Crimes of the Century (2013–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - The Oklahoma City Bombing - full transcript
Oklahoma City lies at the
geographic heart of the country.
More small town than big city,
it's probably the last place
you'd pick to be targeted
for destruction.
Then came the morning
of April 19, 1995.
Good morning.
In this proceeding with regard
to application 95-501
for a groundwater permit...
We'll present evidence, hear
evidence, from the applicant.
With regard to this proceeding,
there are four elements
that I have to receive
information regarding...
Smoke and debris
and fire on the ground.
We'll have to bank around to the other
side so I can get a better view of it.
Wow. Holy cow.
About a third of the building
has been blown away.
It was staggering, the
potential casualties and deaths.
And I remember saying, "God,
I don't want to die today."
It was a terrifying attack... I was so
hoping that it was not an American.
that left an
entire nation disillusioned.
It was an act of cowardice,
and it was evil.
It was a game-changer.
It remains the
worst act of domestic terrorism
in American history, perpetrated
by one of our own...
a decorated Army veteran
of the first Gulf War.
You traitor!
The Oklahoma City bombing, next.
Everybody get out of here now!
Watch that light!
Press the alarm!
Watch the light!
Oh, my God! Hurry!
It's all right.
Go to the back door.
Okay. I'm ready.
Okay, let's go.
Tammy, you can see thick black smoke billowing
from the Federal Court Building downtown.
We are seeing literally dozens
of people that are bleeding.
Some of them, you can't even make
them out, they are so badly injured.
The impact was
immediate and nationwide.
An explosion in Oklahoma City with worldwide
implications and enormous consequences.
The bombing has sent
shockwaves through Washington.
There is increased security
nationwide.
The Pentagon has activated
its emergency disaster response.
It could be a contractor.
It could be a wacko.
It could be a professional.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist
to create this kind of bomb.
As the smoke began to clear, two questions
reverberated across the country... who and why?
The answers would be shocking.
The man behind the devastation
was an American.
His name... Timothy McVeigh.
Tim McVeigh was one of ours.
He was a war hero.
He grew up in the suburbs of
Buffalo, and we needed to know.
There was a sense, an obligation,
to find out who this man was.
Timothy McVeigh was born on April 23, 1968,
in the town of Lockport in upstate New York.
By all accounts, he had an ordinary
childhood and adolescence.
We were never told anything
that would have gave you warning
that he was gonna do something
like this.
In fact, as a teenager, he was the young
man that people in the neighborhood
would choose to
babysit their kids.
He was a good student.
He was bright, above-average
intelligence.
Sometimes you look at the history
of severe criminal conduct,
and there is childhood abuse or abandonment,
and you can see how someone developed into it.
Nothing striking
in McVeigh's background.
But the young
McVeigh did have a dark side.
While still a teenager, he had
discovered "The Turner Diaries,"
a venomously racist novel about an armed
insurrection led by white supremacists
against an oppressive
federal government.
It describes a truck bombing
of FBI headquarters
in Washington, D.C., shortly after 9:00 in the
morning, sounding very similar to what took place
in Oklahoma City
on April 19, 1995.
If Timothy McVeigh
was looking to make a statement,
then he had succeeded
in the worst way possible.
Debris, glass.
It looks as though emergency
crews are on the scene.
The incredible explosion had ripped apart the
9-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building,
hit with the force of
roughly two tons of TNT.
The air inside was whipped into a churning
tornado of glass shards and choking black smoke.
One floor pancaked onto the next, crushing
and trapping men, women, and children below.
The roof has collapsed.
The second floor
held a daycare center.
The lucky ones staggered into
the street, some barely alive.
What the heck happened?
I saw a yellow flash, and then
everything went pitch black.
The force of the blast
bent me over my desk.
The whole back of the building
just fell in on us.
Everyone along our set of offices had back
injuries, head injuries, neck, bleeding, glass.
I felt pain on my left side of my face and
popping noises, and it was the glass shards.
It just kept falling.
It was a horrible noise.
Horrible noise.
And I remember saying, "God, I don't want to die
today, and I don't want to die in this building,
and if it's all right with you,
I'd like to die later."
It felt like an earthquake.
Something actually shook our television
station, and that's five miles away.
In those first frantic minutes, no one was
quite sure what had caused the explosion.
Initially, we thought it
might have been a gas explosion
because we had had to evacuate
the office two or three weeks
earlier because there was
a gas leak downtown.
I thought that a war
had started.
I thought that Oklahoma City had been bombed,
that we had been attacked by another country.
I thought that the explosion was an
atomic blast from Tinker Air Force Base.
I was trying to make sense
out of it.
I did not think it was a bomb.
They have dog teams here searching
for survivors and for bodies.
Scores of people have been killed
outright and hundreds more injured.
The blast radius encompasses
a 16-block area,
but the Murrah building
is ground zero.
Got a stretcher!
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms was headquartered there,
and some of its members
still are missing.
Social Security
was located there.
A childcare center
was located there.
Initial estimates that were coming in was
that there had been perhaps 1,000 people.
It was staggering the potential
casualties and deaths
that could have been caused
by this bombing.
Everything around the building
was still on fire.
Cars across the street
were on fire.
The trees that were there
were on fire.
People at this hour
are literally trapped
in the Alfred Murrah building
in downtown Oklahoma City.
Get back!
Everybody, get back!
Get back!
Get back!
They have found a bomb
in the building.
90 minutes after the blast, a new
panic radiates through the streets
when first responders come across
what appears to be a second bomb.
The rescue operation is suspended, and
a 4-block area is quickly evacuated.
It is, thankfully, a false alarm, but
precious moments have been lost.
By the time the rescue resumes,
investigators have swarmed the area.
First question has been answered... was this
just a freak accidental explosion of some kind,
or was it intentional? We know now... It
is quickly determined that the explosion
at the Federal Building
was caused by a truck bomb.
There are certain things you can look for,
particularly in the case of a large vehicle bomb.
There was a roughly 32-foot
crater in the street.
It appeared to be just about
dead center of the block.
Then investigators
get their first big break.
They learn that a rear-axle housing that
probably came from the truck bomb has landed
around 200 yards
from the bomb site.
I heard something coming through the air, and I
looked up, and you could see this big object
coming straight toward us.
And when it hit the car, it knocked it back
to these other sets of doors back here,
and I looked in front of my car, and there was
that axle laying there, and I thought somebody...
I told my wife... I said,
"It's a car bomb."
Early indications are the bomb was a half-ton
homemade bomb that was made of common fertilizer
and fuel oil.
Fortunately, the axle housing contains the truck's
confidential vehicle identification number.
Using that number, we were able
to trace the vehicle itself
and identify it as a Ford Motor product that
had been made for Ryder rental company.
The Ryder company informs the FBI that
this particular truck had been assigned
to Elliott's body shop in Junction City, Kansas,
more than 270 miles north of Oklahoma City.
FBI agents discover that the truck
had been rented two days earlier.
The rental documents themselves showed that
it had been rented by a Robert "Bob" Kling.
We had no idea who Robert Kling was
or whether he was a real person.
An employee provides a detailed description of
Kling and another man he believed was with him.
