The Oklahoma City Bombing And The Politics Of Terror Part 6

In May of 1992, McVeigh was promoted to lieutenant at Burns Security, and wrote his National Guard commander that his civilian job required his presence. "But the letter was real vague," said his commander. "It didn't say just what this new job was." Approximately nine months later, when McVeigh was going to be promoted to supervisor, he suddenly quit, saying that he had "more pressing matters to attend to."

Just what these "pressing matters" were is not exactly clear. According to co-worker Carl Lebron, McVeigh told him he was leaving to take a civilian position with the Army in Kentucky painting trucks. He later told Lebron that he became privy to a top-secret project at Calspan called "Project Norstar," which, according to McVeigh, involved bringing drugs into the country via miniature submarine. He told his friend that he was afraid that those responsible for Project Norstar were "coming after him," and he had to leave.

While this explanation may strike one as bizarre, McVeigh wrote his sister Jennifer while he was still in the Army telling her that he had been picked for a highly specialized Special Forces Covert Tactical Unit (CTU) that was involved in illegal activities. The letter was introduced to the Federal Grand Jury. According to former grand juror Hoppy Heidelberg, these illegal activities included "protecting drug s.h.i.+pments, eliminating the compet.i.tion, and population control." While all the details of the letter aren't clear, Heidelberg said that there were five to six duties in all, and that the group was comprised of ten men.

Such units are nothing new. During the Vietnam War, CIA Director William Colby and Saigon Station Chief Ted Shackley (who also ran a ma.s.sive heroin smuggling operation) created what they called Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs), which would capture, torture, and kill suspected Viet Cong leaders.[233]

Former Army CID investigator Gene Wheaton also described a covert unit created by the highly secretive NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), which used a.s.sa.s.sination and torture to eliminate so-called enemies of the state. In 1985, Wheaton was approached by "security consultants" to Vice President Bush's "Task Force on Combating Terrorism" who were working for USMC Lt. Colonel Oliver North (who served under Shackley in Vietnam) and a.s.sociate Deputy FBI Director Oliver "Buck" Revell. "They wanted me to help create a 'death squad' that would have White House deniability to a.s.sa.s.sinate people they would identify as 'terrorists,'" said Wheaton.

Code-named "Zeta Diogenes" in the USAF subset, this secret project, according to Wheaton, "was created in a rage by the covert intelligence leaders.h.i.+p after the failed Bay-of-Pigs operation against Cuba in 1961." Wheaton claims the program continues to the present day.[234]

Anyone who prefers to think that agencies of the U.S. government are above a.s.sa.s.sinating U.S. citizens, not to mention senior U.S. officials where expedient, may wish to bear in mind the following testimony given by Colonel Daniel Marvin, a highly decorated Special Forces Vietnam veteran. While going through Special Forces training at Fort Bragg in 1964, Marvin's group was asked if any members would like to volunteer to take special a.s.sa.s.sination training on behalf of the CIA, eliminating Americans overseas who posed "national security risks." About six people, himself included, volunteered.

"The CIA had agents there all the time at Fort Bragg, in the Special Warfare Center Headquarters," said Marvin. "My commanding officer, Colonel C.W. Patton, called me up to his office one day in the first week... and he said, "Dan, go out and meet the 'Company' man standing there underneath the pine trees, waiting to talk to you."

Ironically, Marvin had been motivated to join the Special Forces by the death of President Kennedy, who had conferred upon the unit their distinctive and coveted green berets. Marvin began his a.s.sa.s.sination training in the Spring of 1964. "...during one of the coffee breaks, I overheard one of the [CIA] instructors say to the other one, 'Well, it went pretty well in Dallas. Didn't it?'"

Marvin said his group was shown "16 millimeter moving pictures that we a.s.sumed were taken by the CIA of the a.s.sa.s.sination, on the ground there at Dallas.... We were told that there were actually four shooters. There was one on the roof of the lower part of the Book Depository, and there was one shooter who was in front of and to the right of the vehicle. And I'm not sure whether it was on the Gra.s.sy Knoll area that they were speaking of, or, as some people have reported, [a shooter firing] out of a manhole to the right-front of the vehicle."

He also added that there were two additional snipers with spotters stationed on the routes that the motorcade would have used to travel to the hospital. If the spotter determined that Kennedy had survived, he was to finish him off.

