everyone you can to find out more about the person, that you can present to the jury who they will see who this person is, not just the offender. one of the themes in these cases

is, no one is the worst thing they have done. there is more to it. that is true with every person on the jury, true of everybody. you are never only the worst thing you have ever done. you want to show that. we decided then to retain some law students who worked under charlotte being the people on the ground, talking to everybody, writing reports. >> steve, you also had a team . who was on your team,? >> bob cleary was the first assistant in new jersey. steve burch arrruchero. he was from the northern district of california. i represented the eastern district. basically, we had assistant u.s.

attorneys from the three involved districts. we had a very able prosecutor from montana bernie hugohley and an able writer, assistant u.s. attorney named u.s. wilson -- named wilson, to be our brief writer. this is a case that is going to involve a lot of briefing on a lot of different issues. [laughter] >> wouldn't be brief. >> it sounds like there was a lot of evidence obtained as a result of that search. did you make any effort to quash that search? >> we did. one of your jobs as a defense attorney is to look at search warrant and see whether you think that they are unlawful, and if they are not, whether the evidence can be suppressed.

we looked at that search warrant affidavit, 100 pages, and the fbi was hustling to put the affidavit together. they were afraid or may have been another crime. they compiled a lot of we felt that in the end, it wasn't sufficient. you have to understand that basically until david kaczynski contacted the fbi, no one had ever heard of ted kaczynski. he was not on the radar. they found his name in it data bank of people who graduated from the university of michigan area when david came in and said his brother could be, and i don't think he ever said he was, he thought he could be, he was concerned about this, and gave information that the government

put folks out to put together a search warrant. we felt they did not show probable cause to believe the facts were not enough to show probable cause that ted kaczynski was the unabomber. we filed a motion to suppressed. it went to judge burrell prejudge brow felt there was probable cause. two things about that. i am convinced to this day that if they had gone into that cap in found nothing about the unabomber and found a pound of marijuana, [indiscernible] i believe in the law. i believe the law has to go where it is going to be driven. there is something that is counterintuitive to say that these facts don't show probable

cause, that he is the unit from her -- the unabomber. after the search there is evidence that he was. i think that is a head change that is hard to make. >> did you just argue that there was no probable cause or did you present evidence? >> you always present evidence. you know that. [laughter] >> we went through everything every fact that was stated other than the nature of the crimes and that they were linked together, which was irrelevant whether there was probable cause to believe ted was there, to show that it did not have the significance they attributed to it. one of the big things that was done, there was a large substantial part of the affidavit devoted to the unabomber manifesto. there was a detailed analysis of it trying to show that words in

their, and concepts could be a tribute to two tattoos and ski. we try to show why that -- that words in there and concepts in there could be contributed to ted kaczynski. >> you can't eat your cake and have it too. >> the normal way is you can't eat your cake and have it too. [laughter] >> i'm trying to the phrase. you can't eat your cake and have it too. you've got it backwards. the interesting thing is, we heard a -- we hired a linguist to look at things that were in there. the phrase you can't have your cake and eat it too which is

literally correct, you can't have your cake and eat it too, it goes back to the bible from the book of proverbs, and it has been used in literature and a number of different places. it was not some unusual phrase that only ted kaczynski ever use. the affidavit did point out he had use that phrase in a letter to his mother. it was not like this phrase that ge, he is the only guide who ever said that. -- that, he is the only guy who ever said that. he spelled installment with one l. a lot of people do that. then we pointed out things that cut the other way. ted split his infinitives and

the manifesto written. -- and the manifesto didn't. there were a lot of facts connected, collected about his movement and we try to explain none of them were linked to any particular bombs. 100 pages of which, 80 pages are facts to show probable cause. we try to take those on across the board. >> given the court's ruling to deny your motion to suppress what was your trial strategy? >> it was clear that if we didn't win the motion to suppress, and the evidence from the cabin would come in there would be a guilty verdict. steve is giving you a little bit of what it was. ted had written thousands of pages of journals, he discusses all this stuff. it was clear he was going to be convicted. the only question was what with

the penalty be, and would it be life or death? our goal from then on was to had we lost the suppression motion,, it would have eliminated a guilty motion, we had to deal with the penalty when the jury to convict him. >> what was your trial strategy? >> to win. [laughter] we knew, there were two cases going on at this time catching national prominence. the oklahoma city bombing case and hours. i view those as the flipside as the coin. in oklahoma city, i thought they might have a difficult time proving guilt but once they proved that who is not going to give the death penalty to someone who has killed 368

americans? i viewed ours as the evidence was overwhelming, i had very little doubt that we were going to get a conviction but we knew that a mental defense was coming and probably would be coming and that was going to be the battleground. >> what did you do to protect against that? >> we prepared to meet the defense whether it came in the guilt phase or the penalty phase. we had amassed a lot of evidence with respect to kaczynski's desire to kill, when that was formed, his lack of remorse, his struggling with his conscience as to whether or not killing was an appropriate way to go. and we felt this he was his own worst enemy. he had written so much on those subjects that we were just going to display that for the jury. >> did you make any effort to get a mental examination of ted

