A journalist's reflections on Timothy McVeigh 25 years after Oklahoma City bombing.
Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh told me he did not know what he would encounter on the other side, once the chemicals from the lethal injection killed him.
But on the chance the Pendleton native had an express ticket to hell, he defiantly said he would be in the company of many generals and world leaders who murdered their opposition.
As the first and only journalist to repeatedly interview McVeigh face to face, my job was to keep him talking.
My colleague Dan Herbeck and I needed every scintilla of his thought process, no matter how outrageous, so that we could provide a window into the worst domestic terrorist in U.S. history. We were working on writing a book, “American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing.”
Time was short.
McVeigh had a date with the executioner. He had been convicted of delivering a homemade, 7,000-pound truck bomb that killed 168 innocent people and wounded more than 800 in and around the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
For days, I sat across from McVeigh at the “super-max” prison in Colorado and later on death row in Indiana as he methodically explained his reasoning for the bombing.
He never showed any emotions for the victims, except flashes of anger and profanity.
How dare they call him a coward for lighting the bomb’s two fuses and walking away? McVeigh repeatedly assured me that if the fuses failed to ignite the bomb, he would have returned and shot it at close range with his handgun, sealing his own fate.
It wasn’t easy sitting in a chair across from McVeigh, in a bunker-like concrete cubicle, separated by a thick sheet of Plexiglas with a circular steel vent in its center to allow for our exchange of words.
But as a journalist, it was more than merely my job.
When McVeigh had asked his father, Bill, if he knew of a journalist who could tell his story, my name was suggested.
I lived in rural Niagara County 15 minutes from Bill McVeigh’s house and would often stop to say hello, long after other reporters had lost interest. A tall man who is painfully shy, Bill and I often discussed our common love of vegetable gardening. His son’s name rarely came up.
When Dan and I did write stories about McVeigh or his family, we remembered that they, too, were entitled to fair treatment.
McVeigh had received countless letters from journalists at much bigger newspapers than The Buffalo News, but he was unimpressed with their typed requests beneath fancy letterheads.
After Bill suggested my name, McVeigh sent me a letter asking if I would be interested in writing a book on his life.
And so began an exchange of several letters before our first set of in-person interviews.
Unlike other reporters, I wrote my letters in long hand and on cheap yellow legal pad paper. To solidify our connection, I shared details of my life with him.
I was married and had three kids. My boys and I were active in Cub Scouts. McVeigh, a survivalist, loved the outdoors and shared tips for camping out.
It was mundane yet meaningful enough to unlock the prison doors within a couple of months.
When I said I wanted to include Dan in helping write the book, I explained that there was a lot of ground to cover before the execution. Dan is a great journalist and a guy I would trust my life with.
Tim had served in the Army during the First Gulf War in Iraq and had “battle buddies” to whom he had entrusted his life.
I believe he viewed Dan as my battle buddy. In time, Dan would also sit down with McVeigh for an interview and regularly correspond in letters.
As a civilian, McVeigh was on the side of militias. The enemy was the U.S. government because of the role of federal agents at Ruby Ridge and Waco. In both those events, civilians had been killed.
It soon became clear to me that McVeigh had two sides. There was the friendly, boyish Tim who would go on about the Buffalo Bills or his love of his grandfather who taught him about guns.
But when he discussed how he carried out the bombing, he was a military tactician, hiding or lacking any compassion for those he had blown up. If anything, he took pride in what he had done.
In that prison cubicle, only a few feet away from McVeigh, I sometimes felt like I had stepped into an alternate universe. Was I really hearing this? But there I was sitting and nodding, while my soul ached.
McVeigh enjoyed discussing his coming execution, how he was eager to be done with life and the confines of his prison cell.
I was there when McVeigh, 33, was executed at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., on June 11, 2001.
Unsure of how I should react, I smiled and sort of waved a thumbs up when he looked at me from the table on which he was strapped. Yes, that’s strange. But I knew from all the hours we had spent together that he was getting his final wish – death.
I half expected him to flash a smile, but he looked back stoically in soldier mode.
As I watched the three intravenous tubes fill with chemicals, one at time, and make their way to an unseen incision in his body beneath a white sheet, I could see the life drain out of him.
His skin turned pasty and he died with his eyes open. In the corner of his left eye, I noticed a tear.
President George W. Bush told America “justice” had been served. The execution also served as a warning to others who might be contemplating a terrorist act.
But three months later to the day, 19 terrorists linked to al-Qaida flew airplanes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. A fourth plane almost reached the nation’s capital, but for the bravery of passengers who overpowered terrorists on board. That plane crashed in a remote Pennsylvania field, killing everyone.
Many people at the World Trade Center and Pentagon survived.
There were also many survivors in Oklahoma City and their stories were a crucial part of the book Dan and I were writing.
It hardly seems as if 25 years has passed since the bombing.
Before the coronavirus hit, I spent six days in Oklahoma City. The editors of The News sent me and photographer Sharon Cantillon there to report in words and images the legacy of the bombing.
I can tell you Oklahomans have overcome the horror inflicted by McVeigh.
To me, Oklahoma City is the southwest city of good neighbors. There are new buildings everywhere; its population since the bombing has grown from 400,000 to 650,000.
Most importantly, the site where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building once stood is home to the National Memorial and Museum. It symbolizes good triumphing over evil. It’s also a patch of heaven.
On a stretch of what once was the pavement of N.W. Fifth Street, where McVeigh parked his truck bomb, is a long reflecting pool. On clear days, it mirrors the blue sky. Beside the pool is the Field of Chairs, one for each of the 168 innocent victims who never had the chance to say goodbye to their loved ones.
On the other side of the pool grows the “Survivor Tree,” an American elm, that miraculously withstood the withering blast.
Sharon and I kept returning to the memorial after interviewing survivors and relatives of the dead. Sharon wanted to capture that perfect image of hope mingled with sorrow. She succeeded many times over.
But I believe something else was happening. The frequent returns were inspired by the whispers of our souls, which sought the serenity so abundant at this precious place.
I imagined those lost in the bombing pouring down grace upon the hallowed ground.
At other times, I thought of how some of those I interviewed had interviewed me, asking what McVeigh was like.
Did he say he knew there was a day care in the building?
Some wondered, out of genuine sympathy, how his father was doing.
I answered the questions. I understood I provided them with a connection to the man who had caused them so much pain.
Just as I had let McVeigh plunge deep into my psyche to absorb who he was, I opened myself to their curiosity.
And at the memorial, I imagined myself once again speaking with McVeigh:
Do you see this place? Do you feel its goodness? Did you hear what some of the folks I interviewed said about you?
They forgave you. Or, they rarely ever give you a thought. They spoke about the power of faith and a heaven that is far better than this mortal world.
Do you know what Kari Watkins, the executive director of the National Memorial and Museum, told me?
The museum runs programs devoted to promoting forgiveness, teaches the art of compromise and meeting in the middle, rather than going out and blowing up a building filled with innocent people.
Do you see the Gates of Time at either end of the memorial? One is marked 9:01, the final moment of innocence before your monstrosity exploded at 9:02. At the other end, the gate is marked at 9:03, marking the beginning of healing.
I could visit this place every day and never tire of it.
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