Posted on 10/07/2001 6:35:54 PM PDT by Wallaby
From the Introduction:
This book, in many ways, could not have been written without MeVeigh's cooperation - which, it must be stressed, was given without condition, compensation, or any right of review or approval. But neither could it have been completed without the cooperation of scores of others who have figured in his life. Whenever possible, we have sought out corroborating information that would either support or dismiss MeVeigh's claims, and many people have been helpful in clarifying aspects of the case that have heretofore remained obscure. Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, the two other men convicted in the bombing, were at the top of our list of desired interviews from the start, but a number of attempts to obtain their cooperation proved unsuccessful; McVeigh remains the first and only principal involved in the bombing to cooperate with journalists.Still, in the countless hours of interviews we conducted with law-enforcement officials; relatives of McVeigh, Nichols, and Fortier; and friends and acquaintances of the suspects and bombing victims, we found that each new piece of the puzzle meshed with the rest, and with McVeigh's own self-portrait, into a coherent and consistent picture of the man who finally, with the publication of this book, becomes the confessed bomber of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City.
Who is Timothy McVeigh? We finally have the answers. What our society does with this information remains to be seen. Surely we can learn from this tragedy; surely a better understanding of the mind behind this act can help us all come to terms with humankind's capacity for evil-and our even more remarkable capacity for healing.
-Lou Michel
LOL!
You ignore EXACTLY what you want to and DISREGARD the extensive FOLLOWUP work done by these authors in corroborating Tim's story.
You also IGNORE the fact that a court of law complete with a jury of citizens FOUND Tim GUILTY beyond a SHADOW of a DOUBT.
Of course, you being an obvious conspiracy theorist of a rather high order and having no need for FACT, logic or reasoning in this matter can skip reading the book American Terrorist can continue fantasizing the with the aid of your fellow conspracy theorists ...
As to protecting his family, you haven't a clue what he put them through (AS documented in the book) as it was.
Though he maintains his position that he has no real regrets over his actions, McVeigh has confessed that he feels sorry for what happened to Nichols and Fortier. For all his planning and attention to detail, McVeigh had underestimated the power and breadth of federal conspiracy laws. He had acted under the naive assumption that as long as he delivered and detonated the bomb himself, no one else could be charged. The illegal act, he figured, was purely his own. McVeigh simply hadn't reckoned wth the law."I did not calculate or know enough about conspiracy law to know that my actions could be held against them," he says now. "Because, in a conspiracy, you're all in it as one. Other people's crimes can be held against you." He remains outraged that Fortier and Nichols could face such serious punishment when they had no idea when the bombing was to occur. Perhaps most significant is his claim that the two men had no way of knowing that McVeigh would bomb the building when it was full of people. Nichols never had control of the truck, or knew the time that the blast would occur. "I could have delivered it anytime," McVeigh says. "It was my choice, and my control, to hit that building when it was full, as opposed to eleven P.M.-or three A.M., when it would have been empty, except for possibly a security guard or cleaning crew." McVeigh acknowledges Nichols's involvement in the preparation of the bomb, if only to help dispel the lingering conspiracy theories that surround the case. But he maintains that Nichols's assistance in the mixing of the bomb components came under duress, only after McVeigh had threatened him and his family.
More from 'the book' ...
According to McVeigh, Jones began acting as though he was convinced his client was "delusional." Again and again Jones would send different members of the defense team to El Reno to hear McVeigh recount every detail of the story, only to hear McVeigh give the same version of events each time. Jones even hired an Oklahoma City psychiatrist, Dr. John R. Smith, to evaluate McVeigh and help determine whether McVeigh was delusional or competent to stand trial.Smith, sixty-three at the time, had examined nearly one hundred accused killers as a court-appointed psychiatrist. But he'd never met anyone accused of killing 168 people. Nor had he ever been assigned to a case that hit so close to home. His own home, about a mile from the Murrah Building, had had a front window blown out by the blast. A piece of debris from the bomb had come crashing through a window in an office where Smith's daughter worked, fortunately injuring no one. He was already treating several of the bomb victims, who were traumatized by their experiences. Smith himself had driven past the Murrah Building less than half an hour before the explosion. When Jones's team approached him, they told Smith that they wanted him to judge the mind of "a man who drove off the interstate, set fire to a five-minute fuse, and then set fire to a two-minute fuse."
Smith talked with McVeigh for twenty-five hours, mostly over a five-week period in the spring and summer of 1995. Five years later, McVeigh gave Smith a written release to discuss their interviews with the authors of this book.
Smith found McVeigh very intelligent, with a 126 IQ, and very open to discussing his crime with a psychiatrist. By the second visit, Smith said, McVeigh was openly discussing the bombing, step by step, in chilling detail.
The psychiatrist saw no signs of remorse as McVeigh calmly explained how he designed, built, and delivered his bomb. He talks about this crime like it's some kind of successful science project, Smith thought angrily after one session.
