Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 - June 11, 2001) was an American domestic terrorist who bombed the city of Oklahoma in 1995, killing 168 people and wounding more than 680 others. The bombing was the deadliest act of terrorism in the United States before the 9/11 attacks, and remains one of the deadliest domestic terrorist acts in US history.
McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran, sought revenge against the federal government for the 1993 Waco siege, which ended in the deaths of 86 people - many of whom were children - just two years before the bombing; Ruby Ridge Incidents 1992; and US foreign policy. McVeigh hopes to inspire a rebellion against the federal government, and defend the bombing as a legitimate tactic against what he sees as a cruel federal government. He was arrested shortly after the bombing and charged over eleven federal offenses, including the use of weapons of mass destruction. He was found guilty of all charges in 1997 and sentenced to death.
McVeigh was executed with a deadly injection on June 11, 2001, at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. The execution was carried out in a much shorter time than most inmates awaiting execution; most of the prisoners in the dead prison in the United States spent an average of fifteen years there. Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier were also punished as conspirators in the plot. Nichols was sentenced to eight death sentences for the deaths of eight federal agents, and 161 terms of life without parole by the state of Oklahoma for the deaths of others (including one fetus). Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in jail and has since been released.
Video Timothy McVeigh
Little
McVeigh was born in Lockport, New York, the only son and second child of three Irish Irish brothers Mildred "Mickey" Noreen Hill and William McVeigh. His parents divorced when he was ten years old, and he was raised by his father in Pendleton, New York.
McVeigh claims to be the target of bullying at school, and he takes refuge in a fantasy world where he imagines taking revenge on the bullies. At the end of his life, he expressed his conviction that the government of the United States was a major oppressor.
Most who know McVeigh remember him as a very shy and withdrawn person, while some describe him as an outgoing and playful boy who quit as a teenager. McVeigh is said to have only one girlfriend during his teenage years; He then told reporters that he did not know how to impress the girl.
While in high school, McVeigh became interested in computers and hacked into a government computer system on the Commodore 64 under the grip of "The Wanderer", borrowed from a song by Dion DiMucci. In his senior year, McVeigh was named "the most promising computer programmer" of Starpoint Central High School, but he maintained a relatively poor value until his graduation in 1986.
McVeigh was introduced to a firearm by his grandfather. He told the people that he wanted to be the owner of a gun shop and sometimes bring firearms to school to impress his classmates. McVeigh became very interested in weapons rights, as well as the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, after he graduated from high school, and read magazines such as Soldier of Fortune. He briefly attends Bryant & amp; Stratton College before leaving.
Maps Timothy McVeigh
Military life
In May 1988, at the age of 20, McVeigh graduated from the US Army School of Infantry at Fort Benning, Georgia. While in the military, McVeigh uses much of his free time to read about firearms, sniper tactics, and explosives. McVeigh was rebuked by the military for purchasing "White Power" T-shirts at the Ku Klux Klan protest against black soldiers dressed in "Black Power" t-shirts around Military installations (especially the Army).
He was a top-scorer with a 25mm gun from Bradley Fighting Vehicles used by the 1st Infantry Division and eventually promoted to sergeant. He was stationed in Fort Riley, Kansas, before deploying on Operation Desert Storm.
Speaking of his experience in Kuwait in an interview prior to his execution, it is documented in the official biography of McVeigh American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & amp; The tragedy in Oklahoma City, he claimed he beheaded an Iraqi soldier with cannon fire on his first day of war and celebrated. He said he was then surprised to be ordered to execute the surrendered prisoners and to see the massacre on the road leaving Kuwait after US troops drove out Iraqi soldiers. McVeigh received several service awards, including the Bronze Star Medal, the National Defense Service Medal, the Southwest Asia Service Medal, the Army Service Ribbon, and the Kuwait Liberation Medal.
McVeigh aspires to join the Special Forces of the United States Armed Forces (SF). Upon returning from the Gulf War, he entered the selection program, but washed on the second day of a 21-day assessment and a selection course for Special Forces. McVeigh decided to leave the Army and was dismissed with respect in 1991.
