ExtremismLedger
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Timothy McVeigh

Overview

Timothy James McVeigh (1968-2001) was convicted and executed for carrying out the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which killed 168 people, including 19 children, and injured several hundred more. At the time, it was the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in United States history.

Background and stated motivation

McVeigh was a decorated U.S. Army veteran who served in the 1991 Gulf War. According to the Bill of Rights Institute, McVeigh said he was motivated to bomb the federal building by the 1993 siege at Waco, Texas, and the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, which he viewed as examples of the federal government using excessive, lethal force against its own citizens. He deliberately chose April 19 -- the second anniversary of the fatal end of the Branch Davidian siege at Waco -- as the date of the bombing. ExtremismLedger's own classification of McVeigh's anti-government ideology is an editorial judgment drawn from these documented facts, not itself a separate factual claim.

McVeigh was never a formal member of an organized militia group. Reporting from around the time of his trial found that leaders of existing militia organizations explicitly disclaimed him -- Militia of Montana spokesman John Trochmann said "we or no one that we know of feel he is a martyr for anything," and militia members widely viewed McVeigh as an outsider rather than one of their own, according to ABC News. This profile does not characterize McVeigh as a member of, or formally affiliated with, the militia movement.

Role in the bombing

McVeigh rented the Ryder truck used to carry the bomb, participated in assembling the ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosive device, and drove and parked the truck at the Murrah Building before detonating it. He was indicted in August 1995 on 11 federal counts, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, use of a truck bomb to kill people, and eight counts of murder of federal law enforcement officers (one for each officer killed).

Trial, conviction, and execution

McVeigh was found guilty on all 11 counts on June 2, 1997, and sentenced to death. His execution, originally scheduled for May 16, 2001, was postponed by Attorney General John Ashcroft after the FBI belatedly disclosed roughly a thousand pages of investigative documents to McVeigh's defense team; the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General later reviewed the disclosure failure. Ashcroft stated that a review of the belated material found no evidence undermining McVeigh's guilt. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on June 11, 2001 -- the first federal execution in the United States in 38 years.

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