Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, earned notoriety for committing 16 bombings between 1978 and 1995. But before he turned violent, Kaczynski was used as a pawn by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which subjected him to cruel, mind-altering experiments.¹

Kaczynski, then, could be described as a construct of the CIA, a product of its teachings. Three people lost their lives as a result of Kaczynski’s bombings, and 23 were injured, many seriously. He died in his North Carolina prison cell in June 2023, where he is said to have committed suicide.²

For some, his death puts to rest an era of terror that sowed fear into Americans. But many questions remain. Kaczynski’s homemade bombs were mailed to those he believed to be destroying society with technological advances,³ and the damage done to Kaczynski’s psyche by the CIA may never be fully known.

Unabomber Was Part of CIA’s MK-Ultra Program

Kaczynski was just 16 years old and already a student at Harvard University when he became part of the CIA’s top-secret MK-Ultra project. MK-Ultra involved mind control experiments, human torture and other medical studies, including how much LSD it would take to “shatter the mind and blast away consciousness.”⁴ According to Kaczynski’s brother, David Kaczynski:⁵

“The Harvard study my brother participated in was called “Multiform Assessments of Personality Development Among Gifted College Men.” It was overseen by the noted psychologist Henry Murray, who during WWII worked for the OSS [Office of Strategic Services] (which later became the CIA), where he developed methodologies for interrogating prisoners of war.

In his professional life, Murray was known for his brilliance and his grandiosity. In his personal life, according to his biographer, he displayed sadistic tendencies. His research on college men bears a certain resemblance to his research on prisoners of war. He was quite a big wheel in his day, perhaps as well known and influential in military and government circles as he was in academia.”

According to Jonathan Moreno, Ph.D., an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania,⁶ “The experiment Ted Kaczynski participated in at Harvard involved psychological torment and humiliation.”⁷

Moreno disclosed in a Psychology Today article that Murray, who conducted the three-year humiliation experiment, was a “close friend and colleague” of his father’s, although the Morenos weren’t aware of the trial. According to Moreno:⁸

“The Harvard study aimed at psychic deconstruction by humiliating undergraduates and thereby causing them to experience severe stress. Kaczynski’s anti-technological fixation and his critique itself had some roots in the Harvard curriculum, which emphasized the supposed objectivity of science compared with the subjectivity of ethics.”

Weekly Verbal Abuse and Humiliation

Describing the CIA experiment, Kaczynski’s brother explained, “Every week for three years, someone met with him to verbally abuse him and humiliate him. He never told us about the experiments, but we noticed how he changed. He became harder, more defensive in his interactions with people.”⁹

After Harvard, Kaczynski received a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan and went on to teach at the University of California, Berkeley, before largely disappearing from society.¹⁰ Prior to his arrest, he succeeded in getting The Washington Post and The New York Times to publish his 35,000-word manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future.” Moreno explained in 2012:¹¹

“Kaczynski believes that the Industrial Revolution was the font of human enslavement. ‘The system does not and cannot exist to satisfy human needs,’ he wrote. ‘Instead, it is human behavior that has to be modified to fit the needs of the system.’ The only way out is to destroy the fruits of industrialization, to promote the return of ‘WILD nature,’ in spite of the potentially negative consequences of doing so, he wrote.”

Was Kaczynski’s terrorism the result of the CIA’s psychological torture? The world may never know. But in his book, “Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense,” Moreno states the psychological experiment could have left “deep scars.”¹²