Post-military life
McVeigh wrote to a local newspaper complaining about taxes:
Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what political candidates "promise," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They screwed up. We suffer. Taxes reach catastrophic levels, without noticeable slowdown. [...] Is the Civil War imminent? Should we spill blood to reform the current system? I hope that does not happen. But it's possible.
McVeigh also writes to Representative John J. LaFalce ((D) New York), complaining about the arrest of a woman for carrying a mace:
It's a lie if we tell ourselves that the police can protect us anywhere at any time. Limit of firearms is bad enough, but now a woman can not even bring Mace in her wallet?
While visiting friends in Decker, Michigan, McVeigh reportedly complained that the Army had implanted a microchip into his ass so the government could track it down. McVeigh worked for hours in a dead-end job and felt that he did not have a home. She searched for romance, but her progress was rejected by her co-workers and she felt nervous around the woman. She believes that she brings too much pain to the person she loves. She gets angry and frustrated because of her difficulty finding a girlfriend and she takes on obsessive gambling. Unable to repay the gambling debt, he took a deposit and then failed to pay the mortgage. He then began searching for countries without strict government regulations or high taxes. He gets angry when the government tells him that he has paid more $ 1,058 while in the Army and he has to pay back the money. He wrote an angry letter to the government inviting them to:
Please, take everything I have; take my dignity. Feel good when you grow fat and rich at my expense; suck my tax and property money.
McVeigh introduced his sister to anti-government literature, but his father was not very interested in these views. He moved from his father's house and into an apartment that has no phone, which has an advantage so it is impossible for his employer to contact him for overtime duties. He also withdrew from the NRA, seeing his stance on weapons rights as too weak.
1993 Siege and Waco gun show
In 1993, he went to Waco, Texas during the Waco siege to show his support. At the scene, he distributes pro-weapon rights literature and bumper stickers, such as "When weapons are forbidden, I will be a criminal." He told a student reporter:
The government is afraid of the weapons that people possess because they have to have control over the people at all times. Once you take the weapon, you can do anything to people. You give them an inch and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government continues to grow bigger and stronger, and people need to prepare themselves to defend themselves from government control.
For five months after the Waco siege, McVeigh worked at an arms show and distributed free cards printed under the name and address of Lon Horiuchi, "in the hope that someone in the Patriot movement will kill the snipers." (Horiuchi is an FBI shooter and some of his official acts have invited controversy, particularly the shooting and killing of Randy Weaver's wife as he holds the baby.) He writes hate mail to snipers, pointing out that "what's going on, coming around". McVeigh then considered ruling out his plans to target the Murrah Building to target Horiuchi or his family members.
McVeigh became a fixture on the gun show circuit, traveling to forty states and visiting about eighty gun shows. McVeigh finds that the more west he goes, the more anti-government sentiment he encounters, at least until he gets what he calls the "Socialist People's Republic of California." McVeigh sells survival items and copies of The Turner Diaries . A writer says:
In a culture of gun shows, McVeigh finds a home. Though he remains skeptical of some of the most extreme ideas being disseminated, he likes to talk to people there about the United Nations, the federal government, and possible threats to American freedom.
Arizona with Fortier
McVeigh has a road atlas with a hand drawn one place that is most likely for a nuclear attack and is considered buying a property in Seligman, Arizona, which he is 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 the best human being at this Fortier wedding. McVeigh experimented with marijuana and shabu after first examining their effects in an encyclopedia. He was never interested in drugs as Fortier was, and one of the reasons they parted was McVeigh's boredom with this Fortier drug habit.
With Nichols, Waco siege, radicalization and the first explosive device
In April 1993, McVeigh headed for a farm in Michigan where Terry Nichols lived. Among watching the coverage of the Waco siege on TV, Nichols and his brother began teaching McVeigh how to make explosives from available materials; In particular, they combine household chemicals in plastic pitchers. The destruction of the Waco complex upset McVeigh and convinced him that it was time to act. The use of CS gas by the government in women and children makes McVeigh angry; he has been exposed to gas as part of his military training and is very familiar with the impact. The loss of certain evidence, such as the bullet-mounted steel front door to the compound, made him suspicious of cover-ups.
