All language subtitles for Unabomber.In.His.Own.Words.S01E03.720p.NF.WEBRip.DDP5.1.x264-AMRAP

In 1993,
the Unabomber reappears.

He's been gone a long time,

and he wants to make sure

that everyone realizes
he's back.

And the FBI says
that a letter bomb

was mailed to the home

of one this country's foremost
geneticists.

He is in critical condition
tonight in Northern California.

- It's a rather large shock.

People had gotten used
to the idea

that the Unabomber would never
be heard from again.

And all of a sudden,

he's not just back,
but he is back in a big way.

Dr. Epstein,
a genetics researcher

at the University of California
San Francisco,

has made advances in the study
of Down's Syndrome.

- And who could blame him?

He lost his eardrums
and fingers to this guy

just because he was doing
his job,

trying to help humanity.

Investigators say
they found no link

between the attack
and Epstein's work.

- As a reporter,
I talked to Epstein,

and Dr. Epstein, in particular,

was mad till the day he died,

and I don't blame him
one tiny bit.

The letter bomb
went off at 8:30 this morning

at Yale's computer science
center.

38-year-old associate professor
David Gelernter

was opening his mail
in his fifth-floor office

when the letter bomb exploded.

- So now you have two devices,

one goes to a geneticist,

the other goes to a computer
science professor

at Yale University.

The historical significance
of the case

is not lost on people.

There's been nothing like this

in FBI history.

The two attacks
this week

have raised fears
that a serial bomber

blamed for a dozen explosions
in the late '70s and '80s

may be back at work.

- Overnight,
the decision is made

to reinvigorate
the investigation

by putting a lot of resources
into it.

- They're getting thousands
of tips.

Nut cases, kinda nut cases,

people you take somewhat
seriously,

and then ones who think,
"Wow, maybe you got a point."

It's exhausting.

- We're taking in so much
information,

what if something gets past us?

That was the fear we live,
we live with all the time;

that the answer has come to us

and we've passed it by.

No. It was
simply anger and revenge

and I was...
was going to strike back.

Try not to get blown up.

Local, State,
and Federal investigators

continue to work around
the clock

collecting evidence
from the blast.

I would imagine
it would be

a relatively quick
determination from residue

that we can tell what kind
of explosive was involved.

- He's now using a chlorate
mixture that he's created

which no longer requires a pipe

to contain it.

So, it explodes on its own
once it's initiated.

- We have an announcement

of a piece of evidence
in the case

which has never been made
public before.

- The New York Times receives
a letter

from the Unabomber.

Rather short - it's a double
spaced paragraph,

not a lot of words -

claiming credit
for these bombings.

Investigators at the time
have hopes

that it will provide
some clues.

So, you have the typeface,

what kind of typewriter
wrote this?

Where did the paper come from?
Can you figure that out?

Is the paper significant
in some way?

Where it was mailed?
The type of stamps?

Is there any DNA under the flap
of the envelope?

Are there any fingerprints
on the paper

or on the envelope?

None of that,
there's none of that.

There's no good forensic
evidence.

What there is, on this letter,
is indented writing.

The sort of impressions

which are created by writing
on a surface

with a piece of paper
under that surface,

so you've left no ink marks
or pencil marks,

but you've left an indentation.

"Call Nathan R.
Wednesday, 7pm."

This is taken by
the investigators

as a mistake that
the Unabomber has made.

Finally, he has made a mistake.

- If any members of the public

know a Nathan R.

or have any idea as to who
that person might be

and in what context,

that information would be
of critical importance for us.

- We were looking for
Nathan R.'s everywhere.

It was crazy.

- All the task force has to do

is find every single one
of them,

and one of them will know
who the Unabomber is.

Because he's going to receive
a phone call,

on Wednesday at 7pm.

How hard can this be, right?

Well, it's tremendously hard.

Um...

there are a lot of people
named Nathan R.

- So, you go calling
and, you know,

you've chased down
15 different ways

of getting to a Nathan R.

