Much can be said on the execution of Timothy McVeigh and the events of April 19, 1995. Unfortunately it seems that the makeup-coated media news-readers and lawyers do all of it and leave out the ones we really want to hear, like eye-witnesses and Timothy McVeigh himself. Many unanswered questions remain and it's the intent of this report to illuminate some of them.

In the first few moments and hours after an unprecedented, tragic and chaotic incident, such as the Oklahoma City bombing, multiple stories and rumors inevitably bounce around and the mass-media, being ratings conscious, picks up on them and all too often add them to the news broadcast without adequately checking facts in the rush to be first. And in this case certain officials, both local and federal, exacerbated this problem. Some news stories had bombs inside the building, some had one or two other truck bombs undetonated after the explosion. Stories of foreign terrorists and a foreign accented or Middle Eastern 'John Doe two' were paraded around as well.

Yet in short order these discrepancies should be naturally cleared up and a distinct and cohesive order of events established. However in 2001 some six years after the bombing, and with McVeigh's rushed execution now in question over the bungled release of critical FBI documents, this is still not the case. Indeed, in the aftermath an actual erosion of truth has occurred on the part of the FBI and other officials.

One consistent, flagrant discrepancy is the amount of explosives McVeigh packed into his Ryder truck to create the detonation responsible for crumbling half of the Murrah federal building into sand, gravel and twisted rubble. Example:

For years, investigators have insisted that McVeigh and Terry Nichols, a former army friend, acted alone in planting a 4,000lb fertiliser bomb outside the Alfred P Murrah building. [12]

MSNBC claims it was a 7,000 pound bomb. American Forces Press Service claimed a 5,000 pound bomb. [10] The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) claims the bomb was the equivalent of 4,000 pounds of TNT. [13]

While federal prosecutors were describing their case against McVeigh, law enforcement sources said the 4,800-pound bomb that caused the explosion probably required at least two to three people to construct and considerable patience and planning. Building such a device "would be extremely labor-intensive," said one official, noting that the bomb components included 20 to 25 55-gallon barrels filled with a volatile mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. [7]

It should be noted that such a fertilizer bomb is significantly less powerful than TNT, so to create FEMA's 4000 pound TNT bomb would require perhaps 16,000 pounds of fertilizer. Either way it's almost as if they're just making up numbers here, where's the media getting their figures? Reference #7 from the Washington Post is especially curious because it's from an article dated just nine days after the bombing, long before the trial or any serious explosive tests could have been conducted. Yet the numbers are always stated as fact never approximations.

Secondly, although the type of explosive remained consistent in media reports, that being ammonium nitrate and fuel oil (ANFO), the construction of such a weapon is no idle task. While it's theoretically possible to build an ANFO bomb using fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate, usually less than 30% nitrogen, the resulting blast will be reduced comparative to the lower the percentage of nitrate compound in the fertilizer. Furthermore this method requires careful formulation and strenuous effort to process the bulky and messy materials. Two problems arise here: either McVeigh had many people helping him or he spent weeks preparing the bomb materials.

Although McVeigh rented the truck just days before the bombing, it's officially reported that he and Nichols constructed the charge and packed them into the truck in a park on April 18, and then bombed the building the very next day. They must have worked like fiends for hours. And no one noticed them? Furthermore, the explosive dynamics of ANFO raise serious questions as to what actually caused the damage observed on the Murrah federal building.

Third, Oklahoma City seismologists reported two seismic shocks eight seconds apart (or ten by one story). Was it two bombs? The day of the attack news reporters repeatedly told of dramatic efforts concerning how bombs were found inside the building's rubble and were being defused by bomb squads. Yet mysteriously, memory of this is gone from official records and instead replaced exclusively with the single truck-bomb hypothesis.

Bomb Damage & Comparison

McVeigh was not an explosives expert, he was a Bradley gunner in the Army, not some Special Forces demolitions mastermind. His target, the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, was state-of-the-art when completed in March of 1977 and designed to withstand earthquakes, tornadoes and even nuclear blasts according to some reports. A cursory examination of the building structure from pictures or even FEMA's web site details the nine stories of rebar reinforced concrete for around 724 employees of various government agencies.