McVeigh's anti-government rhetoric is becoming more radical. He began selling bureau hat Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) filled with bullet holes and flare guns, which, he said, could shoot down "ATF helicopters". He made a video detailing government actions in Waco and distributing pamphlets with titles such as "The US Government Initiated Open Warfare Against American People" and "Waco Shootout Evokes Memory of Warsaw '43." He started changing his answering machine every few weeks for Patrick Henry's various quotes like "Give me freedom or give me death." He started experimenting with pipe bombs and other small explosives. The government also imposed new gun restrictions in 1994 which McVeigh believes threatens his livelihood.
McVeigh separated himself from his childhood friend, Steve Hodge, by sending him a 23-page farewell letter. He proclaimed devotion to the United States Declaration of Independence, explaining in detail what each sentence meant to him. McVeigh states that:
Those who betray or subvert the Constitution guilty of sedition and/or betrayal, are domestic enemies and should and will be properly punished.
It also argues that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or provides help or consolation to say the enemy is also guilty. I swear to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will do it because not only I swear, but I believe in what stands for every soul, soul, and being. I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have made peace with myself, my Lord and my purpose. Blood will run down the street, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Slave Socialist Wannabe. Pray it is not your blood, my friend.
McVeigh feels the need to visit conspiracy sites that are rumored in private. He visited Area 51 to challenge government restrictions on photography and went to Gulfport, Mississippi to determine the truth of the rumors about the United Nations operation. This turned out to be wrong; Russian vehicles on the site are being configured for use in UN-sponsored humanitarian relief efforts. Around this time, McVeigh and Nichols also began making mass purchases of ammonium nitrate, agricultural fertilizer, for resale to survivalists, as rumors circulated that the government was preparing to ban it.
Plan a federal building or individual
McVeigh told Fortier about his plans to blow up the federal building, but Fortier refused to participate. Fortier also told his wife about the plan. McVeigh composed two letters to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the first being entitled "Defenders of the Constitution" and "ATF Read" the second. He denounces government officials as "fascist tyranny" and "storm troop" and warns:
ATF, all your tyrannical people will swing wind one day for your act of betrayal of the Constitution of the United States. Remember the Nuremberg War Trial.
McVeigh also wrote a recruitment letter to a customer named Steve Colbern:
A man who has nothing more to lose is a very dangerous person and his/her energy/anger can be focused on a general purpose. What I ask you to do, then, sit and be honest with yourself. Do you have children/wives? Will you come back at the last minute to take care of the family? Are you interested in keeping your weapons for current/future monetary values, or are you going to drag them '06 through rocks, swamps and cactus... to unleash the required shots? In short, I am not looking for a speaker, I am looking for a fighter... And if you are fed, think twice. Think twice about the Constitution that you should apply (not "enforce the freedom" of an oxymoron?) And think twice about catching us off guard - you'll lose like Degan - and your family will lose.
McVeigh began announcing that he had advanced from the "propaganda" phase to the "action" phase. He wrote to his Gwenda Strider Michigan friend, "I have other very limited and highly demanded 'militant' talents."
McVeigh later said he considered "individual murder campaigns," with "decent" targets including Attorney General Janet Reno, Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. from the Federal District Court, which handles the Davidian Branch trial, and Lon Horiuchi, a member of an FBI hostage rescue team that shot and killed Vicki Weaver in a standoff in a remote cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992. He said he wanted Reno to accept " full responsibility in action, not just words. " Such killing seemed too difficult, and he decided that since federal agents had become soldiers, it was important to attack them at their command center. According to McVeigh's official biography, he finally decided that he would make the harshest statement by bombing a federal building. After the bombing, he was ambivalent about his actions; as he stated in the letters to his hometown newspaper, he sometimes wished he had committed a series of murders against police and government officials instead.
