Oklahoma City bombing
On April 19, 1995, American anti-government extremist Timothy McVeigh, assisted by Terry Nichols, detonated a makeshift bomb stored in a rental truck parked in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in an act of domestic terrorism. The attack killed 167 people, injured 684, and destroyed more than a third of the building. The attack also destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings, destroyed 86 vehicles and caused an estimated $652 million in damages. During rescue operations after the bombing, a rescue worker was killed after being struck on the head by falling debris, bringing the total death toll to 168. The bombing remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
Within 90 minutes of the explosion, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for illegal weapons possession. Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested soon after the forensics linked him to the bombing, and within days, both men were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, a veteran of the Gulf War, rented a Ryder truck, which he later filled with the explosives used in the attack. Nichols had assisted McVeigh in planning the attack, and in making the bomb. McVeigh and Nichols were primarily motivated by their anger at the U.S. federal government, particularly its handling of the law enforcement sieges at Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993, as well as the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. McVeigh had timed the retaliatory attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the end of the siege in Waco and the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first engagements of the American Revolution.
The official Federal Bureau of Investigation report on the bombing, referred to as "OKBOMB," involved 28,000 interviews, 7,100 lbs of evidence, and nearly one billion pieces of information. When the FBI raided McVeigh's home, they found a telephone number that led them to a farm where McVeigh had purchased supplies for the bombing. The bombers were tried and convicted in 1997. McVeigh was sentenced to death; he was executed via lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the U.S. federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In response to the bombing, U.S. Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which limited access to habeas corpus in the United States, among other provisions. It also passed legislation to increase the protection around federal buildings to deter future terrorist attacks.
Events
Planning
Motive
The chief conspirators, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, met in 1988 at Fort Benning during basic training for the U.S. Army. McVeigh met Michael Fortier as his Army roommate. The three shared interests in survivalism. McVeigh and Nichols were radicalized by white supremacist and antigovernment propaganda. They expressed anger at the federal government's handling of the 1992 Federal Bureau of Investigation standoff with Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge, as well as the Waco siege, a 51-day standoff in 1993 between the FBI and Branch Davidian members that began with a botched Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms attempt to execute a search and arrest warrant. There was a shootout and ultimately a siege of the compound, resulting in the burning and shooting deaths of David Koresh and 81 others. In March 1993, McVeigh visited the Waco site during the standoff, and again after the siege ended. He later decided to bomb a federal building as a response to the raids and to protest what he believed to be U.S. government efforts to restrict the rights of private citizens, particularly those under the Second Amendment. McVeigh had stated that federal agents were acting like soldiers, thus making an attack on a federal building, an attack on their “command centers.”Target selection
McVeigh later said that, instead of bombing a building, he had contemplated a “campaign of individual assassination.” Potential targets in this campaign included United States Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Hostage Rescue Team sniper Lon Horiuchi. He initially intended to destroy only a federal building, but he later decided that his message would be more powerful if many people were killed in the bombing. McVeigh's criterion for attack sites was that the target should house at least two of these three federal law enforcement agencies: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. He regarded the presence of additional law enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service or the U.S. Marshals Service, as a bonus.A resident of Kingman, Arizona, McVeigh considered targets in Missouri, Arizona, Texas, and Arkansas. He said in his authorized biography that he wanted to minimize non-governmental casualties, so he ruled out Simmons Tower, a 40-story building in Little Rock, Arkansas, because a florist's shop occupied space on the ground floor. In December 1994, McVeigh and Fortier visited Oklahoma City to inspect what would become the target of their campaign: the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
The nine-story building, built in 1977, was named for a federal judge and housed 14 federal agencies, including the DEA, ATF, Social Security Administration, and recruiting offices for the Army and Marine Corps.
McVeigh chose the Murrah building because he expected its glass front to shatter under the impact of the blast. He also believed that its adjacent large, open parking lot across the street might absorb and dissipate some of the force, and protect the occupants of nearby non-federal buildings. McVeigh also believed that the open space around the building would provide better photo opportunities for propaganda purposes. He planned the attack for April 19, 1995, to coincide with the second anniversary of the Waco siege and the 220th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. Rumors have alleged that the bombing was also connected to the planned execution of Richard Snell, an Arkansas white supremacist who was a member of the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord and who was due to be executed the day the bombing took place. Prior to his execution, Snell predicted that a bombing would take place that day. Though his execution was not confirmed to be a motive for the bombing, Fort Smith–based federal prosecutor Steven Snyder told the FBI in May 1995 that Snell wanted to blow up the Oklahoma City building as revenge for the IRS raiding his home.