kaczynski? >> well, we did. that came up because the defense june of the trial commenced in 1997, november of 1997. in june of 197, 1997, the -- 1997, the defense filed a motion setting forth their intention to put forth a mental defense short of insanity. that triggers certain rights on behalf of the prosecution. we can seek to have our experts then do a psychiatric examination of the defendant. >> did you ever get that examination? >> we did not. we spent the better part of the summer briefing that issue back and forth, issues like how many psychiatrists for the government are going to going to able to do that? what is the setting? what kind of questions can they ask? that briefing continued throughout the summer and into the start of jury selection. we were still arguing about it when kaczynski finally indicated

he simply wasn't going to submit to a mental examination. then the briefing switched from well, what is the consequence of that refusal? and the government's position was there are all sorts of sanctions that could be imposed including preventing him from raising a mental defense or barring expert testimony or variations on the theme. >> >> quinn, notice that receive referred to was 12.2 b notice. >> correct. >> why did you give such a notice of intent to use a mental defense? >> first of all, i want to clarify something. that is the -- a notice that you are going to present a mental defense through expert witnesses in the guilt phase. or present that kind of evidence. and recently been amended to say if you going to rely on your experts who have talked to the defendant then the prosecution

has a right to have someone talk to him, too. that was the setting for that. our thought was that the jury was going to hear everything as i say about the offenses throughout the guilt phase which is going to be quite prolonged. i mean the government was going all out with all of their evidence, although i don't know that they needed it all but that was going to be their decision. and then we were going to come in and say by the way, here is ted kaczynski, you to know something about him. we thought it was important this they get an early sense about who ted was and his history and his mental illness and so we wanted to present that evidence not with any hope that it would defeat the convictions, but that it would at least introduce those kind of thoughts to the jury, before we made a fuller presentation. >> did you intend to call experts on his mental condition during the guilt phase? >> we originally did.

>> and what changed your mind? >> what really changed our mind -- well, actually what changed our mind was, first of all there was a point where ted became very upset about that idea. and was very upset about it and we had some conferences in camera with the judge and developed it a lot. and we finally agreed that we would not present those which -- witnesses in the guilt phase expert witnesses, but we kept open the fact that we would present other witnesses and physical evidence like the cabin in the guilt phase and expert and other evidence in the penalty phase. >> all right. >> so that is essentially where was at the time. >> >> let's get to the trial. how difficult was it to select a jury?

steve? >> we called in about 600 people in the jury pool for the reason that there wasn't anybody who wasn't going to know about this case. and so they filled out about 100 page questionnaire, and the procedure that the judge had set up was to call six jurors in in the morning, and six jurors in the afternoon. each side would be given 15 minutes to voir dire. that is a half hour times six jurors. three hours in the morning and three hours in the janine. -- the afternoon. and the jury has to be death qualified. they have to be examined as to whether they have any serious objections to the death penalty. things like that. and, it was obviously a challenge to find people who had not already formed an opinion.

>> wasn't part of these proceedings conducted out of the state fairgrounds at cal expo? >> the initial jury pool was brought out two cal expo to fill out the questionnaires. >> how long did it take to get a panel? >> i believe, i just looked at this, it might surprise you it only took 16 days. [laughter] that went from november 12, we panel the jury before christmas. >> after you finally get a jury selection did anything unusual happened? >> oh, yes. quinn has referenced the fact ted had tried to fire his attorneys, or express dissatisfaction with their pursuing a mental defense. the trial was set to begin january 5.

the court had thought justifiably, he had brokered a deal with kaczynski to keep the attorneys on if they would agree not to present a mental defense. quinn can tell the story better than i can. judy clark premiered her opening statement to kaczynski the night before trial was set to commence . january 4. he was very upset allegedly about her mentioning mental issues in her opening statement. >> if quinn can tell it better let's hear it. >> i will deal with the allegedly. let me go back to jury selection. one of the things that was interesting about that was, the big question for us was not whether people thought ted was guilty. it was how could they keep an open mind on the 2 penalties.

we asked both of those questions. early on, what judge burrell did, we would have 15 minutes each for three jurors. then we would get a transcript that night of the fourvoir dire. then we can make challenges the next day. which i think was a good way to do it. early on, judge burrell does not remember this, i was sitting there. we would say, do you believe that someone intentionally kills someone they should get the death penalty? they would say yes. we are like, ok. we have a cause problem. the judge would say, as judges always do,

in this thing to make sure that you understand what they are saying would say but if i told you you that the law requires you to consider both penalties would you consider it? the jurors would all say well, yeah. so there would go the cause challenge potentially. the judge could look at it. i had realized that the jurors are sitting about closer than we in are right now below judge a and in burrell who is quite big and asked in a deep voice and he would ask in a way that wasn't men to intimidate them but impress them i tell you this you are going to do it. i realized everybody is going to