Decorated Gulf War veteran Sergeant Timothy McVeigh

But without another example of a truck-bomb damaging  a large building for comparison it's difficult to disprove anything. That was the case until just over a year after the Murrah bombing when on June 25, 1996 in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia the Khobar Towers, an Air Force apartment building of similar size, was attacked in exactly this manner by a fuel truck at close range that was packed with explosives.

In comparing the two events a few differences exist, such as the structural integrity of the buildings. While Murrah was reinforced with pillars and thickened walls Khobar was un-reinforced shoddy concrete and masonry. Second, while McVeigh's Ryder truck had anywhere from 4,000 to 7,000 pounds of low grade ANFO, the Khobar fuel truck was packed with the equivalent of 20,000 pounds of TNT! Murrah was far more damaged with 168 killed but Khobar Towers only had its facade blown off killing 19 yet leaving an immense crater one has to see (below) to believe. Yet looking at the overhead shot of Murrah one is struck by the shocking lack of any crater at all!

On the left is the Murrah federal building. Crater? None apparent, but extensive internal structural damage. On the right is the Khobar Towers. Crater? Oh yeah, but structural damage is mostly on the facade.

Where's the crater from the Oklahoma City bombing? If it was filled in with rubble that's difficult to detect, and unlikely given the mechanics of the explosion, especially compared to the Khobar incident. According to FEMA the bomb crater created by McVeigh's rented truck punched through a rugged 11 inches of asphalt and 7 inches of concrete to blast out a 6.8 foot deep by 28 foot wide crater in the ground below the truck, while pulverizing at least four internal support columns, according to another FEMA sketch. [13]

The General Services Administration (GSA), in charge of federal buildings and property, concluded in its studies that the primary source of death was not shock wave blast from explosions but by falling building debris. In other words people were crushed not blown away. Perhaps because of this it's interesting to study the government's carefully constructed person by person death and injury diagram. We can even see people standing next to each other where one is killed and the other not even injured!

By comparing the original location of office workstations to their final resting places in the rubble below, rescuers deduced the building fell straight down in a condition known as a 'pancake collapse', and was not knocked to the side as would be expected from the force of an adjacent explosion. The pancake collapse aided rescue crews because they knew where to look for trapped people and bodies. [14] Yet this immediately raises suspicions as to what really wrecked the Federal building because the devastating results seem more consistent with an internally initiated demolition than from the sideways shockwave blast of a truck-bomb parked on the street.

The Khobar Towers terrorist bombing on 25 June 1996, a cold-blooded act of murder, was a tragic and costly event of unprecedented magnitude, involving a high degree of sophistication. It was an act of war where terrorists detonated a bomb with an estimated likely yield of more than 20,000 pounds of TNT-equivalent explosives outside the fence of the American occupied sector of Khobar Towers. The explosion killed 19 service members and injured hundreds more. It also injured many Saudi Arabian citizens and third country nationals (TCNs) and severely damaged or destroyed a significant amount of property. [8]

By contrast the Khobar Towers bombing left a crater 85 feet wide and 35 feet deep. This speaks to the difficulty in demolishing a large building, fortified or not, with even the most powerful truck bombs simply by co-locating the vehicle.

Here's the kind of crater 20,000 pounds of TNT creates. The men in the upper left add scale.

It appears that McVeigh's truck bombing skills bordered on the super-human, yet his criminal competency was ludicrously pathetic. Just 75 minutes after the blast and some 78 miles from the scene he was pulled over for lack of a license plate on his 1977 yellow Mercury Marquis. Some news reports even have him speeding up to 100 miles per hour at the time! He was subsequently arrested and taken to jail by the officer for a misdemeanor charge of carrying a weapon. Oddly enough, although advanced technological analysis of McVeigh's clothing and personal objects reportedly detected trace amounts of the detonator cord explosive PETN, other more pertinent chemicals were of dubious presence. If McVeigh had constructed an ANFO bomb wouldn't he have reeked of fuel oil? Yet the arresting officer never reported any unusual odors. Furthermore:

They [prosecutors] had no fingerprints on the truck rental agreement or the truck key found in an Oklahoma City alley, and no fertilizer residue in the storage lockers the conspirators allegedly used to store their bomb-making materials. [6]

Although multiple eyewitnesses reported a second person in the car with McVeigh leaving Oklahoma City, when arrested only one person was in the vehicle.

