Timothy McVeigh

American terrorist

• Born: April 23, 1968
• Birthplace: Pendleton, New York
• Died: June 11, 2001
• Place of death: Terre Haute, Indiana

Major offense: Oklahoma City bombing

Active: April 19, 1995

Locale: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Sentence: Death by lethal injection; executed June 11, 2001

Early Life

Timothy James McVeigh (mihk-VAY) was born on April 28, 1968, in Pendleton, New York, a small city near Buffalo. His parents were Bill, a worker at a local radiator plant, and Mickey McVeigh. Timothy was the middle sibling between two sisters.

His youth was largely uneventful except for the bullying he experienced in high school and the marital problems he witnessed between his parents, which included several separations. The marriage ended for good in 1986, a few months before McVeigh graduated from high school, when the couple divorced.

Once out of high school, McVeigh entered a local college but soon dropped out. Eventually, he became a security guard, a job that in part reflected his interest in guns, which had been sparked as a child through target shooting with his grandfather. McVeigh also became drawn to the extreme Right during this period. For example, he read Andrew Macdonald’s The Turner Diaries (1980), a fictional account of an attack on a federal government building by a white supremacist.

McVeigh finally appeared to settle on a career in 1988 when he joined the United States Army. Eventually, he rose to the position of sergeant in the First Infantry Division and the operator of the main gun on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. He saw combat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and would later mention to his biographers the traumatic impact of combat on him, particularly when he killed an Iraqi soldier. His shooting prowess was celebrated, however, and he was encouraged by the Army to audition for the Green Berets. McVeigh quickly found himself overwhelmed in this effort. He ended his attempt to join the Green Berets and soon quit the Army as well.

Criminal Career

Back in the United States, McVeigh found it hard to blend back into civilian life and spent time with former military friends, including his chief accomplice for the Oklahoma City bombing, Terry Nichols. McVeigh also became increasingly radicalized over what he perceived as the excessive interference in everyday life by the U.S. government. He soon was selling antigovernment material at different venues and even traveled to Waco, Texas, to protest the U.S. government’s 1993 confrontation with Branch Davidian cult. According to McVeigh, the final straw in his path toward his crime came with the bloody April 19, 1993, ending of the standoff at Waco. His disenchantment with the U.S. government arising out of that event would lead him to conduct an act of terrorism two years later, on the anniversary of its ending.

On that date in 1995, McVeigh drove a rental truck loaded with a massive bomb made primarily out of fertilizer to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. He had selected the federal government building for the ease of access to it and because of the publicity images the attack would generate. At 9:02 a.m., the bomb exploded, killing 168 people, including 19 children. It was the worst terrorist attack on American territory up to that time.

The hunt quickly began for those responsible. McVeigh made little effort to escape capture. His name was quickly linked to the renting of the truck. By then he was already in custody, having been arrested fleeing the explosion because his car did not have a rear license plate on it. In due course, an accomplice, Nichols, who had helped him build the bomb, was also arrested, as was another man who had advance knowledge of the crime.

Legal Action and Outcome

On April 24, 1997, McVeigh’s trial in federal court began. By early June he had been convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection. He challenged the decision, but a federal court rejected his appeal in 2000, and McVeigh announced he would accept his fate. Eventually, the date for his execution at the federal prison at Terre Haute, Indiana, was set for May 16. Five days before, Attorney General John Ashcroft stayed the execution for a month because the Federal Bureau of Investigation had discovered documents related to the case that had not been shared with McVeigh’s defense lawyers. In the end, a court decided that the new evidence was not significant and refused further blocks on the execution. On June 11, 2001, McVeigh became the first federal prisoner to be executed in thirty-eight years.

Impact

At the time of the Oklahoma bombing, the American public largely associated terrorism with foreign perpetrators, especially Middle Easterners. The fact that the worst terrorist attack on American territory had been carried out by an American citizen and military veteran made the event doubly shocking at the time. It prompted a backlash against the American far Right and increased powers for American police forces to combat domestic terrorism. Questions remain about whether others were involved beyond those, including Timothy McVeigh, who were convicted of the crime.

Bibliography

Bennett, David H. Party of Fear: From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History. New York: Vintage, 2001. A history of the far Right, with an updated discussion of the militia movement.

Michel, Lou, and Dan Herbeck. American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. New York: ReaganBooks, 2001. The definitive account of McVeigh’s life and crime, made possible because he consented to extensive interviews with the two reporters.

Sticknew, Brandon M. “All-American Monster”: The Unauthorized Biography of Timothy McVeigh. New York: Prometheus Books, 1996. A journalistic account written shortly after the Oklahoma City bombing.