“This is the first letter I’ve sent you in many years, and it will probably be the last,” Breivik wrote. “I have many ideological brothers and sisters with whom I correspond in France [where his father lives].” In Breivik’s opinion, Jens was a good father but a victim of the social democracy’s “extreme state feminism.” By this, he no doubt means Norway’s focus on empowering women. Breivik believed this bias was the reason his father lost custody of him to his ill-equipped mother.
“Your comments in the aftermath of my mission were predictable. Very cowardly but understandable. A nationalist with few years left to live, and in addition residing relatively protected in France, you should have taken advantage of the rare opportunities for propaganda you were given to do something for nordisisme, and for the fascist and anti-communist ideology. We both know, however, that you are and will remain as far from being a nationalist as is possible. . . . Your irrational behavior may best be compared to the Stockholm Syndrome, where you defend and submit yourself to your abusers. Fjordman suffers from the same syndrome, as did Mom.”
Breivik invited his father “to take part in the Norwegian fascist movement.” “If you yet again choose to take ‘the broader path,’ this will be the last contact we’ll have. . . . Visiting me has no purpose as long as you share the majority’s attitudes and opinions.”
In his letter, Breivik once again complained that he was being kept prisoner “under inhumane conditions.”
Breivik rambled on about historic events and al Qaeda. “Brainless shells, and you give the impression of being one, you bow your heads in agreement when steps are taken to protect the ideological bubble, utopia. . . . Are you completely retarded, or are you acting in this irrational role as practical idiot to your abusers?”
He continued that he felt ashamed that no one in his family had chosen to fight with Vidkun Quisling—the Norwegian who cooperated with Hitler—during World War II.
“I am proud of the fact that I’m participating in saving my people,” he wrote, “and I continue to work 70 hours per week for this cause. . . . I am and remain extremely proud of my participation in the battle against communism and liberalism. . . . I will continue to work to ensure that the fascists acquiring power will be nordistic fascists.”
Nordistic and nordisisme are words Breivik created to describe his utopia. He ended his letter by wishing his father the best. “Live well, no matter which side you choose. I will always be thankful that you gave me the opportunity to fight. My door will always be open to all nordisists, you included. But we both know you will never choose the narrow path.
“With kind regards,
“Anders Behring Breivik”
Also at the beginning of 2014, Breivik sent a thirty-page letter to selected international press and to the Chinese and Russian embassies. According to ABC Nyheter on January 10, 2014, Breivik claims that although he has no regrets about his acts of violence on July 22, 2011, he now renounces the use of violence to achieve his goal. On the contrary, his intention is to start his own political party and campaign for his politics the democratic way. Perhaps this strategy will prove effective when the time comes to prove that he is no longer a threat to Norwegian society.
In the letter, he also complains about inhumane conditions at Skien prison and writes that he won’t survive unless major improvements are made to his environment. Among the torturous conditions, he mentions the fact that he’s not allowed to establish a political fascist party, that he doesn’t have access to the books necessary to study political science, and that he has an old computer.
His attorney, Tord Jordet, is uncertain when his client changed his attitude concerning the use of violence. “But he is clear on the fact that he will be using democratic means,” Jordet said to ABC Nyheter. “That’s the reason freedom of speech is so important to him. I won’t say the change in him happened on that day, but Breivik surrendered voluntarily on July 22; and since his terrorist acts on that day, he has not attempted to use violence or encourage others to violent acts.”
Although he’s in prison, Breivik has not lost his voting rights. Norway’s laws contrast with those of the United States, where most states prohibit prisoners from voting. Jordet confirmed that his client voted in the last regional election in 2011; however, he wouldn’t confirm whether Breivik used his voting right in the 2013 Parliamentary election. “He has attempted to found his own political party, and it’s therefore likely that he will present himself for election and take advantage of his voting rights.”
The reason Breivik was unsuccessful in creating “Norway’s Fascist Party and its Nordic League” was that his former prison at Ila refused to let him try to collect the necessary second signature in accordance with Brønnøysundsregistret’s rules. To present himself for election, he would also need five thousand signatures from eligible voters.
“Until now, the prison has prevented him from sending out letters with a political content,” Jordet says. “It’s a problem for democracy that the Norwegian Correctional Service imposes such limitations. Founding a political party is a human right.” As long as Breivik doesn’t provoke hatred, violence, or any illegal activity, his attorney sees absolutely no problems with Breivik running a political party from prison.
“He has not shown any aggressive behavior against corrections officers or others, and he’s been very clear on the fact that he’ll continue his battle using his pen.” When ABC Nyheter asked if Breivik is discouraging the two remaining terrorist cells—he still claims they exist—from violence, Jordet’s response was unclear.
About Breivik’s claims about the conditions in prison, Jordet confirmed that visits are restricted and that Breivik is not free to invite visitors. In addition, there are unannounced body and room searches on a regular basis.
“One might ask if it’s necessary, with such comprehensive surveillance of someone who is locked up in isolation without contact with anyone except the corrections officers,” Jordet says. “In my opinion, it’s not. And he experiences these clearly inhumane conditions as torture.”
