Where do you draw the line? Andreia Wehrle

4 April 2012

POLS 4382
Where Do You Draw the Line?

On the morning of 11 September 2001, people in every part of the world turned to their televisions and became witnesses to the most shocking and harmful act of terrorism carried out on the United States. This may have opened eyes to millions in the population about the act of terrorism, but it has been around for as long as people can remember.

Terrorism is a politically motivated, violent act against targets to, in some way, make a declaration of religious beliefs - in most cases. While religion does usually account for the driving force behind these attacks, some terrorists are affected by mental disorders or the way they were brought up. Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph’s upbringing and personality disorders gave him the motives for his terrorist attacks.

Eric Rudolph

Eric Rudolph’s father died of cancer when Rudolph was ten years old. The Federal Drug Administration refused to approve a drug that Rudolph thought would cure his father’s illness, which led to his father’s death and Rudolph’s hatred of the government and association with extremist groups. He then moved with his mother, three brothers, and sister to Missouri in the late 1970s. The family moved again in 1981, this time to the mountains of western North Carolina. Breaking away from his family after dropping out of ninth grade, Rudolph became a drug dealer, growing and selling the most potent marijuana in the Southeast. He eventually felt called to go into the military, from where he was discharged at the age of 22 for testing positive for marijuana (“Who is Eric Rudolph?”, 2007).

Investigators of Rudolph’s case have determined that it was with his mother, Patricia Rudolph, when he was very young, that he first visited a white separatist group that was violently anti-Semitic (“Who is Eric Rudolph?”, 2007). Rudolph’s views experiences led him to be anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, anti-women’s rights, anti-black, and anti-government.

After his discharge, Rudolph went into hiding in a cave that he had built earlier in order to watch over his marijuana fields (Martin, 2003). His discharge led to a life of being isolated, and it fueled his hatred and distrust toward the government.

Terrorist Acts

On 27 July 1996, a bomb hidden in a knapsack exploded in the Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park, killing one woman from Albany, Georgia. The Federal Bureau of Investigation immediately ruled out any political motivation for the attack and instead focused on Richard Jewell, a security guard that had notified authorities about the suspicious bag before the explosion. After more investigation and questioning, the agency had to exonerate Jewell and make a public apology (Martin, 2003).

            On 16 January 1997, two bombs exploded in an office building in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs. There were no fatalities, but six individuals were injured. The abortion clinic in the building was believed to be the target of the bombing (Martin, 2003).

            Five patrons of Otherside Lounge, a gay nightclub in Atlanta, were injured on 21 February 1997, when a nail-laden explosive device went off. A second bomb was found later by authorities and destroyed (Martin, 2003).

            Almost a year later, on 29 January 1998, a blast killed off-duty Birmingham police officer Robert Sanderson and maimed clinic nurse Emily Lyons at the New Woman All Women Health Care Center in Birmingham. The bomb had been placed near the clinic entrance to be set off by a remote control device (“Raw Data”, 2003).

One witness to the explosion saw a man - later identified as Eric Rudolph - walk away from the scene. Another witness wrote down Rudolph’s North Carolina license plate information (Martin, 2003).

Forensic evidence reportedly links the 1996 bomb blasts to the three subsequent attacks. In each instance, two bombs were set. The first bomb was meant to destroy the target and the second was set to go off later, to attack emergency workers and onlookers. However, at Otherside Lounge, the second bomb failed to go off. Authorities later found it and had it destroyed (Martin, 2003).

Rudolph would create bombs filled with nails, so that not only would the target be destroyed, but also so that objects and people surrounding the blast would be seriously damaged, injured, or killed.

Rudolph was last seen in July 1998, at a store in Murphy, North Carolina. The storeowner said Rudolph made off with about six months’ worth of food and supplies and a pickup truck from his home. Rudolph left five $100 bills as payment (“Raw Data”, 2003).

Psychological Analysis

Rudolph was found to have paranoid personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder (Smith, 2005).

Paranoid personality disorder involves a long-term distrust and suspicion of others. People with this disorder have trouble seeing that their distrust is disproportional to their environment. Common symptoms are concern that others have hidden motives, social isolation, and expectation that they will be exploited by others (“Paranoid Personality”, 2011).