Who was Robert Kling, and why
had he just murdered nearly 200
men, women, and children?
Within 24 hours, the nation
would learn the stunning truth.
Let there be no room for doubt... we
will find the people who did this.
It's one of the most terrifying
days in American history.
This is just devastating... smoke
and debris and fire on the ground.
There are numerous injuries.
The human toll is overwhelming... 168
people killed, at least 650 injured.
Among the dead are 19 children.
There's very little hope for those
that are left in that building.
The Oklahoma City bombing will go down in
history as one of those elemental moments
that people will remember
where they were at the time.
This is the grisly, meticulous
search effort to find bodies.
Less than 90 minutes after the blast,
about 75 miles north of Oklahoma City,
state trooper Charlie Hanger stops a 1977
Mercury Marquis for not having a license plate.
The driver of the car is one
Timothy James McVeigh.
When he got out of the car, he
looked like a clean-cut young man
that had a military-type
appearance.
He had a short haircut.
He also had a light windbreaker jacket on, and
it was zipped up just slightly at the bottom.
But as he was removing his billfold from his
right rear pocket, that jacket tightened up,
and I could see a bulge under his left
arm that appeared to me to be a weapon,
and I grabbed the bulge
on the outside of his jacket
and instructed him to, you know,
get his hands up and turn around.
At the same time, I was drawing my weapon
and stuck it to the back of his head.
He said, "My weapon is loaded,"
and I nudged him a little bit with the barrel
of my weapon, and I said, "Well, so is mine."
Hanger arrests McVeigh for carrying a concealed
weapon, never imagining that his prisoner
is the Oklahoma City bomber.
Initially, the name McVeigh means
nothing to bombing investigators.
They're looking for Robert Kling, the man who
rented the Ryder truck in Junction City, Kansas.
It seems hard to believe that all this
destruction was the work of only two men.
The next day, armed with sketches
of Kling and a suspected companion,
law-Enforcement officers canvass
the entire area.
One agent was assigned the Dreamland Motel,
and when he walked in, he talked to the owner
of that particular place,
and he asked her,
"Has anyone been in here that
had a Ryder truck with him?"
And she said, "Actually,
there washere recently."
So the agent decided to show her the artist's
conception, and she looked at it and said,
"That really looks like the
fellow who rented room 25."
He had rented the room
in the name of Tim McVeigh.
The Ryder rental truck had been
rented in the name of Robert Kling,
so there was some question as to which was
the true name, if either were a true name.
So, we do a records search through our
national crime information center
to see if any Timothy McVeighs
had been arrested
anywhere in
the United States recently.
And to our surprise, we learned that a Timothy
McVeigh has been arrested in Noble County,
which is about 75 miles north of Oklahoma City
and was arrested the morning of the bombing.
It turned out that he was still there but he
was getting ready to be released on bail.
So, we put a hold on him until our
agents could get there to interview him.
Was this the same Timothy McVeigh
that was at the Dreamland Motel?
At this point, we don't
necessarily know.
Our agents tried to interview
Timothy McVeigh.
When they approached him, they asked
him, "Do you know what we're here for?"
And he said, "Probably about
that Oklahoma City thing."
And he gave us his name, rank, and serial
number and refused to talk to us anymore.
In Washington, Attorney General
Janet Reno announces the arrest.
I am pleased to announce
that one of the individuals
believed to be responsible for Wednesday's
terrible attack has been arrested.
I remind everyone that
John Doe ♪2 remains at large.
You murderer!
When McVeigh is taken from the local
courthouse to be transported to Oklahoma City,
he is met by an angry crowd
and screams of "Baby killer!"
You can rot in hell!
Is it the act of someone who wishes the United
States government and its entire environs ill?
I was so hoping that it was
not an American.
It's hard to believe
Americans blowing up Americans.
It just boggled my mind.
What Tim McVeigh did was the worst act of
domestic terrorism in American history.
The entire country was shocked and riveted that
somebody could come from white-bread suburbia
and commit such
a hellacious act.
I have a daughter that's 3, and to think
that she'll grow up in this is... scary.
Investigators are certain that McVeigh
is the John Doe ♪1 in the police sketch,
but they still have not
identified John Doe ♪2.
John Doe ♪2... if the FBI can't
find him, does he exist?
FBI chief Louis Freeh
sent him this message...
"There is no place on Earth
where you will be safe."
The Michigan address on McVeigh's driver's license
is the home of a man named James Nichols.
It's a critical development.
Nichols' brother Terry has been
close friends with McVeigh
since they served together
in the Army.
Like McVeigh, Nichols is known
to harbor anti-government views.
Terry Nichols, just
four days before the blast,
took out a new insurance policy
on his pickup truck.
An arrest warrant is quickly issued, and later
that same day, Nichols turns himself in.
By now, the rescue operation
at the Murrah building
has become a recovery effort.
Authorities in this building behind
me are coming across more bodies.
The search for bodies will
last for two full weeks.
Most of the survivors wanted
to go to most of the funerals,
and that's tough going to 16
funerals, let me tell you.
That was... that was really
hard, but we needed to do it.
Two women are believed
to be still in the building.
The third's an elderly man...
Finally, on may 5, 1995,
with three victims still buried in the
rubble, the search comes to an end.
This was not two or three people from this
city or two or three people from that city.
This was Oklahoma City.
The terrorism was directed
at the city.
The terrorism was directed
at its people.
It was the sword at the heart
of Oklahoma City.
On April 21, 1995, Timothy McVeigh is
arrested and charged with the bombing
of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma attorney Stephen Jones is
appointed as McVeigh's public defender.
Jones immediately rejects the
possibility of an insanity defense.
Timothy McVeigh was not insane.
He was rational.
He was interviewed by several
psychologists and psychiatrists.
He didn't have any obvious mental
disorder or emotional disorder.
The question comes up,
why Is a non-mentally ill individual going to
conduct a bombing which kills hundreds of people?
I don't want people to
misread what I'm about to say,
but I was surprised at how
affable and likable he appeared
to be for a man who had killed
168 people in cold blood.
Reporters Dan Herbeck and Lou Michel spent
more than 70 hours interviewing McVeigh,
trying to gain some insight into what
led him to become a domestic terrorist.
By all accounts, an early turning point for
McVeigh comes in 1988, when he joins the Army.
While stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia,
he and his roommate Michael Fortier
bond with their platoon leader, Terry Nichols,
over a shared distrust of the federal government.
McVeigh took an instant liking to him,
and he loved hearing Nichols spout off
about his theories about
government and politics.
McVeigh serves during Operation Desert Storm in
1991 and is awarded a Bronze Star for valor.
During his service, he kills
at least two enemy combatants.
One thing he did brag to me
about was, in Saudi Arabia,
when he was there in the war,
he was a gunner on a Bradley,
and he told me one time about when he was
shooting at an Iraqi bunker and a guy came out
and was waving his hands, trying to surrender
and stuff, and McVeigh started shooting at him.
With a 25-millimeter cannon,
started shooting at him.
He said it was 1,100 meters, and the
first round hit the guy in the head.