Oklahoma City bombing
Working in a lakeside camp near McVeigh Army headquarters, he and Nichols built an ANNM explosive device mounted behind a rental 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 in front of the Federal Building Alfred P. Murrah just as his office opened for the day. Before he arrived, he stopped to turn on the two-minute fuse. At 9:02 am, a large explosion destroyed the northern half of the building. It killed 168 people, including nineteen children in day care centers on the second floor, and wounded 684 others.
McVeigh said that he did not know that the federal office runs a daycare center on the second floor of the building, and that he might have chosen a different target if he knew about it. Nichols said that he and McVeigh knew there was a daycare center in the building, and that they did not care.
Biographers McVeigh, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, quoted McVeigh, with whom they spoke for 75 hours, of his attitude to the victims:
To these people in Oklahoma who have lost loved ones, I apologize but that happens every day. You are not the first mother to lose a child, or the first grandparent to lose a grandchild or granddaughter. It happens every day, somewhere in the world. I will not go into the courtroom, curl up into a fetal ball and cry just because the victims want me to do it.
During an interview with Ed Bradley for the 60 Minutes television news magazine in 2000, Bradley asked McVeigh for his reaction to the deaths of nineteen children. McVeigh states:
I thought it was horrible that there were children in that building.
According to the Oklahoma City Memorial Institute for Counter Terrorism Prevention (MIPT), more than 300 buildings were damaged. More than 12,000 volunteers and rescue workers took part in rescue, recovery and support after the bombing. Referring to the theory that he got help from someone else, McVeigh quoted the famous phrase from the movie A Few Good Men , "You can not handle the truth!" and added "Because of the truth, I blew up the Murray House and is not it terrifying that one man can bring this kind of hell?"
Arrest, trial, conviction and punishment
By tracking the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) of the rear axle found in the ruins, the FBI identified the vehicle as a rented Ryder Rental box truck from Junction City, Kansas. Workers in the agency help an FBI artist in sketching tenants, who have used the alias "Robert Kling". The sketch is 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 Police, Charles J. Hanger. Hanger has passed the McVeigh yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis and noticed that it has no license plate. McVeigh confessed to the police officer (who saw a bulge under his jacket) that he had a gun and McVeigh was later arrested for being pushed without license plates and illegal firearms; McVeigh's hidden weapons licenses are not legal in Oklahoma. McVeigh was wearing a T-shirt at the time with a picture of Abraham Lincoln and the motto: sicer tyrannis ('So always tyrants'), words that should have been shouted by John Wilkes Booth after he shot Lincoln. Behind, there is a tree with three drops of blood and a Thomas Jefferson quote, "The tree of freedom must be refreshed from time to time with patriotic blood and tyrants." Three days later, while still in prison, McVeigh was identified as the subject of a national hunt.
On August 10, 1995, McVeigh was indicted on eleven federal counts, including conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, the use of weapons of mass destruction, destruction by using explosives and eight counts of first-degree murder.
On February 20, 1996, the Court made a change of venue and ordered that the case be moved from Oklahoma City to the US District Court in Denver, Colorado, to be chaired by US District Judge Richard Paul Matsch.
McVeigh instructed his lawyers to use defense needs, but they ultimately did not, because they had to prove that McVeigh was in the "danger of the future" of the government. (McVeigh himself thinks that "soon" does not necessarily mean "soon.") They would argue that the bombing of the Murrah building is a justifiable response to what McVeigh believes is a crime of the US government in Waco, Texas, where the 51-day siege of the Branch complex Davidian resulted in the death of 76 Branch Davidians. As part of the defense, McVeigh's attorney pointed to Waco's controversial video jury, Big Lie.
On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was found guilty of all eleven federal allegations. After the verdict, McVeigh tried to calm his mother by saying, "Think of it like this, when I was in the army you did not see me for years, think of me like that now, like I was in the Army again, on a military assignment. "
On June 13, 1997, the jury recommended that McVeigh receive the death penalty. The US Department of Justice filed a federal suit against McVeigh for causing the death of eight federal officers leading to possible death penalty for McVeigh; they can not file a lawsuit against McVeigh for the remaining 160 murders in federal court because the death falls under the jurisdiction of the State of Oklahoma. Because McVeigh was convicted and sentenced to death, the State of Oklahoma did not file a lawsuit against McVeigh for another 160 deaths. Before the sentence was officially spoken by Judge Matsch, McVeigh addressed the court for the first time and said:
If the Court wishes, I would like to use the words of Justice Brandeis who disagree in Olmstead to speak for me. He wrote, 'Our government is a strong and omnipresent teacher. For good or for illness, it teaches all human beings through his example. That's all I have.
