By Brenna Moore
 
“BUSTED," blared the front page headline of the Missoulian on April 4, 1996. "Lincoln ‘hermit’ jailed as Unabomber suspect.”   “UNABOMBER SUSPECT SNARED,” shouted the Great Falls Tribune. “Unabomber investigation centers on Lincoln 'hermit;'  IS SEARCH OVER?” said the front page of the Helena Independent Record in bold letters.

When Theodore Kaczynski was arrested 10 years ago in Lincoln, Mont., the local press jumped to get the story before national newspapers had the chance. Three Montana newspapers – the Missoulian, the Helena Independent Record and the Great Falls Tribune – had the advantage of the local news angle, but their coverage faded when the story went national.
 
April 3, 1996
At 10 a.m. on that Wednesday, Missoulian reporter Michael Moore was thinking about his upcoming vacation when a call came from his friend Rich Ochsner, a Missoula Police detective.

You’re not going to believe this, but the FBI is in Lincoln getting ready to arrest the Unabomber.

Quit lying to me. Don’t call me with such stupid crap, Ochsner.

That initial phone call set in motion a flurry of events, including Moore’s unsuccessful phone calls to the FBI offices in Missoula, Salt Lake City and Butte. He couldn’t reach anyone, which was peculiar, he said.

Moore was just starting to think, Maybe we need to go to Lincoln. Then CNN reported that the FBI was already in Lincoln, looking for the guy they believed was the Unabomber.

Moore, with Missoulian photographer Kurt Wilson, headed up to Kaczynski’s secluded cabin.

The FBI had the place barricaded from all directions and wasn’t providing any information, said Moore. The Missoulian’s reporting was based on police sources and the people of Lincoln, some of whom knew Kaczynski. 

Because the FBI wouldn’t let the press anywhere near the cabin and wouldn’t answer questions, Moore and Wilson, along with Los Angeles Times columnist Peter King, trudged up the mountain to a back road that put them above Kaczynski’s cabin.

Trekking through knee-deep snow on a chilly April day, trying to sneak closer to the Unabomber’s cabin, was not what Moore imagined he would be doing the day before he left for vacation.

Struggling through the timber, King slipped and fell hard on his back. The loud racket echoed through the trees.

“Movement on the perimeter, movement on the perimeter!” came the response of the FBI agents, dressed in black outfits and carrying Tech-9 machine guns.

Photo by Amanda Determan

Missoulian reporter Michael Moore helped cover the Unabomber story 10 years ago.

Shit, these guys could shoot us! Moore thought.

The reporters and photographer decided it was a good time to leave.

Missoulian photographer Michael Gallacher was lucky enough to get a rare snapshot of Kaczynski, one he sold to Newsweek, said Moore.

“It was during the ‘perp walk,’ where [FBI agents] walk the guy to his court hearing, and I think Michael was up on a street sign at the time and got a really cool picture of Kaczynski looking right at him,” said Moore.

Moore left for his long-awaited break a few days late, after the intensity of the story began to wane.

The Great Falls Tribune was also on story. In response to a phone tip from Lincoln, reporter Jacquie Burchard and photographer Stuart White joined the growing pack of media near the cabin.

“It was interesting and bizarre and exciting,” Burchard said. One of the most startling things she remembers was the number of national press people already in Lincoln.

“I didn’t expect that,” she said. “Honestly I don’t know how all the other reporters found out.”

As a Montana reporter, Burchard found it interesting to watch how national reporters wrote about the state. They called Lincoln a wild, remote part of Montana, but the territory just outside Lincoln wasn’t something Burchard considered remote at all.
Burchard knew that the FBI had arrested Kaczynski and where his cabin was, but she and White spent hours waiting at the bottom of the driveway because the FBI kept everyone out. Late in the day, vehicles started coming down from the driveway, but no one knew whether Kaczynski was in one of them.

“Of course we found out later that he was,” Burchard said.

After filing her story that night, Burchard fell asleep in her clothes at a cabin in Lincoln that belonged to the managing editor of the Tribune. She spent most of the next day interviewing Lincoln residents.

“By the afternoon, everybody was getting pretty tired of reporters coming and asking them questions, because there were so many media people around,” said Burchard. It was a challenge to find people willing to talk, she said.

The Tribune wrote stories about how Lincoln residents were distraught at their treatment by the national media.

“Not that all of the national people were rude, but some of them were. I was kind of amazed by … how brash some reporters were,” Burchard said. “There were a few moments when I was embarrassed to be a reporter.”

Because Kaczynski would not be prosecuted in Montana, the intensity of local coverage began to fade after the first week, Moore said.

In the Missoulian, Kaczynski had a regular appearance on the front page until about April 12, when a train derailed and leaked chlorine gas in Alberton, forcing hundreds to evacuate and forcing Kaczynski off the front page.

The Great Falls Tribune and the Helena Independent Record also wrote local stories about Kaczynski’s neighbors or his time in Montana and even about letters Kaczynski wrote his family and friends. They combined these with stories from national news sources like The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times.

The Tribune covered the story heavily because it was in its own back yard. “I’m not sure the other Montana papers kept after it as long as we did,” Burchard said.

Burchard thought the Tribune found fresh news angles that not everybody had. “I remember feeling like, ‘This is our story,’ ” she said.

The local press knew this was a huge story for Montana. “It was certainly an unexpected story for us to be covering,” said former Missoulian reporter Sherry Devlin, now the editor of the paper. “It really wasn’t something that anyone imagined would be going on in Montana.”

Though the three local papers differed slightly in their coverage of Kaczynski’s arrest, they all focused on reporting “behind the scenes,” something small and local newspapers are skilled at, especially when the story is happening right next door.

It was an exciting time, Moore said, but the Missoulian treated it like any other news story.  Moore still had to try talking to people who didn’t want to talk, find out who Kaczynski was and talk to people who knew him.

But there was a surreal quality for the newspapers that got to be a part of it, Burchard said: “This national story suddenly was in our laps. Everyone had always heard of the Unabomber, and it was like, ‘Wow he’s one of our neighbors.’ ”