IT took nearly 20 years to appre hend the Unabomber, and after ward, there was no doubt about who he was and what he had done.
It took just a few hours to capture Lee Harvey Oswald, but doubts about his guilt in the assassination of President Kennedy have persisted for four-and-a-half decades.
Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber (a name coined by the FBI from the first letters of the words “universities” and “airlines” – “una” – the bomber’s first targets), inspired the creation of a new category of criminal, “the lone wolf,” described in National Geographic Channel’s “Unabomber: The Secret History” as “the invisible, angry loner whose inability to connect with other people leads to a dangerous ide ological obses sion.”
Kaczynski’s obsession had to do with his belief that technological advancements represented an unstoppable encroachment on individual freedom.
His choice of targets had something to do with their involvement in various technology sectors, particularly airlines whose jets flew over his remote Montana cabin, violating the isolation he craved.
Oswald, known as “the lone gunman” by those who don’t believe anyone helped him kill JFK, had some obsessions of his own, particularly with Cold War politics.
How his obsessions might have steered him toward shooting John F. Kennedy is anybody’s guess.
Tonight’s “American Experience” documentary, “Oswald’s Ghost,” suggests that if he had not been fatally shot by Jack Ruby two days after Kennedy’s murder, then Oswald might have had a chance to answer that question and a lot of other ones about how he set up the crime or whether he was assisted.
Or maybe not. The show has no persuasive evidence – based on what is known about Oswald’s personality – that a jailhouse confession would have been more reliable than that of any other convict professing his innocence.
In fact, while “Oswald’s Ghost” has interesting interviews with both conspiracy theorists and those who seek to debunk them, it really isn’t anything new.
Nat Geo’s “Unabomber,” however, tells a harrowing story of how a genius, accepted at Harvard at age 16. became the most hunted man in the history of American law enforcement. What made Ted Kuczynski so angry? This show contains two shocking theories.
It’s the better of the two shows, although you don’t really have to choose one or the other. Tonight, they air consecu tively.
“Unabomber: The Secret History”
Tonight at 8 on National Geographic
“Oswald’s Ghost”
Tonight at 10 on WNET/13