Detention and execution
During his detention, McVeigh issued the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) registration number 12076-064. McVeigh's death sentence was delayed pending an appeal. One of his appeals for certiorari was taken to the United States Supreme Court, rejected on March 8, 1999. McVeigh's request for national television executions was also rejected. Internet companies have also failed to sue the right to broadcast it. At ADX Florence, McVeigh and Nichols are placed in "Bomber's Row", the same cell block as Ted Kaczynski, Luis Felipe and Ramzi Yousef. Yousef often makes a failed attempt to turn McVeigh into Islam.
McVeigh berkata:
I regret these people should lose their lives, but that's the nature of the beast. It is understood in what will be a human sacrifice.
He said that if there was life after death, he would "improvise, adapt and overcome", noting:
If there is a hell, then I will be in a good company with many fighter pilots who also have to bomb innocent people to win the war.
He also said:
I know I want this before it happens. I know my goal is state-assisted suicide and when it happens, it's in your face. You've just done something you want to say should be illegal for medical personnel.
BOP moved McVeigh from ADX Florence to the federal death sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 1999.
McVeigh rejected his remaining appeal, saying that he'd rather die than spend the rest of his life in jail. On January 16, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Prisons established May 16, 2001, as the date of the execution of McVeigh. McVeigh claimed that his only regret was not fully leveling the federal building. Six days before the scheduled execution, the FBI reversed thousands of evidence documents that were previously kept secret by McVeigh's lawyers. As a result, US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced McVeigh's execution would last for a month.
The execution date was reset for June 11, 2001. McVeigh invited the California conductor/composer David Woodard to perform pre-requiem Mass music ahead of execution. He asked a Catholic priest. He asked for two glasses 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 refused. Jay Sawyer, a relative of one of the victims, wrote, "Without saying a word, he got the last word." Larry Whicher, whose brother was killed in the attack, described McVeigh as "a blank, expressionless gaze he has a challenging view and that if he can, he will do it again."
McVeigh was executed with a lethal injection at 7:14 am on June 11, 2001, at the US Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana, the first federal prisoner executed by the United States federal government since Victor Feguer was executed in Iowa in March. 15, 1963.
On November 21, 1997, President Bill Clinton had signed S. 923, a special law introduced by Senator Arlen Specter to ban McVeigh and other veterans convicted of capital crimes buried in military cemeteries. His body was cremated in Mattox Ryan's Funeral Home in Terre Haute. Her ashes were given to her lawyer, who "said that the final goal of McVeigh's remains will remain forever." McVeigh writes that he thinks they are dropped at the memorial site where the building used to stand, but decides that "too vindictive, too raw, too cold." He has expressed a willingness to donate organs, but is prohibited from doing so by prison rules.
Psychiatrist John Smith concluded that McVeigh was "a kind-hearted man who had allowed the anger to build within him to the point he had struck in a terrible and cruel act." IQ McVeigh rated at 126.
Association
According to CNN, the only association he knew was a Republican registered in Buffalo, New York, in the 1980s, and membership at the National Rifle Association in the Army, and there was no evidence that he had been a member of an extremist group..
Religious belief
McVeigh grew up in Roman Catholicism. 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 claimed to believe in "God", even though he said that he "lost contact with" Catholic and "I never really choose it, but I maintain a core belief. "In the biography of McVeigh
Motivation for bombing
McVeigh claimed that the bombing was a revenge against the government for the siege in Waco and Ruby Ridge. McVeigh visited Waco during the deadlock. While there, he was interviewed by student reporter Michelle Rauch, a senior journalist at Southern Methodist University who was writing for the school newspaper. McVeigh expressed his objection to what happened there.