say sure, judge, i will follow the law, whatever it is. we wanted them to be on hest about where are you coming from on this. that is the key thing. i had the tamarity or rashness rashness to say judge could we approach you for a bench conference and i explained the problem as you saw it. he said well i don't mean to intimidate them or influence them. i said i understand it has the same effect. he said well, how about if i came down to the lectern where the lawyers stand and that is what he did for the ref of the selection. i don't think it has ever been done before. i thought in the end the jury selection went very well. i'm not sure i was happy with the jury or steve was but given the pools and everything it went well. that kind of stood out to me. it just changed the dynamics. when he was fur away i think people felt more easier to kind of say what they were realing thinking. that is my diversion. what was your question? >> what happened when judy clarke went over her opening statement with ted kaczynski. >> you have to understand, first of all, that ted is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. he has written forever about the

evils of mental health professionals and what they do in the way of mind control. he is a genius and his -- he kind of -- his core is his mind and his brain and his thinking. and the idea that someone would say that he had mental health problems was nothing the -- anathema to him. it would be like stabbing him, right? he was not -- he didn't want that at all. i mean that is not something in public to have that and he also felt it would denigrate from the ideas in the manifesto which i would recommend you read. it is about 30 pages and really quite good. it is not violent. his views about what technology will do to your society, some a lot better now than they did back in 1997 or 1996 and also about mind control and those kinds of problems. when he had agreed to this

arrangement, first of all, the big thing that it came up early on was who makes the decision as to what a defense has put on when a person is represented by counsel? our position was it is clear you cannot -- there are certain things that a defendant with counsel decides for themselves. one of them is what plea to make. they also decide whether there will be an insanity plea because that in effect is a plea of guilty and by reason of insanity. one reason that was not raised here. whether they will take the stand and address the judge. four or five of them. our position was that -- and we thought the case law supported it, was other than that, it is up to the attorneys to determine how to proceed in support of the not guilty plea. and we thought the law supportd that and i think it did. but it wasn't by the u.s. supreme core.

judge burrell agreed on that. it was understood that as long as we were his lawyers we would decide what witnesses to call and how it pick and jury and do all of the things that lawyers do. early on there was this brokered deal when he was upset again about the idea of his mental health coming in that we would drop the experts from the guilt phase. later we had to drop them even from the penalty phase because he refused to see the government's psychiatrist. the reason he didn't want to see the governments -- government's psychiatrist was he was afraid hard to believe, that the government psychiatrist would find him mentally ill, his big fear. in any case, he did not want us to put on that testimony about -- and what we were going to do is we were going to try to explain his menial illness through other evidence.

his lifestyle and where he had started from and gone to and how he ended up being a whiz kid who skipped two years in high school and went to harvard on a scholarship and got a phd in no time from michigan and then end -- ended up up living this this cabin in this kind of crazy lie. we brought the cabin down from montana and stored it at the air force base and we were going to have jury see it. you cannot imagine -- calling it a cabin sounds like it is an a-frame. this was a 10 by a8, two windows and a big pot steve. no running water. no toilet. it was more like a cell than anything else. and for him to voluntarily go there we thought would help them understand his mental problems which i think fed his schizophrenia. sitting there in the dark in montana from 3:00 a.m. until

10:00 in the moring moring with no electionity or anything. but he we wanted to put this on and he did not want that. there was some back and forth on it in meetings and attempts to see if there was some way we could fulfill our obligation and try to save his life and he would be satisfied with that. and there was even talk about another attorney coming in kevin cleima who was an experienced defense attorney came in to counsel ted and give him advice independent of us , where we weren't involved and in the end he declared after backs and forths that couldn't believe seemed like it was resolved it is not resolved, he decided that he wanted to represent himself. he declared a faretta right that says you can represent yourself in a criminal trial. do you want me to carry from there or stop at that point?

>> in context this takes place after the jury selection? >> correct. >> and after you had the discussion with judy clarke telling him what she plans to say in the opening statement. >> that is what triggers his concern in addressing the judge first about it. further proceedings and he seems to be mollified with other changes made and expresses his concern again and then finally i think maybe on the third time he says i want to represent myself . i'm asking to do it which is the faretta request. we felt we had to declare a reasonable doubt about his competency to make that decision. usually if the lawyers declare that and there is basis for it and we certainly had enough basis for it then the judge will order an evaluation of the defendant and hold a competency hearing and decide for himself

whether theself whether theperson is competent or not. and that is what happened here. >> what did judge burrell rule? >> the first thing that happened was he agreed that ted had to be examined and eval evaluated for competency. it was agreed after some back and forth between the government and the defense that rather than send him off to a federal medical center and because of the time problems with the jury coming in we would ask to have someone come out and evaluate him. and the government or may have been judge burrell arranged for dr. sally johnson the chief of the federal medical complex in buttner, to come out here and look into the cause and read whatever she needed and talk to ted and make a decision as to his competency. she did all that and heard from the government and heard from us. she came back with a report that said that he was a paranoid

schizophrenic, but she did not feel that because of that he was unable to assist his lawyers in his defense. that is the standard for competency and therefore that he was competent to make the decision to represent himself. then the question was whether judge burrell would grant the motion, and the judge denied it on two grounds. one was that it was gonotomely -- untimely, because it should've been made before the jury was in panels, and secondly, it was being made for purposes of delay and therefore said you cannot represent yourself. you will stay with these attorneys. and then i can talk about what happened after that. >> what did the government think of judgment or rails rulings on those issues?

