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File:Timothy mcveigh.jpg
Timothy McVeigh's mugshot
April 19 1995

Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was an American terrorist convicted of eleven federal offenses and ultimately executed as a result of his role in the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The bombing, which claimed 168 lives, is considered the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

On December 18th, 2006, an alarming video of McVeigh proving that he
was still in the Army in 1993 spread onto the Internet: Watch It Here

More information can be found Here.


Biography

McVeigh was raised in Western New York State, being born in Pendleton (near Buffalo) and received his high school diploma from Starpoint High School in Lockport, New York . His parents divorced when he was ten years old. McVeigh had been a registered member of the Republican Party in New York and was a member of the National Rifle Association while in the military.

Religious beliefs

After his parents' divorce, McVeigh and his siblings lived with their father, a devout Roman Catholic who often attended Daily Mass. Some degree of religious conviction may have remained with him throughout his life. In a recorded interview with Time Magazine he professed his belief in "a God". The Guardian reported that McVeigh wrote a letter claiming to be an agnostic.

Military career

File:Aa McVeigh GulfWar1.jpg
1990, Desert Storm.

In May 1988, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He was a decorated veteran of the United States Army, having served in the Gulf War, where he was awarded a Bronze Star Medal. He had been a top scoring gunner with the 25 mm cannon of the lightly armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the U.S. 1st Infantry Division to which he was assigned. He served at Fort Riley, Kansas, before Operation Desert Storm. His superiors and friends thought of him as a model soldier. At Fort Riley, McVeigh completed the Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC), an Army school required for specialists and corporals to be promoted to sergeant. McVeigh had always wanted to join the Green Berets, the Army's Elite Special Forces.
After his return from the war, he entered the program for training to become a Green Beret, but dropped out after the second day of an early phase due to a lack of physical fitness (blisters from new boots acquired on a five-mile march); after this failure, for reasons not fully established, McVeigh decided to leave the Army entirely and received his early discharge on December 31, 1991.

Post-military activities and lifestyle

After leaving the Army, beginning in 1992, his lifestyle grew increasingly transient. At first he worked briefly near his native Pendleton, as a security guard (Hoffman). A few months before the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, he returned to Junction City, Kansas, outside Fort Riley.

McVeigh experimented with methamphetamines. Many of his associations leading up to the years of the bombing were involved in heavy meth use and/or manufacture. Methamphetamine use is associated with paranoid ideations.

Bombing

Working at a lakeside campground near his old Army post, McVeigh constructed an ANFO explosive device arranged in the back of a rented Ryder truck. The bomb consisted of about 5,000 pounds (2,300 kg) of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, and nitromethane, an explosive motor-racing fuel.

On 19 April 1995, McVeigh drove the truck to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building just as federal offices and its day care center opened for the day. Prosecutors said McVeigh strode away from the truck after he ignited a timed fuse from the front of the truck. At 9:02 a.m., a massive explosion collapsed the north half of the building. 168 people died and 850 more were injured in the explosion. The 168th victim, rescue worker Rebecca Anderson, died after the initial blast, when it is believed, the back of her head was struck by a piece of debris that had fallen from the building.. Some of the victims were small children in a day care center located on the ground floor of the building. (Later, McVeigh did not express remorse for these "collateral damage" deaths, but he said he might have chosen a different target if he had known the day care center was there.)

According to the Oklahoma City Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), over 300 buildings were damaged and more than 12,000 volunteers and rescue workers were involved in rescue, recovery, and support operations.

Arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing

File:Aa McVeigh progressive pics.JPG

Through its serial number, the FBI identified the rear axle found in the wreckage as coming from a Ryder Rental Junction City agency truck. Workers at the agency assisted an FBI artist in creating a sketch of the renter who had used the alias "Kling". The sketch was shown in the area and on the same day was identified by manager Lea McGown of the Dreamland Hotel as Timothy McVeigh.

Shortly after the bombing, while driving on I-35 in Noble County, Oklahoma, near Perry, OK, McVeigh was stopped by Charles J. Hanger, an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper from Pawnee, Oklahoma. Officer Hanger had passed McVeigh's yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis and noticed it had no license plate. McVeigh was arrested for driving without a license plate and carrying and transporting a loaded firearm. 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 11 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 October 20, 1995, the government filed notice that it would seek the death penalty.

On February 20 1996 the Court granted a change of venue, and ordered the case transferred from Oklahoma City to the US District Court in Denver, Colorado presided over by U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch.

McVeigh instructed his lawyers to use a "necessity" defense and to argue that his bombing of the Murrah Federal Building was a justifiable response to what McVeigh believed were the crimes of the U.S. government at Waco, Texas, during the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian complex that resulted in the death of 76 Branch Davidian members. As part of his defense, McVeigh's lawyers showed the controversial video Waco: The Big Lie to the jury at his trial.

