Manhunt: Unabomber (2017) s01e03 Episode Script
Fruit of the Poisonous Tree
1 What if there's a wudder or a bruh in here? I've gone through all your options.
- I think a guilty plea - No.
I chose you because I thought you were different.
Barker: If you think that you and the group you came here with from San Diego, if you think you folks are happy now, wait until they open those doors.
Roddy: A new car! [Engine whirs.]
[Engine shuts off.]
Barker: I hope Hey, kitty, you should rotate, or you're gonna get bedsores.
Hey, I walked to the fridge and back twice today.
Oh, twice.
Big exercise.
- Mwah! - So what's on the menu? Soup, I guess.
I just got back from the clinic about three minutes ago.
- Ohh, that's a long day.
- Right? Is that from Talbot's? No.
Uh, it's for dad.
It feels like a video.
Well, people have been sending things since the Times article.
Do I need to be worried about all this fan mail that you're getting? Well, that depends how the soup turns out.
- That's my guy.
- [Laughs.]
Ew.
Are you seriously joking about having an affair? [Laughs.]
Hey, are you gonna watch this with me later? It's the tournament of champions.
Dad? Dad? Charlie: [Groans.]
- [Screams.]
- Charlie! - [Crying.]
Charlie! - [Groans.]
Oh.
- Oh, no.
No, no, no.
- [Groaning.]
Frank: You've built your connection.
He knows you can talk about his ideas, - - that you're his equal, that he made the right call on asking to speak to you and only you.
Now turn it.
No more feelings, no more theories.
Hit him hard with the facts.
He's about to be buried under a mountain of hard evidence.
Going to trial is suicide.
Control, he's desperate for control.
He thinks going to trial will give him that control.
Make him understand that we own the courtroom.
The only thing that gives him wiggle room is to plead guilty.
He wants the control.
[Door buzzes.]
He loves the control.
[Exhales sharply.]
[Door buzzes.]
Here we go.
You can do this, Fitz.
[Door buzzes.]
[Lock engages, door buzzes.]
You didn't happen to bring those stamps, did you? Do you ever think about what you leave behind as you move through this world? Do you mean as in "leave your campsite cleaner than when you found it"? My dad, he made me join the boy scouts, thought it might help me make friends.
It didn't.
But it did teach me to leave my campsite cleaner than when I found it.
But what does that matter if, the next day, a logging company comes in and chops the whole forest down? I mean it literally like all that you leave behind, like at the Charles Epstein bombing site.
You know, you hadn't sent a package in six years, and then, on June 22nd, 1993, man in Tiburon opens a brown padded envelope, and his whole torso is ripped apart.
I think I read about that one in the newspaper.
A geneticist, right? Yeah.
He had a daughter.
When a man interacts with the world, he leaves traces everywhere.
Now, every action, every step that you took, you've been shedding clues Not one, not two, but hundreds, thousands.
And they have a warehouse filled with evidence.
This is a trigger switch.
It's precise.
It's unique.
It's made by hand.
Forensics found one virtually intact at the scene.
They found an identical switch at your cabin.
This is wire clippings, springs, copper pipe, aluminum scraps, all matched.
Stamps.
These are stamps from the Epstein package, and these are stamps from your cabin.
You traveled three days from Lincoln, Montana, to mail the package in San Francisco.
You paid cash.
You used disguises, which was smart, except, in your cabin, we found six pairs of sunglasses, some fake mustaches, and then your journal entries logging your disguises.
This is the chemical components of the explosive mixture and, um, the epoxy that was used in the box, your typewriter that was used for the address label, carbon paper, and a receipt for the carbon paper.
It just goes on and on, and, Ted, they have thousands of pieces of evidence that can link you to the Unabom, but they only need one to convict you.
They're gonna bury you under a mountain of evidence, and all your autonomy is gonna go out the window the first day of trial.
He's looking good.
Frank: Now reel him in.
I want you to change the world.
I want you to start a revolution.
But if you fight this If you fight this, you are gonna lose control of everything in your life.
You're gonna be a helpless cog in the machine of justice until they strap you down to the electric chair.
You have one option.
It's gonna give you some bargaining power, but you got only one.
Plead guilty.
All of this is for one bomb.
There were 15 others that we haven't even talked about.
So trust me.
This is all there is.
All right.
If that's my only option, I'll do it.
[Laughs.]
- Frank: That's it, right? - That's it.
Can I ask you one question? Anything.
Since you've been so helpful walking me through what evidence the F.
B.
I.
has, I was hoping you might confirm for me something I've suspected for a long time but could never get a straight answer to.
But it seems to me that there is no forensic evidence whatsoever tying me to these heinous crimes besides what you found in my cabin.
Yeah, but they got so much evidence of every type.
Imagine if you could throw out all that evidence.
There'd be nothing left, right? Because it's all here on the table.
You just laid it all out in front of me.
Yeah.
James, do you really not have any idea why I brought you here? Huh.
This is your search warrant.
It's based on your linguistic analysis.
This is this is what got you into my cabin, and the prosecution's entire case rests on this one document, your document.
No, what What's he doing? So I thought we could discuss something I learned about only recently called fruit of the poisonous tree.
That's the option that you're neglecting to mention The option where I get all this evidence thrown out and I walk away a free man.
The only evidence connecting me to the Unabom attacks was found inside my cabin.
The only reason the F.
B.
I.
was legally allowed to search my cabin was because of your search warrant, but if that search warrant was issued on false pretenses or based on arguments that fail to meet the burden of proof, well, then all the evidence found at that location is deemed fruit of the poisonous tree.
It's tainted.
It's inadmissible.
It's got to be thrown out.
So if the search warrant goes, then all their mountains of evidence simply Disappear.
Do you follow? The whole case depends on the evidence from the cabin.
And the evidence from the cabin depends on the search warrant, but the search warrant depends on this thing called forensic linguistics, which is a field that you just invented, James R.
Fitzgerald.
There is no precedent in all legal history for a search warrant based on linguistic analysis.
So the question I then place before the court becomes, do we trust this man as so expert that we trust his invention? Where did you get your formal training in linguistics, your PhD, your master's? As I hear it, the majority of your law enforcement career was spent on the graffiti squad of a small-town police department.
Is that right? Now would you say that this time spent reading graffiti constitutes your linguistic training? By the way, we haven't even gotten to the content of the warrant yet.
Oh, god.
Oh.
Perhaps I should leave you with my annotations.
They're quite extensive.
We got to get him out of there.
I was right.
Mm.
Well, it doesn't really matter if you're right.
It matters if they believe in you.
And if they don't believe in you, then they can't trust the warrant.
And if they can't trust the warrant, - then I walk out of here.
- [Door buzzes.]
[Door opens.]
Interview is over.
Stop.
Get him out of here.
Everything you touched is tainted.
You need look no further.
Give me those.
Those notes are privileged.
You are the poisonous tree.
- Man: Get him out.
- Don't say anything else.
Good chat.
[Door closes, buzzes.]
I found one.
I found a mistake.
