UNABOMBER: How the FBI Broke Its Own Rules to Capture the Terrorist Ted Kaczynski Hardcover – June 17, 2014

I enjoyed "Unabomber" immensely -- it's a readable, engaging inside look at the team that tracked and caught America's most notorious and prolific serial bomber. It focuses on the law enforcement side of the equation, but also lets the Unabomber himself speak via excerpts of his voluminous diaries. Though co-authored by the three FBI agents most centrally involved in the endgame, the book has a consistent voice throughout and routinely acknowledges the many contributions of FBI, Postal, ATF, and even Forest Service personnel in helping crack the case.Full disclosure: I know one of the authors personally. But even if I had received and reviewed the book in a plain brown wrapper, I would have liked it just as well.

Excellent book about the Unabomber task forces efforts to track down the most notorious serial bomber in US history. Well paced and well researched in terms of actual case facts. Author does a great job of humanizing the investigators who are trying to track TK down.

I enjoy real-crime books, especially those involving the FBI, and I enjoyed this one, but it's not for everyone. It's full of many nuggets of fascinating facts buried in a mountain of pedestrian writing. Since I do offer some criticisms, let me first say that the authors and the whole Unabomber Task Force members mentioned here presided over the identification, capture and successful prosecution of the Unabomber, a serial killer. You or I might have been his next victim had they not succeeded. Results matter and they got the results, so they deserve credit for that. Bravo. But this is a book review, not a performance review.First, the good. The book gives a very realistic view of the FBI, exposing many errors, foibles, egos, and so forth without sugar-coating. It provides many details of the case that I had never read about before, like the fact that for 16 years, no one who worked the case bothered to check to see if one of the first bombs, one found lying on the ground with plenty of postage, would fit in the nearest mailbox. All kinds of theories were formed about why the bomber chose to plant it there instead of mailing it. How is it possible no one thought that this might be due to the fact it wouldn't fit in the mailbox? The federal jurisdiction was so fractured that the various agencies (ATF, FBI, Postal Inspectors) were not even aware that three of the bombs were made by the same bomber for years because they didn't compare notes or case files. One of the bomb labs thought one bomb was intended to be a dud. Later, the other two agency labs disproved that. And so on. If you're a fan of this kind of crime detail, as I am, this book is worth wading through.The high point of the book is not how the case was finally solved. It was solved not by the FBI but by the Unabomber himself the same way most criminals are caught. He kept committing crimes until he made a mistake and exposed himself. In this case, he wrote a "manifesto" and sent it to some newspapers, and when it was published someone who knew him, a relative, turned him in. This sort of crowdsourcing is as old as the hills. Before TV and the Internet it was done with wanted posters. I seem to recall reading once long ago that Kaczynski had been identified as a suspect early on but was even rejected by the FBI as a non-viable suspect. That's not mentioned in the book, so I can't be sure that's true. But basically, he outed himself by his arrogance, insane compulsive hatred, and his need to promote his "philosophy."That's not to take away from all the hard work done by the task force, both before and after he was identified. Just because various methods didn't work doesn't mean they weren't worth trying or that anyone was deficient. Many clever approaches were tried but did not pan out. That's no doubt reality in law enforcement.Where the book shines is in how it highlights what's wrong with the FBI and other federal law enforcement. We see in this book the comedy of errors that early investigators made, gleefully pointed out by the main author of this book. Disturbing as it is to see him put down others not under his command, he may be doing the public a service. He takes pride in showing how superior his crew was, at least in his mind. The problem with that theory is that he and his crew came no closer to identifying the Unabomber than his predecessors. It took the Unabomber's brother, an Ivy League graduate, to do that. Maybe the FBI should be recruiting there, or at MIT and Caltech, instead of in the usual haunts. Maybe they should be looking at SAT scores rather than the ability to wrestle felons to the ground. It's the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for Pete's sake, not the Federal Bureau of Patrol. If the FBI had put a couple agents with IQ's equal to those of the Unabomber and his brother on the case early on, perhaps the fatalities (which came later) might never have happened. We'll never know. The FBI still thinks of itself as a police agency instead of an investigation agency. It should be the varsity, but Freeman makes them look like bouncers with college degrees. In the British system, Scotland Yard Inspectors, brainiacs (theoretically at least) who don't carry guns, do the investigating and call in the brawny constables when an arrest needs to be made. Something like that could be done with the FBI, but of course that will never happen. The pay and early pension of the FBI, higher than regular civil servants and even higher than other federal investigative agencies, is keyed to the "danger" and "stress" and need to carry weapons, so they have to be given police work to justify that. Freeman and his crew do deserve kudos for the excellent planning and execution of the arrest at least.As for the writing, my description as pedestrian is charitable. The book is replete with grammar, punctuation, and wrong word errors. (Ordinance for ordnance, poured for pored, rationale for rational, feint for faint, etc.) The authors should have splurged and hired an editor, or at least a proofreader. The primary author (the SAC) seems never to have learned the objective case, or maybe just doesn't recognize a preposition or transitive verb when he sees one. ("joined Terry and I", "paused to urge both he and Joel" etc.) This mistake permeated the whole book, with only one instance of correct pronoun usage (at 62% of the way through according to my Kindle) when there were multiple objects. Maybe he missed 7th grade. 90% of the book consists of descriptions of meetings and how he wrested or kept control from other bureaucrats. It sounded like he viewed other agency heads and FBI executives as the main enemy rather than the Unabomber. His self-congratulatory tone is also hard to stomach since the SAC's main contribution, beyond appointing some competent worker bees, seems to be buying donuts and occasionally interrupting his golf game to listen to what the bees actually accomplished.Perhaps most troubling is the pervasive cowardice described during the end game by FBI executives, prosecutors, and DOJ officials. No one was willing to make a decision about whether to release the manifesto, or whether to arrest or search Kaczynski because if it turned out wrong, it would hurt their career. If you care about your career, you shouldn't be in the FB I or DOJ. You should be caring about protecting the public from killers. How about just doing what is most likely to result in the capture of the killer? This concept seemed easy enough for the journeyman agents to understand - Puckett, Moss, and Noel, assuming the book has it right. They seem to be the ones who finally got the impetus going to do what's right. This top-level cowardice aspect left me with a despairing feeling about the future of he FBI, but this stark reality depicted here is probably what is most important in this book. Let's hope Director Comey reads it.