["They used the a.s.sa.s.sination of President Kennedy as a prime example of how to develop the strategy for the a.s.sa.s.sination of a world leader as a conspiracy, while making it look like some 'lone nut' did it....

"The stronger a patriot you are, the more important it is to you that you do whatever is necessary for your flag, for your country," he adds. "It makes you the most susceptible type of person for this kind of training. You are the ultimate warrior. You're out there to do for your country what n.o.body else is willing to do. I had no qualms about it at all."]

Marvin claimed his "a.s.sa.s.sination" training was reserved solely for citizens outside the United States, not on U.S. soil. "The Mafia lists were the ones being used [to kill Americans] in the continental United States," said Marvin. "We were being used overseas." That was, until he was asked to kill an American Naval officer - Lt. Commander William Bruce Pitzer, the X-ray technician who filmed the Kennedy autopsy, "as he was, supposedly, a traitor, about to give secrets to the enemy. It turned out that these 'secrets' were the photos of the real autopsy of President John F. Kennedy. And the 'enemy' was us!"[235]

When he found out that his a.s.signment was to be conducted in the U.S., he refused. "...that wasn't my mission," said Marvin. "When I took my training, I volunteered to do this kind of thing overseas where it could be covered, as far as the family goes. I had a wife and three children. If I were to accept that mission to kill Commander Pitzer right here in the United States, I would have been dropped from the rolls immediately as a deserter so that it would cover me for taking off and taking care of that mission...."[236][237]

Such a "cover" tactic appears to closely parallel that of Timothy McVeigh, who "dropped out" of Special Forces training before embarking on his bewildering and mysterious journey (ala: Dan White) prior to the bombing.

Still another, more well-doc.u.mented reference to such illegal operations is made by Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny in his best-selling book, The Crimes of Patriots. Kwitny describes how rogue CIA agents Edwin Wilson (who reported to Shackley) and Frank Terpil were not only illegally selling huge quant.i.ties of C-4 plastic explosives and sophisticated a.s.sa.s.sination gear to the Libyans, but were actually hiring anti-Castro Cubans from Shackley's old JM/WAVE program, and U.S. Green Berets to a.s.sa.s.sinate Qaddafi's political opponents abroad. (See Chapter 14) Some U.S. Army men were literally lured away from the doorway of Fort Bragg, their North Carolina training post. The GIs were given every reason to believe that the operation summoning them was being carried out with the full backing of the CIA....[238]

Could this be the same group McVeigh claims he was recruited for? Considering the allegations of the Federal Government against McVeigh, the fact that he was chosen for such a clandestine and blatantly illegal government-sponsored operation is highly revealing.

According to Heidelberg's account of the letter, McVeigh turned them down. "They picked him because he was gung-ho," said Heidelberg. "But they misjudged him. He was gung-ho, but in a sincere way. He really loved his country."[239]

In another version of the story reported by Ted Gunderson, an intelligence informant indicated that McVeigh was "trained to work for the CIA in their illegal drug operations," then "became disenchanted with the government, and voiced his displeasure." At that point he was sent to Fort Riley for discharge, at which point John Doe 2 "was planted on him" and "orchestrated the bombing." According to Gundersen's informant, McVeigh was a victim of the CIA's mind-control project, Project MONARCH.[240]

Whether McVeigh turned down this illegal covert operations group, or worked for them for a short time, it is highly likely that he was working in some fas.h.i.+on for the government. There is simply no logical explanation for his giving up a hard-earned and brilliant military career, then subsequently quitting his security guard job on the eve of his promotion to take a job painting old army trucks, or go tooling around the country in a beat-up car hawking used firearms and militia paraphernalia.

If McVeigh was recruited, his "opting out" of the military was most likely a cover story for that recruitment. Former Pentagon counter-intelligence officer Robert Gambert told Kennedy a.s.sa.s.sination researcher d.i.c.k Russell of the mysterious activities of his cousin Richard Case Nagell, "d.i.c.k played the role of a disgruntled ex-Army officer.... he was really still operational, in an undercover capacity, for the Army Intelligence.... They're not gonna' trust anybody who's active military or a friendly retiree. They're gonna trust somebody who's going around griping against the military, against the intelligence operations, against the government...."[241]

After McVeigh's mysterious departure from the Army, his friend Robin Littleton received a strange letter from him. On it was ill.u.s.trated a cartoon depicting a skull and crossbones with the caption "so many victims, so little time."[242] Whether he meant it as a joke, or whether it contained a hidden message, is unclear. But considering the letter he wrote to Jennifer regarding the CTU, its implications are unsettling.

