Van Zandt had also been involved in identifying Kaczynski. That investigation was still ongoing when McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City. Linda Kaczynski, who was married to Ted Kaczynski’s younger brother, David, urged her husband to read the published manifesto. Given the numerous FBI press conferences where the Unabomber was described as someone from the Chicago area (where he began his bombings), with connections in Salt Lake City and the San Francisco Bay Area, Linda had connected the dots.
Although he at first dismissed her theory, David read the manifesto and began to accept the likelihood that his estranged brother was indeed the Unabomber. He then went through old family papers and found letters written by his brother. Dating back to the 1970s, they contained phrases similar to what was found in the Unabomber Manifesto. David, still not certain about Kaczynski’s guilt, voluntarily gave the letters to the FBI to protect his brother from the danger of an FBI raid.
Van Zandt believed the letters and the manifesto were the products of the same author. The FBI arrested Kaczynski on April 3, 1996, after a manhunt of nearly two decades, at his remote cabin outside Lincoln, Montana.
Searching his cabin, the investigators found a wealth of bomb components and forty thousand handwritten journal pages that included bomb-making experiments and descriptions of the Unabomber crimes. The FBI also found, hidden underneath his bed, yet another explosive device ready for mailing.
In the last months before the Oklahoma bombing, McVeigh had used different aliases, just as Breivik had, to avoid apprehension. But he did use his own name at the motel where he had parked his Ryder truck the night before the blast, and the fact that his escape car didn’t have license plates was an invitation to the authorities to arrest him. So was the envelope with anti-government documents that he left in the Mercury and the hateful messages he had written on his sister’s computer. Yet when apprehended, McVeigh didn’t confess to the crime. He wanted to take every opportunity to inconvenience and embarrass the authorities along the way.
On Friday, July 22, 2011, Attorney Geir Lippestad had been out on the Oslofjord waterway, on his way back from vacation with his wife and children in his private boat, when he heard the rumbling sound coming from the city. Looking up at the rain clouds, he dismissed the low roar as thunder. But at the same time, he thought it was weird that he didn’t see any lightning. He noted that it was almost 3:30 P.M., and minutes later he answered a call on his cell phone. It was one of his employees, sounding excited. A bomb-like explosion had ripped off the front of the government building not more than a hundred yards away from his offices.
Assured that his building hadn’t been damaged, he ordered his staff to evacuate and continued sailing toward shore. That night and into the morning, he watched and listened as the news came in about the bombing, then the shootings on Utøya.
The 48-year-old tried to coax his stocky, fit body into sleep. Four hours later, his phone woke him. He listened as the voice of a policeman, who’d been interrogating Anders Behring Breivik, informed him that the accused had personally requested him, Geir Lippestad, to be his attorney. His first inclination was to say no, but he ran a hand through his short clipped gray hair and said, “I need some time to think.”
Lippestad had been relatively unknown until Breivik asked him to be his attorney. After he graduated from the University of Oslo Faculty of Law in 1990, he had been hired by a small law firm in the outskirts of Oslo. Later, he started his own firm with some colleagues in downtown Oslo. Breivik had at some point rented office space in the same building as Lippestad, and they shared the same canteen. In 2002, Lippestad’s name appeared in the national press when he defended Ole Nicolai Kvisler, who was sentenced to seventeen years of prison for his participation in the racially motivated murder of Benjamin Hermansen. Breivik was impressed by the way Lippestad had defended Kvisler, and knowing he would be an even more hated public figure than Kvisler, he felt that Lippestad was a suitable choice. Breivik also thought that Lippestad would let him use his trial as a marketing tool.
Lippestad’s first thought was that he couldn’t deal with this case, nor the man, if he indeed was responsible for such mayhem. But Lippestad didn’t have much time to think about it. Breivik wouldn’t, he was told by the policeman on the phone, reveal any information of other terrorist cells and hidden bombs until his attorney got there. He decided he must discuss the matter with his wife, who always seemed to know what to say and do in tough situations. His wife, a nurse, reminded him of his job as an attorney, and that she, as a nurse, would have treated Breivik had he been brought into the hospital wounded.
