Ted Kaczynski’s Connection to MK-Ultra Explained

Before he was the nationally-feared Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski — who was found dead in his North Carolina prison cell on Saturday at the age of 81 — was a promising 16-year-old student at Harvard University, where was part of an experiment reportedly linked to the CIA’s MK-Ultra program.

During his college years, Kaczynski was part of a three-year experiment “aimed at psychic deconstruction by humiliating undergraduates and thereby causing them to experience severe stress,” Dr. Jonathan D. Moreno wrote in a 2012 piece for Psychology Today.

Helming the study was psychologist Henry Murray, who during World War II worked with the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA. Murray’s work with the OSS included developing tests to screen applicants and see how well they stood up to interrogation, according to a 2000 piece in the Atlantic by Alston Chase, who discussed the Harvard experiment with Kaczynski.

Details on the experimentation to which Kaczynski was subjected are scant, but Moreno described it as involving “psychological torment and humiliation,” and Kaczynski’s brother, David, said in a 2016 interview with German reporter Michaela Haas that it entailed regular verbal abuse.

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

The experiment was reportedly part of the CIA’s clandestine, illegal program MKUltra, aimed at finding ways to brainwash and psychologically break people down under interrogation. The same program, which ran from 1953 to 1973, also included heavy experimental use of LSD.

After his college years, Ted Kaczynski gave in to distrust and dislike of society, isolating himself in a remote shack in Montana. From there, he undertook a 17-year campaign of bombings that killed three people, injured 23 more and left the nation on edge.

After his capture in 1996 — aided by his brother recognizing the tone of a 35,000-word manifesto published in the press — he admitted to the bombings and was sentenced to life in prison.

He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by a psychiatrist, but consistently bristled at suggestions that he was mentally ill.