A patriotic soldier like Timothy McVeigh didn't have a lot of reasons to gripe against the government. But, said the Post: "McVeigh was by now railing at virtually every aspect of American government, and at least beginning to consider a violent solution, as reflected in letters he wrote to the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal in February and March 1992, (ent.i.tled 'America Faces Problems.')"[243]

Crime is out of control. Criminals have no fear of punishment. Prisons are overcrowded so they know they will not be imprisoned long. This breeds more crime, in an escalating cyclic pattern.

Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate "promises," they will increase. More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up, we suffer. Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight.

The "American Dream" of the middle cla.s.s has all but disappeared, subst.i.tuted with people struggling just to buy next week's groceries. Heaven forbid the car breaks down!

Politicians are further eroding the "American Dream" by pa.s.sing laws which are supposed to be a "quick fix," when all they are really designed for is to get the official re-elected. These laws tend to "dilute" a problem for a while, until the problem comes roaring back in a worsened form (much like a strain of bacteria will alter itself to defeat a known medication).

Politicians are out of control. Their yearly salaries are more than an average person will see in a lifetime. They have been entrusted with the power to regulate their own salaries and have grossly violated that trust to live in their own luxury.

Racism on the rise? You had better believe it! Is this America's frustrations venting themselves? Is it a valid frustration? Who is to blame for the mess? At a point when the world has seen Communism falter as an imperfect system to manage people; democracy seems to be headed down the same road. No one is seeing the "big" picture.

Maybe we have to combine ideologies to achieve the perfect utopian government. Remember, government-sponsored health care was a Communist idea. Should only the rich be allowed to live long? Does that say that because a person is poor, he is a lesser human being; and doesn't deserve to live as long, because he doesn't wear a tie to work?

What is it going to take to open up the eyes of our elected officials? America is in serious decline!

We have no proverbial tea to dump; should we instead sink a s.h.i.+p full of j.a.panese imports? Is a Civil War imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn't come to that! But it might.

Naturally, an ordinary gripe letter written by a person with above-average intelligence and political awareness was turned into a manifestation of suppressed frustrations with attendant violent overtones by the psychojournalists of the mainstream press. Yet, if McVeigh was under the influence of some form of mind-control, it is possible the letter, and the one to Littleton, might have been the beginnings of a plan to "sheep-dip" McVeigh as a disgruntled ex-military man.[244]

It is also possible that McVeigh, tasked with the responsibility of infiltrating the Militia Movement, became genuinely enamored with its ideals and precepts. Whether or not this is true, McVeigh's letter to the Lockport Union-Sun & Journal and to Robin Littleton were two more nails the government and the press would use to drive into McVeigh's coffin.

But the major nails in McVeigh's coffin were yet to come.

The Man Who Didn't Exist In September of 1992 McVeigh sold his property in Olean, NY, and in early 1993 traveled to Kingman, Arizona to visit his old Army friend Michael Fortier. Apparently McVeigh's father didn't approve of Tim's letters in the local paper. A friend of McVeigh's father told the Post that one of the reasons McVeigh left was because "he wanted to be somewhere he could talk about what he really believed."

In Kingman, a rugged high-desert town where anti-government sentiments run strong, McVeigh would find like-minded souls. "Arizona is still gun-on-the-hip territory, rugged individuals who don't like the government in their business," said Marilyn Hart, manager of the Canyon West Mobile Park.

After spending a brief time living with Fortier at his trailer home on East McVicar Road, McVeigh rented a trailer at Canyon West where he lived from June to September of 1993, for $250-a-month.

The Times, the Post, Time and Newsweek all reported that McVeigh was a belligerent beer-drinking, loud music-playing slob who stayed at the Canyon West Mobile Park and was subsequently evicted. According to the Times: Residents of the Canyon West Mobile Park drew a picture of an arrogant loner who worked as a security guard for a now-defunct trucking company, lived with his pregnant girlfriend, expressed deep anger against the Federal Government and often caused trouble for his neighbors. "He drank a lot of beer and threw out the cans, and I always had to pick them up," Bob Rangin, owner of the park, was quoted as saying. He said he had frequent fights with Mr. McVeigh, who often wore Army fatigues, over such things as loud rock music coming from his trailer and a dog he kept in violation of his lease.[245]

"Just about any free time, he'd be walking down there, or across the railroad tracks and firing his guns," said Marilyn Hart, nodding at the landscape of canyons and mesas around the Canyon West trailer park here that is one of the last known addresses of the man arrested for bombing the Oklahoma City Federal Building. "He just plain didn't care. Didn't matter the time of day or night, he'd be out there shooting."

