“A day which will live in infamy”; words used by Franklin Delano Roosevelt that echoed throughout the world. From that speech forward, America declared itself as the international leader of global relations.
Nobody would be able to harm the American people and get away with it. While this iconic phrase was related to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, surely the same can be said of the tragic event which occurred in a location at the heart of the country. On the morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh set off a bomb in Oklahoma City which impacted the nation of America forever.This hindrance is the greatest demonstration of domestic terrorism America has faced to date. In an attempt to voice his disapproval of the way the government controls the people, McVeigh believed striking back against a prominent government target was the best way for his dissatisfaction to be heard. What happened on that spring morning has lasting effects which are still evident today.
There is no getting around the fact that the act Timothy McVeigh performed devastated the lives of many Americans and set America on a new course to criminal defense.Timothy McVeigh came from a rough background, as most of the people responsible for large scale criminal offenses do. His parents were divorced, he lived with his dad, and he was bullied at school; more or less alike to many other teenagers. But what set Timothy McVeigh apart were his fantasies about retaliation.
He wanted to punish others who had made fun of him or taken advantage of him. This led to many drawings in school which included his revenge ideas. What made McVeigh extreme was his hatred for the government. He believed the United States Government was the biggest bully of them all.During his time in high school, McVeigh was introduced to guns by his grandfather and once he graduated, he became infatuated by the Second Amendment.
At age 20 McVeigh decided to join the army due to his growing passion for weapons. McVeigh claimed that the army taught him how to turn off his emotions which would later lead to his detached mindset for the victims of his crime. After only four years in the army, McVeigh was discharged, shortly after not passing the psychological evaluation for the United States Army Special Forces.After not being able to find a suitable, ‘non-liberal’ place to live, McVeigh decided to find some of his army buddies. This was a pointless cycle however and Timothy McVeigh ended up moving back in with his father. His father however did not share the same ideologies as him and so McVeigh moved out to his own apartment.
McVeigh expressed his views by writing to newspapers about taxes and writing to a congressman complaining about the lack of protection police officers provide.His hatred of the government was evident in all of his actions, and he did not enjoy large groups of which he made clear after leaving the NRA. This loathing culminated with an event that determined McVeigh to seek retribution for the government’s lack of accountability. The Waco Siege was the breaking point for Timothy McVeigh and was what made him unwavering in his choice to conspire against America (Russakoff and Kovaleski). McVeigh believed that the government did not handle the situation well and they were unconstitutional in their use of CS gas against the women and children.
Shortly following the Waco Siege, McVeigh moved in with Terry Nichols, a former friend from the army and a future co-conspirator. During this time, Nichols taught Timothy McVeigh how to make bombs out of various materials and McVeigh began ending his ties to childhood friends and family members; foreshadowing what was to come. Timothy McVeigh was resolute at this point to avenge the lives of those killed in the Waco Siege. Along with Terry Nichols, McVeigh began the hunt for a way to get back at the government. His first intentions were to get back at federal agents who had been a part of the Waco incident.
McVeigh contemplated a string of assassinations against the Judge of the Waco case, the Attorney-General of the time, as well as an FBI Agent that killed someone at a crisis in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. When none of these options seemed achievable, and McVeigh could not receive support from any clients at his gun store, he started looking into other means and ways to carry out his plan of action. Since Nichols had begun to educate McVeigh in the bomb making process, they found this to be the most suitable way to make their declaration against the United States.McVeigh believed he would make the loudest statement by bombing a federal building (Michel and Herbeck). After much contemplation over where to bomb and what the criteria for the building needed to be, McVeigh decided he wanted a building with minimal civilian casualties and one that contained the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Other government agencies were bonuses in McVeigh’s eyes. The Alfred P.Murrah building located in downtown Oklahoma City was chosen as their target and they picked a date, April 19, to coincide with the Waco Siege. On the morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols set off a bomb in front of the Murrah building. At 9:02, the bomb, placed in the back of a rented moving truck, exploded on the street corner. McVeigh left the rented Ryder truck parked outside the Murrah Building and followed through with his getaway route.
