Background: Giving the Unabomber a Voice

(1995)
In 1995, The Washington Post and The New York Times received letters from an anonymous serial
mail bomber who offered to stop his nationwide attacks if one of the papers published his 35,000-word
anarchist manifesto, titled “Industrial Society and Its Future.” The UNABOM case, which stood
for UNiversity and Airline BOMbing because of the academics and corporate executives targeted, had
baffled the FBI from 1978 to 1995.

After consulting with law enforcement and government officials, and at the urging of the U.S. attorney
general, the Times and Post decided to collaborate and publish the manifesto verbatim.
The Post printed an eight-page special section; the Times helped with the cost. The papers’ publishers
called it the “right choice between bad options.”

The brother of Ted Kaczynski read the published manifesto, recognized the writing style and notified
the FBI. Kaczynski, a former mathematics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, was
captured at his 10-by-12-foot shack in the woods of Montana. He pleaded guilty to 13 federal bombing-
related charges and was sentenced to life in prison.

In a statement to his staff, New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. defended the decision to
publish the manifesto and said it would not set a precedent. “Newsrooms regularly receive messages
from people threatening dire action unless their demands are met. Our traditional response will
continue to serve us well — we notify law enforcement officials, when appropriate, and print nothing. …
You print and he (the Unabomber) doesn’t kill anybody else, that’s a pretty good deal. You print and he
continues to kill, what have you lost? The cost of newsprint?”

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

 Ethics of Journalism and Unabomber Case (https://www.csmonitor.com/1996/0405/05081.html)

 Ethics of Publishing Terrorist Tracts (https://www.csmonitor.com/1995/0920/20011.html)
 Manifesto Poses Ethical Dilemma for Two Newspapers (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.ethics.htm)
 The Post, The Times, and the Unabomber (https://www.poynter.org/news/post-times-and-
unabomber)
 Unabomber Case Holds Lessons For All Journalists (https://www.poynter.org/news/unabomber-
case-holds-lessons-all-journalists)
 Listen to a Newseum Inside Media podcast with FBI agents in “Witness to History: Investigating the
Unabomber” (http://www.newseum.org/event/witness-to-history-investigating-the-unabomber/)
 Read the full manifesto (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm).

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