"Basically he just had a poor att.i.tude, a chip on the shoulder kind of thing," said Rob Rangin, the owner of the trailer park. "He was very c.o.c.ky. He looked like he was ready to get in a fight pretty easy. I'll tell you, I was a little afraid of him and I'm not afraid of too many people.

Mr. McVeigh brought in a big brown dog in defiance of the camp regulations and left a wrecked car parked by his trailer, Mr. Rangin said, and even a nearly totally deaf neighbor, Clyde Smith, complained about the music. Finally, said Mr. Rangin, "he piled up so many violations, I asked him to leave."

"When he did, the trailer was a disaster," he said. "It was trashed."[246]

Yet these accounts of McVeigh in the Times' on April 23 and 24 are totally contrary to their accounts on May 4 and December 31, which describe him as a compulsive neat-freak, highly disciplined, respectful of his elders, and courteous to a fault. Friends and acquaintances interviewed also claimed that McVeigh was extremely quiet, never drank, and never had a date, much less a pregnant girlfriend.

Yet on April 23, the Post described how McVeigh played loud music, terrorized his neighbors, and was evicted from the park. Then on July 2, the Post wrote: When he moved into the Canyon West trailer park outside Kingman in 1993, his first act was to wash the dirty curtains and dust, vacuum and scrub the entire trailer spotless, said owner Bob Rangin, who so liked McVeigh that he offered to lower the rent to keep the ex-soldier from moving.

The Post also ran an interview with neighbor Jack Gohn, who said McVeigh was so "quiet, polite and neat and clean" that "if I had a daughter in that age bracket, I would have introduced them."[247]

Said Marilyn Hart of Timothy McVeigh: "He was very quiet, very polite, very courteous, very neat, very clean, quiet, obeyed all the park rules. He worked on the trailer, did some painting, he did some cleaning on it, he bought new furniture, things like that."[248]

In fact, what the Times was reporting on was not Timothy McVeigh at all, but a completely different man! According to Hart, the mix-up came when reporters from the Times were given information about Dave Heiden, who also was just out of the service, and had lived in trailer #19 (McVeigh lived in trailer #11). "They thought it was the man who lived down below," said Hart. "He was a slob. But he was not Tim McVeigh. The other guy took his guns out across the way and fired them all the time, he got drunk and got up on top of the trailer and did all kinds of noisy things...."

According to Hart, after the man's girlfriend gave birth he sobered up. "Now they're married, the baby was born, he's straightened up his life," said Hart. "He straightened up his act, and he doesn't act that way any more at all."

Rangin called authors Kifner and McFadden of the Times to correct them. "I tried to tell them that wasn't McVeigh," said Rangin. "I called that fellow at the Times who came down here, and told him they got the wrong guy..."[249]

According to the Times, it was a "clearly embarra.s.sed" Mr. Rangin who had made the mistake, wrote the Times on April 25: He added that the man he incorrectly recalled as Tim McVeigh "was like you would think" a suspect in a ma.s.s killing might be.[250]

This is clearly interesting considering that for days the Times had been painting McVeigh as a pathological, as.e.xual neat freak who was extremely polite. These traits, the Times' psychobabblists claimed, were indicators of a ma.s.s killer.

The Times then claimed on the very next day that McVeigh was a belligerent slob with a pregnant girlfriend, and all of a sudden, these were the characteristics of a ma.s.s killer. Obviously, to a propaganda screed like the New York Times, it didn't matter what McVeigh's actual personality really was.

