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Comment by bheadmaster | Hacker News Reader

Ted Kaczynski was a genius, a mathematical child prodigy, became a professor at Berkeley at 25 and had a bright future. I completely blame CIA experiments for his downfall into radicalism and extremism. His ideas were very valid, but his mind was too tortured to deal with them in a healthy manner.

Rest in peace.

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What did the CIA do? I checked his Wikipedia page, not mentioned there.

Search for the section "psychological study" under "Early Life".

"Some sources have suggested that Murray's experiments were part of Project MKUltra" doesn't really seem like strong evidence.

right after that sentence, you have -

"A Freedom of Information Act document released by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2018 states that "a considerable amount of credible circumstantial evidence suggests that Theodore Kaczynski. also known as the Unabomber, participated in CIA-sponsored MK-ULTRA experiments conducted at Harvard University from the fall of 1959 through the spring of 1962".[26] Chase and others have also suggested that this experience may have motivated Kaczynski's criminal activities"

> [1] The CIA was carrying out its mind control program at this university, using the most varied techniques for this purpose. Thus, he endured the administration of substances, hypnosis, electric shocks, and sophisticated psychological techniques. This Harvard experiment lasted almost three years and Kaczynski was one of those experimental subjects.

[1] https://exploringyourmind.com/the-harvard-experiment-that-le...

He participated in about 200 hours of experiments from the age of 16 to 19 which basically consisted of "roasting" and bullying him. The experimenters intentionally sought out the most insecure "maladjusted" students at Harvard (Kaczynski was accepted at 16) and lied about what the experiment was going to do.

The entire thing was horrible and profoundly unethical. His brother has stated it really changed Kaczynski.

Some people have claimed that it was run by the CIA as part of MKUltra. This is certainly possible but not really substantiated by clear evidence as far as I've seen, and even if the CIA has some relationship they probably didn't instigate the experiments but just asked for research notes or something relatively benign like that. We'll probably never know for sure though.

Whatever the case may be, of the group of students that were subjected to these abusive experiments only one became a terrorist, so "the CIA created the Unabomber" is rather simplistic IMO. The primary blame remains with Kaczynski, no matter what.

>Whatever the case may be, of the group of students that were subjected to these abusive experiments only one became a terrorist

Source? What is the incidence of terrorism in that group and in the general population?

I don't have any data or sources on this; if my memory is correct the participants were actually anonymous and the only reason we know Ted Kaczynski participated is because of his brother, so we don't even know who the other people were. However, I expect if another one had also become a terrorist, we would have heard about it. There were just a handful of participants (1 or 2 dozen or thereabouts), so it's not really enough for a "proper study" anyway.

Also: many people (myself included) were extensively and viciously bullied in their childhood and/or teen years. Many suffer profoundly negative effects from this, sometimes for decades or even their entire lives, but most are not terrorists. And even if it did turn out that the incidence of terrorists was higher: that still doesn't absolve them or their own responsibility in committing violent acts against random people (i.e. terrorism).

Are you claiming that childhood bullying is equivalent to a program run by the CIA exploring the use of psychological torture and mind-altering substances?

To wit, the study was run my Harvard psychologists, not CIA.

It was not run by the CIA, as I have mentioned, and it certainly didn't involve mind-altering substances. The specific experiments he participated in involved abusive interrogation sessions to measure stress responses, which is roughly analogous to bullying, yes.

Well, whatever the size of the group is (let's call it X) it's at least 1 out of X. Which is almost certainly more than the general population.

And the p-value?

By that logic, we might as well just blame it on his beard.

The media will report on this as the death of a terrorist. None of the real terrorists will be brought to justice - the CIA has done so many abhorrent things here and abroad.

We act like the KGB/FSB is this unfathomable, foreign evil. We have the bigger, scarier thing that killed it in our backyard.

> real terrorists

Did the CIA fabricate and mail the bombs?

No, but they've bombed a lot more innocent people than TedK did. For one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Lawrence_Pope

How does this make Unabomber not terrorist?

I mean, Ted was definitely a terrorist, but the size of his crimes pales in comparison to the institution that experimented on him and continues to exist to this day.

No they broke him mentally with MKULtra

Not those specific bombs.

did the CIA put crack in the hood?

No. This has been pretty thoroughly refuted.

who refuted it? other federal agencies? the crack just materialized on its own?

There was never any evidence to begin with. The author of the often cited investigative report even refutes the assertion that the CIA was involved. It’s pure fantasy.

right, and then the guy who wrote the report later "killed himself" with two gunshots to the head.

His ex-wife and the LA county corner were pretty convinced that he did it himself. Why would the CIA kill him if he wasn’t point the finger at them?

People shooting themselves in the head often reflexively pull the trigger twice.

Do you suppose the elite hit squad that came to kill him simply added an extra bullet by mistake?

from what I have been able to determine, this does not seem to be true—people who die from multiple self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head seem to be quite few and far between.

what about bombing merchant ships in indonesia, has that been refuted too?

To stick to the facts, LA's biggest cocaine supplier got his stuff from a pair of Nicaraguans were members of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras raising money for the organization. A journalist named Gary Webb covered the whole thing, who later murdered by two gunshots, and his death was ruled a suicide.

Make up your mind on this.

Funding an anti-communist death squad that also sells drugs isn’t exactly the same as bringing crack to the hood.

Whether or not the CIA was behind the psychological abuse he was subjected to, that it was made the bombmaker.

The CIA has done some bad shit, even to their own citizens, but are they really on the level of the KGB? Seems like the KGB was a more overt daily-life terror, whereas the CIA has a more 'occasional' history of atrocities.

CIA is worldwide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CIA_controversies (AND THAT'S THE PUBLIC LIST)

How many redlines they gotta cross and ops they gotta run before they rival the KGB for you?

Always seemed to me the CIA were more creative: fish robot, sewing transmitters inside cats, arranging for their former director to die days before he was to give testimony. KGB and GRU were just "we're going to push you out the window" or "murder your family."

This is such an American thing to write that part of me almost wants to applaud.

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