Paragraph 185, "as for the negative consequences "of eliminating industrial society, "well, you can't eat your cake and have it too.
" "Eat your cake and have it too.
" It's backwards.
[Chuckles.]
It's backwards.
Why aren't you cheering? I found a mistake.
We're looking for mistakes.
I found the first real mistake.
Tabby: Okay.
Cool.
But what does it tell us about the Unabomber? We're looking for a wudder, right, something that tells us who he is, - where he comes from.
- Thank you.
Thank you for quoting me telling you what to do.
What crawled up your ass and died? Ackerman gave us an office and a team to comb the manifesto.
After two weeks, we got nothing.
Well, I have something.
Check it out, yo.
Manifesto, paragraph 11.
Jim: [Sighs.]
These aren't mistakes.
Someone calls me a "broad," that's a mistake, one they would not make a second time.
"Negro" will get your ass kicked.
Ernie, you're a nerd.
Want to test a negro, - huh, broad? - [Laughs.]
Jim: Okay.
Let's go with this.
Let's go with it, all right? What's it telling us? What's Who talks like this? Mm-hmm.
My dad, Wally, he talked like this, but It's generational.
It's generational.
So no one 30 to 40 years old would use those words, right? Correct.
So what are we saying? I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
What What What else does it tell us? Well, well, also, if he used these words, then this is a guy who's never been around black folks - Mm-hmm.
- Or women.
- There you go.
- And trust me.
When you're pretty much the only black guy in the UTF, you get lots of practice picking up on language clues.
So with that, he wouldn't live in San Francisco proper, right? Except every letter and package was mailed from here.
Ooh.
Okay.
All right.
Don't worry about it.
Let's keep playing.
Maybe he does, 'cause he lives in the suburbs within driving distance.
Yes.
Give me everything.
Give me every language clue that we have found in the manifesto.
Okay, well, "negro," "chick," "broad," "eat your cake," though I don't know where that gets us.
Just keep going.
Go on.
Come on.
Uh, the long sentences, the formal style - Trying to sound smart.
- Okay.
They're variant spellings, they're they're not wrong.
They're just unusual, like "willful" with one L and "Analyze" with the S, not a Z.
Plus the numbered paragraphs, numbered end notes, a corrections page, works-cited pages - Okay.
- It's a weird format.
Okay.
Okay.
So what does that tell us? I don't know.
It's formatted weird.
Aw, come on! Dude, what do you want? We've been looking for wudder.
There's no wudder.
I mean, it's an awesome idea.
We gave it a shot.
But discretion is the better part of valor.
I don't want to be the next stamp guy.
I mean, he's off interviewing Eugene O'Neill's grandkids' dog Walker, and his career is over because he didn't know when to say, "uncle.
" Maybe we should call in the experts.
[Indistinct conversations.]
Man: Are you going to the, uh, San Diego thing? I'm not going.
It's a good one.
Jim: Thank you all for coming, for taking the time to read the manifesto.
You've all been asked here today because you were either cited in the manifesto or you work in a related academic field.
Look, I'm just I'm hoping that you can shed some light on who the author is based on what you read.
Are there things that you recognize in the ideas, in the language, you know, from someone that you work with, a colleague or former student maybe? If one of my students wrote this, he'd be out of the program.
There's no way this guy would pass peer review.
Eh, you could scrape by writing like this - in the hard sciences maybe.
- Oh, please.
The work coming out of your department hasn't been publishable in 20 years.
- Oh, please.
- I actually do have a question.
- [Indistinct conversations.]
- Excuse me.
[Indistinct conversations.]
Excuse me.
Was there a corrections page appended to the front? Yeah.
And is it called "corrections" or "errata"? Was it in English or Latin? Leave it to the comparative linguistics grad student to focus on what's relevant.
You know, the Unabomber had one thing right.
Did you all read paragraph 88? "Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human race," comparative linguistics, for example.
[Laughs.]
And you think your work is relevant? [All talking over one another.]
Oh, well, listen to the poli-sci [indistinct conversations.]
Man 1: Time flies when you're having fun.
Man 2: Nope.
So who do we see about our per diem? Front desk.
Fitz, good stuff today? Fill me in first thing tomorrow.
- Yeah.
- Excuse me.
You can get your per diem at the front desk.
No, no.
It's not that.
I just My question was never answered.
Is it "corrections" or "errata"? It's, uh, "corrections.
" Why? Come look at the format.
- It's weird.
- Mm.
To you, it's weird.
To me, these numbered paragraphs, the numbered end notes, and the corrections page, I mean, this is a dissertation.
This is standard formatting for a PhD.
I asked everyone about the formatting.
Well, that's the thing.
Modern dissertations look totally different now.
The word processor changed everything.
This is in the style of an older graduate thesis paper.
I noticed these kind of things, and this style of end notes was only used before 1972-ish when they changed to footnotes.
The corrections page? It was called errata before 1967.
Meaning he learned the formatting between '67 and '72.
More than that.
Only PhD candidates use this style.
So if he's still using this format 20 years later He must have written a dissertation.
He must have written a dissertation - between '67 and '72.
- And '72.
Very nice.
Comparative linguistics, not as useless as the Unabomber thinks.
Do you have a minute? Jim: Technically, you're not supposed to see this, but [Gasps.]
We've been analyzing the language of the manifesto, looking for clues as to who he is.
Wow.
We've been looking for mistakes on the theory that, well, like, I say "wudder" and Idiolect.
It's what we call the speech patterns of one specific person.
Idiolect.
Idiolect, right.
Uh, yes, like a linguistic fingerprint.
I mean, we'll work out who he is by Based on how he speaks.
Yes.
So you've been looking for mistakes.
Right.
We found these Except they're not mistakes.
except they aren't mistakes.
That's right.
They're variant spellings.
They're unusual, but they're technically correct.
And is he consistent? He uses the same spellings every time? Yeah, letters, manifesto It's the same unusual spelling.
Is this totally amateur? Like, am I Am I doing all right? - Am I? - Are you kidding? This is cutting-edge.
Using language to solve crimes? There's not even a name for what you're doing.
So if he's consistent, that suggests a style guide, you know, somewhere where he learned to spell this way, a newspaper, magazine, somewhere that had a style guide for their editors that matches these spellings.
And if we can find that style guide We're closer to finding his idiolect.
And if we can find his idiolect Then we find the Unabomber.
Yes.
Jim: [Sighs.]
No.
That's it? This is Berkeley.
The obsolete style guide sections are pretty thin.
I could start hitting the local public libraries in Marin county today if you want to.
Just keep reading.
Tabby: This is crazy, man.
Needle in a haystack for what, a few spelling mistakes? It's not mistakes.
It's idiolect.
[Pager beeps.]
Tabby: Who is that? It's just Ackerman.
He wants us to brief him, but we got nothing to present.
Jim: He'll be fine.
[Phone rings.]
- Hello? - Okay.
Just tell him I'm on my way.
Dude, it's some woman for you.
Hey! I found it.
The Chicago Tribune, it's their in-house style guide.