-- what did the government think of judge around -- burrel's rulings on the issues? >> we were dealing with issues that were fact bound and the government was flying in the blind to a certain extent because a lot of hearings had been conducted in camera. so as they should have been. and so we at any time know exactly what was taking place. we were concerned about the issue because if anything is going to get you reversed it will be an issue like faretta which involves a defendant's constitutional right. and we were concerned about the findings that it was for purposes of delay bearing in mind that kaczynski had first raised concerns as early as november 25. the judge very meticulously went back and looked at the jury selection proceedings and

determined, picked apart the record and determined that kaczynski must have knowned a -- at that early stage that there was a mental defense and so that was the basis for the judge's conclusion that his later request to represent himself which occurred i think it must have been six weeks later was untimely and that what he was presently engaged in was for purposes of delay. we didn't see it necessarily that way. i felt that kaczynski being a lay person was wrapped up in issues that he was only gradually coming to understand. and judge burrell did address those issues and whether or not

a lay person would be expected to know how these things were folding, so he is not unaware of the issue either. from our standpoint we were very concerned that that was a live issue. >> how did that issue or that concern affect your desire to continue to go ahead and seek the death penalty? >> well, we were fully prepared to stat trial on january 5 and then afterwards the next day january 22, i think when all of the proceedings were finished we were fully prepared to go forward with the trial. we had had some discussions with the defense in december i believe it was and they made some demands which we couldn't accede to so those discussions were cut off.

>> quin, what happened next? >> have to go pack to with happened in december. i'm not sure of the timing of it. we went back to washington again and presented further mitigation evidence to the capital review committee or whatever they are called asking them to remove the death penalty from the case and they declined to do so. we then approached later in the fall maybe december is right we approached the local prosecutors , steve and his team to see if , they would entertain an offer to plead guilty and remove the death penalty with two conditions. one condition would be -- normally if you plead guilty you wave your right to challenge rulings like the suppression motion. we wanted to know -- we wanted to be able to preseven right to appeal the suppression motion which there is a procedure for doing but the government has to agree to it and at the time we

wanted to know whether they would agree that he would not be sent to a mental institution. and as opposed to any other place, bureau of prisons had under its control or the department of justice and they declined to do that. >> so what happened after the -- >> what happened afterward then is we were on maybe the 22nd of january, ted has been found mentally ill but competent and also denied the right to represent himself so he has us as his lawyers. he knows what we are going to put on in terms of evidence to try to save his life. and at that time actually right after judge burrell's ruling i approached the bench and said we wanted to plead guilty to all of the crimes here and new jersey for no death penalty and without those other two conditions.

>> and the government accepted that? >> we did. >> did you have to consult with the attorney general? >> yes, we did. and she gave her approval. >> what were some of the considerations? >> i had had some discussions with the solicitor general in the interim about the twin rulings that we had been talking about that the denial of the faretta request and the ruling that kaczynski was not in charge of his own defense. we discussd that with the solicitor general and acknowledged that there wasn't very much case law on it and that we are dealing with really some very cutting edge issues. the solicitor general indicated that he thought that there was litigation risk there, that if we had -- if we went through with the entire trial it is possible it could be reversed and we communicated that pack to thefact tothe attorney general

and the attorney general received that information as well as other information. she had already been apprised, of course, of the december negotiations regarding their offer to plead so it is not like she wasn't prepared for -- to receive that type of offer now. >> how many bombings did he plead guilty to? >> he plead to all five of the charged bombings including the one that was charged in new jersey. but we took a factual basis to all 16 of the bombs so he admitted to all 16. >> in the rule 11 proceedings the judge usually asks the defendant some questions. when the judge asked him his occupation do you recall what his answer was? >> he said something i suppose i'm an inmate or something like that. >> prison inmate. >> yes. >> what sentence did he receive? >> four consecutive life

sentences. >> as a dialogue -- epilogue what happened to the land upon which the cabin was situated? >> a couple years after the criminal proceedings came to a conclusion, a woman stepped forward asking to purchase the land, unlike other possessions pretty much you have to sell the land to somebody. you can't just sit there titleless. so we did some investigation of her and finally decided that we would not stand in the way of that purchase and the judge signed off of the purchase of the one and a quarter acre parcel that the cabin sat on. >> what happened to the cabin itself? it remained at the air force base for a number of years. i think just reeseently in just recently in the last couple of years, maybe five years was transported to the museum in

washington, d.c. which is where it is now. >> actually, the fbi took it and held it for awhile and then moved it to the museum as part of an exhibit there about this case. >> how about all of contents of the cabin? what happened to them? >> well, after a bunch of litigation there was an order made that they -- that the contents should be sold by the marshalls and the proceeds should be given to the victims as part of -- in payment of restitution. >> that essentially closes the book. we are running a little late but i want to ask each panelists if they could close with a one or two minute statement about what you learned as a result of this whole experience and what it means to you. kerry? -- terry? >> thank you, judge. i learned and had reiterated a lesson that there is no way whether it is the f.b.i. federal, state, local agencies that we could ever come close to

