Timothy McVeigh

Timothy James McVeigh was an American terrorist convicted and executed for the detonation of a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. Commonly referred to as the Oklahoma City bombing, the attack killed 168 people and injured over 600. According to the United States Government, it was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11 attacks, and remains the most significant act of domestic terrorism in United States history. McVeigh, a Persian Gulf War veteran, sought revenge against the federal government for its handling of the Waco siege, which ended in the deaths of 76 people exactly two years before the bombing, as well as for the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992. McVeigh hoped to inspire a revolt against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government. He was convicted of eleven federal offenses and sentenced to death. His execution was carried out in a considerably shorter amount of time than average after his trial, as most convicts on death row in the United States spend many more years waiting for their executions. Four years after his conviction, McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier were also convicted as conspirators in the plot. Terry Nichols was sentenced to 161 life terms without parole. Fortier was sentenced to 12 years and has since been released. Childhood: McVeigh was born in Lockport, New York, the only son and the second of three children of Mildred "Mickey" Noreen (née Hill) and William McVeigh. His Irish American parents divorced when he was ten years old, and he was raised by his father in Pendleton, New York. McVeigh claimed to have been a target of bullying at school, and he took refuge in a fantasy world where he imagined retaliating against the bullies. At the end of his life, he stated his belief that the United States government is the ultimate bully. Most who knew McVeigh remember him as being very withdrawn and shy, with a few describing him as an outgoing and playful child who withdrew as an adolescent. McVeigh is said to have had only one girlfriend during his early childhood, later stating to journalists he did not have any idea how to impress girls. According to his authorized biography, "his only sustaining relief from his unsatisfied sex drive was his even stronger desire to die." While in high school, McVeigh became interested in computers and hacked into government computer systems on his Commodore 64, under the handle "The Wanderer", borrowed from the song by Dion DiMucci. In his senior year, McVeigh was named Starpoint Central High School's "most promising computer programmer," but he maintained relatively poor grades until his 1986 graduation. McVeigh was introduced to firearms by his grandfather. He told people he wanted to be a gun shop owner and sometimes took firearms to school to impress his classmates. McVeigh became intensely interested in gun rights after he graduated from high school, as well as the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and read magazines such as Soldier of Fortune. He briefly attended Bryant & Stratton College before dropping out. Military life: In May 1988, at the age of 20, McVeigh graduated from the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. While in the military, McVeigh used much of his spare time to read about firearms, sniper tactics, and explosives. McVeigh was reprimanded by the military for purchasing a "White Power" T-shirt at a Ku Klux Klan protest against black servicemen who wore "Black Power" T-shirts around the army base. McVeigh was awarded a Bronze Star medal for his service as a vehicle crewman in the Persian Gulf War. He was a top-scoring gunner with the 25mm cannon of the Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by his 1st Infantry Division. He was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, before being deployed on Operation Desert Storm. Speaking of his experience in Kuwait in an interview before his execution, documented in McVeigh's authorized biography American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Tragedy at Oklahoma City, he stated he decapitated an Iraqi soldier with cannon fire on his first day in the war and celebrated. He said he later was shocked to be ordered to execute surrendering prisoners and to see carnage on the road leaving Kuwait City after U.S. troops routed the Iraqi army. McVeigh aspired to join the United States Army Special Forces (SF). After returning from the Gulf War, he entered the selection program. However, because he had not had sufficient time to get himself into the superior physical condition required for the program, he had to drop out. Shortly after that, McVeigh decided to leave the Army. He was honorably discharged on December 31, 1991. McVeigh received several service awards, including the Bronze Star Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Southwest Asia Service Medal, Army Service Ribbon, and the Kuwaiti Liberation Medal. Post-military life: After leaving the army in 1992, McVeigh grew increasingly transient. At first he worked briefly near his hometown of Pendleton as a security guard for Pinkerton Government Services at Calspan in Cheektowaga, where he spoke daily to