Word: mcveigh
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Evidence of McVeigh's admiration for a novel called The Turner Diaries, published in 1978, will aid the prosecution's effort to portray him as a hate-filled radical. The book, a favorite of far-right groups, tells the story of a group of white supremacists who blow up FBI headquarters in Washington at 9:15 one morning--almost exactly the same time of the Oklahoma City bombing. The Turner Diaries oozes invective against blacks and Jews. "We have allowed a diabolically clever, alien minority to put chains on our souls and our minds," a passage reads. "Why didn...
...McVeigh was such an eager evangelist for The Turner Diaries that he handed it out to friends and sold it at gun shows--often at a loss. The government will probably present testimony by Fortier and McVeigh's sister to confirm this zeal and may argue that McVeigh thought the book provided a model for how he might retaliate against the government for its Waco raid. For example, the bomb the narrator builds is, like the one used on the Murrah building, made out of ammonium nitrate mixed with heating oil and is loaded into a truck...
Letters and testimony by friends will show the defendant's growing paranoia about the government and his bitterness toward it. A revealing set of documents was found in the car McVeigh was driving when he was arrested after the bombing. One item is a commentary by John Locke, which McVeigh copied by hand, asserting that a man has a right to kill someone who would take away his liberty; another is a photocopy of a passage from The Turner Diaries that says the purpose of the fictional bombing was to wake up America...
...prosecutors show that the destruction of the Murrah building followed logically from the workings of McVeigh's mind, they will have done part of their job, but a much more important task will remain--proving that he physically committed the crime. The government hopes to convince the jury of a basic narrative that runs like this: by the fall of 1994 McVeigh and Nichols had begun collecting the fertilizer and other materials necessary to make a large bomb. In December McVeigh and Fortier inspected the Murrah building, which McVeigh had chosen as the target. A few months later, on April...
...hour and a half later, a state trooper stopped McVeigh near Perry, Oklahoma, because his car had no rear license plate. The trooper saw he had a gun and arrested him. Using the vehicle-identification number on the Ryder truck's axle, which survived the blast, the FBI learned from Ryder which location the truck had been rented from. Descriptions of McVeigh by two people at the rental office were the basis of a sketch that agents showed to motel desk clerks in the area. The owner of the Dreamland recognized McVeigh and gave his name. Federal agents...