“It is your job as an attorney to defend him and to protect his interests,” she said. Lippestad went for a long walk, to think, and when he came back home he had made up his mind. He had convinced himself that this was a case just like any other, and that the rules of criminal law and procedure were just the same. And maybe, in the back of his mind, he realized what this case might do for his career. He immediately called the policeman and told him he was on his way. He would meet with Breivik, speak with him, and then decide.
SHOCK, GRIEF, AND DENIAL
On Monday evening, still in a state of shock and grief, Norwegian citizens responded in rallies calling for unity to mourn the dead. More than two hundred thousand people assembled in Oslo alone, while other large groups gathered across the country. In front of Oslo’s City Hall, amid the people carrying flowers, cards, and candles, Crown Prince Haakon announced “Tonight our streets are filled with love.” Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who had lost her stepbrother on the island, cried as many onlookers in the crowd held up roses.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who had almost overnight become something of a father figure to the country, said he was confident that Norway would pass this test. “This is a march for democracy, tolerance, and unity,” he told the thousands. “Evil can kill people but never conquer a nation.”
One woman in attendance raised her voice, saying “We are more than the evil within us.”
Her husband added “We must and will stand together now.”
But amid the country’s collective unity, questions were being raised. Why hadn’t Breivik’s plans been detected? His name had appeared on a Norwegian Police Security (PST) watch list for buying chemicals needed to build a bomb, and nothing had come of it. Why had security failed in so many ways? How could one man commit all this evil without being stopped?
Not only was Breivik’s state of mental health discussed among the prosecution and defense teams, but many pro-government political views were being expressed. Just days after the massacre, novelist Jostein Gaarder and Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen wrote an op-ed for the New York Times, “A Blogosphere of Bigots,” in which they claimed Breivik wasn’t a lone wolf–type madman, but a product of the extreme right wing. Much of the essay indicated that Breivik’s disgust with multiculturalism and his hatred for Muslims had driven him over the edge.
Other political activists claimed that the Labor Party, while taking advantage of a stunned community, was exploiting July 22 in order to maintain its power. Breivik, they reminded the public, had killed fellow Norwegians, and his derangement shouldn’t be recognized as a product of the right-wing Progress Party. Author Mora Levin, a respected member of Norway’s Jewish community, wrote that the New York Times piece was “the ugliest thing I have ever read since Mein Kampf.”
Bruce Bawer wrote that this political debate was “plainly a new Norwegian order that the political and media establishment, led by the Labor Party, was trying to ram down the country’s throat in the wake of the atrocities.”
Geir Lippestad would soon agree to defend Breivik. No one was sure of his motives or strategy at that time, but he must have been thinking that Breivik was already being discussed as a phenomenon. In his first press conference, Lippestad faced the cameras and gave short, concise answers to the waiting crowd.
• Yes, Breivik had admitted to his acts.
• Yes, Breivik thought his acts gruesom
e—but, to his mind, necessary.
• No, he (Lippestad) hadn’t officially met with his client.
• Yes, he planned to meet him that afternoon.
• Yes, if he agreed to defend Breivik in court, he would defend him to the best of his ability.
And the world had finally met the man who might be willing to defend such a monster.
Later that afternoon, in Oslo’s central police station, he faced the man who had stolen Norway’s spirit and sent its citizens into their homes, broken and fearful for their country. Had all their progress directed at peace and equality for all been in vain? Had one of their own proved that madness and evil existed in every human mind?
After spending about three hours with his client, Lippestad texted the message that the court had been waiting for. He assured them that he would officially represent Anders Behring Breivik in the upcoming trial. Then he immediately granted a second interview to the hungry media.
His client was in a war. That was his message to the crowd. His client believed that the Western world wouldn’t understand him, that it would take sixty years for his actions to be fully understood and appreciated. Then Lippestad raised his voice as he briefly explained his client’s mindset. “Everything,” he said, raising his eyes to level them on his audience, “indicates to me that he is insane.”