While in Kingman, McVeigh worked at different jobs through an agency called Allied Forces. "He did a number of jobs that way," said Hart. "He was a security guard, he did a number of different jobs. But he always went to his job, did them well... any of the people who worked with him said he didn't act odd, you know, it was totally out of character."[251]

McVeigh worked for a time at True Value Hardware, on Stockton Hill Road, a job that Fortier helped him get. Paul Shuffler, the store owner, said McVeigh "was a young and clean looking person so I gave him a job." According to Shuffler, "If he was a radical around here, I would have noticed it pretty quick and I would have fired him. Radicals don't last long around here because they just make a mess of things."[252]

McVeigh also worked for a spell at State Security. The Times interview with co-worker Fred Burkett took a slightly different slant, painting his co-worker McVeigh as an arrogant, gun-toting loner. "He had a very dry personality," Burkett told the Times. "He was not very outgoing, not talkative and not really that friendly. He wasn't a person that mingled. He was a kind of by yourself kind of person, a loner."

Once, Burkett went with McVeigh on a target-shooting course in the desert, where McVeigh "pretty much went crazy," Burkett said. After running through the course, picking off targets with a Glock .45, McVeigh began "emptying clips on pretty much anything - trees, rocks, whatever happened to be there."[253]

"Other than that, Mr. Burkett said, "he seemed pretty much normal." "The only thing he ever indicated was that he didn't care much for the United States Government and how they ran things," Mr. Burkett said. "He didn't care much for authority and especially when it concerned the government."

Yet authorities have speculated that McVeigh's interests went beyond mere dissatisfaction with the Federal Government. According to Carl Lebron, McVeigh once brought him a newsletter from the Ku Klux Klan.[254] McVeigh was also fond of a book called the Turner Diaries. Written by former physics professor and neo-n.a.z.i William Pierce, the Turner Diaries was a fictionalized account of a white supremacist uprising against the ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government). The book, exceedingly violent and racist in tone, is a fictionalized account of the overthrow of the Federal Government - which by that time had become the "Jewish-liberal-democratic-equalitarian plague" - by a Right-wing paramilitary group called the "Organization," which then goes on to murder and segregate Jews and other "non-whites." The protagonists also blow up FBI headquarters with a truck-bomb. The Turner Diaries was found on Timothy McVeigh upon his arrest.

The book became the blueprint for a neo-n.a.z.i group called The Order, which terrorized the Midwest in the early to mid '80s with a string of murders and bank robberies. Authorities have speculated that McVeigh, who carried the book with him constantly and sold it at gun shows, was inspired by its screed to commit his terrible act of violence. Yet McVeigh dismisses such suggestions as gibberish. "I bought the book out of the publication that advertised the book as a gun-rights book. That's why I bought it; that's why I read it."[255]

In Kingman, McVeigh made friends with an ex-marine named Walter "Mac" McCarty. McVeigh apparently sought out the 72-year-old McCarty for discussions in which he tried to make sense of the actions of the Federal Government at Ruby Ridge and Waco, and such issues as the United Nations, the Second Amendment, and the "New World Order."

"I gathered that he was following the Right-wing, survivalist, paramilitary-type philosophy," McCarty said. "I also got the sense that he was searching for meaning and acceptance."[256]

McVeigh and Fortier also took handgun cla.s.ses from McCarty during the summer of 1994, which is odd considering that the two men, McVeigh especially, were extremely proficient in the use of firearms. "Believe me, the one thing he did not need was firearms training, "said Fred Burkett, McVeigh's co-worked at State Security. "He was very good and we were impressed with his actions."[257]

McCarty himself was apparently suspicious of McVeigh's motives. "They wanted to hear certain things from me to see if they could get me involved," said McCarty. "They definitely liked what they heard. We were on the same page about the problems of America."

Why would McVeigh, the consummate firearms expert, bother taking a course in handguns? Perhaps to be around like-minded individuals or as a harmless diversion. It is also possible, like the Lee Harvey Oswald impostor seen at the Texas rifle range, McVeigh was being sheep-dipped. "I know brainwas.h.i.+ng when I see it, McCarty said. "Those two boys had really gotten a good case of it." Perhaps McCarty was being more literal than he realized.[258]

After the August 1994 pa.s.sage of the Omnibus Crime Bill outlawing certain types of semi-automatic weapons, "McVeigh's demons finally became unbearable," claimed the Times. "What will it take?" wrote McVeigh to Fortier, expressing his exasperation.[259]

It is possible that McVeigh had some contact with a local militia while in Kingman. According to reporter Mark Schafer of the Arizona Republic, Fortier, who worked at True Value, knew Jack Oliphant, the elderly patron of the Arizona Patriots, an extreme Right-wing paramilitary group. Oliphant had been caught in 1986 planning to blow up the Hoover Dam, the IRS and a local Synagogue. After the FBI raid, Oliphant was sentenced to four years in jail, and the Arizona Patriots went underground. It is reported that Fortier, who sported a "Don't Tread on Me" flag outside his trailer-home, was friendly with some of the Arizona Patriots, including Oliphant.