Finally, you knock on the door
and the guy says,

you know, "Who are you?
I don't care. Get lost."

It's... there's a lot of that

when you're doing a story
like this.

- Every Nathan R.
that they could find,

and there are thousands
of them.

We had them all interviewed
to ask these questions.

It didn't lead to a solution.

- There's a sense that
he's fooling them.

He's eluding them.

He's toying with them
and taunting them.

- The pressure that the task
force is under

is increased by these taunts.

- Right over there
was Ted's 10 by 12 cabin.

Again, very rustic,
very simple,

just wood cabin,
no electricity,

no running water,

uh, with a green roof.

- It's a bit haunting,
every time I come back here.

I've never felt peaceful.

I mean, we're surrounded
by beautiful trees,

and the birds are chirping,

but I have never,
I would never use that word

to describe how I feel
in this spot.

Not... not peaceful.

- You know, a lot of people

that have perpetrated
a single murder,

uh, regret it for the rest
of their life

and-and will never kill again.

What makes the serial killer
so particularly fascinating

is they've gone through
the trauma of killing someone

and are addicted to it

and are ready to do it again
and again and again.

- The investigators
are picking up

that this is an anarchist

who doesn't like environmental
decimation,

doesn't like people
who-who shill

for anti-environmentalist
causes.

Investigators say
it was a package

sent through the mail

about the size of a home video
cassette.

It killed 50-year-old
Thomas Mosser,

a senior advertising executive

at one of the largest
ad agencies in the world.

- He opens it in his kitchen,

where his wife and young
daughter had been

standing next to him
just moments before,

uh, and he's killed instantly

by the very significant blast
at this point.

- We are all today determined

to end the death
and destruction

that these random bombings
have wrought.

- The pressure to solve it
is immense.

Desperate is perhaps a...

a fair word at that point.

- Unabomb hotline.

So far thousands
of tips

phoned into the San Francisco
Unabomb Taskforce

have led nowhere.

And a one-million-dollar reward
hasn't helped either.

- The phones are ringing
constantly.

We are getting thousands
of calls from the public.

We don't watch TV much.

Um, the first time I ever heard
the term "Unabomber"

was in December of 1994,

when the front page
of our newspaper

said that the Unabomber,
whoever that was,

had struck again and killed
an advertising executive

by the name of Thomas Mosser
in New Jersey.

But I'd never heard the term
before.

- Ted came down here once,
didn't he?

- No.
- He never came here.

- No, I remember him once
planning to come.

He even told me he had
a bus ticket

and that he was going
to arrive on a certain day,

and then he decided not
to come,

and he said he had too much
to do.

And of course, I'm thinking,
too much to do?

I mean, come on, Ted.

What do you have to do?

And of course, at that time,

I didn't know how...

what he meant.

- He and I had never met.

I have still never met him.

I have never, as far as I know,

talked to him over the phone
or anything like that.

He didn't like me.

He didn't want David
to marry me.

He was really furious,
I guess, about the wedding

and, of course, he didn't come.

And he wrote a letter
that was very...

very aggressive.

Oh, it was really awful.

I had never met the guy

and nobody could understand
why Ted was threatening

to break connection with Dave.

Every time David and his mother
got together,

they sat there for hours

talking about Ted.

His mother was very worried
about it

because Ted had cut
relationships to his mother.

So that's how I began
to pick up the sense

that he was... unusual,

and perhaps mentally...

you know, different.

- Linda was the first one
to tell me.

Reading some of my brother's
letters,

hearing family conversation,

she says, "David, your
brother's mentally ill,

you know that, don't you?"

And I said, "Wait a second, you
don't really understand him.

He's a genius, he's different.

He's ba-blah-blah..."

"David, look at this,
people who are healthy

in their minds
don't think like this."

- His basic argument is that
technology is a system

that we really cannot control.

It's causing harm to people

and the environment.

The stresses will increase
on humans and on nature,

and there's no way to modify
or to reform the system

so as to avoid these negative
outcomes.

His conclusion is the system
has to be brought to an end.

We have to have a kind of
revolution against the system,

and to stop it
before it can uh...

lead to these catastrophic
outcomes.

- In 1995, the Unabomber
sends another letter

to the New York Times.

It's three pages of single
spaced typewriting.

It takes credit

for the bombing of
Thomas Mosser,

and he is indicating

that this will continue
"unless".

There's now a, a deal
that's being offered.

The bomber says
he'll desist

from terrorist activities

only if major publications
print a manuscript

advocating the destruction

of the worldwide industrial
system.

- He says the written document
that he wants published

will be coming forth shortly.

The so-called
Unabomber has now spoken out

and taunted the FBI,
calling it a joke.

- In the letter he refers
to the FBI as a joke.

This is somewhat echoing
sentiments

that are coming from political

and media and public circles.

He apparently has jumped on
that bandwagon as well.

The mysterious
Unabomber is claiming

to be part of a group,

quote "The FBI has tried to
portray these bombings

as the work of an isolated nut.

We won't waste our time arguing
about whether we are nuts,

but we certainly are not
isolated."

- He claims to be a group
called "FC"

and he's always very clear

to make sure that his bombs
contain FC

somewhere in there
where the FC will be found

stamped onto a piece of metal,

or etched onto a piece
of metal,

in other words,
intended to survive.

The Unabomber suggested
that part of his motivation

had to do with concerns
about the environment

to try to portray himself as,
perhaps,

some sort of environmental
crusader.

Around the same time,
there were environmental groups

which advocated radical
solutions

to their concerns.

So, it was somewhat
of a logical extension

that he get the task force
to consider

that perhaps he was associated
with groups like that.

- Because there was always this
idea of FC

and the Freedom Club,

I think that the Feds believed

that there were more people
involved

than Kaczynski himself.

And so, they were really
interested

in letting me in there

and letting us talk freely

so that they could gauge
whether or not

Kaczynski was connected
in any way

to any of us in Earth First!

- Earth First! has been
an organization,

from its beginning,

that has been dedicated
to action.

Everything from,
you know, tree sitting,

and other types of
monkeywrenching,

and had been under suspicion

of being tied to radical
environmental terrorism.

- Yeah, the '90s was a trip.

Soon had this slow progression
of radicalism.

And for me,
I noticed it up at a...

the mountains east of town,

and the Earth Firsters were
trying to protect

this forest up there,
which they did.

And these Earth Firsters
created a, a blockade

to prevent loggers
from coming in,

and they won.

In the eyes of
the forest service,

this is destruction of
government property,

a federal offence,

and some critics are even
calling these protesters

domestic terrorists.

Don't move your truck!
Shut your truck off, man!

There's an old woman,
she's 80 years old!

80-years-old woman locked
to the back of your truck

- and you're gonna kill her.
- He's not turning it off!

He knows someone's locked under!

- And then when Ted came along,
or the Unabomber,

and started, you know, killing
people that were responsible

for some of this kind of
behavior

that these kids didn't like,

I think they found somebody

that they could respect
a little bit

and could understand why
he was doing it.

The FBI
is investigating

whether the Unabomber used this
so-called ecological hitlist

to select some of his recent
victims.

The list published in 1990
in an underground newsletter

is made up of 11 companies
and organizations

that the publisher of the paper

apparently considered enemies
of the environment.

- People in the anarchist
community,

they're liking the philosophy

that they're seeing reflected
in this.

Killing innocent people walking
down lonely roads,

that's one thing.

Killing people with a
political, philosophical bent,

this had resonance.

Attention all units!

20 minutes after 2,

the calm of this sunny day
in downtown Sacramento

is shattered...

It's a terrible,
terrible bombing scene.

Let me take you
somewhere.

- It's hard to describe,
really, the effects

that such a thing has on a,
a person,

but it was,
it was really awful.

Um...

Uh, I'll reserve saying anymore
for the sake of the victim

and the victim's families,
but...

