Looking Back


Savage act of vengeance against the U.S. government.


F BY JERRY OPPENHEIMER


or the employees and visi- tors in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995, was anoth-


er idyllic early spring day. Six hundred federal employees were


already at their desks as an early bird crowd of more than 200 visitors sought assistance in the local offices of the Social Security Administration, the Vet- erans Administration, and the Housing and Urban Development Department. The nine-story concrete and granite


structure, named after a federal judge, was headquarters for 17 federal agen- cies and government law enforcement offices — but not the FBI — as well as a credit union, a day care center, and a snack bar. Outside, no one would have paid


any attention to the Ryder rental truck parked at the building’s north entrance, a normal location for deliv- ery drivers and messengers to bring parcels to the building. Then, at precisely 9:02 a.m., the


world seemingly exploded. A deafening blast emanating from the truck mea- sured an earthquake-like 3.0 on the Richter scale. It was felt more than 50 miles away. The explosion would take the lives of


168 people — including 19 of the 21 chil- dren in the day care center. It left 850 others injured. It was the nation’s worst act of domestic terrorism until the 9/11 attacks six years later. Unlike the Middle Eastern hijackers who flew jets on Sept. 11, 2001, the Mur-


44 NEWSMAX | APRIL 2025


1995


Domestic Terrorists Kill 168 in Federal Building


MCVEIGH


rah bombers had all-American names — Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Both viewed the bombing as justifi-


able against the federal government, and believed the murder of innocents as “collateral damage.” In his mid-20s at the time of the


bombing, McVeigh, a skinny kid, grew up the victim of bullying in a middle- class Buffalo, New York, family. Obsessed with guns, he enlisted in


the Army at 20, earning a Bronze Star for heroism in the Gulf War, where he had earned the rank of sergeant. It’s also where his obsession with weap- onry increased, along with his hostility toward the U.S. government. On the second anniversary of a 1993


attack by U.S. law enforcement on an armed cult compound in Waco, Texas, in which 76 people died, McVeigh planned revenge. He built a 7,000-pound bomb out of


fertilizer, left it in the Ryder truck, lit the fuse, and fled.


The FBI traced the truck to McVeigh,


who was in jail in a neighboring Okla- homa town. He was being held by state police after he was stopped in his get- away car with no identification and carrying an unlicensed Glock. His associate, Nichols, who bought


the fertilizer, was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of federal employees. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. On June 11, 2001, exactly two


months before the 9/11 attacks, at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, McVeigh, 33, was strapped to a gur- ney and administered a lethal injection through a catheter into a vein in his right leg. He was pronounced dead four minutes later. He made no final statement, but left


a poem of defiance, Invictus, by an Eng- lishman, William Ernest Henley. “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”


BUILDING/AP IMAGES / MCVEIGH/BUREAU OF PRISONS/GETTY IMAGES


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