Their publisher, Robert McCormick, was this big proponent of this fringe simplified spelling movement.
In 1949, he forced it on his editors.
In 1954 when he died, they switched back to standard spelling.
- Jim: "Analyse.
" - Yeah.
"Wilfuly.
" "Licence.
" Instalment with one L, he uses that in U-11.
This is it.
Can I keep this? Yes.
Thank you.
- Fitz? - Yeah? We're late.
It started.
So from that initial subject pool of 15 million, we put additional parameters on the M.
P.
P.
, which narrowed it to 2,500.
We're calling that our tier 3 subject group.
Tier 2 Subjects with criminal records, mechanical or explosives training, in a nexus between Salt Lake City and the Bay area.
Tier 1 top 20.
High level of confidence that one of these guys is our man.
They're all under active surveillance, or they're at large being sought by special operations group.
Excellent.
Fitz, have you got anything from those nutty professors that can move the needle? Jim: Actually, yes.
We have solid linguistic evidence that he grew up in Chicago and that he learned his spelling and grammar from the Chicago Tribune.
And how solid is this? Solid.
You just made somebody very happy.
Confirmed something that I've been saying.
Leo Frederick Burt, born in Chicago.
Pass these around.
Leo Burt, my pick for suspect number one.
Born and raised in Chicago, flirted with S.
D.
S.
and the Panthers before joining a radical weather underground splinter group, involved in a series of anti-establishment attacks in the late '70s, including Drum roll, please Three attempted bombings, went into hiding around the same time that the Unabomber started his attacks, and, plus, as you can see, he's a dead ringer for the sketch.
You want to add anything to that, Fitz? Well, it's also likely that he had a university affiliation, you know, that the previous profile suggested little or no college Stan: Fitz, your voice is music to my ears today.
He went to university of Wisconsin-Madison.
That's where he got hooked up with the radical groups.
Don: All right.
Let's alert S.
O.
G.
And start re-interviewing all known associates.
Let's see if we can drag Leo Burt out of hiding.
Awesome work, guys.
Meet me upstairs.
We'll talk through it.
Get you involved in that tier 1 squad.
Just a second, before everyone goes.
- Um - Is there something else? Fitz, leave it be.
It's just a question.
How old is Leo Burt? Forty-seven, born 1948.
Why? Jim: He's too young.
Tabby: He's possibly too young.
It's not possibly.
He learned his spelling between '49 and '54.
He got a PhD between, you know, '67 and '72.
So we're looking at someone who's minimum of 50 years old.
Plus, if he's got an affiliation with the Black Panthers, then he wouldn't use the word "negro.
" So it's not him.
It's not Leo Burt.
I'm gonna take "college," and I'm gonna take "Chicago.
" I'm gonna forget the rest.
- Perfect.
- You can't do that.
You can't pick and choose.
He's over 50.
That's three robust data points.
Plus, the Unabomber got a doctorate.
He didn't just spend a little time in college.
He got a PhD.
No, you can't do that! Don: Okay! This meeting's over! That's it.
[Indistinct conversations.]
Stan: What's this based on? The Unabomber's idiolect, his use of language, the formatting, his spelling.
The spelling? Goddamn spelling? I'm gonna kill this guy.
Every serial bomber in history started between 18 and 21.
That puts his age between 35 and 45.
Well, maybe he's the exception to the rule.
Every profiler that we've had in here, including Go back to your desks, both of you! If you want a seat at this table, you put names on that board! That's your job! Your job is not to tell me to burn a month's work over goddamn spelling! What the hell is wrong with you? They're just so blinded, they can't see.
They're blinded? Dude, you just turned a promotion into a freaking kamikaze mission.
No, no.
I just saved the investigation.
That's what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to save it.
You know, they can run the M.
P.
P.
all month long, but garbage in, garbage out.
They got 2,000 subjects.
They're all wrong.
Well, how can you be so sure they're wrong? We don't even know what we're doing.
We're making this up as we go.
Yeah, yeah.
We're breaking new ground.
- Maybe.
- It's great.
Maybe we're wrong.
I mean, look at us.
I mean, I'm flunking out of intro to psych.
You have a night school degree in an unrelated field.
Doesn't mean that We don't even know what we don't know.
I know that we're right.
Okay.
You want to stake your career on that? You go ahead.
You leave me the hell out of it.
Seriously? They're sending me back to the lab.
It's been real.
[Phone rings.]
Linda: Hello? Thanks for staying up.
Rough day, huh? [Sighs.]
Yeah.
There is a silver lining.
Yeah.
I, uh I found a dictionary of phrases, and I've been reading about "eat your cake and have it too.
" Have your cake and eat it too.
Yeah.
See, that's the thing.
It is actually the other way around.
Sometime in the 1500s, it got switched around.
And we've been saying it wrong ever since.
[Chuckles.]
Wow.
Yeah.
So why are you telling me this? How was today? Doughnuts for Dad.
Dan burned his tongue.
Sean opted out.
And you? I'm fine.
I went.
I stayed.
I left.
All right.
Well, I love you.
I love you.
[Phone clicks.]
Natalie: To eating your cake and having it too in that order.
There's something so tragic about him, isn't there? A guy who could write like that, think like that, so much insight and passion? And yet, somehow, his life turned out in such a way that he thinks the only way he can get people to hear what he has to say is by blowing people up? Well, if he was trapped, ignored, powerless He thinks it's about being powerless, but really it's about being so terribly lonely.
It's about having just one person that he can talk to who understands him, who respects him for who he is.
That's what anyone wants, right? - There you go.
- Thanks.
This is the Venn diagram of nachos? Natalie: [Laughs.]
You have the jalapeño zone to the north, the bean zone to the west, salsa zone to the east, and at the center, it's the Pripyat river valley.
[Laughs.]
It's just some linguistics humor You know, the Slavic homeland.
- Huh? - Never mind.
You know, it's just this weird, dorky thing.
Go on.
Gon on.
Tell me.
Okay.
So, around the year 600, Slavic people suddenly appeared all over Europe You know, Germany, Poland, Serbia, Russia But nobody could figure out where they came from.
- The Slavic homeland.
- Right.
It was this huge historical mystery until they started looking at language, and then they realized that proto-Slavic was missing words for certain kinds of trees.
You know, they had to borrow words for oak and beech and pine and The nachos are Europe.
The Slavs are everywhere, but they don't have a word for jalapeños.
So they can't come from here? Exactly.
And they have no word for beans or salsa or sour cream, which eliminates everywhere but here.
The Pripyat river valley in Ukraine.
It's basically this huge swamp.
The one place in Europe where there are no trees.
Right.
It was brilliant because, up until then, they had only been looking at the words that they had, and the key was in the words that they didn't have.
- What they didn't say - Mm-hmm.
what they didn't know how to say.
What they didn't know how to say.
Right.
Go.
It's the Slavic homeland.
Go.
- Thank you.
- Yeah.
Thank you.
So what don't you talk about? [Exhales sharply.]
Wife, children, family You don't talk about them.