People with schizotypal personality disorder can have odd beliefs and behaviors, but are not disconnected from reality, and usually do not hallucinate. They also may have unusual preoccupations and fears, such as the constant feeling of being monitored by the government (M. Brown, personal communication, April 2, 2012).

Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is a condition in which the person is preoccupied with control, order, and rules. A person’s childhood and environment may also play roles in the disorder. OCPD has some of the same symptoms as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, people with OCD have unwanted thoughts, while people with OCPD believe that their thoughts are correct. These people may not be able to express their anger directly (“Obsessive-Compulsive”, 2011).

When doing a character profile on any individual, there are two different axes that categorize personality disorders (M. Brown, personal communication, April 2, 2012).

Axis I refers to legitimate mental illnesses, such as indications of hallucinations or bizarre delusions. For example, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders like depression would be in this axis. Axis II is based strictly on personality disorders. These are technically outrageous about the person’s environment or self. Anything in Axis II exists before the individual is 18. These are the developmental disorders. They are patterns of viewing and understanding the world. People with Axis I disorders have a mental illness. People with Axis II disorders have peculiar ways of thinking and acting (M. Brown, personal communication, April 2, 2012).

Our current healthcare system is primarily set up to treat Axis I disorders. This, however, does not mean that Axis II disorders are not represented in the health treatment centers. In fact they are more represented in the healthcare centers that Axis I disorders. People are less likely to intervene in cases that present with an Axis II disorder, possibly due the difficulty of treatment for ingrained behaviors and beliefs (M. Brown, personal communication, April 2, 2012).

Eric Rudolph had been a general suspect in the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta, and the bombings at Otherside Lounge and at the abortion clinics in Atlanta and Birmingham. The Birmingham bombing led to Rudolph’s identification as a principal suspect (“Raw Data”, 2003).

After Rudolph’s sighting in North Carolina, more than 200 FBI agents fanned out across the state to bring him into custody. Police Officer Jeff Postell found Rudolph on 31 May 2003, scavenging for food in a dumpster at the Save-A-Lot food store in Murphy, North Carolina. Surprisingly, he was arrested only a few hundred yards from where he had last been seen. After his arrest, Rudolph confirmed that he had spent the last five years living near Murphy (“Raw Data”, 2003).

Rudolph made his initial court appearance in Asheville, North Carolina, before he was flown to Birmingham to be tried in court on 2 June 2003 (“Raw Data”, 2003).

Timothy McVeigh

Timothy McVeigh suffered from a childhood of absent parents. He developed a love for guns at an early age, and had dreams of being in the Special Forces unit in the military. McVeigh spent four years in the Army after high school, but left in 1992 after being turned down by the Green Beret. He had previously served as an artilleryman (Iannetta, Hayes, 2008).

Rudolph and McVeigh both had aspirations in the military, but were rejected. McVeigh wanted to be a Green Beret; Rudolph wanted to be a Ranger. The rejection put both men into a kind of isolation and gave them bitterness toward the military and the government. They both adopted nomadic, antisocial lifestyles that would eventually lead to destruction.

McVeigh developed a nomadic lifestyle, living in motels and frequenting gun shows (Iannetta et al., 2008). Like Rudolph, he lived in isolation, growing increasingly bitter about the government and its control.

The military could have done a better job of looking out for both McVeigh and Rudolph. Usually when people experience rejection on a large scale, as McVeigh and Rudolph did, they have support from their families. McVeigh and Rudolph had no such support and the military (“Who is Eric Rudolph?”, 2007).

There should be required counseling for military personnel who quit or who are discharged in any capacity, because these men were not counseled, and led lives of isolation and anger after they left the military. McVeigh and Rudolph were not absorbed back into society and might have not known how to relate to people in general. People like this can grow increasingly bitter toward the government and its control, which led McVeigh and Rudolph to their rage and created the framework for the violence that, would later break out against the United States.

It does not help that there are anti-governmental and racist groups in the United States that appeal to and welcome these kinds of people.

Domestic Terrorist Groups

The Aryan Nation, a neo-Nazi hate group begun by Richard Butler in 1974, advocates Christian Identity, white supremacy, and neo-Nazism. Its members are consumed with the furtherance of the “White Race” and their goal is “Aryan War”: that the government would be pushed into a state of perpetual revolution and thereby eventually destroy itself. All of this is for the benefit of Caucasians and their descendants (“The History of Aryan Nation”, 2007).