After returning from the war,
McVeigh hopes to join the Special Forces but
quits because he is physically unprepared.
One of McVeigh's goals from early on in
entering the Army was Special Forces.
When it didn't work out for him with
the Special Forces, he lost his focus.
McVeigh is discharged from the
Army on December 31, 1991.
He begins to drift around the country,
taking odd jobs and attending gun shows.
He was totally against
any kind of gun control.
He was totally in favor of government leaving
people alone, letting them do what they want to do.
Distrust of a large central government
goes back to our independence.
It's written into
our Constitution.
The problem is when it's taken
to its extremes.
And Timothy McVeigh was the
extreme of that ideology.
But he doesn't seem to be destructive until
two tragic events in the early 1990s
incite McVeigh
to embrace violence.
In August 1992, Deputy U.S. Marshals and FBI
agents are involved in a deadly confrontation
in Northern Idaho with an alleged
White Supremacist named Randy Weaver.
Weaver is suspected of selling
illegal firearms.
During an 11-day standoff, Weaver's son, his
wife, and a Deputy U.S. Marshal are killed.
Then, on February 28, 1993, following
a gun battle between the ATF
and members of a religious group
called the Branch Davidians,
federal agents lay siege to the
group's compound near Waco, Texas.
A suspected cache of illegal weapons
is at the center of the controversy.
McVeigh was just absolutely in a
rage over both of those incidents.
But the one thing that pushed
him over the edge and turned him
into a terrorist
was the Waco incident.
At one point, McVeigh drives
to Waco to observe the siege.
He went and parked his car nearby, and
he was selling anti-government pamphlets
and giving interviews to at
least one reporter that day
about how much he distrusted
the U.S. government.
During an assault by the FBI on April 19th, the
Branch Davidian compound is engulfed by fire.
At least 76 men, women, and
children die during the inferno.
McVeigh told us that he was convinced that
the U.S. government purposely murdered
women and children
at the Waco compound.
It was all part of an effort to
destroy gun rights in America.
The triggering moment was Waco.
He was there, and he decided that
the government had gone too far.
He was going to start
his own war.
And the first strike would be aimed
at the heart of the country.
For McVeigh and his Army buddy
Terry Nichols,
targeting a government building
was dramatic and symbolic.
They chose the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in downtown Oklahoma City,
which housed 14 federal agencies, including
the Secret Service, the DEA, and the ATF.
McVeigh believed that his bombing would
be the opening salvo in a conflict
against an illegitimate,
tyrannical federal government
that needed to be brought
down to its knees.
On August 10, 1995, a federal grand
jury charges Timothy McVeigh
and Terry Nichols
with 11 criminal counts,
including 8 counts of murder.
That figure is based upon the number of federal
law-enforcement officials killed in the blast.
On April 24, 1997, two years after the bombing...
McVeigh's trial begins in Denver, Colorado.
The prosecution presents first and lays out a
timeline of events that led up to the bombing.
By mid-1994, McVeigh and Nichols, along
with their Army friend Michael Fortier,
were ready to put their plan
into action.
McVeigh decided that the most effective
weapon would be a truck bomb.
In September 1994, McVeigh and Nichols
begin stockpiling ammonium nitrate,
a fertilizer
often used in truck bombs.
When you combine that ammonium nitrate,
which is the oxidizer, with a fuel,
then you have
an explosive mixture.
It's cheap, it's readily available, and
it's not particularly complicated to make.
Over the next few months, the two men
start quietly gathering more components,
including racing fuel,
explosive charges,
and 544 blasting caps they steal
from a quarry in Marion, Kansas.
Then, that December, McVeigh and Michael Fortier
go to Oklahoma City to case the Murrah building.
We know for certain that McVeigh
examined multiple
federal buildings.
He, in particular, scouted out the
Murrah building on multiple occasions.
We know that because he took Michael
Fortier directly to the Murrah building
and said that after his examination
of all the potential targets,
this is the one
he was gonna hit.
McVeigh picks
April 19th as the date.
Known as Patriots' Day, it's revered by many
in the right-wing anti-government movement.
On April 19th, you have the first shot fired
in Lexington in the American Revolution.
On that day, Waco occurs in 1993, and then two
years later, McVeigh blows up his truck bomb
in front of the Murrah building.
At some point, Fortier decides
to not take part in the bombing.
In fact, in a later plea bargain, he will
agree to testify against his co-conspirators.
In March 1995, McVeigh creates a fake driver's
license with the name Robert D. Kling
and a birth date
of April 19, 1972.
On April 14, McVeigh buys the
yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis
from a used-car dealer
in Junction City, Kansas.
The next day, McVeigh reserves the
Ryder truck from Elliott's Body Shop,
using the Robert D. Kling alias.
On April 16th, McVeigh and Nichols
drive the Mercury to Oklahoma City.
McVeigh parks it several blocks
away from the Murrah building.
He removes the license plates from the
car and leaves a note... "Not abandoned.
Please do not tow.
Will move by April 23rd.
Needs battery and cable."
Two days later, McVeigh and Nichols rendezvous
at Geary Lake State Park, near Junction City,
where they assemble the bomb
in the truck.
The ammonium nitrate and the fuel would
have been mixed in some barrels...
something akin
to a 55-gallon plastic barrel.
Those barrels were then likely connected with
this detonating cord, which led to the boosters,
and then, ultimately, that detonating
cord would have come together
where the detonators
or blasting caps were.
But at the last minute, Terry Nichols,
like Michael Fortier, bails out.
As time grew near to the time of the
bombing, Nichols got cold feet.
He decided he didn't
want to do that.
He decided that was
going too far.
McVeigh screamed at him, threatened
him, may have threatened to kill him.
On the morning of April 19th, McVeigh, now on his
own, drives the Ryder truck into Oklahoma City.
At 8:57 A.M., security cameras
at the Regency Tower
apartment building a few blocks
west of the Murrah building
catch the Ryder truck parked
across the street.
Investigators surmise this is when
McVeigh lights the first fuse.
A few minutes later,
McVeigh moves the truck up,
lights the second fuse, and parks on
the north side of the Murrah building.
He then exits the truck
and begins walking rapidly
to the yellow Mercury,
parked four blocks away.
At the Federal Building,
the work day is starting.
Hundreds of people
are already inside.
An explosion downtown.
About a third of the
building has been blown away.
The whole front of
the Federal Building is gone.
McVeigh is only two blocks
away when the bomb detonates.
But he makes it to the getaway car
and heads north on Interstate 35,
where he is soon stopped for
driving a vehicle without tags.
Among the items found after his arrest is a
business card for a military-supply store.
On the back is a handwritten note...
"TNT at $5 a stick. Need more."
There's no question in my mind that
Timothy McVeigh wanted to get caught,
wanted to become a martyr, wanted the U.S.
government to execute him.
He left a trail of bread crumbs
for the federal agents.
He was seeking the deluxe-suicide-by-cop
execution package.
As nearly 2,500 newspeople begin
to settle in for the trial
outside the Federal Courthouse,
so is the city of Denver.
During his trial, Timothy McVeigh does
not deny that he set the truck bomb.
He instructs his lawyers to use a necessity
defense... that he acted in self-defense
against an oppressive
federal government.
McVeigh looked at the federal
trial as a multimillion-dollar
soap box for his anti-government views... that he
felt he had no choice but to blow up a building
and kill 168 people.
Is everything still all right?
Great.
You have no complaints?
No, nothing.
They resolve every problem
that I bring up.
Okay.
So, the situation here
is a lot better than it was?
Day and night.
Good. Good.
In his distorted world view, his
actions were a justifiable response
to what he considered violence perpetrated
by the government against its own people.
But defense attorney Stephen Jones
knew a necessity case was unwinnable,
so he chose a different course, arguing that
McVeigh was only part of a much larger conspiracy.
The greatest mystery of the
Oklahoma City bombing case
is who else besides Tim McVeigh, Terry
Nichols, and Michael Fortier were involved?
Because there were
most assuredly others.
Much of the
speculation centered on the man
reportedly seen with McVeigh
at the truck-rental company.
Known as John Doe ♪2, the description did not
fit either Terry Nichols or Michael Fortier.
Investigators concluded that
John Doe ♪2 never existed.
We found a gentleman that had been in there that
generally fit the description of John Doe ♪2,
but it turned out it had been
on a different day.
He'd been in there with a friend
that had rented a Ryder truck.
So, we now realized that it was
a misidentification of people
transposing two different events and putting
two different occurrences together.
McVeigh swore to us over and over
again that there was no John Doe ♪2.
No one was with him on the day
of the bombing.
The biggest misconception out there about
the Oklahoma City bombing, in my view,
is that this was something
that sprang from the brain
of Timothy McVeigh, was
masterminded by Timothy McVeigh,
and substantially carried out
by Timothy McVeigh
with a little bit of help
from Terry Nichols.
If there were
other people involved
with the bombing, who were they?
Some believe there may have been a
connection between McVeigh and Elohim City,
a so-called Christian Identity
Community in Northeastern Oklahoma,
about 170 miles from Oklahoma
City, near the Arkansas border.
Christian Identity is
essentially a religion that says
that white Anglo-Saxon Americans
are the true children of Israel
and Jews are subhuman, essentially, and
black people are not even human at all.
During the early 1990s, a number of far-right
extremists had reportedly spent time at Elohim City.
This was an interesting time.
You had a number of anti-government groups
that were taking shape, arming themselves,
building compounds throughout the
country, establishing their own laws,
really setting themselves apart
from mainstream cities
and locations on purpose,
and believing, then,
that not only people of other faiths or
ethnicities or nationalities were the enemy
but that the United States
government was the biggest enemy.
The question that recurs is, what was the
connection between Tim McVeigh and Elohim City?
Tim McVeigh said
he never went there.
There are people, however, who claim
to have seen McVeigh at Elohim City.
And probably the strongest
evidence that he was there
is a ticket he received from
an Arkansas highway patrolman
about 4 miles into Arkansas from Oklahoma on a
road that takes you straight to Elohim City.
So, if he wasn't at Elohim City,
where was he?
Timothy McVeigh made some
calls to Elohim City.
He drove near the area, we know.
But beyond that, any connection to Elohim City
or the notion that there were others involved
is speculation heaped
on top of speculation.
But even assuming others were involved, why would
McVeigh so strongly insist that he acted alone,
with help only
from Nichols and Fortier?
He believed that in lying, he would protect
the others so they wouldn't be convicted.
And he spun a series of lies
to shield the others.
I think it's possible that there were
other people that helped along the way
but did not know they were
helping with the bombing.
But I believe that the only ones
who actually knew what they were
working on were the three men
that were punished
by the government... McVeigh,
Fortier, and Nichols.
Justice is served!
We got him!
Two years and 44 days after the worst
terrorist attack on United States soil,
a verdict has been rendered in the
bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh.
On June 2, 1997, Timothy McVeigh is found guilty
on all 11 counts of murder and conspiracy.
He is sentenced to death.
Outside the courthouse in Denver, tears,
smiles, and all emotions in between.
Later that year, on December 24th,
Terry Nichols is also convicted.
He is currently serving Life at the
Federal Supermax prison in Colorado.
For cooperating, Michael Fortier
receives a 12-year sentence.
He is now part of the
witness protection program.
People are going to remember Timothy
McVeigh as a murderer, not a martyr.
On June 11, 2001, Timothy
McVeigh is put to death
at the Federal Correctional
Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Timothy James McVeigh has been
executed by lethal injection.
It is the first
federal execution in 38 years.
McVeigh, even at the point he was being executed,
never flinched, never changed his mind,
never expressed regret, but right
to the point of his death,
McVeigh sustained his belief
and did not show remorse.
Just over a month
after the Oklahoma City bombing,
what was left of the Murrah
Federal Building was demolished.
Today the site is home to the Oklahoma
City National Memorial & Museum.
In addition to a reflecting pool,
there is a field of empty chairs...
168 handcrafted sculptures
that represent the victims.
The memorial is a very
special place.
I think it really is a tribute
to those who were killed
and those who survived
and those changed forever.
It's just a positive thing
that came out of a negative
situation that we want people not to
forget but realize if a bad thing happens,
you can get through it.
Claudia and Jim Denny's children, Brandon
and Rebecca, were two of six kids
at the daycare center
who survived the blast.
Rebecca was in the hospital for 10
days, released in pretty decent shape.
She looked horrible, but
she was in pretty good shape.
Brandon, in 1995,
spent 126 days hospitalized.
The first 45 days, he had
four major brain surgeries.
They could not tell me for
35 days if Brandon would live.
They informed us that if he did survive, he would
more than likely never walk or talk again.
But we have a young man who's now 21 years
old, and he's a walking, talking example
of what miracles are all about.
The Oklahoma City bombing remains the worst
domestic-terrorist act in American history.
It changed the country in ways
that are still being felt.
People forget how different the world
was when the bombing happened,
and I think it shattered, across the world,
people's feelings of safety and security,
because if it can happen in Oklahoma
City, it can happen anywhere.
If it can happen to me,
it can happen to anyone.
We became a more
cautious society.
Barriers went up around
federal buildings.
You have more security.
The seeds of Homeland Security were
actually planted by Timothy McVeigh.
There were other
changes, as well.
The attack led to significant
engineering improvements
that allow buildings to better withstand
excessive forces, whether man-made or natural,
and legislation passed
in the wake of the disaster
has given greater voice
to the victims and families
left behind by attacks
like the Oklahoma City bombing.
Timothy McVeigh believed that
he was gonna cause people
to rise up and rebel
against their government.
This was gonna be the start
of the revolution.
And what happened was
the total opposite.
You saw a community in total support of its law
enforcement, of its firemen, of its government.
It shows that when we put our hearts and our minds
together, we can make something good happen
out of something terrible.
But resilience alone can't
protect against every threat.
Events continue to demonstrate that
free societies must remain vigilant.
The tragic bombing that killed 3
and injured 250
at the 2013 Boston marathon
is a stark example.
Almost certainly by coincidence, it happened on
Patriots' Day... virtually 18 years to the day
after Timothy McVeigh attacked
Oklahoma City.
geographic heart of the country.