On June 2 1997, McVeigh was found guilty on all 11 counts of the indictment.

On June 13, the same jury recommended that McVeigh receive the death penalty. The U.S. Department of Justice brought federal charges against McVeigh for causing the deaths of the eight federal officers leading to a possible death penalty for McVeigh; it 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. After McVeigh's conviction and sentencing (and after the Terry Nichols trial), the state of Oklahoma did not file the state charges in the other 160 murders against McVeigh, since he had already been sentenced to death in the federal trial.

File:Aa McVeigh Time covers.JPG

Death

File:Last meal.JPG
Timothy McVeigh's last meal before execution.

McVeigh's death sentence was delayed pending an appeal. One of his appeals was taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, which denied certiorari on March 8, 1999. He was ultimately executed by lethal injection at 7:14 a.m. on June 11, 2001, at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. He had dropped all of his existing appeals, while presenting no reason for doing so. He was 33 years old.

McVeigh invited California conductor/composer David Woodard to perform a 'prequiem' (a Mass for those who are about to die) on the eve of his execution, and he had also requested a Catholic chaplain. Ave Atque Vale was performed under Woodard's baton by a local brass choir at St. Margaret Mary Church, located near the Terre Haute penitentiary, at 7:00 p.m. on June 10, to an audience that included the entirety of the next morning's witnesses. McVeigh chose William Ernest Henley's poem "Invictus" as his final statement. His final meal consisted of two pints of Ben and Jerry's mint chocolate chip ice cream. McVeigh's execution was the first of a convicted criminal by the U.S. federal government since the execution of Victor Feguer in Iowa on March 15, 1963.

His body was disposed of by cremation in the retort at Mattox Ryan Funeral home in Terre Haute under the direction of funeral director Kevin Nickles. The cremated remains were then given to his lawyer for disposition. McVeigh's remains were scattered in an undisclosed location.

Motivations for the bombing

McVeigh claimed that the bombing was revenge for "what the U.S. government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge." He visited Waco during the standoff, where he spoke to a news reporter about his anger over what was happening there.

McVeigh was considered by many an anti-government extremist, with a long background in the survivalist movement. He frequently quoted and alluded approvingly to the controversial novel The Turner Diaries, which describes acts of terrorism similar to the crimes that he was convicted of perpetrating (Michel and Herbeck). Photocopies of pages sixty-one and sixty-two of The Turner Diaries were found in an envelope inside McVeigh's car. These pages depicted a fictitious mortar attack upon the U.S. Capitol in Washington.

In a book based on interviews before his execution, American Terrorist, McVeigh stated he decapitated an Iraqi soldier with cannon fire on his first day in the war, and celebrated. But 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. In interviews following the Oklahoma City bombing, McVeigh said he began harboring anti-government feelings during the Gulf War. Some question the veracity of this claim in light of McVeigh's attempts to become a Green Beret after returning from Iraq.

In 1998, an imprisoned McVeigh penned an essay that criticized US foreign policy towards Iraq as being hypocritical.

The administration has said that Iraq has no right to stockpile chemical or biological weapons (“weapons of mass destruction”) — mainly because they have used them in the past.
Well, if that’s the standard by which these matters are decided, then the U.S. is the nation that set the precedent. The U.S. has stockpiled these same weapons (and more) for over 40 years. The U.S. claims that this was done for deterrent purposes during the “Cold War” with the Soviet Union. Why, then is it invalid for Iraq to claim the same reason (deterrence) — with respect to Iraq’s (real) war with, and the continued threat of, its neighbor Iran?
…
If Saddam is such a demon, and people are calling for war crimes charges and trials against him and his nation, why do we not hear the same cry for blood directed at those responsible for even greater amounts of “mass destruction” — like those responsible and involved in dropping bombs on the cities mentioned above?
The truth is, the U.S. has set the standard when it comes to the stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction.

Alleged accomplices

In addition to McVeigh, Terry Nichols was also convicted and sentenced in federal court to life in prison for his role in the crime. At Nichols' trial, evidence was presented indicating that others may have been involved. Several residents of central Kansas, including real estate agent Georgia Rucker and a retired Army NCO testified at the Terry Nichols federal trial that they had seen two trucks at Geary State Lake where prosecutors alleged the bomb was assembled. The retired NCO said he visited the lake on April 18 1995, but left after a group of surly men looked at him aggressively. The operator of Dreamland Motel testified that two Ryder trucks had been parked outside her Grandview Plaza motel where McVeigh stayed in Room 26 the weekend before the bombing. Testimony suggested that McVeigh may have had several other accomplices, but no other individuals have been indicted for the bombing.