According to federal authorities, McVeigh also left a note addressed to "S.C." on a utility pole near Kingman seeking "fighters not talkers." It has been speculated that "S.C." is actually Steven Colbern, who lived in the nearby town of Oatman, and was friends with McVeigh. (See Chapter 5) But federal authorities became very interested when they learned that a small explosion, related to a home-made bomb, had slightly damaged a house down the road from the trailer park. That house was owned by Frosty McPeak, a friend of McVeigh's who had hired him in 1993 to do security work at a local shelter. When McPeak's girlfriend was arrested in Las Vegas on a bad credit charge, Clark Vollmer, a paraplegic drug dealer in Kingman, helped bail her out. In February of '95, Vollmer had asked McPeak to ferry some drugs. He refused. On February 21, a bomb exploded outside McPeak's home. When he went to Vollmer's house to confront him, he found Timothy McVeigh, along with another man he didn't recognize.[260]

According to Mohave County Sheriff Joe Cook, the explosion "wasn't really a big deal" and probably wasn't related to the explosion in Oklahoma City.[261]

What does Marilyn Hart think about McVeigh's connection to the local militias? "I probably do know several people who are militia," said Hart. "But they don't advertise it, and they're not kooks. To me, McVeigh didn't have the money. The two other guys, Rosencrans and Fortier, went to school with our children, and neither of them have money either. And it took a good amount of money to pull this off. "

"Obsessed With Waco"

Whether or not McVeigh's "demons" became "unbearable" after the pa.s.sage of the Omnibus Crime Bill, his anger, along with that of millions of others, would be justified by the governments' ma.s.sacre of 86 innocent men, women and children at the Branch Davidian Seventh Day Adventist Church near Waco the following April. The ostensible purpose of the ATF's raid was to inspect the premises for illegal weapons. Although the Davidians, who were licensed gun dealers, had invited the ATF to inspect their weapons, the agency declined; they were more interested in staging a show raid to impress the public and increase their budgetary allowance. In fact, the raid was code-named "Show Time."

On February 28, 1993, without a proper warrant and without identifying themselves, over 100 agents stormed the Church compound. Residents who answered the door were immediately fired upon. At least one ATF helicopter began strafing the building, firing into the roof. For the next hour, ATF agents fired thousands of rounds into the compound. Many church members, including women, children and the elderly, were killed by gunfire as they lay huddled in fear, the women attempting to cover the children with their bodies. Church members repeatedly begged the 911 operator to stop the raid. In the ensuing battle, four ATF agents were killed, although there is evidence that indicates they were killed by "friendly fire."

Several days later, the FBI took over. Almost immediately, they began psychologically hara.s.sing the Church members with loud noises. For over a month and a half, the Davidians were tormented by the sounds of dying animals, religious chants, loud music, and their own voices. Their electricity was cut off, and milk and other supplies necessary for young chidden was not allowed into the compound. Bright lights were s.h.i.+ned on residents 24 hours-a-day, and armored vehicles began circling the compound, while flash-bang grenades were thrown into the courtyard.

The media was kept at bay, fed propagandizing stories by FBI spokesmen that painted the Davidians as crazed cultists with desires for apocalyptic self-destruction - dangerous wackos who stockpiled machine-guns and who abused their children. The ma.s.s media happily obliged, feeding these images to a gullible public.[262]

After a 51-day standoff, the newly appointed Attorney General, Janet Reno, approved an FBI plan to a.s.sault the compound with a highly volatile form of tear-gas, proven deadly to children, who she was ostensibly trying to protect from "abuse." On April 19, tanks from the Texas National Guard and the Army's Joint Task Force Six, in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act forbidding the use of military force against private citizens, stormed the compound, firing hundreds of CS gas ferret rounds into the buildings. The tanks also rammed the buildings repeatedly, knocking holes in them, the official explanation being so that the residents could more easily escape. Instead, what it did was cause the buildings to collapse, killing dozens as they lay crouched in fear. Kerosene lanterns knocked over by the tank ramming ignited the highly flammable CS gas, and the holes created a flue effect through the buildings, caused by 30 mile and hour winds. Immediately the compound became a fiery inferno.