Meanwhile, Inga Bejer Engh, a 41-year-old attorney in the Oslo Prosecutor’s Office, had been driving to her summer cabin when she learned of the killings. She followed the case with interest. Within a month, she and her colleague Svein Holden were officially assigned as prosecutors for Breivik’s case. What followed would be far from a typical Norwegian trial, but it would follow the Norwegian mindset to a frightening degree.
A copy of Breivik’s manifesto began to surface through an anonymous post on various Internet forums. Immediately it went viral, and a surge of anxiety rushed through the nation and beyond. With the live drama about his upcoming trial, his written diatribe was discussed in many tones, most of which were aimed at how he would be tried. The majority wanted him quickly convicted and imprisoned. Since there is no death penalty in Norway, the call was for life in prison, to lock him up and throw away the key.
As the peaceful parades continued, the full impact of what her son had carried out on that deadly Friday struck Wenche Behring. She collapsed in her apartment, where Breivik had so often slept, and was admitted as a patient in the psychiatric ward at Diakonhjemmet Hospital.
For more than a month, too shocked to face the outside world, she talked to the police and gave what would later be considered crucial evidence at the hearing. Too ill to attend, she allowed her remarks to be read to the court a few months later by her far-from-unbiased doctor. “I thought [my son, Anders] had turned completely crazy,” the doctor would read to a visibly shaken Anders Breivik. “I thought there was something wrong with his head.”
Like Breivik, McVeigh was unashamed of his crimes. He admitted to his attorneys that he was responsible for the bombing; however, he claimed that his actions were a justifiable response to the tyranny of the government. Much like Breivik, he wanted his lawyers to craft a “necessary defense” pleading and create a platform for him to get his message through to the public. And as in Breivik’s case, McVeigh’s attorney, Stephen Jones, attempted to use insanity as a defense in spite of his client’s opposition. The psychiatrist Jones hired to evaluate McVeigh, however, quickly came to the conclusion that McVeigh had known exactly what he was doing when he detonated the bomb. He was legally sane, and it would be difficult to argue otherwise.
The question of sanity was also crucial to Kaczynski. Forensic psychiatrist Sally Johnson, appointed to examine Kaczynski’s mental state for competency, diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. Furious at this finding, Kaczynski attempted to fire his attorneys and refused to accept a diagnosis of mental illness. In the end, he pleaded “guilty” to avoid being characterized as insane during the trial.
A QUESTION OF SANITY
In order to understand the farce that followed July 22, 2011, it is imperative to study the meaning of the insanity ruling in Norway. In most countries, including the United States, it is a defense, meaning that being judged insane might reduce one’s sentence. In Norway, however, insanity excludes the assailant from punishment altogether. Under Norwegian law, a person who is guilty of a crime, but considered psychotic, cannot be imprisoned or even punished for his actions. Had Breivik been sent to a mental institution, he could pretend to regret the murders and secure a release as soon as five years later. That was the fear that filled the Norwegian population. No one wanted this monster to go unpunished.
However, statistically, only one of five insanity pleas in Norway was successful; and of those, many involved subjects who were deemed mentally deficient without contest.
Had Breivik killed his countrymen because, as his manifesto suggested, he was a rebel against the multiculturalist left? Certainly, when he committed the murders, he was mad. That was what I thought at first. It was as clear as black and white to me. A moral middle ground did not exist for him, especially not in Norway, where black and white fade into noncommittal shades of gray. Perhaps Breivik’s destiny was predicted early on, when Kristian Andenæs, a renowned criminal-law professor at the University of Oslo, wrote: “In a way, he [Breivik] is obviously insane, but not in the sense of [Norwegian] criminal law.”