Gilbert Murray,
the president

of the California Forestry
Association,

is the third person to be
killed by the Unabomber.

- It's the Unabomber.

It's creepy and it's current

and it's from a killer
who has not been caught

for more than a decade.

- Another kind of terror -
mailbombs.

- Officials are warning
everyone to be on guard.

- The most wanted criminal
in America

is still the Unabomber.

- You have to wonder,
"Am I next?"

Is he gonna send a, you know,
a pipe bomb to the Chronicle

because we're reflecting
technology

and capitalism,

and big business?

I'm feeling every package.

Every parcel that comes in,

you check for wires,

you check for a little bit
of oil.

You smell it.

Has it got a little gunpowder
smell to it?

You press down on it.

Has it got uneven lumps

that could be the match-head
igniters?

Could be explosive loads.

You're very careful about
packages like that.

- The newsroom gets a letter
from the Unabomber

saying that he's going
to blow up an airliner

in L.A.

So, we take this thing into
the editorial office,

everyone looks at it.

We're wondering what this
next step is.

Do you print this stuff?

Are you going to be uh...

an ad paper for a killer?

We call the FBI.

They come over.
They look at it.

It's pretty quickly determined
that it's the real thing.

- Further examination
has confirmed

that this letter originates
from the Unabomber subject.

- So, do you take him seriously

or do you blow it off?

We decided to print.

- There was a suggestion by
the postal service

to simply not carry packages
anymore.

They weren't willing
to put them in airplanes.

And that added tremendously

to the already unbelievable
amount of pressure

on the task force

to solve this case.

You can't have the mail
in the United States

come to a halt.

It's almost inconceivable.

Los Angeles
International Airport

is under full alert

with security measures not seen
since the Gulf War.

- And it turns out the guy
wasn't serious.

And so, after the 4th of July
weekend comes and goes

and no one's killed,
nothing blows up,

the dogs get called off

and it goes back
to Unabomber normal.

- Everybody in the United
States, it seems,

and probably many other
countries,

is aware of and interested
in the Unabomber

and what comes next
in this story.

- In the summer of 1995,

almost every day
or every other day,

there was a little article
describing the Unabomber

and what his interests were,

and these different theories
about what we should do.

We don't want, you know,
any kind of technology,

We don't want all of this.

We have to go back to
the natural way of life,

you know, without machines

and without phones
and all of that.

It was churning up in my head
quite a bit.

And I thought, gosh, that
sounds like Dave's brother.

- I look at her and she,
she didn't look quite happy,

and I said, "Something wrong?"

- And, for a while,
I was going to hold off,

but then I did broach the topic.

- And she said, "David,

I think it might be your
brother."

And, you know, my immediate
reaction was,

Oh, well, I know
it's not my brother,

so thank goodness it's...
you know,

thank goodness it's just
a worry you have,

not something real."

- David just couldn't
believe it.

He just thought I was being
stupid, I guess,

or crazy or something.

- I mean, she really,
it was more of an intuition,

I thought, than anything.
Nothing like evidence.

- He didn't want to believe it.

And I guess that's the way um...

family members might be,
that they don't...

they don't want to believe that
about their family member.

- These are type-written
copies,

typed on the same typewriter

that's been used on most of the
other Unabomb communications.

Which we have figured out,
forensically,

is a very old L.C. Smith Corona

manual typewriter.

He sends as many copies
of the manifesto

as can be banged out

using carbon paper,

on a manual typewriter.

Five copies go out
to various locations.

- We get a copy of
the Manifesto ourselves

and I read this thing
word for word.

We realize the guy's smart.

He's not a great writer,

but he's a very competent
academic writer,

and we now have the dilemma
before us

about whether we should print
this manifesto or not.

Do we want to piss off
the author?

Do we want to serve the greater
good of journalism?

Do we want to suppress it

because it's incitive stuff

that can rile up anarchists
into action?

Or just be smart stuff

that informs the public?