his co-worker Carl Lebron, Jr. about his loathing for government. Deciding the Buffalo area was too liberal, he left his job and began driving around America, seeking out his old buddies from the Army. McVeigh wrote letters to local newspapers complaining about taxes: Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up. We suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight. [...] Is a Civil War Imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that. But it might. McVeigh also wrote to Representative John J. LaFalce ((D) New York), complaining about the arrest of a woman for carrying mace: It is a lie if we tell ourselves that the police can protect us everywhere at all times. Firearms restrictions are bad enough, but now a woman can't even carry Mace in her purse? It is claimed that while visiting friends in Decker, Michigan, McVeigh complained that the Army had implanted a microchip into his buttocks so that the government could keep track of him. McVeigh worked long hours in a dead-end job and felt that he did not have a home. He sought romance, but his advances were rejected by a coworker and he felt nervous around women. He believed that he brought too much pain to his loved ones. He grew angry and frustrated at his difficulties in finding a girlfriend and he took up obsessive gambling. Unable to pay back gambling debts, he took a cash advance and then defaulted on his repayments. He then began looking for a state without heavy government regulation or high taxes. He became enraged when the government told him that he had been overpaid $1,058 while in the Army and he had to pay back the money. He wrote an angry letter to the government inviting them to: Go ahead, take everything I own; take my dignity. Feel good as you grow fat and rich at my expense; sucking my tax dollars and property. McVeigh introduced his sister to anti-government literature, but his father had little interest in these views. He moved out of his father's house and into an apartment that had no telephone, which had the advantage of making it impossible for his employer to contact him for overtime assignments. He also quit the NRA, viewing its stance on gun rights as too weak. 1993 Waco siege and gun shows: In 1993, he drove to Waco, Texas during the Waco Siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributed pro-gun rights literature and bumper stickers, such as "When guns are outlawed, I will become an outlaw." He told a student reporter: The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control. For the five months following the Waco Siege, McVeigh worked at gun shows and handed out free cards printed up with Lon Horiuchi's name and address, "in the hope that somebody in the Patriot movement would assassinate the sharpshooter." (Horiuchi is an FBI sniper and some of his official actions have drawn controversy, specifically his shooting and killing of Randy Weaver's wife while she held an infant child.) He wrote hate mail to the sniper, suggesting that "what goes around, comes around". He later considered putting aside his plan to target the Murrah Building to target Horiuchi, or a member of his family instead. McVeigh became a fixture on the gun show circuit, traveling to forty states and visiting about eighty gun shows. McVeigh found that the further west he went, the more anti-government sentiment he encountered, at least until he got to what he called "The People's Socialist Republic of California." McVeigh sold survival items and copies of The Turner Diaries. One author said: In the gun show culture, McVeigh found a home. Though he remained skeptical of some of the most extreme ideas being bandied around, he liked talking to people there about the United Nations, the federal government and possible threats to American liberty. Arizona with Fortier: McVeigh had a road atlas with hand-drawn designations of the most likely places for nuclear attacks and considered buying property in Seligman, Arizona, which he determined to be in a "nuclear-free zone." McVeigh lived with Michael Fortier in Kingman, Arizona, and they became so close that he served as best man at Fortier's wedding. McVeigh experimented with cannabis and methamphetamine, after first researching their effects in an encyclopedia. However, he was never as interested in drugs as was Fortier. One of the reasons they parted ways was McVeigh's boredom with Fortier's drug habits. With Nichols, Waco siege, radicalization and first explosive devices: In April 1993, McVeigh headed for a farm in Michigan where co-conspirator Terry Nichols lived. In between watching coverage of the Waco siege on TV, Nichols and his brother began teaching McVeigh how to make explosives out of readily available materials; specifically, they combined household chemicals in plastic jugs. The destruction of the Waco compound enraged McVeigh and convinced him that it was time to take action. The government's use of CS gas on women and children angered McVeigh; he had been exposed to the gas as part of his military training and was familiar with its effects. The disappearance of certain evidence, such as the bullet-riddled steel-reinforced front door to the complex, led him to suspect a cover-up. McVeigh's anti-government rhetoric