Work? Don't talk about a job, co-workers.
Friends You don't have any friends.
You got no one to talk to, no one to listen to.
And no computer, TVs, no pop culture.
So no IBM, G.
E.
, G.
M.
, Xerox, Dell You haven't heard of any of them.
You're cut off.
No black people, no women.
You had a phone.
Call Nathan R.
You wrote, "call Nathan R.
" You are out there.
You're somewhere beyond.
Isolated.
This is it.
This is your homeland here where there's nobody, where there's nothing.
[Door opens.]
[Door closes.]
Natalie: Well, this is nice.
You don't change, do you, Fitz? Just a little less subtle this time.
Jim: Ted set me up so he could attack the search warrant, attack my forensic linguistics work.
So what? Your work is solid, and it worked.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter 'cause they're gonna put me on the stand.
They're gonna tear me apart 'cause I don't have a PhD.
I'm not gonna be humiliated in front of the whole bureau.
Stop with the self-pity.
Who cares what the bureau thinks? They don't care about you unless they want something from you.
What we had, what we discovered, the work, at least, was special, and it was right.
You are more than this case, Fitz, even if you don't believe it, even if they never give you credit for it.
That has to mean something, right? What was that about credit? Jim: Credit That is the way back in.
Ted wants to be famous.
He wants everyone to know how smart he is.
The only way he's gonna get the credit is to plead guilty.
You bet the farm once before that he'd need a trophy.
This is different.
Look how that turned out.
This is different.
You know that.
You can convince me all night, but there's no way Cole will let you in there.
I'll go on my own.
Make the call.
I'll go tonight.
It'll be off the record, just me and Ted, face-to-face.
I'll make I'll make it right.
Make the call.
Make the call.
[Door closes, buzzes.]
[Door buzzes.]
I'm off the case.
I'm going home.
I thought it best if you heard it from me.
There's one thing I would like to ask you before I leave.
Did you do all this because you wanted to make a difference in the world, to change things? That's what I admired about you.
You know, I admired you so much, I gave up everything to live like you Alone in the woods, manifesto under my bed.
Is that true? When you asked for me, I came, right? Yeah.
You did, didn't you? Not many men whose ideas can change the world.
Now you're gonna throw it all away.
I'm not throwing anything away.
I'm beating the system at its own game.
That's the whole point.
Well, getting the search warrant tossed out is beating the system.
But what about after? Oh, you mean after.
Well, I I walk away a free man, vindicated as the victim of your sloppy and inexpert police work.
Aren't you forgetting a step? Before you walk free, you got to stand in front of a judge and say, "I'm not guilty.
" I'm not the Unabomber.
I didn't write the manifesto, didn't elude the F.
B.
I.
for 2 decades.
"I'm just a nobody who stands for nothing.
" No.
See, your Your logic is flawed.
I'm gonna be acquitted on a technicality, not on the merits of the case.
I won't be saying that I'm not the Unabomber.
You say that on TV, then people who admire you, like me, are just gonna think you're a hypocrite.
You're just betraying your own principles to save your own skin.
No, you got to stand up.
You got to take ownership of what you wrote.
Otherwise, your legacy, the manifesto will vanish.
The manifesto will not vanish because the manifesto has been published, and more importantly, the manifesto happens to be right.
Doesn't matter if it's right.
People don't believe in you, they won't believe in the manifesto.
Are you, one man, doing it all alone, or are you a leader of men, a man who can change the world, who can make a difference and can leave a legacy behind? Because you can't be both.
Can't eat your cake and have it too, Ted.
What about you, Fitz? What's your legacy? What are you leaving behind? My family, my sons, they're my legacy.
So they were out in the woods with you? Mnh-mnh.
No.
They weren't.
No.
They weren't.
So why do you think you said that? Why do you think you're lying to me? I wasn't lying.
It's complicated.
It's not complicated.
It's simple.
They're not your legacy.
I am.
You're not my legacy.
You're here because catching me is the only meaningful thing you've ever accomplished.
And now I'm gonna walk, you can feel it slipping away.
If you walk, you will lose all respect.
Are you talking about me or you? Because, see, it's you that spent your whole life desperate for respect, desperate to prove that you're smarter than the people around you, and for a brief moment, you were.
You were the guy that caught the Unabomber.
But I'm about to walk, and the whole world will see that you are just a knuckle-dragging beat cop, and the graffiti squad was where you belonged.
You know, the thing I find most sad about you, James, is that you can run off and live in the woods, abandoning your wife and kids, study the manifesto down to the letter, but it will not make one jot of difference to anyone, and the best that you will ever be is a feeble imitation of me.
[Door buzzes.]
[Door buzzes.]
[Door buzzes.]
[Door buzzes.]
[Typewriter keys clacking.]
Don: I've got some concerns about Leo Burt.
He's our best suspect, but he's also our most elusive.
Uh, Fitz, uh, you weren't on the list for this meeting, so if we need you, we will give you a buzz.
Jim: This is a new profile.
It's clean, no typos, solid.
Goodbye, Fitz.
Just trying to help.
This is based on what exactly? Forensics.
It's grounded in forensics.
Forensics? I've come up with an approach I'm calling forensic linguistics.
Fingerprints are forensics.
DNA is forensics.
Spelling willfully with one L is not forensics.
It's not just spelling.
It's a comprehensive idiolectic profile.
Fitz, we don't want a profile.
We want a person.
Can you get us a person that we can put on the board? I think if you just read it I didn't think so.
Give me a name that I can put on the board.
Otherwise, shut the door behind you.
[Sighs.]
[Door closes.]
Toss that thing.
Okay.
Where were we? We've got the top five, counting Leo Burt.
[Typewriter keys clacking.]
Look at this obedient ship.
Got to make them hear you.
Got to make them listen.
[Sighs.]
You're gonna make them listen.
You're gonna make them hear you.
How? How? [Indistinct conversations.]
- Who's my liaison? - Over here.
Tabby: Tell the lab to drop everything else.
This is all hands on deck.
Man: Copy that.
We're on it.
Get the originals down to forensics.
Follow me.
They're from him.
They're all from him.
[Beeping.]
Jesus, I'm gonna go get him.
[Knock on door.]
Why didn't you answer my pages? You got to come in.
We just got a bunch of new Unabom letters.
He's written to the Times, the Washington Post, Penthouse.
You're not gonna believe this.
The Unabomber wants to make a deal.
Well, what the hell do we do now? You haven't got a fingerprint in 17 years.
He just gave us a linguistic fingerprint on a silver platter.
This is how we catch him.
I'm supposed to walk into Janet Reno's office and ask her to publicly give in to the demands of a terrorist? Where do we stand once all this is done? Don's taken it upon himself to propose one of the largest operations in F.
B.
I.
history.
Both our asses are on the line.
Do you understand me? Stan: Now I know he's got 10 PhDs and a 500 I.
Q.
, but he's still a serial killer, right? Don: You've got 30 minutes to come up with something better than forensic linguistics.
Tabby: I'm at Montgomery station.