While some residents managed to escape, most were trapped inside, exphyxiated by the gas, crushed by falling debris, or burned alive. Some who tried to escape were shot by FBI snipers. One unarmed man who tried to enter the compound to be with his family was shot six times, then left lying in a field while prairie dogs picked at his bones. During the final siege, which lasted for six hours, firetrucks were purposefully kept away. Bradley M-2 armored vehicles fitted with plows pushed in the still standing walls, burying those still trapped inside. A concrete vault where approximately 30 people had sought refuge was blasted open with demolition charges, killing most of the people inside.

When it was all over, the fire department was allowed inside the compound to pump water on the smoldering debris. Out of approximately 100 Church members, 86 perished, including 27 children. No FBI agent was injured. The remaining 11 Church members were put on trial for attempted murder of federal agents. During the trial, government prosecutors repeatedly withheld, altered, and destroyed evidence. The government even cut off electricity to the morgue, preventing autopsies on the bodies.

The judge, recently under scrutiny by the "Justice" Department, also refused to allow the testimony of critical witnesses. Although the jury found all 11 innocent, the judge reversed the verdict. Nine Davidians were imprisoned for attempting to defend their families. Some received sentences up to 40 years.

While "General" Reno, in a symbolic gesture of public reconciliation, took "full responsibility" for the actions of the FBI, she never resigned or served time. In fact, Larry Potts, who led the raid on behalf of the FBI, was promoted.

The a.s.sault would be compared to the ma.s.sacre of the Jews in Warsaw by the n.a.z.is during WWII. A bunch of religious fanatics. Who'd complain? Who'd care? Yet the government didn't count on the fact that a lot of people would care. Millions in fact. The murder of the Branch Davidians would indeed become a wake-up call for a citizenry concerned about an increasingly tyrannical, lawless government. A government that would murder its own citizens with impunity, in fact with zeal. A government that would lie to its citizens, and be accountable to no one.[263]

In March of 1993, Timothy McVeigh traveled from Kingman to Waco to observe the 51-day standoff. He was photographed by the FBI along with others protesting the siege on the road outside the compound, selling b.u.mper stickers out of his car. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was photographed at the Cuban emba.s.sy in Mexico (a claim made by the government, but never substantiated), the photo of McVeigh would be added proof of his far-Right-wing a.s.sociations.

A day and a half later, McVeigh drove to Decker, Michigan to be with his old Army buddy, Terry Nichols. The Nichols family sat with McVeigh in their living room as they watched M-2 Bradley a.s.sault vehicles storm the compound. On April 19, they watched as the Branch Davidian Church burnt to the ground. "Tim did not say a word," said James Nichols, who watched the compound burn to the ground along with Tim and his brother. "We stood there and watched the live television footage as the church burned and crumbled... we couldn't believe it."[264]

McVeigh, who the Justice Department claimed was "particularly agitated about the conduct of the Federal Government in Waco," had a right to be. McVeigh had offered his life to serve in the military, and now had seen that very same military ma.s.sacring its own citizens. He could see the Green Berets from the Army's Joint Task Force Six advising the FBI, and had watched while Bradley armored vehicles - the same vehicles he had served in - ga.s.sed and bulldozed the citizens of a country he had sworn to defend.

The Federal Building was blown up on April 19, the two year anniversary of the Waco conflagration. Like millions of other citizens, McVeigh was angry about the deadly raid. He was particularly incensed about the partic.i.p.ation of the Army's Joint Task Force Six, and about the deployment of the Seventh Light Infantry during the Los Angeles riots in 1992, and the United Nations command over American soldiers in Somalia, his former Army friend Staff Sergeant Albert Warnement told the Times. "He thought the Federal Government was getting too much power. He thought the ATF was out of control."[265]

"I saw a localized police state," McVeigh told the London Sunday Times, "[and] was angry at how this had come about."[266]

"Their (the FBI's) actions in Waco, Texas were wrong. And I'm not fixated on it...." he told Newsweek.