became more radical. He began to sell Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) hats riddled with bullet holes and a flare gun, which, he said, could shoot down an "ATF helicopter". He produced videos detailing the government's actions at Waco and handed out pamphlets with titles like "U.S. Government Initiates Open Warfare Against American People" and "Waco Shootout Evokes Memory of Warsaw '43." He began changing his answering machine greeting every couple of weeks to various quotes by Patrick Henry such as "Give me liberty or give me death." He began experimenting with pipe bombs and other small explosive devices for the first time. The government also imposed new firearms restrictions in 1994 that McVeigh believed threatened his livelihood. McVeigh dissociated himself from his boyhood friend, Steve Hodge, by sending a 23-page farewell letter to him. He proclaimed his devotion to the United States Declaration of Independence, explaining in detail what each sentence meant to him. McVeigh declared that: Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly. It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will because not only did I swear to, but I believe in what it stands for in every bit of my heart, soul and being. I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend. McVeigh felt the need to personally reconnoiter sites of rumored conspiracies. He visited Area 51 in order to defy government restrictions on photography and went to Gulfport, Mississippi to determine the veracity of rumors about United Nations operations. These turned out to be false; the Russian vehicles on the site were being configured for use in U.N.-sponsored humanitarian aid efforts. Around this time, McVeigh and Nichols also began making bulk purchases of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, for resale to survivalists, since rumors were circulating that the government was preparing to ban it. Plan against federal building or individuals: McVeigh told Fortier of his plans to blow up a federal building, but Fortier declined to participate. Fortier also told his wife about the plans. McVeigh composed two letters to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the first titled "Constitutional Defenders" and the second "ATF Read." He denounced government officials as "fascist tyrants" and "storm troopers" and warned: ATF, all you tyrannical people will swing in the wind one day for your treasonous actions against the Constitution of the United States. Remember the Nuremberg War Trials. McVeigh also wrote a letter of recruitment to a customer named Steve Colbern: A man with nothing left to lose is a very dangerous man and his energy/anger can be focused toward a common/righteous goal. What I'm asking you to do, then, is sit back and be honest with yourself. Do you have kids/wife? Would you back out at the last minute to care for the family? Are you interested in keeping your firearms for their current/future monetary value, or would you drag that '06 through rock, swamp and cactus... to get off the needed shot? In short, I'm not looking for talkers, I'm looking for fighters... And if you are a fed, think twice. Think twice about the Constitution you are supposedly enforcing (isn't "enforcing freedom" an oxymoron?) and think twice about catching us with our guard down – you will lose just like Degan did – and your family will lose. McVeigh began announcing that he had progressed from the "propaganda" phase to the "action" phase. He wrote to his Michigan friend Gwenda Strider, "I have certain other 'militant' talents that are in short supply and greatly demanded." McVeigh later said he considered "a campaign of individual assassination," with "eligible" targets including Attorney-General Janet Reno, Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. of Federal District Court, who handled the Branch Davidian trial, and Lon Horiuchi, a member of the FBI hostage-rescue team who shot and killed Vicki Weaver in a standoff at a remote cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. He said he wanted Reno to accept "full responsibility in deed, not just words." Such an assassination seemed too difficult, and he decided that since federal agents had become soldiers, it was necessary to strike against them at their command centers. According to McVeigh's authorized biography, he ultimately decided that he would make the loudest statement by bombing a federal building. After the bombing, he was ambivalent about his act, as expressed in letters to his hometown newspaper that he sometimes wished he had carried out a series of assassinations against police and government officials instead. Oklahoma City bombing: Working at a lakeside campground near McVeigh's old Army post, he and Nichols constructed an ANNM explosive device mounted in the back of a rented Ryder truck. The bomb consisted of about 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane. On April 19, 1995, McVeigh drove the truck to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building just as its offices opened for the day. Before arriving, he stopped to light a two-minute fuse. At 09:02, a large explosion destroyed the north half of the building. It killed 168 people, including nineteen children in the day care center on the second floor, and injured 684 others. McVeigh said that he had no knowledge that the federal offices also ran a daycare center on the second floor of the building, and that he might have chosen a different target if he had known about it. Nichols disputed this, saying they knew there was a daycare center in the building and that they did not care. McVeigh's biographers, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, quote McVeigh, with whom they spoke for 75 hours, on his attitude to the victims: To these people in Oklahoma who have lost a loved one, I'm sorry but it happens every day. You're not the first mother to lose a kid, or the first grandparent to lose a grandson or a granddaughter. It happens every day, somewhere in the world. I'm not going to go into that courtroom, curl into a fetal ball and cry just because the victims want me to do that. During an interview with Ed Bradley for television news magazine 60 Minutes in 2000, Bradley asked McVeigh for his reaction to the deaths of the nineteen children. McVeigh stated: I thought it was terrible that there were children in the building. According to the Oklahoma City Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), more than 300 buildings were damaged. More than 12,000 volunteers and rescue workers took part in the rescue, recovery and support operations following the bombing. In reference to theories that he had assistance from others, McVeigh quoted a well known line from the film A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth!" and added "Because the truth is, I blew up the Murrah Building and isn't it kind of scary that one man could wreak this kind of hell?" Arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing: By tracing the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) of a rear axle found in the wreckage, the FBI identified the vehicle as a Ryder Rental box truck rented from Junction City, Kansas. Workers at the agency assisted an FBI artist in creating a sketch of the renter, who had used the alias "Robert Kling". The sketch was shown in the area. Lea McGown, manager of the local Dreamland Motel, identified the sketch as Timothy McVeigh. Shortly after the bombing, while driving on I-35 in Noble County, near Perry, Oklahoma, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma State Trooper Charles J. Hanger. Hanger had passed McVeigh's yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis and noticed that it had no license plate. McVeigh admitted to the police officer (who noticed a bulge under his jacket) that he had a gun and McVeigh was subsequently arrested for having driven without plates and illegal firearm possession; McVeigh's concealed weapon permit was not legal in Oklahoma. McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt at that time with a picture of Abraham Lincoln and the motto: sic semper tyrannis ('Thus always to tyrants'), the state motto of Virginia and also the words shouted by John Wilkes Booth after he shot Lincoln. On the back, it had a tree with a picture of three blood droplets and the Thomas Jefferson quote, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Three days later, while still in jail, McVeigh was identified as the subject of the nationwide manhunt. On August 10, 1995, McVeigh was indicted on eleven federal counts, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, use of a weapon of mass destruction, destruction by explosives and eight counts of first-degree murder. On February 20, 1996, the Court granted a change of venue and ordered that the case be transferred from Oklahoma City to the U.S. District Court in Denver, Colorado, to be presided over by U.S. District Judge Richard Paul Matsch. McVeigh instructed his lawyers to use a necessity defense, but they ended up not doing so, because they would have had to prove that McVeigh was in "imminent danger" from the government. (McVeigh himself argued that "imminent" did not necessarily mean "immediate.") They would have argued that his bombing of the Murrah building was a justifiable response to what McVeigh believed were the crimes of the U.S. government at Waco, Texas. The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian complex resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians. As part of the defense, McVeigh's lawyers showed the jury the controversial video Waco, the Big Lie. On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was found guilty on all eleven counts of the federal indictment. After the verdict, McVeigh tried to calm his mother by saying, "Think of it this way. When I was in the Army, you didn't see me for years. Think of me that way now, like I'm away in the Army again, on an assignment for the military." On June 13, 1997, the jury recommended that McVeigh receive the death penalty. The U.S. Department of Justice brought federal charges against McVeigh for causing the deaths of eight federal officers leading to a possible death penalty for McVeigh; they could not bring charges against McVeigh for the remaining 160 murders in federal court because those deaths fell under the jurisdiction of the State of Oklahoma. Because McVeigh was convicted and sentenced to death, the State of Oklahoma did not file murder charges against McVeigh for the other 160 deaths. Before the sentence was formally pronounced by Judge Matsch, McVeigh addressed the court for the first time and said: If the Court please, I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, 'Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.' That's all I have. Incarceration and execution: While imprisoned, McVeigh had the Federal Bureau of Prisons register # 12076-064. McVeigh's death sentence was delayed pending an appeal. One of his appeals for certiorari, taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, was denied on March 8, 1999. McVeigh's request for a nationally televised execution was also denied. An Internet company also unsuccessfully sued for the right to broadcast it. At ADX Florence, McVeigh and Nichols were housed in "Bomber's Row", the same cell block as Ted Kaczynski, Luis Felipe and Ramzi Yousef. Yousef made frequent, unsuccessful attempts to convert McVeigh to Islam. McVeigh said: I am sorry these people had to lose their lives, but that's the nature of the beast. It's understood going in what the human toll will be. He said that if there turned out to be an afterlife, he would "improvise, adapt and overcome", noting: If there is a hell, then I'll be in good company with a lot of fighter pilots who also had to bomb innocents to win the war. He also said: I knew I wanted this before it happened. I knew my objective was state-assisted suicide and when it happens, it's in your face. You just did something you're trying to say should be illegal for medical personnel. The BOP moved McVeigh from ADX Florence to the federal death row at United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1999. McVeigh dropped his remaining appeals, saying that he would rather die than spend the rest of his life in prison. On January 16, 2001 the Federal Bureau of Prisons set May 16, 2001 as McVeigh's execution date. McVeigh stated that his only regret was not completely leveling the federal building. Six days prior to his scheduled execution, the FBI turned over thousands of documents of evidence it had previously withheld to McVeigh's attorneys. As a result, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced McVeigh's execution would be stayed for one month. The execution date was reset for June 11, 2001. McVeigh invited California conductor/composer David Woodard to perform pre-requiem Mass music on the eve of his execution. He requested a Catholic chaplain. He requested two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream for his last meal. McVeigh chose William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus" as his final statement. Just before the execution, when he was asked if he had a final statement, he declined. Jay Sawyer, a relative of one of the victims, wrote, "Without saying a word, he got the final word." Larry Whicher, whose brother died in the attack, described McVeigh as having "a totally expressionless, blank stare. He had a look of defiance and that if he could, he'd do it all over again." McVeigh was executed by lethal injection at 7:14 a.m. on June 11, 2001, at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, the first federal prisoner to be executed by the United States federal government since Victor Feguer was executed in Iowa on March 15, 1963. On November 21, 1997, President Bill Clinton had signed S. 923, special legislation introduced by Senator Arlen Specter to bar McVeigh and other veterans convicted of capital crimes from being buried in any military cemetery. His body was cremated at Mattox Ryan Funeral Home in Terre Haute. His ashes were given to his lawyer, who "said that the final destination of McVeigh's remains would remain privileged forever." McVeigh had written that he considered having them dropped at the site of the memorial where the building once stood, but decided that would be "too vengeful, too raw, too cold." He had expressed willingness to donate organs, but was prohibited from doing so by prison regulations. Psychiatrist John Smith concluded that McVeigh was "a decent person who had allowed rage to build up inside him to the point that he had lashed out in one terrible, violent act." McVeigh's IQ was assessed at 126. Association: According to CNN, his only known associations were as a registered Republican while in Buffalo, New York in the 1980s, and a membership in the National Rifle Association while in the Army, and there is no evidence that he ever belonged to any extremist groups. Religious beliefs: McVeigh was raised Roman Catholic. During his childhood, he and his father attended Mass regularly. McVeigh was confirmed at the Good Shepherd Church in Pendleton, New York, in 1985. In a 1996 interview, McVeigh professed belief in "a God", although he said he had "sort of lost touch with" Catholicism and "I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs." In McVeigh's biography American Terrorist, released in 2002, he stated that he did not believe in a hell and that science is his religion. In June 2001, a day before the execution, McVeigh wrote a letter to the Buffalo News identifying himself as agnostic. However, he took the Last Rites, administered by a priest, just before his execution.