I need backup.
F.
B.
I.
, freeze!
- I think a guilty plea - No.
I chose you because I thought you were different.
Barker: If you think that you and the group you came here with from San Diego, if you think you folks are happy now, wait until they open those doors.
Roddy: A new car! [Engine whirs.]
[Engine shuts off.]
Barker: I hope Hey, kitty, you should rotate, or you're gonna get bedsores.
Hey, I walked to the fridge and back twice today.
Oh, twice.
Big exercise.
- Mwah! - So what's on the menu? Soup, I guess.
I just got back from the clinic about three minutes ago.
- Ohh, that's a long day.
- Right? Is that from Talbot's? No.
Uh, it's for dad.
It feels like a video.
Well, people have been sending things since the Times article.
Do I need to be worried about all this fan mail that you're getting? Well, that depends how the soup turns out.
- That's my guy.
- [Laughs.]
Ew.
Are you seriously joking about having an affair? [Laughs.]
Hey, are you gonna watch this with me later? It's the tournament of champions.
Dad? Dad? Charlie: [Groans.]
- [Screams.]
- Charlie! - [Crying.]
Charlie! - [Groans.]
Oh.
- Oh, no.
No, no, no.
- [Groaning.]
Frank: You've built your connection.
He knows you can talk about his ideas, - - that you're his equal, that he made the right call on asking to speak to you and only you.
Now turn it.
No more feelings, no more theories.
Hit him hard with the facts.
He's about to be buried under a mountain of hard evidence.
Going to trial is suicide.
Control, he's desperate for control.
He thinks going to trial will give him that control.
Make him understand that we own the courtroom.
The only thing that gives him wiggle room is to plead guilty.
He wants the control.
[Door buzzes.]
He loves the control.
[Exhales sharply.]
[Door buzzes.]
Here we go.
You can do this, Fitz.
[Door buzzes.]
[Lock engages, door buzzes.]
You didn't happen to bring those stamps, did you? Do you ever think about what you leave behind as you move through this world? Do you mean as in "leave your campsite cleaner than when you found it"? My dad, he made me join the boy scouts, thought it might help me make friends.
It didn't.
But it did teach me to leave my campsite cleaner than when I found it.
But what does that matter if, the next day, a logging company comes in and chops the whole forest down? I mean it literally like all that you leave behind, like at the Charles Epstein bombing site.
You know, you hadn't sent a package in six years, and then, on June 22nd, 1993, man in Tiburon opens a brown padded envelope, and his whole torso is ripped apart.
I think I read about that one in the newspaper.
A geneticist, right? Yeah.
He had a daughter.
When a man interacts with the world, he leaves traces everywhere.
Now, every action, every step that you took, you've been shedding clues Not one, not two, but hundreds, thousands.
And they have a warehouse filled with evidence.
This is a trigger switch.
It's precise.
It's unique.
It's made by hand.
Forensics found one virtually intact at the scene.
They found an identical switch at your cabin.
This is wire clippings, springs, copper pipe, aluminum scraps, all matched.
Stamps.
These are stamps from the Epstein package, and these are stamps from your cabin.
You traveled three days from Lincoln, Montana, to mail the package in San Francisco.
You paid cash.
You used disguises, which was smart, except, in your cabin, we found six pairs of sunglasses, some fake mustaches, and then your journal entries logging your disguises.
This is the chemical components of the explosive mixture and, um, the epoxy that was used in the box, your typewriter that was used for the address label, carbon paper, and a receipt for the carbon paper.
It just goes on and on, and, Ted, they have thousands of pieces of evidence that can link you to the Unabom, but they only need one to convict you.
They're gonna bury you under a mountain of evidence, and all your autonomy is gonna go out the window the first day of trial.
He's looking good.
Frank: Now reel him in.
I want you to change the world.
I want you to start a revolution.
But if you fight this If you fight this, you are gonna lose control of everything in your life.
You're gonna be a helpless cog in the machine of justice until they strap you down to the electric chair.
You have one option.
It's gonna give you some bargaining power, but you got only one.
Plead guilty.
All of this is for one bomb.
There were 15 others that we haven't even talked about.
So trust me.
This is all there is.
All right.
If that's my only option, I'll do it.
[Laughs.]
- Frank: That's it, right? - That's it.
Can I ask you one question? Anything.
Since you've been so helpful walking me through what evidence the F.
B.
I.
has, I was hoping you might confirm for me something I've suspected for a long time but could never get a straight answer to.
But it seems to me that there is no forensic evidence whatsoever tying me to these heinous crimes besides what you found in my cabin.
Yeah, but they got so much evidence of every type.
Imagine if you could throw out all that evidence.
There'd be nothing left, right? Because it's all here on the table.
You just laid it all out in front of me.
Yeah.
James, do you really not have any idea why I brought you here? Huh.
This is your search warrant.
It's based on your linguistic analysis.
This is this is what got you into my cabin, and the prosecution's entire case rests on this one document, your document.
No, what What's he doing? So I thought we could discuss something I learned about only recently called fruit of the poisonous tree.
That's the option that you're neglecting to mention The option where I get all this evidence thrown out and I walk away a free man.
The only evidence connecting me to the Unabom attacks was found inside my cabin.
The only reason the F.
B.
I.
was legally allowed to search my cabin was because of your search warrant, but if that search warrant was issued on false pretenses or based on arguments that fail to meet the burden of proof, well, then all the evidence found at that location is deemed fruit of the poisonous tree.
It's tainted.
It's inadmissible.
It's got to be thrown out.
So if the search warrant goes, then all their mountains of evidence simply Disappear.
Do you follow? The whole case depends on the evidence from the cabin.
And the evidence from the cabin depends on the search warrant, but the search warrant depends on this thing called forensic linguistics, which is a field that you just invented, James R.
Fitzgerald.
There is no precedent in all legal history for a search warrant based on linguistic analysis.
So the question I then place before the court becomes, do we trust this man as so expert that we trust his invention? Where did you get your formal training in linguistics, your PhD, your master's? As I hear it, the majority of your law enforcement career was spent on the graffiti squad of a small-town police department.
Is that right? Now would you say that this time spent reading graffiti constitutes your linguistic training? By the way, we haven't even gotten to the content of the warrant yet.
Oh, god.
Oh.
Perhaps I should leave you with my annotations.
They're quite extensive.
We got to get him out of there.
I was right.
Mm.
Well, it doesn't really matter if you're right.
It matters if they believe in you.
And if they don't believe in you, then they can't trust the warrant.
And if they can't trust the warrant, - then I walk out of here.
- [Door buzzes.]
[Door opens.]
Interview is over.
Stop.
Get him out of here.
Everything you touched is tainted.
You need look no further.
Give me those.
Those notes are privileged.
You are the poisonous tree.
- Man: Get him out.
- Don't say anything else.
Good chat.
[Door closes, buzzes.]
I found one.
I found a mistake.
Paragraph 185, "as for the negative consequences "of eliminating industrial society, "well, you can't eat your cake and have it too.