McVeigh often quotes and alludes to the white supremacy novel The Turner Diaries ; he claimed to appreciate his interest in firearms. Photocopies of sixty-one and sixty-two pages of The Turner Diaries are found inside an envelope in a McVeigh's car. These pages illustrate a fictitious mortar attack against the US Capitol in Washington.
In a 1,200 word essay dated March 1998, from the maximum federal security prison in Florence, Colorado, McVeigh claimed that terrorist bombings were "morally equivalent" to US military action against Iraq and other foreign countries. Handwritten essays, submitted and published by an alternative national news magazine Media Bypass , were distributed worldwide by the Associated Press on May 29, 1998. It was written amid the Iraqi disarmament crisis of 1998 and a few months before Operation Desert Fox.
The government has said that Iraq has no right to store chemical or biological weapons ("weapons of mass destruction") - especially since they have used them in the past.
Well, if that's the standard that decides these things, then the US is the country that sets the precedent. The US has been stockpiling this same weapon (and more) for more than 40 years. The US claims this was done for a deterrent purpose during the "Cold War" with the Soviet Union. Why, then, is it illegal for Iraq to claim the same (deterrent) cause in connection with the (real) Iraq war with, and the ongoing threat, its neighbor, Iran?
The administration claims that Iraq has used these weapons in the past. We've all seen pictures showing a Kurdish woman and frozen children in deaths due to the use of chemical weapons. But, have you ever seen those pictures juxtaposed beside the photos from Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
I suggest that someone learn the history of World War I, World War II and other "regional conflicts" that the United States has been involved in getting used to the use of "weapons of mass destruction."
Remember Dresden? What about Hanoi? Tripoli? Bagdad? What about the big ones - Hiroshima and Nagasaki? (In these two locations, the US has killed at least 150,000 non-combatants - mostly women and children - in the blink of an eye. Thousands of people take hours, days, weeks, or months to die).
If Saddam was such a devil, and people called for war crimes and judges against him and his people, why did we not hear the same call for blood directed at those responsible for a large number of "mass destruction" - as responsible and involved in dropping bombs in the cities mentioned above?
In fact, the US has set standards when it comes to the hoarding and use of weapons of mass destruction.
The essay, which marks the first time that McVeigh publicly discusses the Oklahoma City bombings, continues:
Hypocrisy when it comes to the death of children? In Oklahoma City, it is a family comfort that explains the existence of a daycare center placed between the street level and law enforcement agencies occupying the upper floors of the building. However, as the discussion shifted to Iraq, the daycare center in the government building soon became a "shield." Think about it.
When considering morality and "mens rea" [criminal intent], given these facts, I ask: Who is a true barbarian?...
I find it ironic, at least, that one of the planes used to drop such bombs in Iraq was dubbed "The Spirit of Oklahoma." This leads me to the final, and unspoken, moral hypocrisy of the use of weapons of mass destruction.
When a plane or US cruise missile is used to bring destruction to foreigners, the country rewards bombers with applause and praise. How easy it is to free the killers from any responsibility for the destruction they leave behind them.
Unfortunately, murder morality is not so superficial. The truth is, the use of trucks, aircraft or missiles for the delivery of weapons of mass destruction does not change the nature of the act itself.
This is a weapon of mass destruction - and the method of delivery is small for those who receive such weapons.
Whether you want to admit it or not, when you approve, morally, about the bombing of foreign targets by the US military, you consent to actions that are morally equivalent to the Oklahoma City bombings...
McVeigh includes photocopies of the famous Vietnam War images showing frightened children escaping from napalm bombs, and nuclear destruction in Japan. He said in the preface that the essay was meant to "provoke thought - and not be written with malicious intent."
On April 26, 2001, McVeigh wrote a letter to Fox News, I Explained Here Why I Bombed the Federal Building of Murrah in Oklahoma City , which explicitly put the reason for the attack. McVeigh reads Unintended Consequences and says that if it appeared several years earlier, he would give serious consideration to using sniper attacks in the war against the government instead of bombing the federal building.