The explosion left 324 buildings damaged and 168 people dead, including 19 children.Over a third of the building was blown away in the explosion and left a 30-foot wide crater. McVeigh fled from the scene and used a planted getaway car to get out of the downtown area. Ironically, he was arrested an hour and a half after the bombing for his car missing license plates.
Timothy McVeigh was arrested for having driven without plates and the illegal possession of a firearm. At the time of his arrest, McVeigh was wearing a shirt that contained the phrase “sic semper tyrannis” which is the state motto of Virginia as well as the words of John Wilkes Booth after shooting President Abraham Lincoln.Meanwhile, the search for the bomber was kicked off by local officers as well as federal authorities. This manhunt, in which they were searching for John Doe 1, led the agents to find a match on the VIN number from remnants of the rented truck (Serano). They successfully followed the trail of clues leading them to find where McVeigh had stayed, as well as the false address he had been using. It took three days however to realize they already had the man in custody.
After his trial for the gun charges, McVeigh was taken into custody once again by federal agents as further investigation for the bombing was carried out.Instead of admitting to anything, McVeigh demanded an attorney and a bulletproof vest during his transportation. By this point, there was no doubt in the public’s mind that Timothy McVeigh did in fact have a part in the Oklahoma City bombing. In the following days, relief efforts continued to turn up mixed results.
While many people were saved from the building, there was still a massive death count. Victims were taken to hospitals all over town and rescue teams were relentless in their search through the rubble.There was a Pulitzer Prize winning photo taken of a firefighter holding a dying infant. But this baby girl was one of many at the daycare in the Murrah Building who suffered fatal injuries. Outside the devastation of the wreckage, the investigation by the federal government carried on in search of accomplices to McVeigh; hoping to find all of those who needed to be held responsible for this tragedy.
Terry Nichols turned himself in as soon as he learned he was being hunted. He was found to be the leading conspirator along with Timothy McVeigh.Their trials were held in Denver, Colorado as a way to avoid an unfair trial in Oklahoma. McVeigh claimed his reasoning for picking the Murrah Building was because he viewed federal agents as soldiers in a massive army, and that in order to stop the largest amount, he had to take out their command center (McVeigh). McVeigh was found with 11 counts of murder along with conspiracy and was charged with the death penalty. He received the lethal injection on June 11, 2001 becoming the first case of federal execution in 38 years.
Terry Nichols, the co-conspirator, was tried twice. The first time by the Federal Government in which he received life in prison with no possible chance of parole, and the second time was by the State of Oklahoma where he was sentenced to 161 life terms in prison, in regards to the 160 people he killed with the bomb and the one unborn fetus. Nichols is now in a maximum security prison in Colorado. In the aftermath of this tragedy, there was much confusion in how to overcome such a staggering challenge.The logical steps were taken in the city and a memorial was erected near the site where the Murrah Building had once stood. The memorial was opened five years after the bombing occurred and had a total of 700,000 visitors in the first year.
On each end of the memorial are two walls that symbolize the minute before the bombing and the minute after the bombing, with a reflecting pool which represents the bombing itself located in between these two walls. On one side of the pool is a lawn full of bronze chairs that correspond to the names of the victims that died.Each year on the anniversary of the bombing, a day of remembrance is held to reflect on the tragic event that once occurred. The pain caused by the bombing was never eased but justice for the victims was found in the penalty each of the conspirators received. While the blast of the bomb only reached the surrounding area, the devastation of this incident was felt across the country.
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols participated in the greatest account of domestic murder this country has ever seen and the expense was paid by the citizens.Families lost their loved ones and the people lost their hope. It was not long though until the people united together against the grief and disparity and used this event to move forward in American society. While the Oklahoma City Bombing may not be revered as a powerful day in this nation’s history, it will be remembered as a day where the United States stood against the acts of terrorism which attack the country.
And now, once again, America is the front runner as what every nation strives to be like, powerful, steadfast and indomitable