Excellent book detailing FBI investigation.

I can't believe the number of 4- and 5-star reviews. Have any of these people actually read this abomination. It's mostly detailed dialog that’s presented as detailed conversations. This incredibly dumb and ill-advised adds nothing whatsoever to the story but does seriously detract from the reading experience. It's so awful that I must quote a paragraph from the book because you'd not believe me if I tried to describe how insipid this abomination of a book is."Janet, give a call to Terry and have him drop in to decipher that report he dropped off yesterday. Let's do it by 11:00 as my fairway seminar at the Presidio starts at noon." For some reason I continued to use this old euphemism for golf with Janet as we both knew it was unnecessary. "Oh, and good morning! And how about a cup of string coffee?" knowing full well that she was a tea drinker with no appreciation of a good cup of Joe.There is page after ungodly page of this abject drivel which adds NOTHING to the pitiable reader's understanding of the story. I'm trying to finish the book because there's a dirth of readable prose on the manhunt, but it's torture. Beware and be forewarned

I enjoyed the book for the most part, but as some have noted, there must be a better work out there on the mind and actions of Ted Kaczynski himself.If you enjoy getting into a lot of the minutiae about the inner workings of the Unabomber Task Force, you've come to the right place! If like me, though, all that begins to drag and get old after a while. (How many times do I really need to hear about how so and so had a cup of coffee and started talking about the case?) At any rate, the title is apt, so just be clear on the focus of the book going in.

Tedious, boring, read. The FBI task force must have been operated by Mormons, because the dialogue was extremely unnatural or censored. It's hard for me to believe that a bunch of Alpha male FBI guys would talk like that. ** Spoiler Alert** And the biggest disappointment, with all the hard work, man hours, and millions of dollars put into this manhunt, the Unabomber did himself in. It was the publishing of his manifesto that caught him; the hard work of the FBI essentially amounted to nothing more than obtaining an interesting profile on the guy.

In the interest of full disclosure let me make it clear I am a retired FBI Agent and was assigned to this case. I can guarantee this book is a fair and accurate portrayal of how the investigation went. The authors went out of their way to not only describe their part in the case but to make sure others that proceeded them in the early stages were recognized. Of course it all came together one morning in a remote corner of Montana and the way the story is told you can almost feel like you were there. I know because I was.

Excellent service