Accomplices
McVeigh's arm, Terry Nichols, was convicted and sentenced in federal court for life in prison for his role in crime. At the Nichols trial, the evidence presented suggests that others may have been involved. Some central Kansas residents, including Georgia real estate agent Rucker and a retired NCO Army, testified in federal court Terry Nichols that they had seen two trucks at Geary Lake State Park, where prosecutors alleged the bomb was assembled. Retired NCO said he visited the lake on April 18, 1995, but left after a group of surly men looked at him aggressively. The Dreamland Motel operator testified that two Ryder trucks had been parked outside the Grandview Plaza motel where McVeigh stayed in Room 26 the weekend before the bombing. Terry Nichols is locked up in ADX Florence in Florence, Colorado.
Michael and Lori Fortier are also regarded as accomplices because of their knowledge of the bombing. In addition to Michael helping McVeigh in overseeing the federal building, Lori has helped McVeigh laminate a fake SIM used to rent a Ryder truck. Fortier agrees to testify against McVeigh and Nichols in return for reduced penalties and immunity for his wife. He was sentenced on May 27, 1998, twelve years in prison and a $ 75,000 fine for failing to alert authorities to the bombing. On 20 January 2006, Fortier was released for good behavior into the Witness Protection Program and was given a new identity.
An ATF informant, Carol Howe, told reporters that shortly before the bombing he had warned his guards that a guest from Elohim City, Oklahoma was planning a major bombing raid. McVeigh pulled out a ticket that drove there at the same time. In addition to this speeding ticket, there is no evidence of a link between McVeigh and members of the Midwest Bank Robbers in Elohim City.
In February 2004, the FBI announced it would review its investigation after finding out that an agent in the investigation of the Midwest Bank Robber (who alleged the Aryan-oriented alley) had appeared the same type of explosive hat used to trigger the Oklahoma City bomb. The agents expressed surprise that the bombing investigators have not been informed of the investigations of the Midwest Bank Robbers. McVeigh suffered further delays and maintained until his death that he acted alone in the bombing.
Several witnesses claimed to have seen the second suspect, and there was a search for "John Doe # 2", but nothing was ever found.
See also
- Lone wolf (terrorism)
References
Note
Further reading
- Jones, Stephen and Peter Israel. Other Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy , second edition. New York: PublicAffairs, 2001. ISBNÃ, 1-58648-098-7.
- Madeira, Jody LyneÃÆ'Â ©. Killing McVeigh: Death Penalty and Closure Myth . NYU Press, 2012. ISBNÃ, 0-81-479610-9 ISBNÃ, 978-0-814-79610-8
- Michel, Lou, and Dan Herbeck. American terrorists: Timothy McVeigh and Oklahoma City bombing . New York: ReganBooks (HarperCollins), 2001. ISBN: 0-06-039407-2.
- Brandon M. Stickney, "All-American Monster: Timothy McVeigh's Unlawful Biography". Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1996. ISBN 978-1-57392-088-9.
- Vidal, Gore. Eternal War for Perpetual of Peace: How We Should Be Hate , Press Book/Mouth of Thunder, 2002. ISBNÃ, 1-56025-405-X.
- Wright, Stuart A. Patriot, Politics, and Oklahoma City bombing . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBNÃ, 978-0-521-87264-5
External links
- "Bad Day Dawning" in "Criminals and Methods: Timothy McVeigh" on Court TV: Crime Library
- Timothy McVeigh's Letter on April 27, 2001 to reporter Rita Cosby - Explains why he bombed the Federal Murrah Building (posted on independence.net)
- Timothy McVeigh's Dungeon Prison in The Smoking Gun
- The Timothy McVeigh Story: The Oklahoma Bomber on Court TV: Crime Library
- Voices of Oklahoma interview with Stephen Jones. The first person interview was conducted on January 27, 2010, with Stephen Jones, a lawyer for Timothy McVeigh.
- Letter Ted Kaczynski to the authors of the book, American terrorist - Criticism of Timothy McVeigh by fellow Prisoner Unabomber
- Timothy McVeigh's Execution - USA Today
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments