Okla City Bombing Trial(英)

The Oklahoma City Bombing & The Trial of Timothy McVeigh

by Douglas O. Linder (2006)

　　Prosecutor Joseph Hartzler began his opening statement in the Timothy McVeigh trial by reminding the jury of the terror and the heartbreak: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, April 19th, 1995, was a beautiful day in Oklahoma City —— at least it started out as a beautiful day. The sun was shining. Flowers were blooming. It was springtime in Oklahoma City. Sometime after six o'clock that morning, Tevin Garrett's mother woke him up to get him ready for the day. He was only 16 months old. He was a toddler; and as some of you know that have experience with toddlers, he had a keen eye for mischief. He would often pull on the cord of her curling iron in the morning, pull it off the counter top until it fell down, often till it fell down on him. That morning, she picked him up and wrestled with him on her bed before she got him dressed. She remembers this morning because that was the last morning of his life……"

　　A bomb carried in a Ryder truck exploded in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City at 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995. The bomb claimed 168 innocent lives. That a homegrown, war-decorated American terrorist named Timothy McVeigh drove and parked the Ryder truck in the handicap zone in front of the Murrah Building there is little doubt. In 1997, a jury convicted McVeigh and sentenced him to death. The federal government, after an investigation involving 2,000 agents, also charged two of McVeigh's army buddies, Michael Fortier and Terry Nichols, with advance knowledge of the bombing and participation in the plot. Despite considerable evidence linking various militant white supremacists to the tragedy in Oklahoma City, no other persons faced prosecution for what was——until September 11, 2001——the worst act of terrorism ever on American soil.

　　The Oklahoma City bombing trials raise questions more interesting than the answers they provide. How, in four years, can an army sergeant and Green Beret aspirant turn so violently against the government he served? If there had been no Waco, would there have been no Oklahoma City? Did McVeigh want to be captured? Why did the government only bring charges against three men in connection with the bombing, when compelling evidence suggests that others played significant roles in the crime? We do not have clear answers to any of these questions——but some possible answers to these and other intriguing questions have come into better focus in the years since the McVeigh and Nichols trials.

　　The Making of an American Terrorist

　　The childhood of Timothy McVeigh in Lockport, New York was far from idyllic. His parents divorced in 1978, when Tim was ten, and for the remainder of his school years he lived mainly with his father, Bill McVeigh. Scrawny and unathletic, "Noodle" McVeigh became a target for neighborhood bullies. He attributes a lifelong hatred for bullies of all kinds (a class which, in his view, included an overreaching federal government) to early beatings on softball diamonds and head spinning "swirlies" in flushing toilets. It is possible that McVeigh's fascination with guns, dating to pre-teen years spent admiring his grandfather's .22-caliber rifle, might have something to do with his view of weapons as the great equalizer. He dedicated himself to developing his marksmanship skills, spending hours shooting holes in soft-drink cans in a ravine. By age 14, Tim McVeigh's interests included survivalism. He began stockpiling food and camping equipment in preparation for possible nuclear attack or a communist overthrow of the United States government.

　　Although McVeigh performed well on standardized tests in high school, school and its social life had considerably less appeal for him than his world of guns, fringe movements, and science fiction books. He struck classma

tes as somewhat introverted and disengaged, and his only extracurricular activity was track. Under the entry "future plans" in his high school yearbook, McVeigh wrote: "Take it as it comes, buy a Lamborghini, California girls." Despite his reference to "California girls," McVeigh seemed uncomfortable around women, never had a girlfriend, and——despite his own contentions to the contrary—— might have remained a virgin throughout his entire life.