"It disturbed him," said Burkett. "It was wrong, and he was mad about it. He was flat out mad. He said the government wasn't worth the powder to blow it to h.e.l.l."[267]

Perhaps rather coincidentally, McVeigh's sister Jennifer said that during her brother's November '94 visit to the McVeigh family home in Lockport, he confided that he had been driving around with 1,000 pounds of explosives. During his trial Prosecutor Beth Wilkinson asked Jennifer if she had questioned her brother about why he was carrying so much. "I don't think I wanted to know," she said.[268]

Just what was McVeigh doing driving around with explosives, and where did he acquire them? Were these explosives part of the batch of ammonium nitrate Terry Nichols had allegedly purchased from the Mid-Kansas Co-op on October 20, or perhaps the Dynamite and Tovex the government alleged Nichols stole from the Martin Marietta rock quarry in September?

Obviously this, and McVeigh's expression of anger at the Federal Government, would become the foundation of their case against him. In a letter Tim wrote to Jennifer, he is highly critical of the ATF. The anonymous letter, which was sent to the federal agency, was accompanied by a note that read: "All you tyrannical motherf.u.c.kers will swing in the wind one day for your treasonous actions against the Const.i.tution and the United States." It concluded with the words, "Die, you spineless cowardice b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."[269]

"He was very angry," recalled Jennifer McVeigh during her brother's trial. "He thought the government ga.s.sed and murdered the people there."

Jennifer also claimed her brother also wrote a letter to the American Legion saying that ATF agents "are a bunch of fascist tyrants." He identified himself in the letter as a member of the "citizens' militia." He also sent his sister literature on the standoff at Ruby Ridge, the Const.i.tution, and even a copy of the Turner Diaries. [270]

By the Spring of 1995, he told Jennifer not to send any more letters to him after May 1 because "G-men might get them." Then he sent her a letter saying, "Something big is going to happen in the month of the Bull." He did not explain what that meant, but Jennifer looked in her astrology book and saw that the "month of the Bull" was April. McVeigh also advised her to extend her Spring break - which began on April 8 - a bit longer than the planned two weeks, and instructed her to burn the letter.[271]

For McVeigh's part, he wrote that this "expression of rage" the government claimed was so key, was nothing more than "...part of my contribution to defense of freedom, this call to arms.... I intend to become more active in the future. I would rather fight with pencil lead than bullet lead. We can win this war in voting booth. If we have to fight in the streets, I would not be so sure.... All too often in the past, we gutsy gun owners have lost the battle because we have failed to fight. The Brady Bill could have been defeated in Congress if gun owners had become more involved in electing officials and communicating to those officials what was expected to them.... Start your defense today. Stamps are cheaper than bullets and can be more effective."

This letter, found by authorities in McVeigh's car, speaks of a man committed to fighting for freedom as many Americans have, in the "voting booth," and with pen and paper. Yet lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler would read this letter, along with quotes such as this one: "My whole mindset has s.h.i.+fted... from the intellectual to the animal," into evidence at McVeigh's trial, in an attempt to prove that Timothy McVeigh was committed to violence.

Like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was upset about the Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion and American foreign policy in general, a view he expressed to his friends in Dallas, McVeigh was upset about the government's foreign policy, a view he expressed to his friends here. "He wasn't happy about Somalia," that if we could put the United States under basically UN command and send them to Somalia to disarm their citizens, then why couldn't they come do the same thing in the United States?" Sergeant Warnement said.

McVeigh was also reportedly angry over the killings of Sammy and Vicki Weaver, who were killed by federal agents at their cabin in Ruby Ridge, Idaho in August of 1992. Randy Weaver had become a fugitive wanted on a minor weapons violation. During the stand-off, U.S. Marshals had shot 14-year-old Sammy Weaver in the back, and had shot Vicki Weaver, Randy's wife, in the face as she stood at the cabin door holding her infant daughter. McVeigh had traveled to Ruby Ridge and came back convinced that federal agents intentionally killed the Weavers.

Although his anger over Waco and Ruby Ridge hardly implicates McVeigh in the destruction of the Federal Building, the government would make this one of the cornerstones of it case. The press naturally jumped on the bandwagon. When Jane Pauley of NBC's Dateline interviewed Jennifer McVeigh about her thoughts on Waco, she said, "The way I saw it, the Davidians were just a group of people who had their own way of living, perhaps different from the mainstream. But they were never really harming anybody. And to bring in all those tanks and things like that to people who are just minding their own business, not harming anybody, I just - I don't think that's right."