Did a Psych Experiment Turn Ted Kaczynski into the Unabomber?

In March 1960, a 17-year-old Harvard student was ushered into a room, hooked up to electrodes, and told he would be debating a peer about his personal philosophy. He had been prepped for this moment—or so he thought. In reality, the researchers had placed a highly skilled lawyer behind the one-way mirror, coached to attack the teenager's deepest beliefs with what the study's director called "vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive" interrogation. The student's code name was Lawful. His real name was Ted Kaczynski. Decades later, he would be known as the Unabomber.

The Unabomber's Campaign and the Manifesto

By the summer of 1995, Ted Kaczynski had been terrorizing the country for 17 years. Operating from a 140-square-foot cabin in Lincoln, Montana, he had sent 16 bombs through the mail, injuring 23 people and killing three. His targets included universities—Northwestern, Vanderbilt, UC Berkeley, the University of Utah, the University of Michigan—as well as airlines and individual homes. In 1979, he rigged a bomb for a commercial plane's cargo hold designed to detonate at altitude; it malfunctioned. In 1985, a bomb killed computer store owner Hugh Scrutton. Advertising executive Thomas Moser died opening a package in his New Jersey kitchen. The FBI task force had been tracking the case since the first bomb a