solving these kinds of crimes especially the ones involving lone actors without help from the public. and i think many times when you look at how something comes together you don't realize that in many of these -- in fact recent terrorist cases cases or acts of terror where they are prevented by someone alert in the public deciding to do something about it and take the information they have or outhear observation of someone in many other cases the case is solved and people arrested. it takes tremendous courage and conviction and decency to come forward and then to begin the , work with us of trying to pull things together and when i look back at this and i think of all of those qualities that david possessed, people such as the victims who like gary who were always constantly there for us even and showed such great courage with the things that happened to them, i think it touches you deeply and maybes -- makes you realize why you got in law enforcement. but it sevens as a constant reminder we have to go to the

public and give them asp as much -- as much as we can give them to use their support and help to bring these cases to a conclusion. >> gary? >> i could probably talk about that for a long time. squeezing that into a couple of minutes, i guess the couple of things i learned would be that i don't think anybody knows what they are going to do with something like this until you are actually in it. you learn a lot about that. a lot about yourself. a lot about people. you learn a lot about the people sitting at this table. lots and lots of people that i dealt with through a lot of years. especially not knowing for nine years who it was. a lot of friendships developed on all sides of law enforcement and prosecution, defense. i have a lot of friends that way. kind of echoing a little bit what terry said. i felt like it was my job to get out and do what i could as a victim if you will because i don't really like the word as the judge mentioned i'm is

survivor. paris hilton is a victim. just thought i would put that out there. but, yeah, in my world i mean i was approached to go out and to things like unsolved mysteries america's most wanted and there , is a certain amount of risk that goes with that, when somebody is coming back at you or not but that is the way in my , world things worked. my dad as state trooper so i grew up that way. so i more or less appreciated a lot around the system. i appreciated what it offered me and the ability that i actually had a voice. when you are in the middle of that i think it is -- well, in , my world the job to get up and say you have a voice. so i continue to do that. >> thank you. quin? excuse me, steve. >> i was going going to say -- >> all right. >> well, i don't know if these are great insights or anything but i came away from the experience with a couple of

thoughts. one is -- i think terry would agree with this entirely. you to constantly reexamine your assumptions. there were so many many false leads in this case. instances where we thought we had the unabomber on the line , this has to be the guy. there are coincidences that can't be explained away. and they were explained away. and so constantly when i hold that with me, whenever i was conducting investigations after that, i would continue to reexamine the assumptions. the other one has nothing to do with law. it has more to do with the the fickleness of fate. there were several of these instances that could easily have resulted in the death of more individuals. gil murray, the victim of bomb

number 16, which occurred just about five blocks from this building, the package was delivered in a big one of those white mail tubs to the business. the bomb was actually sitting on top. the mail was late that day. so, all of the employees of the timber association were kind of congregating around the reception area to get their mail. gil murray was called out to receive his package which wasn't even addressed to him. it was addressed to the prior president. it was a very tightly wrapped package with brown packing paper. it was designed to detonate when the tension on that packing paper was released. so if you just released the tape that is enough to explode the devices. the f.b.i. still doesn't know how that was possible. in any event, gil murray comes out and there are about eight

people standing around the counter leafing through mail and having discussions when gil murray is trying to open this package. he is having difficulty because it so tightly wrapped he can't do it with his fingers so he , asks the receptionist for a pair of scissors. people are filtering away. one gets a phone call and has to go back to his office and , another called a coworker aside to a hallway to talk about some point. other people are simply getting their mail and going back. as he is handing -- as the receptionist is handing scissors to gil murray she gets a phone call. the caller wants to know the number of another person. it is not on the rolodex at the reception desk. the receptionist who is just filling in for the real receptionist for the lunch hour says -- puts the caller on hold , goes back to her office to

retrieve the information. she gets about 10 steps outside the hall when the bomb explodes. gil murray is the only one killed because he is the only one left in the reception area at that time. had the bomb exploded 30 seconds earlier there probably would have been a half a dozen fatalities. the same story repeats itself with thomas mosier the victim of bomb 15. his wife and 1 1/2-year-old daughter come into the kitchen just as he is starting to open the package. the daughter needs a diaper change. the wife does a 180 and leaves the area and goes back to do the diaper change. the bomb explodes and thomas mosier is killed instantly. there are other examples of that. but i just hold on to that thought that you know as you say but for the grace of god we could have had a lot of -- a lot more fatalities. thank you. >> excuse me. i guess what i take away from it

is a great admiration or respect for david kaczynski. he and his mom were estranged from ted because of ted's mental illness but they were very , supportive of him. and when actually -- i think as gary says it was david's wife who started saying could that be ted and then when he realized he thought it could be and he was just torn between this, on the one hand, this is my brother and if i turn him in what will they do to him and if i don't and he , is really the unabomber, more people will be killed. and he went through that horrible back and forth and then , with the help of this wonderful lawyer from washington, d.c., tony, came forward and it was the key to , this case. i don't know if the task force would have got there sooner or later but would have been awhile , i think. and david was given a rewardion