Breivik’s attorney added that Breivik is emotionally strong and said that his client is not broken. “He has never expressed any remorse, and still vouches for what he said during his trial—that his acts were gruesome, but necessary.”
When asked why Breivik sent his thirty-page letter to the Russian and Chinese embassies, Jordet answered that since Norway criticizes those countries for human-rights breaches, Breivik thought it important that they receive information about how Norway treats its own prisoners.
Some still think Breivik’s sentence wasn’t harsh enough. Norway actually has a law that allows a thirty-year sentence in extreme circumstances. The law is supposed to be used against terrorism and crimes against humanity. Although the law was passed in 2008, it hasn’t yet been enforced, due to bureaucracy and political unwillingness, and Breivik was sentenced under the regular law where the maximum is twenty-one years. Perhaps, in this world today, where a single terrorist like Anders Breivik can cause such mass chaos and destruction both in and out of prison, Norway will change its attitude toward criminals and start enforcing the thirty-year law. However, that is yet to happen.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg expressed after the trial that he was proud of how the court and the Norwegian people handled Breivik’s trial. “It was handled with a lot of dignity,” he said.
Perhaps in our time, dignity will not be enough to keep us safe.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AFTERMATH
But this trial is also about finding the truth. The statements I have made, the comparisons I have drawn—are they true? Because, if something is true, how can it be illegal?
—ANDERS BREIVIK MANIFESTO
Warning signs that might have prevented a tragedy like the July 22, 2011 attacks were everywhere. Breivik’s early life, if one were to examine it closely, offered hints as to how he might have veered from what is frequently viewed as “normal” behavior. Psychiatrists point out how
disorderly his home life was, especially his relationship with his mother. Social Services even recommended that he be sent to a foster home. Recent evidence would lead one to believe that his half-sister, Elisabeth, warned her mother about his odd behavior. She believed that Breivik, in moving back home and playing computer games all day, was signaling his strange existence. His friends also worried about him and tried time and again to get him to come out of his room at his mother’s apartment. Those who knew Breivik best spoke of how adept he always proved to be when going into one of his planning phases. Before the attacks, he had slipped into a state of near-hibernation socially, but his mind and body continued to explore and activate his diabolical plot.
“The reason these killers don’t show up in police blotters is because they are not technically in the criminal life,” said Dr. Kathleen Puckett. “Usually in law enforcement, including the FBI, most cases are studied on a case-study basis. You never really have a portrait of the internal mechanisms of their psychological states.”
Apart from making a few mini-bombs in high school, there was nothing in Kaczynski’s life to draw law enforcement’s attention to him.
“One day in the laboratory,” he wrote in a high school article, “having finished my assigned experiment early, I thought I might as well spend the extra time pursuing my favorite line of research . . . a mixture of red phosphorus and potassium chlorate seemed promising.”
The first six of Kaczynski’s bombs were made in accordance with that article from high school.
“He may have been brilliant,” according to Robert D. McFadden’s Prisoner of Rage, published in the New York Times on May 26, 1996, “but what they remembered about him at Harvard were his annoying trombone blasts in the dead of night, the primordial stench of rotting food that drifted from his room, his odd metronomic habit of rocking back and forth on a chair as he studied, and his icy aloofness as he strode through the suite, saying nothing, slamming his door to shut them out.”
Not much there to indicate a mass murderer in the making.
“He was so young and so lacking in social skills,” Kaczynski’s mother, Wanda, said to the FBI. “It was always hard for him to make friends. I think he grew even more isolated while he was at Harvard.”
Kaczynski cut himself off from social life after he left his teaching job at the University of California, Berkeley and secluded himself in the Montana woods, where he began plotting murder.
After the explosion of his first primitive homemade bomb in 1978, Kaczynski would terrorize the United States for the next two decades, mailing or hand-delivering a series of increasingly sophisticated explosive devices that killed three people and injured twenty-three others.
He sent the first mail bomb in late May 1978 to materials engineering professor Buckley Crist at Northwestern University. The package was found in a parking lot at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with Crist’s return address. The package was “returned” to Crist, but when Crist received the package, he noticed that it was not addressed in his own handwriting. Suspicious, he contacted campus policeman Terry Marker, who opened the package, which exploded immediately. Marker survived but required medical assistance for injuries to his left hand.
The bomb was made of metal that could have come from a home workshop. It contained smokeless explosive powders, and the box and the plugs that sealed the pipe ends were handcrafted from wood. Later, as Kaczynski’s methods became more sophisticated, he used batteries and heat filament wire to ignite the explosives faster and more effectively.
He followed the initial 1978 bomb by targeting airline officials, and in 1979 he placed a bomb in the cargo hold of American Airlines Flight 444, a Boeing 727 carrying seventy-two passengers and a crew of six from Chicago to Washington, D.C. According to authorities, it had enough power to “obliterate the plane,” but it failed to explode due to a faulty timing mechanism, and the pilot was able to make an emergency landing. Apart from twelve passengers treated for smoke inhalation, no one was harmed.