More small town than big city,
it's probably the last place
you'd pick to be targeted
for destruction.
Then came the morning
of April 19, 1995.
Good morning.
In this proceeding with regard
to application 95-501
for a groundwater permit...
We'll present evidence, hear
evidence, from the applicant.
With regard to this proceeding,
there are four elements
that I have to receive
information regarding...
Smoke and debris
and fire on the ground.
We'll have to bank around to the other
side so I can get a better view of it.
Wow. Holy cow.
About a third of the building
has been blown away.
It was staggering, the
potential casualties and deaths.
And I remember saying, "God,
I don't want to die today."
It was a terrifying attack... I was so
hoping that it was not an American.
that left an
entire nation disillusioned.
It was an act of cowardice,
and it was evil.
It was a game-changer.
It remains the
worst act of domestic terrorism
in American history, perpetrated
by one of our own...
a decorated Army veteran
of the first Gulf War.
You traitor!
The Oklahoma City bombing, next.
Everybody get out of here now!
Watch that light!
Press the alarm!
Watch the light!
Oh, my God! Hurry!
It's all right.
Go to the back door.
Okay. I'm ready.
Okay, let's go.
Tammy, you can see thick black smoke billowing
from the Federal Court Building downtown.
We are seeing literally dozens
of people that are bleeding.
Some of them, you can't even make
them out, they are so badly injured.
The impact was
immediate and nationwide.
An explosion in Oklahoma City with worldwide
implications and enormous consequences.
The bombing has sent
shockwaves through Washington.
There is increased security
nationwide.
The Pentagon has activated
its emergency disaster response.
It could be a contractor.
It could be a wacko.
It could be a professional.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist
to create this kind of bomb.
As the smoke began to clear, two questions
reverberated across the country... who and why?
The answers would be shocking.
The man behind the devastation
was an American.
His name... Timothy McVeigh.
Tim McVeigh was one of ours.
He was a war hero.
He grew up in the suburbs of
Buffalo, and we needed to know.
There was a sense, an obligation,
to find out who this man was.
Timothy McVeigh was born on April 23, 1968,
in the town of Lockport in upstate New York.
By all accounts, he had an ordinary
childhood and adolescence.
We were never told anything
that would have gave you warning
that he was gonna do something
like this.
In fact, as a teenager, he was the young
man that people in the neighborhood
would choose to
babysit their kids.
He was a good student.
He was bright, above-average
intelligence.
Sometimes you look at the history
of severe criminal conduct,
and there is childhood abuse or abandonment,
and you can see how someone developed into it.
Nothing striking
in McVeigh's background.
But the young
McVeigh did have a dark side.
While still a teenager, he had
discovered "The Turner Diaries,"
a venomously racist novel about an armed
insurrection led by white supremacists
against an oppressive
federal government.
It describes a truck bombing
of FBI headquarters
in Washington, D.C., shortly after 9:00 in the
morning, sounding very similar to what took place
in Oklahoma City
on April 19, 1995.
If Timothy McVeigh
was looking to make a statement,
then he had succeeded
in the worst way possible.
Debris, glass.
It looks as though emergency
crews are on the scene.
The incredible explosion had ripped apart the
9-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building,
hit with the force of
roughly two tons of TNT.
The air inside was whipped into a churning
tornado of glass shards and choking black smoke.
One floor pancaked onto the next, crushing
and trapping men, women, and children below.
The roof has collapsed.
The second floor
held a daycare center.
The lucky ones staggered into
the street, some barely alive.
What the heck happened?
I saw a yellow flash, and then
everything went pitch black.
The force of the blast
bent me over my desk.
The whole back of the building
just fell in on us.
Everyone along our set of offices had back
injuries, head injuries, neck, bleeding, glass.
I felt pain on my left side of my face and
popping noises, and it was the glass shards.
It just kept falling.
It was a horrible noise.
Horrible noise.
And I remember saying, "God, I don't want to die
today, and I don't want to die in this building,
and if it's all right with you,
I'd like to die later."
It felt like an earthquake.
Something actually shook our television
station, and that's five miles away.
In those first frantic minutes, no one was
quite sure what had caused the explosion.
Initially, we thought it
might have been a gas explosion
because we had had to evacuate
the office two or three weeks
earlier because there was
a gas leak downtown.
I thought that a war
had started.
I thought that Oklahoma City had been bombed,
that we had been attacked by another country.
I thought that the explosion was an
atomic blast from Tinker Air Force Base.
I was trying to make sense
out of it.
I did not think it was a bomb.
They have dog teams here searching
for survivors and for bodies.
Scores of people have been killed
outright and hundreds more injured.
The blast radius encompasses
a 16-block area,
but the Murrah building
is ground zero.
Got a stretcher!
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
Firearms was headquartered there,
and some of its members
still are missing.
Social Security
was located there.
A childcare center
was located there.
Initial estimates that were coming in was
that there had been perhaps 1,000 people.
It was staggering the potential
casualties and deaths
that could have been caused
by this bombing.
Everything around the building
was still on fire.
Cars across the street
were on fire.
The trees that were there
were on fire.
People at this hour
are literally trapped
in the Alfred Murrah building
in downtown Oklahoma City.
Get back!
Everybody, get back!
Get back!
Get back!
They have found a bomb
in the building.
90 minutes after the blast, a new
panic radiates through the streets
when first responders come across
what appears to be a second bomb.
The rescue operation is suspended, and
a 4-block area is quickly evacuated.
It is, thankfully, a false alarm, but
precious moments have been lost.
By the time the rescue resumes,
investigators have swarmed the area.
First question has been answered... was this
just a freak accidental explosion of some kind,
or was it intentional? We know now... It
is quickly determined that the explosion
at the Federal Building
was caused by a truck bomb.
There are certain things you can look for,
particularly in the case of a large vehicle bomb.
There was a roughly 32-foot
crater in the street.
It appeared to be just about
dead center of the block.
Then investigators
get their first big break.
They learn that a rear-axle housing that
probably came from the truck bomb has landed
around 200 yards
from the bomb site.
I heard something coming through the air, and I
looked up, and you could see this big object
coming straight toward us.
And when it hit the car, it knocked it back
to these other sets of doors back here,
and I looked in front of my car, and there was
that axle laying there, and I thought somebody...
I told my wife... I said,
"It's a car bomb."
Early indications are the bomb was a half-ton
homemade bomb that was made of common fertilizer
and fuel oil.
Fortunately, the axle housing contains the truck's
confidential vehicle identification number.
Using that number, we were able
to trace the vehicle itself
and identify it as a Ford Motor product that
had been made for Ryder rental company.
The Ryder company informs the FBI that
this particular truck had been assigned
to Elliott's body shop in Junction City, Kansas,
more than 270 miles north of Oklahoma City.
FBI agents discover that the truck
had been rented two days earlier.
The rental documents themselves showed that
it had been rented by a Robert "Bob" Kling.
We had no idea who Robert Kling was
or whether he was a real person.
An employee provides a detailed description of
Kling and another man he believed was with him.
Who was Robert Kling, and why
had he just murdered nearly 200
men, women, and children?