" "Eat your cake and have it too.
" It's backwards.
[Chuckles.]
It's backwards.
Why aren't you cheering? I found a mistake.
We're looking for mistakes.
I found the first real mistake.
Tabby: Okay.
Cool.
But what does it tell us about the Unabomber? We're looking for a wudder, right, something that tells us who he is, - where he comes from.
- Thank you.
Thank you for quoting me telling you what to do.
What crawled up your ass and died? Ackerman gave us an office and a team to comb the manifesto.
After two weeks, we got nothing.
Well, I have something.
Check it out, yo.
Manifesto, paragraph 11.
Jim: [Sighs.]
These aren't mistakes.
Someone calls me a "broad," that's a mistake, one they would not make a second time.
"Negro" will get your ass kicked.
Ernie, you're a nerd.
Want to test a negro, - huh, broad? - [Laughs.]
Jim: Okay.
Let's go with this.
Let's go with it, all right? What's it telling us? What's Who talks like this? Mm-hmm.
My dad, Wally, he talked like this, but It's generational.
It's generational.
So no one 30 to 40 years old would use those words, right? Correct.
So what are we saying? I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
What What What else does it tell us? Well, well, also, if he used these words, then this is a guy who's never been around black folks - Mm-hmm.
- Or women.
- There you go.
- And trust me.
When you're pretty much the only black guy in the UTF, you get lots of practice picking up on language clues.
So with that, he wouldn't live in San Francisco proper, right? Except every letter and package was mailed from here.
Ooh.
Okay.
All right.
Don't worry about it.
Let's keep playing.
Maybe he does, 'cause he lives in the suburbs within driving distance.
Yes.
Give me everything.
Give me every language clue that we have found in the manifesto.
Okay, well, "negro," "chick," "broad," "eat your cake," though I don't know where that gets us.
Just keep going.
Go on.
Come on.
Uh, the long sentences, the formal style - Trying to sound smart.
- Okay.
They're variant spellings, they're they're not wrong.
They're just unusual, like "willful" with one L and "Analyze" with the S, not a Z.
Plus the numbered paragraphs, numbered end notes, a corrections page, works-cited pages - Okay.
- It's a weird format.
Okay.
Okay.
So what does that tell us? I don't know.
It's formatted weird.
Aw, come on! Dude, what do you want? We've been looking for wudder.
There's no wudder.
I mean, it's an awesome idea.
We gave it a shot.
But discretion is the better part of valor.
I don't want to be the next stamp guy.
I mean, he's off interviewing Eugene O'Neill's grandkids' dog Walker, and his career is over because he didn't know when to say, "uncle.
" Maybe we should call in the experts.
[Indistinct conversations.]
Man: Are you going to the, uh, San Diego thing? I'm not going.
It's a good one.
Jim: Thank you all for coming, for taking the time to read the manifesto.
You've all been asked here today because you were either cited in the manifesto or you work in a related academic field.
Look, I'm just I'm hoping that you can shed some light on who the author is based on what you read.
Are there things that you recognize in the ideas, in the language, you know, from someone that you work with, a colleague or former student maybe? If one of my students wrote this, he'd be out of the program.
There's no way this guy would pass peer review.
Eh, you could scrape by writing like this - in the hard sciences maybe.
- Oh, please.
The work coming out of your department hasn't been publishable in 20 years.
- Oh, please.
- I actually do have a question.
- [Indistinct conversations.]
- Excuse me.
[Indistinct conversations.]
Excuse me.
Was there a corrections page appended to the front? Yeah.
And is it called "corrections" or "errata"? Was it in English or Latin? Leave it to the comparative linguistics grad student to focus on what's relevant.
You know, the Unabomber had one thing right.
Did you all read paragraph 88? "Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human race," comparative linguistics, for example.
[Laughs.]
And you think your work is relevant? [All talking over one another.]
Oh, well, listen to the poli-sci [indistinct conversations.]
Man 1: Time flies when you're having fun.
Man 2: Nope.
So who do we see about our per diem? Front desk.
Fitz, good stuff today? Fill me in first thing tomorrow.
- Yeah.
- Excuse me.
You can get your per diem at the front desk.
No, no.
It's not that.
I just My question was never answered.
Is it "corrections" or "errata"? It's, uh, "corrections.
" Why? Come look at the format.
- It's weird.
- Mm.
To you, it's weird.
To me, these numbered paragraphs, the numbered end notes, and the corrections page, I mean, this is a dissertation.
This is standard formatting for a PhD.
I asked everyone about the formatting.
Well, that's the thing.
Modern dissertations look totally different now.
The word processor changed everything.
This is in the style of an older graduate thesis paper.
I noticed these kind of things, and this style of end notes was only used before 1972-ish when they changed to footnotes.
The corrections page? It was called errata before 1967.
Meaning he learned the formatting between '67 and '72.
More than that.
Only PhD candidates use this style.
So if he's still using this format 20 years later He must have written a dissertation.
He must have written a dissertation - between '67 and '72.
- And '72.
Very nice.
Comparative linguistics, not as useless as the Unabomber thinks.
Do you have a minute? Jim: Technically, you're not supposed to see this, but [Gasps.]
We've been analyzing the language of the manifesto, looking for clues as to who he is.
Wow.
We've been looking for mistakes on the theory that, well, like, I say "wudder" and Idiolect.
It's what we call the speech patterns of one specific person.
Idiolect.
Idiolect, right.
Uh, yes, like a linguistic fingerprint.
I mean, we'll work out who he is by Based on how he speaks.
Yes.
So you've been looking for mistakes.
Right.
We found these Except they're not mistakes.
except they aren't mistakes.
That's right.
They're variant spellings.
They're unusual, but they're technically correct.
And is he consistent? He uses the same spellings every time? Yeah, letters, manifesto It's the same unusual spelling.
Is this totally amateur? Like, am I Am I doing all right? - Am I? - Are you kidding? This is cutting-edge.
Using language to solve crimes? There's not even a name for what you're doing.
So if he's consistent, that suggests a style guide, you know, somewhere where he learned to spell this way, a newspaper, magazine, somewhere that had a style guide for their editors that matches these spellings.
And if we can find that style guide We're closer to finding his idiolect.
And if we can find his idiolect Then we find the Unabomber.
Yes.
Jim: [Sighs.]
No.
That's it? This is Berkeley.
The obsolete style guide sections are pretty thin.
I could start hitting the local public libraries in Marin county today if you want to.
Just keep reading.
Tabby: This is crazy, man.
Needle in a haystack for what, a few spelling mistakes? It's not mistakes.
It's idiolect.
[Pager beeps.]
Tabby: Who is that? It's just Ackerman.
He wants us to brief him, but we got nothing to present.
Jim: He'll be fine.
[Phone rings.]
- Hello? - Okay.
Just tell him I'm on my way.
Dude, it's some woman for you.
Hey! I found it.
The Chicago Tribune, it's their in-house style guide.
Their publisher, Robert McCormick, was this big proponent of this fringe simplified spelling movement.