　　For two years following high school graduation, McVeigh briefly attended a computer school in Buffalo and took on a series of short-term jobs——then, in May 1988, he enlisted in the U. S. Army. In basic training, the loner McVeigh found a friend in his platoon leader, Terry Nichols, who shared his conservative and somewhat paranoid political views. McVeigh seemed to fit well into the structured life of the military, performing well enough to be promoted to sergeant. He served in Fort Riley, Kansas, where he met Michael Fortier, the man who would later provide key testimony against him in the Oklahoma City bombing trial. From Fort Riley, McVeigh headed to the Persian Gulf War, where for four months he drove a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and, for his efforts, earned a bronze star. McVeigh seemed well-suited to the details of military life; his army years were probably his best years. Nonetheless, after realizing that he lacked the "right stuff" during the first day of a Green Beret try-out, McVeigh requested and received an honorable discharge in December 1991.

　　McVeigh's life darkened in the year following his discharge. By the end of 1991, McVeigh was living with his father again in upstate New York, near Buffalo, and working for near minimum wage as a security guard. He fought through bouts of serious depression and thoughts of suicide. Politically, he moved further and further from the mainstream. He began espousing increasingly angry views of U. S. foreign policy, gun control, and what he believed were conspiracies involving the United Nations. In a March 1992 letter to the Lockport Union-Sun, McVeigh wrote, "AMERICA IS IN DECLINE……Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system?" According to McVeigh, he first began thinking of violent action against the federal government in August 1992 following news of a federal government shoot-out with survivalist Randy Weaver in the Idaho woods.

　　In January 1993, McVeigh turned in his security company badge, sold most of his belongings, packed his bags, left New York, and began a transient life of gun shows, stays with army buddies, and short-term jobs. Gun shows provided McVeigh with money and a steady stream of acquaintances who shared his anti-gun control and anti-government views.

　　No event did more to radicalize McVeigh than did the stand-off near Waco, Texas between members of the Branch Davidians, a religious cult headed by David Koresh, and U. S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). On February 28, 1993, 80 armed BATF agents tried to execute a warrant to search for illegal weapons at the Mount Carmel compound of the Davidians. The raid ended badly, with four agents and six Branch Davidians killed. What would turn out to be a 51-day stand-off began. The federal government's actions so infuriated McVeigh that he traveled to Texas in March to sell bumper stickers with slogans such as "Fear the Government that Fears Your Gun." McVeigh was watching television at the farm of his army buddy, Terry Nichols, in Michigan on April 19 when the government forces (including the FBI and army) launched their attack against the heavily fortified Davidian compound. Tanks rammed holes in the compound and agents fired CS gas inside. Pyrotechnic devices fired into the building turned it into a raging inferno. When it was over, 74 men, women, and children were found dead inside the compound. McVeigh, in Michigan, sat stunned and appalled: "What is this? What has America become?" He decided the time would com

e when he would strike back.

　　The Widening Conspiracy

　　There is no shortage of people in the United States who have serious beefs with the federal government. In addition to the anti-gun control crowd, there are anti-tax fanatics, white supremacists who resent government's race and immigration policies, and a wide variety of persons who think the United States government is full of communists or "one-world-government" proponents.

　　Timothy McVeigh had most of these complaints with the government, and over the next two years would find himself in the company of many who shared much of his somewhat paranoid world view. At an April 1993 gun show in Tulsa, for example, McVeigh met Andreas Strassmeir, the grandson of a founder of the Nazi party and then the head of security for Elohim City, a 400-acre compound on the Arkansas-Oklahoma border founded by a white supremacist. (There is interesting, but inconclusive, evidence suggesting that Strassmeir might have been a federal undercover operative.) In Kingman, Arizona, McVeigh renews his friendship with army buddy Michael Fortier, an anti-gun control protester with a passion for far-right politics. In the fall of 1993, McVeigh and Terry Nichols made their first visit to Elohim City, a hotbed of anti-government activity——including a plot to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City. (For McVeigh, it would be the first of at least two, and most likely four or more visits to the compound.)

　　In 1994, McVeigh's activities became overtly criminal. According to FBI reports, it is probable that McVeigh participated in a series of bank robberies around the Midwest with a gang from Elohim City in an effort to raise money for projects involving anti-government violence. McVeigh cased banks, and most likely drove the getaway car in some of the heists. He also plotted and carried out, with the help of either

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