Gathering materials
McVeigh and Nichols bought or stole the materials they needed to manufacture the bomb and stored them in rented sheds. In August 1994, McVeigh obtained nine binary-explosive Kinestiks from gun collector Roger E. Moore in Arkansas, and with Nichols ignited the devices outside Nichols's home in Herington, Kansas. On September 30, 1994, Nichols bought forty bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from Mid-Kansas Coop in McPherson, Kansas, enough to fertilize of farmland at a rate of of nitrogen per acre, an amount commonly used for corn. Nichols bought an additional bag on October 18, 1994. McVeigh approached Fortier and asked him to assist with the bombing project, but he refused.McVeigh and Nichols then robbed Moore in his home of $60,000 worth of guns, gold, silver, and jewels, transporting the property in the victim's van. McVeigh wrote Moore a letter in which he claimed that government agents had committed the robbery. Items stolen from Moore were later found in Nichols's home and in a storage shed he had rented.
In October 1994, McVeigh showed Michael and his wife Lori Fortier a diagram he had drawn of the bomb he wanted to build. McVeigh planned to construct a bomb containing more than of ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed with about of liquid nitromethane and of Tovex. Including the weight of the sixteen 55-gallon drums in which the explosive mixture was to be packed, the bomb would have a combined weight of about. McVeigh originally intended to use hydrazine rocket fuel, but it proved too expensive. McVeigh and his accomplices then attempted to purchase drums of nitromethane at various NHRA Drag Racing Series events during the season. His first attempt was at the Sears Craftsman Nationals, held at Heartland Motorsports Park in Pauline, Kansas. World Wide Racing Fuels representative Steve Lesueur, one of three dealers of nitromethane, was at his unit when he noted a "young man in fatigues" wanted to purchase nitromethane and hydrazine. Another fuel salesman, Glynn Tipton, of VP Racing Fuels, testified on May 1, 1997, about McVeigh's attempts to buy nitromethane and hydrazine. After the event, Tipton informed Wade Gray of Texas Allied Chemical, a chemical agent for VP Racing Fuels, who informed Tipton of the explosiveness of a nitromethane and hydrazine mixture. McVeigh, using an assumed name, then called Tipton's office. Suspicious of his behavior, Tipton refused to sell McVeigh the fuel.
The next round of the NHRA championship tour was the Chief Auto Parts Nationals at the Texas Motorplex in Ennis, Texas, where McVeigh posed as a motorcycle racer and attempted to purchase nitromethane on the pretext that he and some fellow bikers needed it for racing. However, there were no nitromethane-powered motorcycles at the meeting, and he did not have an NHRA competition license. Lesueur again refused to sell McVeigh the fuel because he was suspicious of McVeigh's actions and attitudes, but VP Racing Fuels representative Tim Chambers sold McVeigh three barrels. Chambers questioned the purchase of three barrels, when typically no more than five gallons would be purchased by a Top Fuel Harley rider, and the class was not even raced that weekend.
McVeigh rented a storage space in which he stockpiled seven crates of Tovex “sausages,” 80 spools of shock tube, and 500 electric blasting caps, which he and Nichols had stolen from a Martin Marietta Aggregates quarry near Marion, Kansas. He decided not to steal any of the of ANFO he found at the scene, as he did not believe it was powerful enough. McVeigh made a prototype bomb that was detonated in the desert to avoid detection.
Later, speaking about the military mindset with which he went about the preparations, he said, "You learn how to handle killing in the military. I face the consequences, but you learn to accept it." He compared his actions to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, rather than the attack on Pearl Harbor, reasoning it was necessary to prevent more lives from being lost.
File:Detailed map of Junction City, Kansas.png|thumb|A detailed map of Junction City, Kansas, the general location where McVeigh purchased the Ryder truck used for the bomb. Grandview Plaza, the former location of the Dreamland Motel where McVeigh stayed, is just to the east of Junction City along Interstate 70.
On April 14, 1995, McVeigh paid for a room at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas. The next day, he rented a 1993 Ford F-700 truck from Ryder under the name Robert D. Kling, an alias he adopted because he knew an Army soldier named Kling with whom he shared physical characteristics, and because it reminded him of the Klingon warriors of Star Trek. On April 16, he and Nichols drove to Oklahoma City, where he parked a getaway car, a yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis, several blocks from the Murrah Federal Building. The nearby Regency Towers Apartments' lobby security camera recorded images of Nichols' blue 1984 GMC pickup truck on April 16. After removing the car's license plate, he left a note covering the vehicle identification number plate that read, "Not abandoned. Please do not tow. Will move by April 23.." Both men then returned to Kansas.