Within 24 hours, the nation
would learn the stunning truth.
Let there be no room for doubt... we
will find the people who did this.
It's one of the most terrifying
days in American history.
This is just devastating... smoke
and debris and fire on the ground.
There are numerous injuries.
The human toll is overwhelming... 168
people killed, at least 650 injured.
Among the dead are 19 children.
There's very little hope for those
that are left in that building.
The Oklahoma City bombing will go down in
history as one of those elemental moments
that people will remember
where they were at the time.
This is the grisly, meticulous
search effort to find bodies.
Less than 90 minutes after the blast,
about 75 miles north of Oklahoma City,
state trooper Charlie Hanger stops a 1977
Mercury Marquis for not having a license plate.
The driver of the car is one
Timothy James McVeigh.
When he got out of the car, he
looked like a clean-cut young man
that had a military-type
appearance.
He had a short haircut.
He also had a light windbreaker jacket on, and
it was zipped up just slightly at the bottom.
But as he was removing his billfold from his
right rear pocket, that jacket tightened up,
and I could see a bulge under his left
arm that appeared to me to be a weapon,
and I grabbed the bulge
on the outside of his jacket
and instructed him to, you know,
get his hands up and turn around.
At the same time, I was drawing my weapon
and stuck it to the back of his head.
He said, "My weapon is loaded,"
and I nudged him a little bit with the barrel
of my weapon, and I said, "Well, so is mine."
Hanger arrests McVeigh for carrying a concealed
weapon, never imagining that his prisoner
is the Oklahoma City bomber.
Initially, the name McVeigh means
nothing to bombing investigators.
They're looking for Robert Kling, the man who
rented the Ryder truck in Junction City, Kansas.
It seems hard to believe that all this
destruction was the work of only two men.
The next day, armed with sketches
of Kling and a suspected companion,
law-Enforcement officers canvass
the entire area.
One agent was assigned the Dreamland Motel,
and when he walked in, he talked to the owner
of that particular place,
and he asked her,
"Has anyone been in here that
had a Ryder truck with him?"
And she said, "Actually,
there washere recently."
So the agent decided to show her the artist's
conception, and she looked at it and said,
"That really looks like the
fellow who rented room 25."
He had rented the room
in the name of Tim McVeigh.
The Ryder rental truck had been
rented in the name of Robert Kling,
so there was some question as to which was
the true name, if either were a true name.
So, we do a records search through our
national crime information center
to see if any Timothy McVeighs
had been arrested
anywhere in
the United States recently.
And to our surprise, we learned that a Timothy
McVeigh has been arrested in Noble County,
which is about 75 miles north of Oklahoma City
and was arrested the morning of the bombing.
It turned out that he was still there but he
was getting ready to be released on bail.
So, we put a hold on him until our
agents could get there to interview him.
Was this the same Timothy McVeigh
that was at the Dreamland Motel?
At this point, we don't
necessarily know.
Our agents tried to interview
Timothy McVeigh.
When they approached him, they asked
him, "Do you know what we're here for?"
And he said, "Probably about
that Oklahoma City thing."
And he gave us his name, rank, and serial
number and refused to talk to us anymore.
In Washington, Attorney General
Janet Reno announces the arrest.
I am pleased to announce
that one of the individuals
believed to be responsible for Wednesday's
terrible attack has been arrested.
I remind everyone that
John Doe ♪2 remains at large.
You murderer!
When McVeigh is taken from the local
courthouse to be transported to Oklahoma City,
he is met by an angry crowd
and screams of "Baby killer!"
You can rot in hell!
Is it the act of someone who wishes the United
States government and its entire environs ill?
I was so hoping that it was
not an American.
It's hard to believe
Americans blowing up Americans.
It just boggled my mind.
What Tim McVeigh did was the worst act of
domestic terrorism in American history.
The entire country was shocked and riveted that
somebody could come from white-bread suburbia
and commit such
a hellacious act.
I have a daughter that's 3, and to think
that she'll grow up in this is... scary.
Investigators are certain that McVeigh
is the John Doe ♪1 in the police sketch,
but they still have not
identified John Doe ♪2.
John Doe ♪2... if the FBI can't
find him, does he exist?
FBI chief Louis Freeh
sent him this message...
"There is no place on Earth
where you will be safe."
The Michigan address on McVeigh's driver's license
is the home of a man named James Nichols.
It's a critical development.
Nichols' brother Terry has been
close friends with McVeigh
since they served together
in the Army.
Like McVeigh, Nichols is known
to harbor anti-government views.
Terry Nichols, just
four days before the blast,
took out a new insurance policy
on his pickup truck.
An arrest warrant is quickly issued, and later
that same day, Nichols turns himself in.
By now, the rescue operation
at the Murrah building
has become a recovery effort.
Authorities in this building behind
me are coming across more bodies.
The search for bodies will
last for two full weeks.
Most of the survivors wanted
to go to most of the funerals,
and that's tough going to 16
funerals, let me tell you.
That was... that was really
hard, but we needed to do it.
Two women are believed
to be still in the building.
The third's an elderly man...
Finally, on may 5, 1995,
with three victims still buried in the
rubble, the search comes to an end.
This was not two or three people from this
city or two or three people from that city.
This was Oklahoma City.
The terrorism was directed
at the city.
The terrorism was directed
at its people.
It was the sword at the heart
of Oklahoma City.
On April 21, 1995, Timothy McVeigh is
arrested and charged with the bombing
of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City.
Oklahoma attorney Stephen Jones is
appointed as McVeigh's public defender.
Jones immediately rejects the
possibility of an insanity defense.
Timothy McVeigh was not insane.
He was rational.
He was interviewed by several
psychologists and psychiatrists.
He didn't have any obvious mental
disorder or emotional disorder.
The question comes up,
why Is a non-mentally ill individual going to
conduct a bombing which kills hundreds of people?
I don't want people to
misread what I'm about to say,
but I was surprised at how
affable and likable he appeared
to be for a man who had killed
168 people in cold blood.
Reporters Dan Herbeck and Lou Michel spent
more than 70 hours interviewing McVeigh,
trying to gain some insight into what
led him to become a domestic terrorist.
By all accounts, an early turning point for
McVeigh comes in 1988, when he joins the Army.
While stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia,
he and his roommate Michael Fortier
bond with their platoon leader, Terry Nichols,
over a shared distrust of the federal government.
McVeigh took an instant liking to him,
and he loved hearing Nichols spout off
about his theories about
government and politics.
McVeigh serves during Operation Desert Storm in
1991 and is awarded a Bronze Star for valor.
During his service, he kills
at least two enemy combatants.
One thing he did brag to me
about was, in Saudi Arabia,
when he was there in the war,
he was a gunner on a Bradley,
and he told me one time about when he was
shooting at an Iraqi bunker and a guy came out
and was waving his hands, trying to surrender
and stuff, and McVeigh started shooting at him.
With a 25-millimeter cannon,
started shooting at him.
He said it was 1,100 meters, and the
first round hit the guy in the head.
After returning from the war,
McVeigh hopes to join the Special Forces but
quits because he is physically unprepared.