An ATF informant, Carolyn Howe, told reporters that shortly before the bombing she had warned her handlers that guests of Elohim City, Oklahoma were planning a major bombing attack. McVeigh was issued a speeding ticket there at the same time. However, other than this speeding ticket, there is no evidence of a connection between McVeigh and members of the MidWest Bank Robbers at Elohim City.

In February 2004, the FBI announced it would review its investigation after learning that agents in the investigation of the MidWest Bank Robbers (an alleged Aryan-oriented gang) had turned up explosive caps of the same type that were used to trigger the bomb. Agents expressed surprise that bombing investigators had not been provided information from the MidWest Bank Robbers investigation. McVeigh was given a one week delay prior to his execution while evidence relating to the Bank Robbers gang was presented to a court.

McVeigh eventually declined any further delays and maintained until his death that he had acted alone in the bombing.

Conspiracy theories

Islamic and Neo-Nazi conspiracy

In Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy, Stephen Jones, McVeigh's first, court-appointed lead defense counsel (prior to the death-penalty phase of the case), and Jones's co-author Peter Israel discuss several other possible suspects and continued to implicate Terry Nichols' brother, James.

Jones and Israel suggest in Others Unknown that Terry Nichols had crossed paths with suspected Islamic terrorists during his frequent visits to the Philippines before the attacks. Nichols' father-in-law at the time was a Philippine police officer who owned an apartment building often rented to Arabic-speaking students with alleged terrorist connections. Former counter-terrorism adviser on the U.S. National Security Council Richard A. Clarke speculates on the improvement in Nichols's bomb-making techniques as a possible link to Philippines-based Islamist terrorists in Cebú and the southern islands, plus several telephone calls he made there long after he and his wife had come back to the U.S. together, in his 2004 account of the work he undertook for several administrations, Against All Enemies.

McVeigh's defense attorneys also submitted a theory to the court that Islamist Terrorists and American Neo-Nazis conspired in the bombing. They pointed out that location and day of the attack indicated the possibility that those seeking revenge for the execution of Richard Snell may have been involved.

In presiding over the trial, Judge Matsch rejected these arguments and did not allow them to be presented as a defense. There remains no credible documented evidence of Islamist or other foreign links to the Oklahoma City bombings.


Jose Padilla

McVeigh and Padilla were thought to have met at least once. Both of them at one time lived in the greater Fort Lauderdale, Florida area.

Footnotes

  1. Profile of Timothy McVeigh, CNN, March 29, 2001, accessed August 8, 2006.
  2. Patrick Cole, "A Look Back in TIME: Interview with Timothy McVeigh," March 30, 1996, accessed August 8, 2006,
  3. Julian Borger, "McVeigh faces day of reckoning: Special report: Timothy McVeigh," The Guardian Online, June 11, 2001, accessed August 8, 2006
  4. Douglas O. Linder, "The Oklahoma City Bombing & The Trial of Timothy McVeigh,", online posting, University of Missouri–Kansas City, Law School faculty projects, 2006, accessed August 7, 2006; cf. People in the News: Timothy McVeigh: The Path to Death Row, transcript of program broadcast on CNN, June 9, 2001, 11:30 p.m. ET].
  5. See Hoffman, "'The Face of Terror'"; Hoffman finds many speculations published in the media about this episode in McVeigh's life as a soldier inaccurate and based on false information.
  6. Summary of McVeigh trial.
  7. "Most people using very high doses may become psychotic, because amphetamines can cause severe anxiety, paranoia, and a distorted sense of reality. Psychotic reactions include auditory and visual hallucinations (hearing and seeing things that are not there) and a feeling of having unlimited power (omnipotence). Although these effects can occur in any user, people with a mental health disorder, such as schizophrenia, are more vulnerable to them." Source: Merck Manual Reference on Methamphetamines
  8. MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base
  9. Oklahoma city National Memorial Cite listing of deaths
  10. "Rebecca Anderson Scholarship Information". 07/27/2004. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Text "Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education" ignored (help)Retrieved on Nov. 16, 2006
  11. See Michel and Herbeck; cf. Walsh:
    According to Michel and Herbeck, McVeigh claimed not to have known that a day-care center was located in the Murrah Building, and that if he had known it, in his own words, “it might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large amount of collateral damage.”
    Michel and Herbeck quote McVeigh, with whom they spoke for some 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.”
    McVeigh's lack of remorse for the deaths of 19 children, as well as secretaries, clerks, administrators and others employed by the federal government, and the dozens of people who were merely visiting the building, should serve as a warning about the character of elements promoted by the ultra-right in the US. They are brutal, cowardly and ruthless.
  12. See "Officer of the Month - October 2001: Second Lieutenant Charles J. Hanger, Oklahoma Highway Patrol," National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, copyright 2004-2006, accessed August 8, 2006.
    • Count 1 was "conspiracy to detonate a weapon of mass destruction" in violation of 18 USC § 2332a, culminating in the deaths of 168 people and destruction of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. ??
    • Count 2 was "use of a weapon of mass destruction" in violation of 18 USC § 2332a (2)(a) & (b).
    • Count 3 was "destruction by explosives resulting in death", in violation of 18 USC § 844(f)(2)(a) & (b).
    • Counts 4 through 11 were first degree murder in violation of 18 USC § 1111, 1114, & 2 and 28 CFR § 64.2(h), each count in connection to one of the 8 law enforcement officers who were killed during the attack.
  14. Douglas O. Linder, "The Oklahoma City Bombing & The Trial of Timothy McVeigh,", online posting, University of Missouri–Kansas City, Law School faculty projects, 2006, accessed August 7, 2006.
  15. People in the News: Timothy McVeigh: The Path to Death Row, transcript of program broadcast on CNN, June 9, 2001, 11:30 p.m. ET. . For a description of the video by its director, Linda Thompson, see Waco: The Big Lie, hosted by wfmu.org, a New Jersey FM radio station via serendipity.li, accessed August 8, 2006.
  16. Mark Eddy, George Lane, Howard Pankratz, and Steven Wilmsen, "Guilty on Every Count," Denver Post Online June 3, 1997, accessed August 7, 2006:

