(CBS 5) SAN FRANCISCO A decade after the feds tracked him down, CBS 5 Investigates has uncovered exclusive new information about Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, including a secret code he developed, and the confessions revealed as the code is broken.
When Federal Bureau of Investigation agents swooped down on Kaczynski's Montana cabin in 1996, they found much more than they expected, according to lead agent Max Noel.
There were "lots of writings, lots of journals, lots of notebooks," recalled Noel, now retired.
Among them, he said, was one notebook in particular that interested all of the agents at the scene because "it just contained lots of numbers," according to Noel.
Noel believes Kaczynski wrote in code out of concern that someone might break into his cabin and discover his current and past activities, which may have included plans for future attacks.
"I thoroughly believe that he was going to begin a much more prolific bombing attack," he said.
The FBI eventually found itself trying to unscramble a code that the National Security Agency would later describe as one of the more sophisticated codes it had ever seen, said Noel.
In fact, it was a code that could not be broken at all until, searching through Kaczynski's cabin, FBI agents found Kaczynski's own key to unmasking the hidden messages.
CBS 5 Investigates has obtained portions of that key along with the Unabomber's coded writings.
The coded writings initially appear to be sets of numbers, commas, and spaces placed in random order. But they are actually part of a very complex mathematical code, also called a cipher.
"It's very clear that this isn't a normal cipher," said Bruce Schneier, a nationally known expert on cryptography who was asked to review photos of the writings.
Schneier described the code as so complicated that "it would not surprise me if this was the most complex cipher the FBI has seen since World War II."
Schneier said with that code, Kaczynski could certainly be successful in keeping information away from the authorities.
But Kaczynski succeeded only up to a point.
Agents discovered the first of many clues to solving the puzzle in one of Kaczynski's notebooks, on a page labeled, "Unscrambling Sequence."
On the handwritten page, arrows appear to show the direction that a page packed with numbers should be read. Then, in a complex series of decoding steps that Kaczynski calls "phases," numbers are added, subtracted, and married, revealing a new set of numbers that translate to letters and word fragments.
"This clearly takes many steps," Schneier said. "Four steps are listed here, and that's not all. There are at least six steps and could be even more then that."
The FBI's decoding of the notebook revealed a virtual catalog of destruction.
Kaczynski's comments on one page, translated, discussed his feelings about one bombing this way:
"I sent a bomb to a computer expert ... revenge attempts have been gobbling much time, impeding other work. But I must succeed, must get revenge."
Another note translated into a discussion of a July 2, 1982 bombing at the University of California at Berkeley, where Kaczynski said, "I went to U. of California Berkeley and placed in Computer Science Building a bomb consisting of a pipebomb in a gallon can of gasoline."
On another page, Kaczynski described his failed attempt to blow up a commercial airplane on Nov. 15, 1979, saying, "I constructed device ... rigged barometer so device would explode at 2000 ft."
Noel said decoding the notebook led to terrible but important revelations.
"The contents of that small notebook was a detailed confession of all of the past bombings that had been attributed to the Unabomber," Noel said.
Kaczynski's own notes indicate he did not want people to be able to read those confessions.
Some speculate he may have wanted authorities to find the key later if he was killed or captured in order to take credit for his acts. |