One of McVeigh's goals from early on in
entering the Army was Special Forces.
When it didn't work out for him with
the Special Forces, he lost his focus.
McVeigh is discharged from the
Army on December 31, 1991.
He begins to drift around the country,
taking odd jobs and attending gun shows.
He was totally against
any kind of gun control.
He was totally in favor of government leaving
people alone, letting them do what they want to do.
Distrust of a large central government
goes back to our independence.
It's written into
our Constitution.
The problem is when it's taken
to its extremes.
And Timothy McVeigh was the
extreme of that ideology.
But he doesn't seem to be destructive until
two tragic events in the early 1990s
incite McVeigh
to embrace violence.
In August 1992, Deputy U.S. Marshals and FBI
agents are involved in a deadly confrontation
in Northern Idaho with an alleged
White Supremacist named Randy Weaver.
Weaver is suspected of selling
illegal firearms.
During an 11-day standoff, Weaver's son, his
wife, and a Deputy U.S. Marshal are killed.
Then, on February 28, 1993, following
a gun battle between the ATF
and members of a religious group
called the Branch Davidians,
federal agents lay siege to the
group's compound near Waco, Texas.
A suspected cache of illegal weapons
is at the center of the controversy.
McVeigh was just absolutely in a
rage over both of those incidents.
But the one thing that pushed
him over the edge and turned him
into a terrorist
was the Waco incident.
At one point, McVeigh drives
to Waco to observe the siege.
He went and parked his car nearby, and
he was selling anti-government pamphlets
and giving interviews to at
least one reporter that day
about how much he distrusted
the U.S. government.
During an assault by the FBI on April 19th, the
Branch Davidian compound is engulfed by fire.
At least 76 men, women, and
children die during the inferno.
McVeigh told us that he was convinced that
the U.S. government purposely murdered
women and children
at the Waco compound.
It was all part of an effort to
destroy gun rights in America.
The triggering moment was Waco.
He was there, and he decided that
the government had gone too far.
He was going to start
his own war.
And the first strike would be aimed
at the heart of the country.
For McVeigh and his Army buddy
Terry Nichols,
targeting a government building
was dramatic and symbolic.
They chose the Alfred P. Murrah Federal
Building in downtown Oklahoma City,
which housed 14 federal agencies, including
the Secret Service, the DEA, and the ATF.
McVeigh believed that his bombing would
be the opening salvo in a conflict
against an illegitimate,
tyrannical federal government
that needed to be brought
down to its knees.
On August 10, 1995, a federal grand
jury charges Timothy McVeigh
and Terry Nichols
with 11 criminal counts,
including 8 counts of murder.
That figure is based upon the number of federal
law-enforcement officials killed in the blast.
On April 24, 1997, two years after the bombing...
McVeigh's trial begins in Denver, Colorado.
The prosecution presents first and lays out a
timeline of events that led up to the bombing.
By mid-1994, McVeigh and Nichols, along
with their Army friend Michael Fortier,
were ready to put their plan
into action.
McVeigh decided that the most effective
weapon would be a truck bomb.
In September 1994, McVeigh and Nichols
begin stockpiling ammonium nitrate,
a fertilizer
often used in truck bombs.
When you combine that ammonium nitrate,
which is the oxidizer, with a fuel,
then you have
an explosive mixture.
It's cheap, it's readily available, and
it's not particularly complicated to make.
Over the next few months, the two men
start quietly gathering more components,
including racing fuel,
explosive charges,
and 544 blasting caps they steal
from a quarry in Marion, Kansas.
Then, that December, McVeigh and Michael Fortier
go to Oklahoma City to case the Murrah building.
We know for certain that McVeigh
examined multiple
federal buildings.
He, in particular, scouted out the
Murrah building on multiple occasions.
We know that because he took Michael
Fortier directly to the Murrah building
and said that after his examination
of all the potential targets,
this is the one
he was gonna hit.
McVeigh picks
April 19th as the date.
Known as Patriots' Day, it's revered by many
in the right-wing anti-government movement.
On April 19th, you have the first shot fired
in Lexington in the American Revolution.
On that day, Waco occurs in 1993, and then two
years later, McVeigh blows up his truck bomb
in front of the Murrah building.
At some point, Fortier decides
to not take part in the bombing.
In fact, in a later plea bargain, he will
agree to testify against his co-conspirators.
In March 1995, McVeigh creates a fake driver's
license with the name Robert D. Kling
and a birth date
of April 19, 1972.
On April 14, McVeigh buys the
yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis
from a used-car dealer
in Junction City, Kansas.
The next day, McVeigh reserves the
Ryder truck from Elliott's Body Shop,
using the Robert D. Kling alias.
On April 16th, McVeigh and Nichols
drive the Mercury to Oklahoma City.
McVeigh parks it several blocks
away from the Murrah building.
He removes the license plates from the
car and leaves a note... "Not abandoned.
Please do not tow.
Will move by April 23rd.
Needs battery and cable."
Two days later, McVeigh and Nichols rendezvous
at Geary Lake State Park, near Junction City,
where they assemble the bomb
in the truck.
The ammonium nitrate and the fuel would
have been mixed in some barrels...
something akin
to a 55-gallon plastic barrel.
Those barrels were then likely connected with
this detonating cord, which led to the boosters,
and then, ultimately, that detonating
cord would have come together
where the detonators
or blasting caps were.
But at the last minute, Terry Nichols,
like Michael Fortier, bails out.
As time grew near to the time of the
bombing, Nichols got cold feet.
He decided he didn't
want to do that.
He decided that was
going too far.
McVeigh screamed at him, threatened
him, may have threatened to kill him.
On the morning of April 19th, McVeigh, now on his
own, drives the Ryder truck into Oklahoma City.
At 8:57 A.M., security cameras
at the Regency Tower
apartment building a few blocks
west of the Murrah building
catch the Ryder truck parked
across the street.
Investigators surmise this is when
McVeigh lights the first fuse.
A few minutes later,
McVeigh moves the truck up,
lights the second fuse, and parks on
the north side of the Murrah building.
He then exits the truck
and begins walking rapidly
to the yellow Mercury,
parked four blocks away.
At the Federal Building,
the work day is starting.
Hundreds of people
are already inside.
An explosion downtown.
About a third of the
building has been blown away.
The whole front of
the Federal Building is gone.
McVeigh is only two blocks
away when the bomb detonates.
But he makes it to the getaway car
and heads north on Interstate 35,
where he is soon stopped for
driving a vehicle without tags.
Among the items found after his arrest is a
business card for a military-supply store.
On the back is a handwritten note...
"TNT at $5 a stick. Need more."
There's no question in my mind that
Timothy McVeigh wanted to get caught,
wanted to become a martyr, wanted the U.S.
government to execute him.
He left a trail of bread crumbs
for the federal agents.
He was seeking the deluxe-suicide-by-cop
execution package.
As nearly 2,500 newspeople begin
to settle in for the trial
outside the Federal Courthouse,
so is the city of Denver.
During his trial, Timothy McVeigh does
not deny that he set the truck bomb.