-- a reward, $1 million, i think and he dedicated it to helping , other victims. he was going to use it solely for that. he and gary have become friends i think is a fair statement and have gone together to talk to victims' groups and to gary can speak more of that but he has , continued in that area and the death penalty area and also has come together with a brother of a fellow, manny babbitt, who was a california state capital defendant in the brother of manny babbitt turned him in and the state executed him. so the two of them go out and talk about victims and responsibility. so i think they are wonderful. and i think gary is wonderful. he has been much more giving whatever words, than any -- than i ever would have been. >> thank you. >> thank you. this concludes the presentation.

we want to invite all of you to attend the reception in the anthony m. kennedy learning center downstairs where there will not only be refreshments but the panelists will' available and photographs and evidence of that would have been used at the trial of the united states versus theodore kaczynski had the trial actually gone forward. thank you very much. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> earlier this week, the u.s.

supreme court heard arguments in the latest attempt to strike down the affordable care act. you can join a said it :00 p.m. eastern, when we will broadcast the oral argument. we will have comments and reactions from some of the attorneys involved. you can listen to that at 8:00 p.m. eastern. the congress is on a break to work in their home districts paid only the senate is in session. they meet next monday for general speeches and at 5:00 they will consider a number of president obama's executive nominations, including a new patent and trade office director. other actions the 2016 federal budget. you can watch the house life here on c-span and the senate on c-span2. we told you about reports that new jersey democratic senator bob menendez is being investigated by the justice department for corruption.

his office released a statement that reads in part, "as we have said before, we believe all of the senator's actions have been appropriate unlawful and the facts will only confirm that. any actions taken by senator menendez or his office have into appropriate address public policy issues and not for any other reason." we will bring you updates as they are available. "the atlantic" posted the sixth annual washington ideas forum. it brings together business entrepreneurs and science experts. this next portion runs just under an hour. >> thank you, and thank you for coming. it is a huge honor for me to be a peer with others because they are the best novelists working

in english. i was at the southern festival of the book a couple weeks ago and i saw you walking to the lobby, and i contemplated going up to you and talk to you, and i thought you would run away. but now i realize you are a captive audience. i want to get down to serious business. i wanted to begin on a couple of lighter notes. i was reading in "the new yorker", and you noted that you passed 46 ativan tablets for your -- stage anxiety. how many did you end up taking

one other note, and i'm kindnesses of the fact it has been a long day, i want to make sure i can be fully awake. you have written many times in your memoir and some of your novels about the excess of -- excessive furry in this some of your protagonists. that is a self-conscious preoccupation of yours. i would say to the record, and maybe afterward we could have a short conversation, i am hairier than you.

. the national zoo would turn up. the national zoo will collect all of us and take us back to where we belong. anyway, getting down to serious business, i would say that with regard to your respective ridings styles and sensibilities, and some ways you are extremely dissimilar novelists. and if you're looking for analogs, i will put a chill in the tradition of someone who has been compared to, scott fitzgerald which is heady company to be in gary, i would put you in the tradition of saul

bellow and early phillip roth, not just because of your preoccupation with jewish themes, but because of the exuberance of your voice. if in the russian tradition, i would say come back gary, you are more in the tradition of gogol, whereas with your restraint is more like chekoff. one place where you do overlap despite these differences is writing about immigrants and expatriates and what you might call the identity crisis. and in your debut novel you have the main character who is working in new york opinion of the emigrants have immigrant's ex-patriot. and had to offer an unlikely

joke and the characters in your book and are also explants american, dubai, your latest book. i saw you quoted in an interview you do that have on home turf but you have no choice to float around on these post-national currents. you have not spent your entire careers in some sense talking abut this to my but very briefly. how is being an immigrant or displaced expatriate inform your writing? >> when i came to america, it was 1980. being a russian was the worst thing you could be. i was sentenced to eight years for hubris school for crimes i did not commit. when i was sentenced there, it was so bad being a commie that i had to can -- pretend i was born

in east berlin not leningrad. but tamed years later i showed up at oberlin college, a small marxist college in ohio, and being an immigrant was the coolest thing you could imagine. nobody wanted to be that heterosexual white male. so i got as russian as i could be. i tried to annex another college. it was productive. >> you have not annexed in other colleges, like gary has. >> no, i have not. >> you came to america from holland, not turkey? >> i was born in ireland.

my mother is turkish. i grew up in holland. i speak french with my mother. so in other words, new york was a good fit for me. >> we are in washington, so the perfect place to ask this question, what is the relationship of the novel to politics? you have both dabbled in novels and satire. in your book, i saw you say in an interview -- and this speaks to your own sensibilities -- but obama by your own novel -- >> did he buy it? >> maybe somebody gave it to him. i felt uncomfortable about it.

i am sure it sold book, but not been in office for six years and we are still forced feeding people in guantanamo bay it is an uncomfortable. for both of you, what bearing or relevance? correct yes. i think novels are inevitably physical. but the political content of a novel depends on the reader. if you are to sports toward asking ethical questions, then practically any text becomes loaded with physical meaning. i certainly feel that my most recent book in dubai is investigating all sorts of political things how countries

are structured. >> i think from the former soviets, whatever, the -- you do get political. i want to capture the feeling of what it is like to be in these two giant countries when one does well and the other collapses. yeah, it is a very 20th century of experience that i have had. a part of me wishes i was working in a burger king in denmark and having a decent life instead of -- >> that is a good segue, because of the prospect of you working in a mcdonald's in denmark.

philip roth a few years ago called the novel a dying animal and he elaborated, saying a small group of people will be reading it. a be more people will read them now than currently now read latin poetry, but in that range, and he elaborated because of screen time and distraction. i was googling around. i thought it was a great quote. then i found an interview that you did. you know. maybe literature will come back someday. so what is the future of the novel? >> you have to take everything that i say with a grain of salt and in the industry they call me a sap. nothing to me was going to look up, but i think we are in the end of this. this is coming to an end. writing novels, i mean. and long-form texts in general.

i have not read a book in a while because i do not have time. i read parts of books or texts on books, but it is hard to read an entire book. that is why i think that tv serial like "the sopranos" has caught on so much because it provides a narrative that we all need. we are wired for narratives that we watch instead of trying to absorb. reading a book, after into the consciousness of this guy, and he has to do the same with me, and that takes effort. it is almost over. >> do you agree? >> i am still trying to get into the whole entering gerry'sary's consciousness. come on. actually, i'm just going to stay. i think -- i do agree.

i actually think it is a question of money. it is just not lucrative for anyone to read or to get people to read. the technology is overtaking that. everything, all human activity is so connected to profitability in a way that just was not the case in my childhood, for example, that it seems kind of strange, to be invalid about reading a novel or a lengthy text area is as if everything has to be reduced to bullet points. >> so was the novel just a contingent, time-permitted thing for early victorian era to 15 years ago? what is next? >> the novel is contingent with the enlightenment. and i think that now the end of

the enlightenment misinformation does not depend upon the accuracy, but sellability to the market, and the great thing to offer is contract with reality and truth. that is not particularly a valuable commodity anymore. that is where we track in relation to enlightenment. >> the place where people majored in humanities everyone's >> every once in a while. that used to be a major part of this country. millions flocked to the universityies we just have to set that reality. what could you do next?

>> i like air-conditioning. hvac is huge. i have an 8-year-old. he's developed his love of refrigeration. hechinger and that company. what laws exist. >> pretty easy as it relates to the political question? famously end of reportedly at this point said that poetry makes nothing happen. the same could be said of the novel. does your writing entertain, to enlighten, the function of a novel and what function is to

conserve that breaking bad can't serve? >> the way that these things are structured is chapters. it corresponds the characters. this is good stuff, but the novel, when you buy a book from one of us, you are entering us for a while, the inside for a while, and that is a different technology. to see that completely destroyed is sad. to see it play a minor role is ok. it will be nice. >> gary is right. it is an insight into subjectivity that we enter people's minds and tb cannot do that.

even smartest television, there always comes a moment when you think that is just stupid. that is just stupid. they have to go, do something stupid, otherwise it is boring. a literary novels, there is no real payoff for being stupid or pressure for being stupid if you are penalized for it. it does not reward stupidity. you have all these moments where you just think. and then you come and pick it up. >> holding it. does it make you feel better? >> it does, and thanks for allowing me to do that. >> we want to make you feel -- >> this is a good year 2014. >> people are always

interested. so figure out how to of premises as succinctly as possibly. how do you get your ideas or novels, developer characters to my your writing process and there is kind of -- there are people who, many friends who work with "the atlantic" who write seven words a day but they are all perfect. and then there are those who just spew out thousands of words and most of it is crap that has to be edited back. i am like a constipated worder which is the worst of all. how do you guys were? >> just whole thing is not my forte. you know, i actually think that idleness is what i do best and in fact, my life as a novelist, he spent a lot of time

lying around, not even incidentally this stuff. that barely happens. so i just sit they're thinking. and i often go away to canada usually, and right in first and get it done like that. >> there is an exciting incident that happened. there is a cabin in moscow. -- a cabbie in moscow. he said, what is your immigration policy ?get most of you can go to canada. i can only go to a superpower. thanks both to you. thanks to all of you. thank you all for coming.

>> we are in an unusual technical situation because craig is ill with something. let's see if i can -- craig, can you hear me question what he is ill with something akin to mutinous. he is looking pretty good. can you hear me at all? you think you are scary looking? let's see -- we have a number of backup systems which i suppose we should employee. if worse comes to works, i will tell you what i think he would have done if i can control him like a puppet.

now maybe he is hearing me. can you hear me? >> i can. >> so what is wrong with you? >> i did not want to leave for washington dc. a number of things going on, but it would have been -- it would have made montezuma proud. >> let me quickly ask you because we do not have a whole lot of time, you have a whole list of things that you are doing, that the one that intrigues me the most is this notion of a minimal cell. can you explain what a minimal cell is? >> we have been trying to work on this since 1995 when we sequenced the first two genomes in history, trying to understand is there a minimal set of genes that can be responsible for

complete self-replicating life. we have been working on this for a long time. we have had our first synthetic version in 2010, as you know. we have been working since then to try to design a cell from scratch that has just the minimal set of genes necessary for living and replication can at least in the laboratory environment. >> so we human have 20,002 30,000 -- 20,000 two 30,000 genes. you started with a little itty bitty thing. you try to make it smaller. how low did you go? . >> that is put in a way that only you can put it, robert. yes, so the smallest organism

set of genes was sequenced in 1995, mycoplasma was a little over five super genes. the goal is and the problem in this whole field is our fundamental knowledge of biology is so limited that we don't know what about 20% of the genes can do. so, it's trying to do a design when you don't know what 20% of the parts do. all that you know is is they are absolutely necessary. i told you the story when i was in seattle on part of my book to her. my late uncle who was part of the boeing design team for the 767. he said imagine if they didn't know what 20% of the parts did. what makes you think that we knew? >> this is kind an interesting idea.

you take the genes that you've chosen to you think these are the ones necessary for life. you shoot one of them and then you say, are they still alive? you shoot another one, is it still alive? you shoot another one, is it still alive? so where are you now in the gallery? >> i think, so the problem in that method -- and that is a pretty good description of what we've done -- it turns out that it's important for life and there's little pathways and dual systems that haven't yet been totally recognized by modern science. it's hard to get the funding to study these things. but you can knock out genes that when you knock it out of its own it doesn't kill the cell. but as you knock out the unknown counterpart, you can do that. if we use the airplane analogy and you are in a 777 aircraft, you can lose one engine and the airplane keeps flying, so you can say well maybe engines aren't really necessary, and so you lose the second one and find out that in fact they were very important.

so it turns out people thought by knowing the structure of the jeans genes that they knew what the functions, so we thought we could say we don't know that particular function the --so we can knock it out, but the genes have multiple functions and their counterparts have functions that we want so it's been more than just trial and error. of course we did it and that didn't give us a living cell so we added back components. one is working on the shooting of one at a time and we had in the back we built these and five different cassettes when your test environment of all of the others that looks like it works because there was a counterpart. this is trying to get low 500 or

so genes. >> i am so glad this is hard. this is a little bit like god. there is clay, god goes, and then there is adam. it should at least take you 10 years to figure out that part. >> exactly maybe a while longer. might remember stephen colbert asked me why i thought i could do better than god and i said, well, we have computers. >> let me ask you this. i would assume that if you get a cell that you can boot up from a store-bought ingredients and you can create a life, it is a very simple life, why do we need one? >> we don't need one per say for

that, it is a proof of principle. but if we actually want to do designs for building new organisms to make new vaccines new medicines, food sources, etc., we want to get down to where we can actually do the design on the first principle basis. so the other thing that we are doing rather than try to make the minimal genome, if you think of it as computer analogies, four billion years of evolutions get messy all over the place and there is no logic to it. there's a lot of randomness. but if we are trying to do the designs where we want to put in a cassette or genes for the sugar metabolism and the methane metabolism we like to do that as you plug in this cassette and have the energy production for the cell. so we are defragging and that is more complicated than it might seem as well. but the point is to get to where we can start to do the design from the known components to

start to build new things for these are the early baby scratch that allow us to start accelerating the design and building of new organisms for very specific manufacturing purposes. >> let me run through some of those purposes. you would think that pollution- eating bugs, fuel-producing bugs that urinate diesel or gasoline, toxin eating bugs, medicine producing bugs, you would then put them in the air and the water and the land. the first question that comes to my mind is, how hungry are we about to be or how energy needy or how anxious for fresh water that this would be something that politicians would bless? do we need this?

>> our plan is not to add them back to the environment. i think that would be a mistake to do. as you know, we sailed around the globe picking samples in the ocean and the and sequencing the organisms there. over 40% of our oxygen comes from those algae. we wouldn't want those replaced by algae that produce a whole lot of oil instead of oxygen to say give us an oily gue in the oceans of these would be organisms that in fact within that lives outside of the laboratory or outside a production environment and that is an important part of our design is building these so they can't survive on their own. but we are thinking of industrial manufacturing and applications. so, for example, you can convert sugar into almost anything. we are working on designing new pathways that don't exist in nature for making the chemicals

that go into plastic bottles. right now that comes from oil, a byproduct of oil production, so it's adding to the pollution taking oil out of the ground. we burn some of it and reduce into chemicals and plastic bottles. if we make the same chemicals from sugar, we convert them to a renewable chemical and are able to recycle all of the ways we use them. so we also have the algae that grow in the desert of the synthetic genomics that use sunlight and carbon dioxide, so they are pulling co2 out of the atmosphere and we need high doses of co2. we have to concentrate it pumping even more in in all these different chemicals including foodstuffs.

>> we are talking about little things but we need a lot of fuel. is it a simple matter once you have proven the concept to scale up? >> unfortunately, none of this is simple. the hardest goals will be fuled that can compete with the cost. anytime new biofuel approaches came in the past, all of a sudden the cost of carbon out of the ground gets to again. that is what makes it impossible to pete. the only way for it to compete is for the government to create a carbon tax so we start to realize it does not matter how cheap it is to burn coal or oil or natural gas in the long ron. we cannot afford to keep doing that. at that stage, yes it and be scaled up very dramatically.