Kaczynski’s Resistance to Mental Exam Forewarned

David Kaczynski, offering a window into the tortured mind of his brother, the alleged Unabomber, said Thursday that he cautioned prosecutors 18 months ago that Theodore Kaczynski would block any examination by their psychiatrists.

In an interview with The Times, David Kaczynski, whose tip led the FBI to arrest his older brother, said he is disappointed with federal prosecutors because they ignored the warning and are pushing for a mental exam.

“I think our family for many years had a feeling that Ted needed help, but we also realized he was resistant,” said David Kaczynski, an upstate New York social worker.

“He was in absolute denial. A main pin of his belief system was that psychology and psychiatry were not exact sciences. I had always read into that an extreme unwillingness to recognize he had a problem.”

David Kaczynski said that when he met at an Albany, N.Y., hotel in late May 1996 with lead prosecutor Robert Cleary he was told there would not be a need for a face-to-face exam with his brother.

Cleary indicated that volumes of Theodore Kaczynski’s writings--including many found in his Montana shack after his arrest--would be adequate to make a mental assessment, David Kaczynski said.

After Cleary spent three hours with him and another three hours with his mother, David Kaczynski was hopeful that he had the New Jersey-based prosecutor’s ear.

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Noting that he’s not a mind reader, David Kaczynski nonetheless said he believed that Cleary “was sympathetic with our concerns.”

Cleary, a special U.S. attorney, declined to comment Thursday afternoon as he entered the federal courtroom where jurors are being selected in Theodore Kaczynski’s murder-by-bombing trial.

In a court filing Wednesday, Cleary said there is ample evidence to suggest that Theodore Kaczynski, who his attorneys say has been diagnosed as being a paranoid schizophrenic, is not afraid of an exam.

“The flat refusal to comply with the court’s order [to submit to an exam] smacks of trial tactics designed to thwart the search for the truth, rather than the product of any mental illness,” Cleary said in the court document.

David Kaczynski dismissed Cleary’s assertion, saying: “That’s absolutely not true.”

He also said Cleary let him down because government mental health experts failed to talk to him or his mother before U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno decided to pursue the death penalty against Theodore Kaczynski.

Why speak out on this particular issue now?

“When Mr. Cleary promised me [that] a fair and impartial evaluation of my brother’s mental state would be made before a decision on the death penalty, I believed him,” David Kaczynski said Thursday. “I find it odd that decision was made before the government psychologist even talked to my family.”

David Kaczynski agreed to speak by telephone, with his attorney on the line, only on the narrow issue of the mental exam and his brother’s mental health. He spoke in a calm, straightforward manner, not raising his voice.

He agreed to the interview a day after prosecutors made public chilling excerpts from the journals of his brother, revealing that he allegedly intended “to start killing people,” comparing himself to Texas tower killer Charles Whitman and belittling those who might someday brand him mentally ill.

“If I am successful at this, it is possible that, when I am caught (not alive, I fervently hope!) there will be some speculation in the news media as to my motives for killing,” Theodore Kaczynski was quoted as writing. “If such speculation occurs, they are bound to make me out to be a sickie, and to ascribe to me motives of a sordid or ‘sick’ type . . .

“I would point out that many tame, conformist types seem to have a powerful need to depict the enemy of society as sordid, repulsive or ‘sick.’ ”

During Thursday’s conference call, Anthony Bisceglie, the Kaczynski family attorney, said he also attended last year’s meeting with Cleary and recalls the prosecutor saying a face-to-face exam of Theodore Kaczynski might not be necessary “and that there was evidence that a more accurate assessment might be made on the basis of this individual’s writings.”

The family’s comments are the latest skirmish over whether Theodore Kaczynski’s attorneys should be allowed to offer mental health experts as witnesses in his upcoming trial. Kaczynski has been interviewed by his own experts.

A hearing on the issue is set for this afternoon.

On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. warned Theodore Kaczynski that his continued resistance to a mental exam could bring sanctions--including the prohibition of psychiatric defense evidence.

David Kaczynski is a pivotal figure, not just in the legal case, but also in the life of his brother, whom he once idolized.

They grew up together in a Chicago suburb, and in 1969, when Theodore Kaczynski, a mathematics professor, left his post at UC Berkeley, the pair spent two months driving through Canada in search of some land for Theodore to buy.

Eventually, David, who graduated from Columbia University, helped Theodore purchase a small parcel near the Continental Divide, about 60 miles from Helena, Mont.

Theodore built a tiny shack there without electricity or running water. Likewise, David purchased property in a remote stretch of west Texas, where he spent winters in a lean-to.

David Kaczynski later married and moved to upstate New York. Meanwhile, Theodore became increasingly isolated from his family.

After newspapers in 1995 published the Unabomber’s 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto, David Kaczynski stumbled across old papers of his brother’s that seemed to parallel the treatise’s main themes on the inhumanity of industrial society.

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David Kaczynski, eight years younger than the 55-year-old Theodore, eventually expressed his misgivings about his brother to authorities.

Theodore Kaczynski was arrested in early April 1996 at his Montana hideaway. He was indicted by a grand jury in connection with blasts that killed two Sacramento men and two other attacks that injured academics in Tiburon, Calif., and New Haven, Conn.

On Thursday, David Kaczynski said that long before the arrest he took some of his brother’s letters to a psychiatrist for evaluation. He was told that his brother was extremely mentally ill and paranoid.

The worried family considered different options, he said.

One was to have Theodore Kaczynski committed to a mental institution. But David Kaczynski said he believed there was no way that would work because the family would have to show that the Harvard University-educated mathematician was a danger to himself or others.

“And at that time, in 1991, we had no evidence he was a danger to anyone,” David Kaczynski said.

He also appealed to a Montana cardiologist who had treated Theodore Kaczynski. “I encouraged her to encourage him to seek psychiatric help,” David Kaczynski said. But he suspects that the doctor was reluctant to get involved.

David Kaczynski said his appeals for help show two things: “that Ted had a mental illness and we knew how resistant he would be to be evaluated.”