Bombing an airliner is a federal crime in the United States, and an FBI-led task force was formed to investigate the case. Assigned the code name UNABOM (UNiversity and Airline BOMber), the task force grew to more than 150 full-time investigators and analysts. This team made every possible forensic examination of recovered components of the explosives. These were of little use, as the bombs were essentially made from scrap material available almost everywhere. The victims, investigators later learned, were chosen irregularly from library research. Because Kaczynski had no criminal record, there was nothing to lead authorities to him.
In 1980, chief agent John Douglas, working with agents in the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences Unit, issued a psychological profile of the Unabomber which described the offender as a man of above-average intelligence with connections to academia. This profile was later refined to characterize the offender as a neo-Luddite holding an academic degree in the hard sciences, but this profile was discarded in 1983 in favor of an alternative theory developed by FBI analysts concentrating on the physical evidence in recovered bomb fragments. In this rival profile, the bomber suspect was characterized as a blue-collar airplane mechanic. In truth, the FBI didn’t have a clue.
A 1-800 hotline was set up by the UNABOM Task Force to take any calls related to the Unabomber investigation, with a $1 million reward for anyone who could provide information leading to the Unabomber’s capture. But it was the publication of Kaczynski’s manifesto—almost two decades later—that led to his arrest.
“The terrorist group FC is planning to blow up an airliner out of Los Angeles . . . ,” Kaczynski threatened, “during the next six days” if his manifesto was not published by a major national newspaper.
After a heated debate on whether to agree to the terrorist’s demands, the United States Department of Justice, along with Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh, recommended publication in hopes that a reader would identify the author.
McVeigh had also been a law-abiding citizen until April 19, 1995.
He was obsessed with The Turner Diaries, a novel by former American Nazi Party official William L. Pierce. Writing under the name Andrew Macdonald, Pierce writes about Earl Turner, who demonstrates his contempt for gun-control laws by truck-bombing the Washington FBI headquarters. He was clearly an inspiration for McVeigh.
After McVeigh left the Army, his anger against the government increased. He railed against gun control and the abuse of power. He spouted conspiracy theories and appeared to believe in UFOs. He even told a friend from the Army that he’d seen documented evidence that the government was importing drugs from Canada in mini-subs. When his friend asked to see a copy of the document, McVeigh claimed it was on secret paper that couldn’t be copied. But what concerned his friend so much that he wrote it down was McVeigh’s statement that he knew how to steal guns from the military. McVeigh had said it would be “very easy to rob a base of guns . . . two people could easily get away with it.”
McVeigh was less careful than Breivik, who did not share his anti-government rhetoric. He discussed his thoughts in depth with his former Army comrades Michael Fortier and Terry Nichols. Both knew McVeigh had planned something big, and Nichols even helped him build the bomb. He had even discussed his ideas with his younger sister. No one seemed to take him seriously enough to warn the police.
Perhaps Breivik could have been stopped early had Norway been more awake and aware. As is the case with many children, he displayed malevolence at times. His offbeat scheming methods to get his way had raised questions, but nothing pointed to his becoming a monster.
When Breivik isolated himself outside Oslo to perfect his bomb, buying up suspicious chemicals, his country snoozed. He was able to purchase enough fertilizer to blow up a big portion of downtown Oslo. This collecting of material that contained certain combustible ingredients automatically placed him on Norway’s Police Intelligence List and flagged him as a suspected terrorist. However, authorities didn’t follow through on his
case simply because he didn’t have a criminal record. His “farm” was never checked out, and his manufacturing continued. Nor were the authorities alarmed that his company, in the official register, had a different purpose than farming. His farming neighbors said, in hindsight, that Breivik had acted suspiciously, that he had covered the windows of his house, and that he didn’t seem to know much about farming. Yet it would have only taken one phone call to the PST and his quest might have ended right then and there.
NO HEALING; ONLY DENIAL
Adrian Pracon was as unlike Breivik as anyone on the island that day; gay, Catholic, son of Polish immigrants, county secretary for the Workers’ Youth League of Telemark. Supposedly unprovoked, Pracon beat a man and woman after leaving an arraignment hearing for Breivik in November 2011. In August 2012, he was sentenced to 180 hours of community service and the equivalent of $1,700 in damages for his aggravated assault. He was given leniency in his sentence by the court because of the trauma he had suffered on July 22 the previous year.
Pracon later explained in his book, The Heart Against the Rock, written with Erik Moller Solheim, that he suffered from a kind of survivor’s guilt, especially after realizing why he had been spared. In the water, he was convinced that he would die. He wrote:
I stopped breathing. My heart was beating so hard that it must have been visible through my wet T-shirt. Where was he going to hit me? In the head? In the heart? I hoped for the heart. And that it would be quick. I had never had a gun aimed at me before. It was a feeling of complete inferiority. He could do to me whatever he wanted.
The Mystery of the Lone Wolf Killer Page 21