The magistrate, Ronald L. Howland, ordered McVeigh to be held without bail after listening to four hours of testimony from FBI special agent John Hersley in which he described eyewitness accounts of a yellow Mercury with McVeigh and another man inside speeding away from a parking lot near the federal building. [7]

Remember me? Whatever happened to John Doe #2?

Who was that second person that the reports referred to? Was that the mysterious John Doe number two or someone else entirely? Despite an intense, media- saturating, reward-money motivated nationwide manhunt no one was ever found or prosecuted that matched the description. This probably explains why at the trial those eyewitness reports were discounted and ignored because the prosecution was unable to prove McVeigh was even at the scene of the crime.

Even after the most exhaustive criminal investigation in U.S. history, prosecutors produced no eyewitness placing McVeigh at the scene of the bombing. [6]

Speaking for Timothy McVeigh

John Doe number two and numerous other unanswered questions may well go to the grave along with Timothy McVeigh after his execution given that he never testified in court; McVeigh's version of events was never aired. However in a handwritten letter to the Houston Chronicle in May 2001 he claims that there was no John Doe two.

While McVeigh has seemed content to let others speak for him, and perhaps guess at his true motives, he has consistently approved tacitly and vocally with both the political statement made by the Murrah bombing and related anti-government sentiment towards increasingly militarized and deadly federal police enforcement agencies.

One person who can't be left out of the issue, and whose novel was part of the trial, is Dr. William Pierce of the National Alliance who stated on May 12, 2001, "Even though I've never met or corresponded with Timothy, I've had dozens of reporters calling me for interviews in connection with the killing, because he read one of my novels, The Turner Diaries." [3]. That novel (marked exhibit 1 at the trial) was supposedly McVeigh's blueprint for blowing up the federal building.

Although oddly enough McVeigh hasn't communicated with Dr. Pierce he has with famous author and historian Gore Vidal, a man he even invited (successfully) to view his execution!

Vidal, who plans to write an article about the execution for Vanity Fair magazine, said he began his correspondence with McVeigh after an article the author wrote for the magazine in 1998 about the `"shredding'' of the Bill of Rights in America. "He wrote me and I became fascinated by him. First of all he's a very good, clear writer and he knows a lot about the Constitution and is very interested in the Bill of Rights." [4]

Gore Vidal isn't the only one entranced by Timothy McVeigh's composure under duress.

Woodard, however, draws parallels with Jesus Christ, who, he says, like McVeigh "was 33 and nearly universally despised at the time of his execution.'', "I think it is worth my efforts to do something on his behalf because he is such an unusual person. The way in which he has managed himself (after the bombing) is unfathomably mindful and composed and I feel he deserves some sort of tribute." continued... "McVeigh shares with Christ "a messianic quality.'' He speaks of the "inhuman duress'' under which McVeigh now operates as he faces his own death, and calls him "an amazing, albeit misguided talent. - David Woodard, LA composer [5]

The FBI has spoken for Timothy McVeigh and unambiguously labeled him the worst terrorist in American history. Yet if any doubts may exist about McVeigh's criminal competency very little is left of the FBI's. Most recently the FBI has yet again bungled a high profile case, this time through the belated release of documents relating to the Murrah bombing. These documents were held until less than a week before McVeigh was to be executed and didn't reach Terry Nichol's lawyers until the very last day they could appeal to the Supreme Court. #2

Louis Freeh, director of the FBI since July 1993, announced his resignation just two weeks before the FBI turned over these documents concerning McVeigh and the bombing. The FBI knew for months of their existence yet failed to release them. According to the FBI this was due to a nefarious combination of bureaucratic ineptitude and computer database malfunctions. #9

Other Significant Points to Ponder

"...one of the mothers told us she had seen the Oklahoma County Bomb Squad downtown that morning before the bombing." [1] Later confirmed by City officials but claimed to be purely coincidental because they were 'out getting coffee'.

Current reports give 168 as the number killed, yet Compton's 1997 online encyclopedia gives a figure of 169 killed. An engineering report on the structural damage also gives 169 dead. [14]

On the meaning of April 19th:

 ... April 19, 1775, was 'the shot heard around the world'; April 19, 1942, the Nazis celebrated the burning of the Warsaw Ghetto; April 19, 1985, was the day the FBI raided the compound of the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA); April 19, 1992, was the original aborted raid on Randy Weaver's cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho; and April 19, 1993, was the day Mount Carmel was burned to the ground by the ATF at Waco, Texas. [...]