Later, though, as I conducted my research, my opinion changed, as I learned that Breivik is a textbook example of a lone wolf killer, and that he was perfectly sane before, during, and after his gruesome acts. Just like Kaczynski and McVeigh.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Breivik’s first psychiatric examination was arranged by court-appointed Torgeir Husby, the 61-year-old head of psychiatry at Oslo’s Diakonhjemmet Hospital. Known for his tough medical approach rather than his attention to his patient’s veracity, or lack thereof, he was joined by Dr. Synne Sørheim, a former assistant of his at Oslo’s facility. Ironically enough, the hospital Dr. Husby headed was the same facility that had treated Breivik’s mother in the past and was treating her now, after her breakdown. Clearly, Husby was no impartial expert. Breivik’s mother had long insisted that her son was insane, as a way of avoiding taking any blame for his actions.
The panel’s conclusion was made public on Tuesday, November 29, 2011. They diagnosed Breivik as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. This disorder had developed over a period of time, they concluded, and he had been criminally insane during the attacks and still was during their examinations days later.
According to the report, Breivik offered unfitting dialogue that lacked empathy. He spoke and acted compulsively, alluding to himself as Europe’s warrior in “a low-intensity civil war.” He described himself as a grand master in the Knights Templar and claimed that the organization would commit further executions.
One might think this would take care of the question as to Breivik’s state of mind when he slaughtered seventy-seven people and left well over a hundred more collectively suffering on the street, at the camp, in the fields, and in the water. Yet the Norwegian people were shocked by the realization that he could, in essence, go free. That was what their legal system offered them. A person, in this case Breivik, could either be sane and imprisoned or insane and unpunished. It was too much to fathom.
This shock created a huge outrage in the media. On December 8, 2011, on behalf of the surviving victims of the attacks, their attorneys challenged the panel’s bias and demanded a second opinion.
Meanwhile, Dr. Randi Rosenquist, a renowned psychiatrist who had observed Breivik during his initial days in prison, spoke for the first time about the case on national television. It was her opinion that someone who, like Breivik, was in the midst of an active psychosis like the panel had concluded, most likely couldn’t have pulled off such a complicated and well-organized plan of attack.
When she learned how Breivik had manufactured the bomb, coordinated its blast, and directed his att
ack on the island, she paused to ponder the totality of horror he had accomplished. The time it must have involved just to plan the attack. The energy he must have expended. The precise manner in which he had executed his mission. All these factors suggested that he was probably sane. The full scope of Breivik’s act seemed too complex to be compatible with an active psychosis.
In January 2012, the court appointed a second panel of psychiatric experts, Dr. Tørrissen and Dr. Aspaas, in an attempt to appease the media and population. Right after Easter break in April, the panel’s conclusion was made public. They deemed Breivik sane, in the criminal sense of the term. Their conclusion didn’t come as a surprise, and critics of the insanity circus have pointed out that both panels had political agendas.
One such critic, author/psychologist Ellen Kolsrud Finnøy, pointed out that both panels had ulterior motives for their conclusions. In her book The Envious Murderer, she portrays four possible motivating factors that address both panels. First, a diagnosis of insanity was the ultimate revenge against Breivik because he feared lack of credibility above all else. Second, the insanity conclusion would prevent uncomfortable discussions about the Norwegian legal system and justice for the victims. No one would have to think about how sentences in Norway can be reduced after a few years if the prisoner behaves well, or that the goal is to rehabilitate, not to punish, the prisoners. Third, the diagnosis of schizophrenia may have been an attempt to discount Breivik’s political views and motivation for the attack as expressed in his manifesto.
On the other side, as a fourth point, she points out that the second panel’s motivation was appeasement of the victims, their families, and the population in general. The second panel was bullied by the media into coming to their conclusion. And so the debates continued to rage, leading up to Breivik’s formal trial.
A CIRCUS
On February 6, 2012, after Breivik had attended a number of subsequent custody hearings, he was brought into the court to face presiding judge Wenche Elizabeth Arntzen, for his final preliminary hearing. Both his team of defense attorneys and the state’s group of prosecutors sat at their appropriate tables. In attendance were many expert witnesses for both factions of the insanity debate. Also, many surviving victims of the massacre watched with differing degrees of passion. Upon entering the courtroom, Breivik swung his cuffed hands out in a ceremonial gesture.
The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer Page 17