In 1949, he forced it on his editors.
In 1954 when he died, they switched back to standard spelling.
- Jim: "Analyse.
" - Yeah.
"Wilfuly.
" "Licence.
" Instalment with one L, he uses that in U-11.
This is it.
Can I keep this? Yes.
Thank you.
- Fitz? - Yeah? We're late.
It started.
So from that initial subject pool of 15 million, we put additional parameters on the M.
P.
P.
, which narrowed it to 2,500.
We're calling that our tier 3 subject group.
Tier 2 Subjects with criminal records, mechanical or explosives training, in a nexus between Salt Lake City and the Bay area.
Tier 1 top 20.
High level of confidence that one of these guys is our man.
They're all under active surveillance, or they're at large being sought by special operations group.
Excellent.
Fitz, have you got anything from those nutty professors that can move the needle? Jim: Actually, yes.
We have solid linguistic evidence that he grew up in Chicago and that he learned his spelling and grammar from the Chicago Tribune.
And how solid is this? Solid.
You just made somebody very happy.
Confirmed something that I've been saying.
Leo Frederick Burt, born in Chicago.
Pass these around.
Leo Burt, my pick for suspect number one.
Born and raised in Chicago, flirted with S.
D.
S.
and the Panthers before joining a radical weather underground splinter group, involved in a series of anti-establishment attacks in the late '70s, including Drum roll, please Three attempted bombings, went into hiding around the same time that the Unabomber started his attacks, and, plus, as you can see, he's a dead ringer for the sketch.
You want to add anything to that, Fitz? Well, it's also likely that he had a university affiliation, you know, that the previous profile suggested little or no college Stan: Fitz, your voice is music to my ears today.
He went to university of Wisconsin-Madison.
That's where he got hooked up with the radical groups.
Don: All right.
Let's alert S.
O.
G.
And start re-interviewing all known associates.
Let's see if we can drag Leo Burt out of hiding.
Awesome work, guys.
Meet me upstairs.
We'll talk through it.
Get you involved in that tier 1 squad.
Just a second, before everyone goes.
- Um - Is there something else? Fitz, leave it be.
It's just a question.
How old is Leo Burt? Forty-seven, born 1948.
Why? Jim: He's too young.
Tabby: He's possibly too young.
It's not possibly.
He learned his spelling between '49 and '54.
He got a PhD between, you know, '67 and '72.
So we're looking at someone who's minimum of 50 years old.
Plus, if he's got an affiliation with the Black Panthers, then he wouldn't use the word "negro.
" So it's not him.
It's not Leo Burt.
I'm gonna take "college," and I'm gonna take "Chicago.
" I'm gonna forget the rest.
- Perfect.
- You can't do that.
You can't pick and choose.
He's over 50.
That's three robust data points.
Plus, the Unabomber got a doctorate.
He didn't just spend a little time in college.
He got a PhD.
No, you can't do that! Don: Okay! This meeting's over! That's it.
[Indistinct conversations.]
Stan: What's this based on? The Unabomber's idiolect, his use of language, the formatting, his spelling.
The spelling? Goddamn spelling? I'm gonna kill this guy.
Every serial bomber in history started between 18 and 21.
That puts his age between 35 and 45.
Well, maybe he's the exception to the rule.
Every profiler that we've had in here, including Go back to your desks, both of you! If you want a seat at this table, you put names on that board! That's your job! Your job is not to tell me to burn a month's work over goddamn spelling! What the hell is wrong with you? They're just so blinded, they can't see.
They're blinded? Dude, you just turned a promotion into a freaking kamikaze mission.
No, no.
I just saved the investigation.
That's what I'm trying to do.
I'm trying to save it.
You know, they can run the M.
P.
P.
all month long, but garbage in, garbage out.
They got 2,000 subjects.
They're all wrong.
Well, how can you be so sure they're wrong? We don't even know what we're doing.
We're making this up as we go.
Yeah, yeah.
We're breaking new ground.
- Maybe.
- It's great.
Maybe we're wrong.
I mean, look at us.
I mean, I'm flunking out of intro to psych.
You have a night school degree in an unrelated field.
Doesn't mean that We don't even know what we don't know.
I know that we're right.
Okay.
You want to stake your career on that? You go ahead.
You leave me the hell out of it.
Seriously? They're sending me back to the lab.
It's been real.
[Phone rings.]
Linda: Hello? Thanks for staying up.
Rough day, huh? [Sighs.]
Yeah.
There is a silver lining.
Yeah.
I, uh I found a dictionary of phrases, and I've been reading about "eat your cake and have it too.
" Have your cake and eat it too.
Yeah.
See, that's the thing.
It is actually the other way around.
Sometime in the 1500s, it got switched around.
And we've been saying it wrong ever since.
[Chuckles.]
Wow.
Yeah.
So why are you telling me this? How was today? Doughnuts for Dad.
Dan burned his tongue.
Sean opted out.
And you? I'm fine.
I went.
I stayed.
I left.
All right.
Well, I love you.
I love you.
[Phone clicks.]
Natalie: To eating your cake and having it too in that order.
There's something so tragic about him, isn't there? A guy who could write like that, think like that, so much insight and passion? And yet, somehow, his life turned out in such a way that he thinks the only way he can get people to hear what he has to say is by blowing people up? Well, if he was trapped, ignored, powerless He thinks it's about being powerless, but really it's about being so terribly lonely.
It's about having just one person that he can talk to who understands him, who respects him for who he is.
That's what anyone wants, right? - There you go.
- Thanks.
This is the Venn diagram of nachos? Natalie: [Laughs.]
You have the jalapeño zone to the north, the bean zone to the west, salsa zone to the east, and at the center, it's the Pripyat river valley.
[Laughs.]
It's just some linguistics humor You know, the Slavic homeland.
- Huh? - Never mind.
You know, it's just this weird, dorky thing.
Go on.
Gon on.
Tell me.
Okay.
So, around the year 600, Slavic people suddenly appeared all over Europe You know, Germany, Poland, Serbia, Russia But nobody could figure out where they came from.
- The Slavic homeland.
- Right.
It was this huge historical mystery until they started looking at language, and then they realized that proto-Slavic was missing words for certain kinds of trees.
You know, they had to borrow words for oak and beech and pine and The nachos are Europe.
The Slavs are everywhere, but they don't have a word for jalapeños.
So they can't come from here? Exactly.
And they have no word for beans or salsa or sour cream, which eliminates everywhere but here.
The Pripyat river valley in Ukraine.
It's basically this huge swamp.
The one place in Europe where there are no trees.
Right.
It was brilliant because, up until then, they had only been looking at the words that they had, and the key was in the words that they didn't have.
- What they didn't say - Mm-hmm.
what they didn't know how to say.
What they didn't know how to say.
Right.
Go.
It's the Slavic homeland.
Go.
- Thank you.
- Yeah.
Thank you.
So what don't you talk about? [Exhales sharply.]
Wife, children, family You don't talk about them.
Work? Don't talk about a job, co-workers.