And yet even in this confessed mass murderer Smith found things he liked, and reasons for sympathy. While others saw McVeigh as outgoing and happy-go-lucky, Smith found McVeigh deeply troubled by his parents' divorce and his war experiences. He pictured McVeigh in adolescence, trying to lose himself in the fantasy world of comic books late at night while his parents argued so furiously in the next room that McVeigh actually feared they might kill each other.
Others saw McVeigh as tremendously proud of his accomplishments in the military, but Smith saw a young man who was horrified by the killing of Arab soldiers. He listened closely to McVeigh's nightmarish descriptions of the killing he had done. To Smith, it was tragic that McVeigh never received counseling when he returned to the United States after the war. McVeigh told him he had looked into the possibility of getting treatment at a Veterans Administration hospital in Florida, but backed out when he was told he could not be treated under an assumed name. McVeigh was worried that receiving such counseling would be held against him when he applied for jobs.
Mcveigh told Smith he bad briefly experimented with methamphetamines after leaving the Army, but Smith saw no indications that McVeigh had ever been a heavy user of drugs.
While McVeigh proudly called himself a warrior, Smith could only picture McVeigh killing others from afar - while peering through the sights of a Bradley, or delivering a bomb and leaving the scene, but never face-to-face.
Smith had met many murderers who seemed to enjoy killing. McVeigh was different. His outlook on the bombing was cold and calculating, but Smith could see that McVeigh took no pleasure from the killings at the Murrah Building. McVeigh viewed the bombing as a mission that it was his duty to carry out, and he was convinced the bombing would change government in America.
"I expect to be convicted for the bombing, and I expect to receive the death penalty," McVeigh told the psychiatrist.
McVeigh also told Smith that, in scouting locations for his bombing, he had looked for a target he could bring down without killing a lot of people in surrounding, nongovernment buildings.
Smith concluded that McVeigh's life had been thrown into turmoil by a series of disturbing events: his parents' breakup, the killing he had done in the war, even the tragic death of Terry Nichols's stepson. But the Waco incident, Smith believed, was the flash point for MeVeigh's anger.
As a boy, Smith said, McVeigh had been so upset by his parents' breakup that he created a fantasy world for himself. "He created this superhero role for himself," Smith said. "He fantasized all these monsters, which he fought."
As an adult, McVeigh came to see the U.S. government as the ultimate monster - especially after the Waco incident.
"Waco was not the sole reason for the bombing," Smith said. "But if there had been no Waco, I don'tt believe Tim would have bombed the Murrah Building."
Smith once tried to confront McVeigh about the pain his bomb had caused others. Smith had noted how much McVeigh seemed to enjoy talking to people, and now he tried to use this quality to provoke a reaction from him. "Instead of the death penalty, Tim, they should put you in a tiny little cell, Smith said. "You wouldi't be allowed to talk to anyone, ever again."
McVeigh looked surprised. He stood straight up from his chair. "You'd put me in a little cell like that?" he said.
"Tim, that's what you did to your victims and their families," Smith said. "They'll never be able to communicate with each other again."
The two quickly moved on to other topics. "Tim, have you ever loved anyone?" Smith asked.
"My father and my grandfather," McVeigh quickly answered.
"I noticed you didn't mention your mother or your sisters," Smith remarked.
"Yes," McVeigh said. "I was just noticing that myself."
Smith could see that McVeigh was awkward with women, but he knew that McVeigh had cared deeply about a couple of women in his life. McVeigh once asked Smith if he could take some of his sperm out of the prison and give it to a woman, so she could become pregnant. Smith agreed to look into the legal requirements for such a venture.
Smith said McVeigh also told him of the brief affair he allegedly had with Marife Nichols, the wife of Terry Nichols. Though he was horrified by McVeigh's crime and his cold attitude, Smith did not see him as an evil man. Clinically, he saw him as an essentially decent person who had allowed rage to build up inside him to the point that he had lashed out in one terrible, violent act. "I've seen it many times," Smith maintains. "Nice people do really terrible things."
The psychiatrist reported back to Jones that his client was not delusional - that be knew exactly what he did, and exactly what be was doing now.
As for McVeigh, he considered himself as sane as anyone. In the months after his arrest, he continued his voracious reading of all things antigoverment, and he enjoyed watching TV shows that questioned the government's actions. One night on cable, McVeigh enjoyed a viewing of Brazil, Terry Gilliam's surreal 1985 film about a futuristic society where citizens are dehumanized. One of the characters in the film is Harry Tuttle, a terrorist bomber played by Robert DeNiro. Some people later theorized that McVeigh had chosen the alias Tim Tuttle in honor of DeNiro's character, but the first time he saw the film was inside prison walls.
Delusion returns to FR ...
McVeigh was executed June 11, 2001. Bush was prez at the time.
Do you know whatever happened to this guy?
Don't look it up -- I can do that. I just thought you might already know.
Fancy seeing you on a conspiracy thread. :-)
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