The Aryan Nation was deemed by RAND Corporation as the “first truly nationwide terrorist network.” (“The History of Aryan Nation”, 2007).

The Nation has lost some of its power in the past 20 years, due to the loss of key leaders and bankruptcy. The nation had to give $6.3 million dollars to two individuals who were chased and shot at near one of their compounds. Aside from that, the Nation is still successful in recruiting new members and it demonstrates a clan-like solidarity with its members and its goals (“The History of Aryan Nation”, 2007).

Rudolph sent letters claiming responsibility for two of the bombings and signed them, “Army of God.” Army of God has been around since the early 1980s as an extreme anti-abortion organization. It has even circulated a manual with instructions on how to make bombs, much like The Turner Diaries (“Who is Eric Rudolph”, 2007).

The Turner Diaries, an influential ideological work of anti-government and Aryan tendencies, is a fictionalized account of an international white revolution. It is supposed to be the diary of one Earl Turner, a participant in the “Great Revolution” race war supposed to have happened in the 1990s. This book galvanizes bigotry and anti-government sentiments and glorifies violent guerrilla acts committed by small, determined bands (class lecture, March 28, 2012).

Another racially terroristic group is Christian Identity. It is a racist and anti-Semitic religious group that believes the United States was bestowed by God to white Christians only. They are against the United States government, which they see as dominated by the Jews, “race traitors,” and other minorities (Robinson, 2006).

This group believes that non-whites are “mud people” who eventually evolved from the Jews. God sent Jesus to help white people with their struggles, but the Jews crucified him. White people then migrated to Europe and the United States. Once in the United States, this group believes that the Jews then took control of the government by conspiring to create the Federal Reserve System, which would give them some control over the country’s wealth (Robinson, 2006).

McVeigh called the Christian Identity compound several times in the days leading up to the Oklahoma City Bombing, and Rudolph was a member of this group and Army of God, an anti-abortion group (class lecture, March 28, 2012).

Theodore Kaczynski

Theodore Kaczynski, most commonly known as the Unabomber, has been charged with many federal offenses as a domestic terrorist, for sending bombs to several universities and airlines from the late 1970s to the early 1990s (Smith, 2005).

As an infant, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski experienced an extreme allergic reaction and was hospitalized for several weeks. Only his parents could visit him, but they were forbidden to hold or touch him. After his discharge from the hospital, there was a noticeable shift in his personality (Iannetta et al., 2008). Before, he had been a happy child. After, he was would not respond well to human interaction and contact. He was never the same.

Surprisingly, Kaczynski had a very high IQ and was able to skip the sixth grade. He saw that experience as a major event in his life. He did not fit in with his classmates and was teased and bullied by them. He was also able to skip the eleventh grade and graduate from high school two years earlier than his peers. Kaczynski was accepted to Harvard at age 16 (Iannetta et al., 2008).

Once at Harvard, Kaczynski volunteered as a test subject for personality destruction experiments. These experiments were conducted by Henry A. Murray, a Harvard psychologist and former CIA interrogation and psychological warfare expert. Murray was also known for experimenting with mind-altering drugs. These experiments were called “didactic interaction of alienation subjects” and tested the subjects’ beliefs and personality traits (Iannetta et al., 2008).

Kaczynski would later believe that the tests of his beliefs and personality traits were linked to his emotional instability and fear of mind control (Iannetta et al., 2008).

After graduating from Harvard, Kaczynski received his Master’s and Doctorate degrees in mathematics at the University of Michigan, starting in 1962. In 1967, Kaczynski was hired at the University of California at Berkeley as an assistant professor of mathematics (Iannetta et al., 2008). He resigned two years later without any explanation (Smith, 2005).

Kaczynski also suffered from paranoid personality disorder and went into isolation after his resignation from Berkeley (Smith, 2005).

Assessment

The comparison of McVeigh and Kaczynski to Rudolph as similar terrorists, while argues the point of personality disorders and upbringing resulting in a lifetime of terrorism, it still scientifically does not justify that people with different beliefs and mental capacities than the rest of society, may not will all become terrorists. In some cases, however, these characteristics can be the stimulus for eventual terror activity.

Rudolph vs. McVeigh

We compare McVeigh to Rudolph knowing that he had an introverted personality and that he was a highly organized planner. McVeigh also generated his ideas from his personal background and belief system, and carefully and accurately put things together with precision and perfection (Iannetta et al., 2008). McVeigh’s precision and perfection is much like Rudolph’s bombing strategy – placing one bomb against the target and the other timed to go off later to kill rescue workers and bystanders (Martin, 2003).

Rudolph and Kaczynski are domestic terrorists who chose serial bombing as their modus operandi. They acted independently to murder and maim, and evaded authorities for a combined period of 25 years (Smith, 2005). Their series of bombings were rooted in their social and occupational failures, and both men experience severe isolation after these failures.

One unsettling similarity between these two men is the number seven.

As stated before, Kaczynski resigned from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969. He was 27 years old at the time. Two years later, after severe isolation, Kaczynski and his brother David purchased 1.4 acres near Lincoln, Montana. Their living conditions were substandard; their house was a plywood shack lacking electricity and indoor plumbing. On 25 May 1978, seven years after Kaczynski’s resignation, he executed his first bombing in a parking lot at the University of Illinois in Chicago. The Unabomber lived in freedom for 18 more years before he was captured (Smith, 2005).

On 27 July 1996, three months after the Unabomber was captured, Rudolph set off his first bomb in the Olympic Centennial Park in Atlanta, which, strangely enough, was seven years after he had been discharged from the army at the age of 22. Rudolph was arrested on 21 May 2003, almost seven years after his first bombing (Smith, 2005).

Evaluation

While people with Axis II disorders are not deemed “crazy,” it is still a possibility that their thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors can lead to them hurting themselves and others.

Even with all this research, it is still not enough to say that every person with an Axis II disorder should to be targeted as a terrorist.

Take these three terrorists for example. They are the only three terrorists compared to each other that are found to have personality disorders. As stated earlier, most people see mental illness as Axis I disorders, so even with these three men and their Axis II disorders, the disorders seem to be brushed off as oddities or individual liberties (M. Brown, personal communication, April 2, 2012).

In Rudolph and McVeigh’s cases, their Axis II disorders may have been noticed when they had psychological evaluations for the military, but that did not exactly rule them out from participation.

Many people with Axis II disorders are viewed as just “odd.” They have a looseness with their thoughts and actions. They experience more oddities of thoughts than the “normal” person, but they are not out of touch with reality. In most cases, it is the opposite. They are too engrossed and concerned with what is going on around them. For example, they can get caught up with peculiar aspects of things and become paranoid. Most documented cases show that paranoia of the government ranks as a major with people with these disorders. Not only do they think people or institutions are “out to get them,” they are also paranoid about criticisms from these groups (M. Brown, personal communication, April 2, 2012).

Rudolph’s multiple Axis II disorders may have made life difficult for him, ultimately leading him to a life of terrorism, but his extreme isolation should also be taken into account. The man distanced himself from all outside contact after experiencing such a heavy loss in his life, which may have led to his mental instability.

Isolation is a valid stimulant for terrorist attacks because when living in isolation with either strong religious beliefs, which motivate some terrorists, or with personality disorders, these people have time to dwell on their hatred for certain political or religious groups and plot the end result for their enemies.

Not all people with these disorders become terrorists, and not all people who become terrorists have these disorders.

CBS News. (2007). Who is Eric Rudolph?. Retrieved from http://www.cbsnews.com/2316-100_162-556529-2.html

Cook, A. (2012, March 28). The Turner Diaries. Lecture conducted from Alethia Cook.

Fox News. (2003, June 2). Raw data: timeline in Eric Rudolph case. Retrieved from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,88269,00.html

Iannetta, Kimon; Hayes, Reed. (2008). ProQuest Criminal Justice. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/criminaljusticeperiodicals

Martin, P. (2003, June 4). The case of Eric Rudolph: right-wing terrorism and the Bush administration. Retrieved from http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jun2003/rdph-j04.shtml

PubMed Health. (2011). Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001938/

PubMed Health. (2011). Paranoid personality disorder. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001934/