- The leadership of
the task force

was given the assignment

by the FBI Director
and the Attorney General,

Director Freeh
and Director Reno,

to debate this question

and come back with
a recommendation.

- Within the bureau there was
a thought that,

you know, are we capitulating
to a bomber,

a terrorist,

by publishing his manifesto?

- I'll call it a somewhat
furious debate over this,

and everybody was not on
the same side initially.

And the decision was made

that we shouldn't publish it.

The meeting breaks up,

one of us looked at everybody
else and said,

"That was the wrong decision,
wasn't it?"

And everybody else
in there said, "Yes,

that was the wrong decision."

And the primary argument was,

if it gets published,

a document of that size,
seen by enough people,

it's almost impossible

that someone will not recognize
the author.

Either because of the way
he writes,

or because of his message.

- We figure, "This is for
the greater good."

You put out the clues and,
as a newspaper,

we are all about being
for the greater good.

So, in conjunction with
the local FBI office,

we printed the Manifesto.

It was behind
the business pages,

tucked in between the want ads,
but it was all there today,

all 35,000 words of the
Unabomber's message to America.

- We print the thing
and we get...

zillions of responses
at the time.

I think that copy of the paper
sold fairly well,

which, you know, you don't
wanna make money on horror,

but the fact that it sold well

meant that a lot of people
were reading it

and that was good. You want
people to pick, pick it over.

- I remember my first thought

was that the Unabomber had won,
at this point.

When the whole thing
was published,

I thought,
well, that's it, he won.

He defeated the federal
government and the FBI

because he got this thing
published.

- This is the original copy

of the Unabomber Manifesto.

I kept it never knowing that
I would meet the author.

It's huge,
it's an amazing document.

Like the opening sentence,

"The Industrial Revolution
and its consequences

have been a disaster
for the human race."

- "They've destabilized
society,

have made life unfulfilling,

have subjected human beings
to indignities,

have led to widespread
psychological suffering

and have inflicted severe
damage on the natural world."

- "Science marches on blindly

without regard to the welfare
of the human race."

- "The system cannot be
reformed in such a way

as to reconcile freedom
with technology.

The only way out
is to dispense with

the industrial technological
system altogether."

- "It would be better

to dump the whole stinking
system

and take the consequences."

- "We therefore advocate
a revolution

against the industrial system."

- You could take any aspect
of the technological system

and it's hard to argue
against any one aspect.

You could say, what's wrong
with a phone?

What's wrong with an email?

What's wrong with a digital
camera or something?

But if you take someone
like Kaczynski,

he looks at the ensemble,
the whole system and he says,

well, look what the system
is doing to us.

It's drawing people in,
they're getting addicted.

Mental stress is increasing,
mental illness is increasing,

physical health is decreasing,

environmental destruction
is accelerating.

This is a consequence of
the whole technological system.

It's not any one technology.

So, my cell phone
isn't destroying

the-the global ecosystem.
No, it's not the cell phone,

but it's the whole network that
goes to having and creating

and using a cellphone
on a mass basis.

That's what's destroying
the global ecosystem

and that's what's causing
human stress.

- When friends of mine
discovered

that I hadn't even read it yet,
they go,

"You're gonna love it, read it!
You're an idiot. Come on."

And I did. Uh, there wasn't
anything I disagreed with,

actually, and I still,
uh, advocate it.

I think it's just an amazingly
important document

now more than ever.

- "In order to get our message
before the public

with some chance of making
a lasting impression,

we've had to kill people."

He comes right out and says it.

The Justice
Department hopes

to use his own words
to lead investigators

to one of the most hunted men
in the country.

- I'm sure there will be a lot
of people

in the academic community

that will read this
and will say,

"Well, that sounds just like..."

and they'll flash back
to a student

or a professor that
they have worked with.

- It did ultimately lead to...

literally thousands of people

that thought that they might
know who the Unabomber was.

- This was getting
to be about mid-October.