    Although 168 people, including 19 children, were killed in the April 19, 1995 explosion, but murder charges were only brought against McVeigh for the eight federal agents who were on duty when the 5,000 pound fuel oil and fertilizer bomb ripped away the face of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

    Along with the eight counts of murder McVeigh was charged with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, using a weapon of mass destruction and destruction of a federal building.

    Oklahoma City District Attorney Bob Macy said he would file state charges in the other 160 murders after McVeigh's co-defendant, Terry Nichols, is tried later this year.

  17. See "Sentenced to Die," The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Online NewsHour, PBS, June 13, 1997, accessed August 8, 2006.
  18. People in the News: Timothy McVeigh: The Path to Death Row, transcript of program broadcast on CNN, June 9, 2001, 11:30 p.m. ET].
  19. See "McVeigh Remorseless About Bombing," newswire release, Associated Press, March 29, 2001, reposted on rickross.com, accessed August 8, 2006.
  20. Profile of Timothy McVeigh, CNN, March 29, 2001, accessed August 8, 2006.
  21. See Michel and Herbeck; cf. Walsh.
  22. See by Timothy McVeigh, March 1998
  23. Jones's professional website, Stephen Jones summarizes his role in the case as follows:

    On May 8, 1995, Jones was appointed by the United States District Court as the lead defense counsel for Timothy James McVeigh, charged with the largest mass murder and act of domestic terrorism in the United States, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

    A book synopsis appears in the PublicAffairs online catalogue for Others Unknown.
  24. Richard Snell had planned to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1983 but was arrested, imprisoned, and convicted of unrelated murders before doing so, received the death penalty, and was coincidentally executed on April 19, 1995, the same day of the bombing of the Murrah Building that McVeigh was later convicted of carrying out. For a summary of the defense's theory involving foreign conspiracy or conspiracies, see "Petition for Writ of Mandamus of Petitioner-Defendant, Timothy James McVeigh and Brief in Support," dated March 25, 1997.

See also

Further reading

  • Hoffman, David. The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror. Los Angeles: Feral House, 1998. ISBN 0-922915-49-0. (Complete book accessible online; Chap. 2: "'The Face of Terror'" concerns Timothy McVeigh.)
  • Jones, Stephen, and Peter Israel. Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy. Rev. ed. (paperback). 1998; New York: PublicAffairs, 2001. ISBN 1-58648-098-7.
  • Michel, Lou, and Dan Herbeck. American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. New York: ReganBooks (A Division of HarperCollins Publishers), 2001. ISBN 0-06-039407-2.
  • Vidal, Gore. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books (An imprint of Avalon Publishing Group), 2002. ISBN 1-56025-405-X. (Incl. "How I Became Interested in Timothy McVeigh and Vice Versa" and "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh.")
  • Walsh, David. "Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh: the making of a mass murderer." April 19, 2001, World Socialist Web Site. Accessed August 8, 2006.
  • Davis, Jayna. "The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing" (WND Books ISBN 0-7852-6103-6).

External links

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