Friends You don't have any friends.
You got no one to talk to, no one to listen to.
And no computer, TVs, no pop culture.
So no IBM, G.
E.
, G.
M.
, Xerox, Dell You haven't heard of any of them.
You're cut off.
No black people, no women.
You had a phone.
Call Nathan R.
You wrote, "call Nathan R.
" You are out there.
You're somewhere beyond.
Isolated.
This is it.
This is your homeland here where there's nobody, where there's nothing.
[Door opens.]
[Door closes.]
Natalie: Well, this is nice.
You don't change, do you, Fitz? Just a little less subtle this time.
Jim: Ted set me up so he could attack the search warrant, attack my forensic linguistics work.
So what? Your work is solid, and it worked.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter 'cause they're gonna put me on the stand.
They're gonna tear me apart 'cause I don't have a PhD.
I'm not gonna be humiliated in front of the whole bureau.
Stop with the self-pity.
Who cares what the bureau thinks? They don't care about you unless they want something from you.
What we had, what we discovered, the work, at least, was special, and it was right.
You are more than this case, Fitz, even if you don't believe it, even if they never give you credit for it.
That has to mean something, right? What was that about credit? Jim: Credit That is the way back in.
Ted wants to be famous.
He wants everyone to know how smart he is.
The only way he's gonna get the credit is to plead guilty.
You bet the farm once before that he'd need a trophy.
This is different.
Look how that turned out.
This is different.
You know that.
You can convince me all night, but there's no way Cole will let you in there.
I'll go on my own.
Make the call.
I'll go tonight.
It'll be off the record, just me and Ted, face-to-face.
I'll make I'll make it right.
Make the call.
Make the call.
[Door closes, buzzes.]
[Door buzzes.]
I'm off the case.
I'm going home.
I thought it best if you heard it from me.
There's one thing I would like to ask you before I leave.
Did you do all this because you wanted to make a difference in the world, to change things? That's what I admired about you.
You know, I admired you so much, I gave up everything to live like you Alone in the woods, manifesto under my bed.
Is that true? When you asked for me, I came, right? Yeah.
You did, didn't you? Not many men whose ideas can change the world.
Now you're gonna throw it all away.
I'm not throwing anything away.
I'm beating the system at its own game.
That's the whole point.
Well, getting the search warrant tossed out is beating the system.
But what about after? Oh, you mean after.
Well, I I walk away a free man, vindicated as the victim of your sloppy and inexpert police work.
Aren't you forgetting a step? Before you walk free, you got to stand in front of a judge and say, "I'm not guilty.
" I'm not the Unabomber.
I didn't write the manifesto, didn't elude the F.
B.
I.
for 2 decades.
"I'm just a nobody who stands for nothing.
" No.
See, your Your logic is flawed.
I'm gonna be acquitted on a technicality, not on the merits of the case.
I won't be saying that I'm not the Unabomber.
You say that on TV, then people who admire you, like me, are just gonna think you're a hypocrite.
You're just betraying your own principles to save your own skin.
No, you got to stand up.
You got to take ownership of what you wrote.
Otherwise, your legacy, the manifesto will vanish.
The manifesto will not vanish because the manifesto has been published, and more importantly, the manifesto happens to be right.
Doesn't matter if it's right.
People don't believe in you, they won't believe in the manifesto.
Are you, one man, doing it all alone, or are you a leader of men, a man who can change the world, who can make a difference and can leave a legacy behind? Because you can't be both.
Can't eat your cake and have it too, Ted.
What about you, Fitz? What's your legacy? What are you leaving behind? My family, my sons, they're my legacy.
So they were out in the woods with you? Mnh-mnh.
No.
They weren't.
No.
They weren't.
So why do you think you said that? Why do you think you're lying to me? I wasn't lying.
It's complicated.
It's not complicated.
It's simple.
They're not your legacy.
I am.
You're not my legacy.
You're here because catching me is the only meaningful thing you've ever accomplished.
And now I'm gonna walk, you can feel it slipping away.
If you walk, you will lose all respect.
Are you talking about me or you? Because, see, it's you that spent your whole life desperate for respect, desperate to prove that you're smarter than the people around you, and for a brief moment, you were.
You were the guy that caught the Unabomber.
But I'm about to walk, and the whole world will see that you are just a knuckle-dragging beat cop, and the graffiti squad was where you belonged.
You know, the thing I find most sad about you, James, is that you can run off and live in the woods, abandoning your wife and kids, study the manifesto down to the letter, but it will not make one jot of difference to anyone, and the best that you will ever be is a feeble imitation of me.
[Door buzzes.]
[Door buzzes.]
[Door buzzes.]
[Door buzzes.]
[Typewriter keys clacking.]
Don: I've got some concerns about Leo Burt.
He's our best suspect, but he's also our most elusive.
Uh, Fitz, uh, you weren't on the list for this meeting, so if we need you, we will give you a buzz.
Jim: This is a new profile.
It's clean, no typos, solid.
Goodbye, Fitz.
Just trying to help.
This is based on what exactly? Forensics.
It's grounded in forensics.
Forensics? I've come up with an approach I'm calling forensic linguistics.
Fingerprints are forensics.
DNA is forensics.
Spelling willfully with one L is not forensics.
It's not just spelling.
It's a comprehensive idiolectic profile.
Fitz, we don't want a profile.
We want a person.
Can you get us a person that we can put on the board? I think if you just read it I didn't think so.
Give me a name that I can put on the board.
Otherwise, shut the door behind you.
[Sighs.]
[Door closes.]
Toss that thing.
Okay.
Where were we? We've got the top five, counting Leo Burt.
[Typewriter keys clacking.]
Look at this obedient ship.
Got to make them hear you.
Got to make them listen.
[Sighs.]
You're gonna make them listen.
You're gonna make them hear you.
How? How? [Indistinct conversations.]
- Who's my liaison? - Over here.
Tabby: Tell the lab to drop everything else.
This is all hands on deck.
Man: Copy that.
We're on it.
Get the originals down to forensics.
Follow me.
They're from him.
They're all from him.
[Beeping.]
Jesus, I'm gonna go get him.
[Knock on door.]
Why didn't you answer my pages? You got to come in.
We just got a bunch of new Unabom letters.
He's written to the Times, the Washington Post, Penthouse.
You're not gonna believe this.
The Unabomber wants to make a deal.
Well, what the hell do we do now? You haven't got a fingerprint in 17 years.
He just gave us a linguistic fingerprint on a silver platter.
This is how we catch him.
I'm supposed to walk into Janet Reno's office and ask her to publicly give in to the demands of a terrorist? Where do we stand once all this is done? Don's taken it upon himself to propose one of the largest operations in F.
B.
I.
history.
Both our asses are on the line.
Do you understand me? Stan: Now I know he's got 10 PhDs and a 500 I.
Q.
, but he's still a serial killer, right? Don: You've got 30 minutes to come up with something better than forensic linguistics.
Tabby: I'm at Montgomery station.
I need backup.
F.
B.
I.
, freeze!