David promised

that when the Unabomber
manifesto was published,

that he would go out
and get it.

He promised that to me.

But apparently there were only
6 copies being sold

at this newspaper shop

and they had already gone
very quickly.

- The college library had
the issue

but somebody had taken
the manifesto out of it

so it wasn't there.
And I'm, I'm ready

to throw up both of my hands
and then she...

and then she says,
"The internet!"

Now, I had hardly heard
of the internet.

We didn't have it at home,

but they had it
at the college library.

Linda's sitting next to me,

and, first of all,
it's kind of weird.

Here I am on this new-fangled
technology,

trying to figure out
if my brother

is the anti-technology
terrorist.

You know, I felt almost, like,
guilty about doing that.

- He was looking at the screen

and I was looking at his cheek

and his jaw dropped

when he read the first
few lines

of the Unabomber manifesto.

Linda kind of whispered,
"David, what do you think?

Do you think it could be Ted?"

And I said, "I have to admit,

some parts of it really do
sound like him.

If I had to, if I had to guess,

maybe there's one chance
in a thousand he wrote it."

And I was expecting,

well, maybe that would be
reassuring to her.

But she said, "David,
one chance in a thousand?

That's not nothing."

- I started to try
and talk Dave

into getting an expert

in analyzing the comparison
between Ted's letters

and the Unabomber manifesto.

That, that perhaps
there's a pattern

because it's the same author.

So, I suggested Susan Swanson,

who I knew was a private
investigator

and had connections
with this kind of thing.

- I've known Linda since
we were toddlers.

It was Linda who cracked
the Unabomber case.

She was the only one
who suspected,

just by reading his letters,
that he might be violent.

And I tried to look

to see if there were
any similarities

and, after a while,

there were times when I thought

they really could've been
written by the same person.

- "I've got to know
that every last tie

joining me to this
stinking family

has been cut forever."

- "It would be better

to dump the whole stinking
system

and take the consequences."

- I thought it was hard to tell
the difference between the two.

It kind of flowed,

it had, you know, um...

the same tone.

So, I went to work researching
the Unabomber case,

taking into account
other things Ted had

that were in common
with the Unabomber.

Probably the biggest
geographic link

had to do with universities
where bombs were found.

There were two at the
University of California,

at Berkeley,

and one at the University
of Michigan

in Ann Arbor.

We knew that Ted had gotten
his Ph.D.

at the University of Michigan
at Ann Arbor,

and we knew he had been a...
assistant professor

at the University of California
at Berkeley.

- We were looking at the
timeline of the bombings

and letters that we had
received from Ted.

My big hope was that we would...

find that a letter was sent
from Montana,

on a day that, say, a bomb
was sent from California.

So, I was still hopeful that
he might be ruled out.

- And, um,
what David knew was that

Ted would sometimes hitch
a ride to Helena, Montana.

And from there, he would catch
a Greyhound bus

all the way to
the San Francisco Bay area.

I made some calls to
the Greyhound bus line.

They said there's no way
you could take

the Greyhound bus
from Helena, Montana

to San Francisco, California,

without going through
Salt Lake City, Utah.

And since Salt Lake City
is one of the places

where a bomb had gone off,

that was very concerning.

- I'm actually thinking
my brother

could be the most wanted person
in America,

a serial murderer.

The cost if we were wrong
either way

was so intense.

If we did nothing

and Ted was the Unabomber,
he might strike again.

Someone would be dead.

We'd have to go through
the rest of our lives

understanding that
somebody died

because we had failed to act.
That was intolerable.

And then the other side of this

was the realization,
my God, if Ted is...

if Ted is guilty
and he's killed three people,

then he's probably gonna get
the death penalty.

What would it be like for me

to go through the rest
of my life

with my brother's blood
on my hands?

The brother I'd sworn
to never abandon.

Man, that was unthinkable.

It was like,
I was sort of in this box,

not at all of my own making

and there was like no way
to get out of it.

- For me, it was easy.