He instructs his lawyers to use a necessity
defense... that he acted in self-defense
against an oppressive
federal government.
McVeigh looked at the federal
trial as a multimillion-dollar
soap box for his anti-government views... that he
felt he had no choice but to blow up a building
and kill 168 people.
Is everything still all right?
Great.
You have no complaints?
No, nothing.
They resolve every problem
that I bring up.
Okay.
So, the situation here
is a lot better than it was?
Day and night.
Good. Good.
In his distorted world view, his
actions were a justifiable response
to what he considered violence perpetrated
by the government against its own people.
But defense attorney Stephen Jones
knew a necessity case was unwinnable,
so he chose a different course, arguing that
McVeigh was only part of a much larger conspiracy.
The greatest mystery of the
Oklahoma City bombing case
is who else besides Tim McVeigh, Terry
Nichols, and Michael Fortier were involved?
Because there were
most assuredly others.
Much of the
speculation centered on the man
reportedly seen with McVeigh
at the truck-rental company.
Known as John Doe ♪2, the description did not
fit either Terry Nichols or Michael Fortier.
Investigators concluded that
John Doe ♪2 never existed.
We found a gentleman that had been in there that
generally fit the description of John Doe ♪2,
but it turned out it had been
on a different day.
He'd been in there with a friend
that had rented a Ryder truck.
So, we now realized that it was
a misidentification of people
transposing two different events and putting
two different occurrences together.
McVeigh swore to us over and over
again that there was no John Doe ♪2.
No one was with him on the day
of the bombing.
The biggest misconception out there about
the Oklahoma City bombing, in my view,
is that this was something
that sprang from the brain
of Timothy McVeigh, was
masterminded by Timothy McVeigh,
and substantially carried out
by Timothy McVeigh
with a little bit of help
from Terry Nichols.
If there were
other people involved
with the bombing, who were they?
Some believe there may have been a
connection between McVeigh and Elohim City,
a so-called Christian Identity
Community in Northeastern Oklahoma,
about 170 miles from Oklahoma
City, near the Arkansas border.
Christian Identity is
essentially a religion that says
that white Anglo-Saxon Americans
are the true children of Israel
and Jews are subhuman, essentially, and
black people are not even human at all.
During the early 1990s, a number of far-right
extremists had reportedly spent time at Elohim City.
This was an interesting time.
You had a number of anti-government groups
that were taking shape, arming themselves,
building compounds throughout the
country, establishing their own laws,
really setting themselves apart
from mainstream cities
and locations on purpose,
and believing, then,
that not only people of other faiths or
ethnicities or nationalities were the enemy
but that the United States
government was the biggest enemy.
The question that recurs is, what was the
connection between Tim McVeigh and Elohim City?
Tim McVeigh said
he never went there.
There are people, however, who claim
to have seen McVeigh at Elohim City.
And probably the strongest
evidence that he was there
is a ticket he received from
an Arkansas highway patrolman
about 4 miles into Arkansas from Oklahoma on a
road that takes you straight to Elohim City.
So, if he wasn't at Elohim City,
where was he?
Timothy McVeigh made some
calls to Elohim City.
He drove near the area, we know.
But beyond that, any connection to Elohim City
or the notion that there were others involved
is speculation heaped
on top of speculation.
But even assuming others were involved, why would
McVeigh so strongly insist that he acted alone,
with help only
from Nichols and Fortier?
He believed that in lying, he would protect
the others so they wouldn't be convicted.
And he spun a series of lies
to shield the others.
I think it's possible that there were
other people that helped along the way
but did not know they were
helping with the bombing.
But I believe that the only ones
who actually knew what they were
working on were the three men
that were punished
by the government... McVeigh,
Fortier, and Nichols.
Justice is served!
We got him!
Two years and 44 days after the worst
terrorist attack on United States soil,
a verdict has been rendered in the
bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh.
On June 2, 1997, Timothy McVeigh is found guilty
on all 11 counts of murder and conspiracy.
He is sentenced to death.
Outside the courthouse in Denver, tears,
smiles, and all emotions in between.
Later that year, on December 24th,
Terry Nichols is also convicted.
He is currently serving Life at the
Federal Supermax prison in Colorado.
For cooperating, Michael Fortier
receives a 12-year sentence.
He is now part of the
witness protection program.
People are going to remember Timothy
McVeigh as a murderer, not a martyr.
On June 11, 2001, Timothy
McVeigh is put to death
at the Federal Correctional
Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Timothy James McVeigh has been
executed by lethal injection.
It is the first
federal execution in 38 years.
McVeigh, even at the point he was being executed,
never flinched, never changed his mind,
never expressed regret, but right
to the point of his death,
McVeigh sustained his belief
and did not show remorse.
Just over a month
after the Oklahoma City bombing,
what was left of the Murrah
Federal Building was demolished.
Today the site is home to the Oklahoma
City National Memorial & Museum.
In addition to a reflecting pool,
there is a field of empty chairs...
168 handcrafted sculptures
that represent the victims.
The memorial is a very
special place.
I think it really is a tribute
to those who were killed
and those who survived
and those changed forever.
It's just a positive thing
that came out of a negative
situation that we want people not to
forget but realize if a bad thing happens,
you can get through it.
Claudia and Jim Denny's children, Brandon
and Rebecca, were two of six kids
at the daycare center
who survived the blast.
Rebecca was in the hospital for 10
days, released in pretty decent shape.
She looked horrible, but
she was in pretty good shape.
Brandon, in 1995,
spent 126 days hospitalized.
The first 45 days, he had
four major brain surgeries.
They could not tell me for
35 days if Brandon would live.
They informed us that if he did survive, he would
more than likely never walk or talk again.
But we have a young man who's now 21 years
old, and he's a walking, talking example
of what miracles are all about.
The Oklahoma City bombing remains the worst
domestic-terrorist act in American history.
It changed the country in ways
that are still being felt.
People forget how different the world
was when the bombing happened,
and I think it shattered, across the world,
people's feelings of safety and security,
because if it can happen in Oklahoma
City, it can happen anywhere.
If it can happen to me,
it can happen to anyone.
We became a more
cautious society.
Barriers went up around
federal buildings.
You have more security.
The seeds of Homeland Security were
actually planted by Timothy McVeigh.
There were other
changes, as well.
The attack led to significant
engineering improvements
that allow buildings to better withstand
excessive forces, whether man-made or natural,
and legislation passed
in the wake of the disaster
has given greater voice
to the victims and families
left behind by attacks
like the Oklahoma City bombing.
Timothy McVeigh believed that
he was gonna cause people
to rise up and rebel
against their government.
This was gonna be the start
of the revolution.
And what happened was
the total opposite.
You saw a community in total support of its law
enforcement, of its firemen, of its government.
It shows that when we put our hearts and our minds
together, we can make something good happen
out of something terrible.
But resilience alone can't
protect against every threat.
Events continue to demonstrate that
free societies must remain vigilant.
The tragic bombing that killed 3
and injured 250
at the 2013 Boston marathon
is a stark example.
Almost certainly by coincidence, it happened on
Patriots' Day... virtually 18 years to the day
after Timothy McVeigh attacked
Oklahoma City.