Those following loose ends of the bombing case say April 19, 1995, was important for another reason, perhaps more directly connected to the bombing than any of the rest. Just hours after the bombing of the Murrah Building, Arkansas prison officials prepared for that afternoon's execution of Richard Wayne Snell, a member of the domestic terrorist organization known as The Order, which was founded out of the Aryan Nation in Idaho. According to court records, Snell conceived the plan to blow up the Murrah Building in 1983. [1]

Although superficial connections to nearly every extreme right wing group and racist organization in America have been attributed to McVeigh and Nichols at one point or another, none have been substantiated. One point almost never mentioned is that Terry Nichols married twice, one was a Filipina woman and the other was Mexican. Any racist ideas would be difficult to attribute to Nichols as demonstrated by his behavior. None of these extremist organizations, or indeed anyone, has ever claimed credit for the Murrah building bombing except McVeigh himself in a book interview, but not in court. Militias and right-wing groups have been vocal in denouncing the bombing in order to be cleared of any wrongdoing, even cooperating with federal agencies.

Yet if a terrorist organization didn't benefit from the publicity of the act, and if McVeigh and Nichols are the only two involved, then no one has made any effort to capitalize on one of the most infamous and politically-powerful terrorist events of recent American history. Except of course the federal government.

FEMA certainly gained valuable experience from the event, and even a new record:

FEMA coordinated the federal response to the Oklahoma City bombing and later worked closely with State and local officials on recovery efforts. Within 45 minutes after notification from the Oklahoma Department of Civil Emergency Management, FEMA deployed staff to Oklahoma City. The President signed an Emergency Declaration within 8 hours of the occurrence. This was the first time section 501(b) of the Stafford Act, granting FEMA the primary federal responsibility for responding to a domestic consequence management incident, was ever used. The President subsequently declared a major disaster on April 26, 1995. [11]

But why did it take a week for the president to declare a "major" disaster?

Intriguing is the fact that not only were no Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents killed but they weren't even in the building at all at the time of the explosion 9:01 am (or 9:02 am depending on your media source). Indeed, apparently all badge carrying officers were absent that day, yet explanations for this remarkable occurrence remain sketchy. The BATF was McVeigh's primary target given his anger at their raid on the branch Davidian church in Waco Texas.

An observant McVeigh in Waco Texas, March 1993 where he reportedly distributed "Is Your Church ATF approved?" bumper stickers.

The stack of stalled, backlogged 'anti-terrorism' legislation pushed by the Clinton administration in conjunction with Janet Reno's Justice Department and lambasted by the ACLU and other civil liberties organizations as an affront to freedom and Constitutional rights, instantly sailed through Congress within days of the bombing.

On May 23, 1995 the Murrah building was completely demolished by implosion, and after searching through the rubble three more bodies were removed by the 29th. Despite the status as a crime scene the remnants were summarily removed, compacted and buried off-site while in its place today is the official memorial. Was this rush job an effort to mask contradictory evidence? That evidence may have been related to the mysterious teams seen working in the lower portions of the Murrah building shortly before the explosion, checking pillars and other structures.

Numerous occurrences highlight prior knowledge by some federal, and perhaps even local agencies, such as the bomb squad that was seen cruising town early that fateful morning. If they knew and had their agents out of the building at the time, and if the demolition of the building required inside technical work, did that make federal agents accomplices to the terrorism? To what end, to get propitious legislation through Congress? To get increased funding? To justify their escalated militancy and violence? To promote the belief of right-wing, home-grown terrorist threats? All of these goals were accomplished. But the question is: if McVeigh was set up why did they need to participate in the damage? Perhaps they felt, and with reasonable cause, that McVeigh was not competent enough to build a bomb that would cause sufficient carnage?

Admittedly this is just speculation, but if explosives were strategically placed inside the federal building to sympathetically detonate in conjunction with the truck bomb, then that would explain the emphatic original reporting of bombs being defused inside the federal building. Those were the extra demolition charges that didn’t detonate. Similarly, John Doe #2 could have been the police informer or entrapment agent. Authorities were forced to respond to multiple eyewitness reports and produce official requests for his arrest, but since he was probably in official hiding anyway that would explain why the seemingly critical factor of John Doe #2 was allowed to fade away. I suspect that, if this is really the case, the federal agents involved in this operation justified their participation thinking that if McVeigh and Nichols are going to blow up their truck anyway and kill people, why not enhance the effect to show to everyone what a threat to the nation that ‘domestic terrorists’ pose? Perhaps even further rationalizing that since the truck bomb acted as the trigger for the demolition charges inside the building, it wasn't the federal agents that did the killing but the two bombers with their truck.

Another, less likely, scenario is that certain documents stored in the Murrah building needed to be destroyed, documents perhaps related to the Waco raid. It's interesting to note that afterwards the federal government was exonerated of charges in the conclusion of that trial over the attack on David Koresh's church.

In my assessment the known evidence, as a whole or even taken separately, points towards the coordinated and technically advanced contact explosive demolition of key support columns within the Murrah building in conjunction with Timothy McVeigh's Ryder truck bomb parked outside. This was perhaps achieved utilizing shock sensitive switches to generate a sympathetic detonation upon detection of the blast from McVeigh's truck. The slight delay between the two triggers would account for the dual eyewitness and seismic recorded shocks. However, although some people had access to restricted areas within the building they clearly chose not to take down the entire structure. They felt the need to only create enough damage to make the truck bomb appear the sole source but still render record-breaking loss of life to guarantee the uselessness of the building and much of its contents. This succeeded in creating a credible domestic terrorist profile while limiting the fallout of culpability from the circumstantial evidence to the absolute minimum of two individuals, McVeigh and Nichols, thereby ensuring concise legal closure and protecting other unseen participants from prosecution.

It seems unlikely that McVeigh or anyone he knew would have had the technical expertise to conduct an operation involving the construction and detonation of a weapon of mass destruction while also breaking into a secured federal building, analyzing structural integrity and carefully planting charges on key supports. It seems difficult for one or even two people to pull off an operation of this scale alone. Yet if it wasn't McVeigh that got into the Murrah building, and it wasn't Nichols either, then the question arises - who was it? Whoever they are it seems almost certain they will never face legal justice, especially as all of the physical evidence, except that relating to the trials of McVeigh and Nichols, has been destroyed.

How many questions will remain unanswered after McVeigh's federal execution by lethal injection in this small room in Indiana?

It's interesting to contemplate that since the bombing was such a rousing success, both in headline screaming death toll and profound political statement, McVeigh has never felt the need to insinuate police entrapment or even claim external assistance. Indeed one of the benefits of ensuring that blast damage was more than just an ANFO truck bomb is the willing participation of McVeigh through a strong ego attachment to the successful event. I posit that if the only bomb had been his Ryder truck of some 4,000 pounds of ANFO, merely blasting the windows, doors and facade off the building while killing 19 like the Khobar Towers, he would be much less pleased with the resulting lackluster image of his political statement.

But regardless of the hypothesis employed a conspiracy did occur; whether it was between Nichols and McVeigh, or government agents, more than one person was involved. Unfortunately, given the heightened emotions and the vivid trauma of the tragedy it seems unlikely conclusive answers will manifest anytime soon, and also unfortunate that a very flawed and politicized trial is being upheld as the final and undeniable singular answer to the a deadly chain of events that occurred in the destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building and 168 lives.
...or was it 169?

On Friday, June 13, 1997, the jury's decision was announced: death. Two months later, McVeigh returned to Judge Matsch's courtroom to hear the formal pronouncement of his sentence. Asked by the judge if he had anything to say, McVeigh quoted from a 1928 dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: "'Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.' That's all I have." [15]

Execution

On June 11, 2001 Timothy McVeigh was executed in a small green tiled room at the federal prison in Indiana.

The lethal injection was administered to McVeigh's right leg. McVeigh made eye contact with his four witnesses, then with the 10 media witnesses, then squinted toward the tinted window shielding the 10 victims' witnesses from his view. He also stared straight at the victims in Oklahoma City by looking directly into the TV camera.

McVeigh, wearing a white T-shirt, khaki pants and slip-on sneakers, looked pale as he awaited death. His hair was cropped short. A white sheet was pulled up tightly to his chest as he lay on the gurney.

McVeigh received a mixture of sodium thiopental, to sedate him, pancuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant that collapses the diaphragm and lungs; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

When the first drug was administered, he let out a couple of deep breaths, then a fluttery breath. His head moved back, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, and his eyes were glassy. [16]

A more choreographed and clinical execution could not have been performed. Is this a dehumanized murder, and if so what does it portend? Regardless, what made it especially poignant was the character of the subject on the gurney. While it's one thing to execute some raving, deranged, saliva spitting maniac, some socially useless Charles Manson psycho-killer, Timothy McVeigh did not fit that description at all. Despite what media and Murrah building victims may like to think he's not crazy or imbalanced, just rash and angry. He did what he did for a reason, and even if his conclusions are unpopular that doesn't necessarily make them invalid.

Indeed, rather than work with McVeigh or discuss what made him reach his conclusions the federal government and media outlets have made every effort to ostracize everything about him; you've heard the slogans, 'evil', 'monster', 'most-hated'. How does this resolve the issue, how does this aid understanding of motivations or prevent similar actions by others in the future? It's as if they can throw away the person as easily as the ideas by, ironically, poisoning a war veteran who worked for the same government that killed him.

A Foreign Connection?

An official investigation titled The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection? was released in 2006. The investigation was led by Representative Dana Rohrabacher and it addressed recurrent claims of foreign involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing (OKBOMB), specifically Iraqi or Arab persons such as Ramzi Yousef, the first World Trade center bomber of February 1993. Although the report conveniently fits the contemporary paranoia of the post-9-11 era it could not find any evidence of a foreign connection to the Murrah bombing. Nonetheless it remains quite illuminating on several lingering issues.

Probably the biggest question remaining in the OKC bombing case is that of John Doe #2. The investigation finds numerous credible witnesses that attest to seeing John Doe #2 with McVeigh but oddly enough the FBI failed to follow through in explaining who he is, even going so far as to pressure one witness to change his story! Oklahoma City TV reporter Jayna Davis claims that John Doe #2 was an Iraqi named Hussain Al-Hussaini but the substance is still lacking to support it, remaining purely circumstantial and coincidental.

Other important questions remain, such as:

• How did Terry Nichols, a man with no steady job or source of income, finance his five trips to the Philippines?

• Why was an unaccounted-for leg found in the debris after the bombing?

The Chairman’s Report and the responses they received while trying to investigate actually increase suspicion, suggesting either widespread incompetence and/or some kind of cover-up at the FBI. The simplest answer seems to be an attempt on the part of the FBI to protect the agency from the embarrassment that would follow revelations of a flawed investigation.

Interesting fact: McVeigh conceded to his legal team the OKBOMB conspiracy did begin September 13, 1994 with the passage of the assault weapons ban.

The investigation concluded,

While the desire of most of the victims’ families for swift justice is understandable, with the benefit of hindsight, the McVeigh execution should have been further delayed until there was greater consensus on the subject of John Doe Two. As is clear by their documents (which the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee has had access to for the first time), his own defense team had significant internal doubts about McVeigh’s candor with them on this subject. His only failure on a polygraph test involved his response to a question on whether he had additional help with the bombing.

The question persists, and the only person who might have shed light on it is gone. Further, it was McVeigh’s decision to end his appeals that expedited his execution. His time from the end of trial to execution was only four years; the average condemned inmate spends well over a decade on death row. Given the significance of this case and the lingering questions, the execution date appears hasty in retrospect. Perhaps McVeigh would have continued to adamantly deny anyone else’s involvement but simply keeping him alive closer to the typical death row stay would have allowed more opportunity for determining the truth. [17]

Understanding Timothy McVeigh

Gore Vidal is one of the few articulate individuals to have known McVeigh on a level deep enough to make a legitimate effort to understand his thinking and motivation. In 2009 Gore Vidal was asked about the bomber and he responded, attempting to accurately characterize McVeigh despite the difficulty many have in seeing beyond the vivid visual violence:

He didn't kill them [children] deliberately! But the American government killed all those people at Waco, men, women and children deliberately! It was his gesture against the government he loathed. You know, he swore to me he had no idea there were children there. He said, 'How would I know? I walked by the place once and I knew that there was some kind of dining room, families might be there, or they might not be there,' and he wasn't counting, he wasn't out for a big count. But he was trying to tell the government – look, you have done this arbitrarily, contrary to the Posse Comitatus Act, contrary to American law, you've killed American citizens. Remember he was an army boy, and he loved it, and he was longing to get back in the army and the army was longing to get him back, he was the best sharpshooter they'd seen in years. But it was not meant to be. [...]

So did Patton, so did Eisenhower! [kill innocent people] Everybody's rather careless about it once you start getting involved in wars. He saw this as a war to preserve the Constitution! You know what he said? But you don't, so I'm going to tell you. The judge [at his trial] quite liked him, and he was intrigued by the fact that this rather talkative kid who wrote tons of pieces for the press had not defended himself. So he said – Mr McVeigh, could we hear more from you? [McVeigh] said, 'Well, your honour, I will base my case on Justice Brandeis, one of our most brilliant jurists, in his opinion in Olmstead. There, he writes that when government ceases to lead by example and actually provides a bad example, anything can happen. Government is the last teacher. Everything I did, I learned from my government. [18]

Considering the farce of a trial that McVeigh was given it seems peculiar that he never tried to appeal the verdict. But Timothy McVeigh, in his view, was not trying to save himself; he was trying to save his country. His attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City was an act of symbolic revenge, and he wanted to demonstrate to the American people that their federal government was wholly corrupt, violent, and unjust – characteristics on display at the siege and assault in Waco Texas. McVeigh knew that the federal government couldn’t even prove he was at the scene of the crime yet they found him guilty anyway. McVeigh used the show-trial and subsequent execution to demonstrate his contention, but if he was granted an appeal or a retrial it would have undercut his statement. The FBI, and the rest of federal criminal justice establishment, proceeded to fully cooperate in substantiating McVeigh’s claims.

The story of Timothy McVeigh on trial demonstrates that the American Justice System doesn’t really want the answer in any objective or truthful sense. It’s at least as much a problem of institutional bias as it is psychological bias. The process in place seeks someone to blame, always employing the same simplistic thinking: something happened, someone is responsible, and someone must be punished.

The very name is corrupt because the criminal justice system implies what it does not do, creating a false sense of validity. This improperly named ‘justice’ system doesn’t seek true justice; it seeks someone to blame for the crime, or rather someone that can be successfully prosecuted in court. These aren’t scientists testing a hypothesis to seek a valid conclusion; they’re cops, lawyers and politically-tainted judges looking for a quick result. And that’s what we get.

News

• Lawyer says Oklahoma City bombing tapes edited, The Oklahoman Newspaper, September 28, 2009.

• 'Oklahoma City Bombing Was Taped' April 19, 2004

References

1. Bomber Takes Truth to Grave, by Kelly Patricia O'Meara, Insight magazine, May 2001

2. Lawyers Review McVeigh Documents, by Karen Gullo, Associated Press, May 12, 2001

3. Pierce claims no contact with Mcveigh, National Alliance, May 2001

4. Gore Vidal defends decision, May 8, 2001

5. McVeigh gets music to die by, Reuters, May 9, 2001

6. McVeigh Guilty on All 11 Counts, by Lois Romano and Tom Kenworthy, Washington Post, June 3, 1997, Page A01

7. McVeigh Held in Conjunction with Oklahoma City Bombing, by Paul Duggan and Pierre Thomas, Washington Post, April 28, 1995

8. U.S. Air Force Report on the Khobar Towers

9. FBI source - McVeigh error known for months, CNN, May 12, 2001

10. American Forces Press Service

11. FEMA Report

12. FBI blunder may save McVeigh's life, by Tom Rhodes, The Sunday Times (UK), May 13, 2001

13. FEMA bomb damage & building performance

14. Engineering Building Collapse Response Report

15. Famous Trials - Oklahoma City Bombing Trial 1997

16. Timothy McVeigh Put to Death, by Rex W. Huppke, Associated Press, June 11, 2001

17. The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection?,  Chairman’s Report Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House Internal Relations Committee.

18. Gore Vidal's United States of fury, The Independent (UK), October 7, 2009.