There was a possibility uh...

somewhat a pretty decent
possibility

that he was the Unabomber,

so we had to do something.

- So, David called me

and he said, you know,

that this was,
this was bad news.

- I said, "Well, we think
we need to stop the violence,

so we'd like you to contact
the FBI."

We thought everything's gonna
change,

you know, everything's gonna...

well, two or three weeks go by,
we don't hear anything.

- We are deluged
with information.

People are mailing in
writings from...

their uncles, their brothers,

their ex-boyfriends,

saying, well, this person
might be the Unabomber.

And we're trying to take it in
and process it.

There were thousands of people
who got brief looks.

There were 2,417 people

who were designated formally
as suspects.

Ted Kaczynski was number 2,416.

- But at this point,
my mother got sick.

She was in the hospital
in Chicago.

I had to fly back there,

and I found myself alone
in her house.

And, um, I realized she had
saved a bunch of letters

from my brother,

and among her letters,

I find a 23-page manuscript

which was like...

I guess you'd call it
a proto-manifesto.

It was the essence of
the manifesto

boiled down to 23 pages,

written maybe several years
earlier.

And at that point,
without hesitation,

we contacted the FBI.

- A call came into
the switchboard,

at the San Francisco office,

looking for someone
from the Unabomb Task Force.

It was from an agent
and she's read the document

and she thinks it might be
important.

All she wanted is someone
on the task force

to look at the document

before it just went into the...

great pile of okay-this-has
been-handled-and-washed-out.

So, I asked her
to send it to me.

She faxed it to me,
I looked at it,

uh, and I concluded that

the writer of this 23-page
document

and the writer of the manifesto

were the same person.

This is a huge moment.

The light is at the end of
the tunnel.

We are going to solve
this case.

We are convinced of it.

But we don't have enough
evidence to arrest him.

We can tie him very
definitively to the manifesto,

but it's ties based on...

linguistic analysis,
essentially.

That's not enough
to arrest him.

We need to get into that cabin,

we need to conduct a search
of that cabin,

and see what's in there.

That becomes the primary goal,

is getting into the cabin
by a search warrant.

We send a handful
of agents up there.

- They approached my dad
because Ted trusted him -

I mean, as much as he probably
trusted anybody -

because he'd been his neighbor
for 20-plus years.

- They were like, "What do you
know about your neighbor, Ted?"

And Butch is like,
"He's a hermit."

And they go,
"Well, we're pretty sure

he's the Unabomber."

And Butch is like, "No,
he's not the Unabomber."

And he's like, "Yeah, we,
we're pretty sure we got him.

And so would you

be willing to help us

in his arrest?"

And Butch is like,
"Well, what do you need?"

Well, my dad was asked

to video the terrain

around Ted's place.

And he went out there

and took his video camera,

held it down by his hip

and just walked the grounds

so that the FBI could have
a clear vision

of what the terrain looked like
around Ted's cabin.

My dad, Butch, was the eyes
and the ears of the operation.

- We start getting hints
before April

that the investigators
are narrowing in;

that the Manifesto

has lit a fuse

and that something's going down.

And so, we're scratching
everywhere we can.

We get clues,

some of the networks get clues.

They're trying to keep
a tight lid on it,

but it's leaking out.

- The task force
was contacted by CBS

at the beginning of April.

And CBS News indicated
that they, essentially,

had the story,

and they were going to run
with the story.

We couldn't afford
for media trucks

to be driving down that
little dirt road

and knock on his door...

for a million reasons.

So, okay, we had 24 hours
to get in place.

We flew a planeload of agents,

the entire San Francisco
SWAT team

to surround the cabin,

crawl into place
during the night,

and then all the other people
we would need

to knock on his door
the next day.

- The day of the arrest,
it was early,

it's kind of chilly,

wind was blowing.

The air was so...

I mean, the tension
was so thick

you could just feel it.

- We didn't want to have
a situation

where we had a barricaded
gunman.

We knew Ted had
at least one weapon,

a, a rifle.