On the morning of April 19, 1995,
an ex-Army soldier and security guard named Timothy
McVeigh parked a rented Ryder truck in front
of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown
Oklahoma City. He was about to commit mass murder.
Inside
the vehicle was a powerful bomb made out of
a deadly cocktail of agricultural fertilizer,
diesel fuel, and other chemicals. McVeigh got
out, locked the door, and headed towards his
getaway car. He ignited one timed fuse, then
another.
At precisely 9:02 a.m., the bomb exploded.
Within
moments, the surrounding area looked like a
war zone. A third of the building had
been reduced to rubble, with many floors flattened
like pancakes. Dozens of cars were incinerated
and more than 300 nearby buildings were damaged
or destroyed.
The human toll was still more devastating: 168
souls lost, including 19 children, with several
hundred more injured.
It
was the worst act of homegrown terrorism in the
nation's history.
Coming
on the heels of the World Trade Center bombing
in New York two years earlier, the media
and many Americans immediately assumed that the
attack was the handiwork of Middle Eastern terrorists.
The FBI, meanwhile, quickly arrived at the scene
and began supporting rescue efforts and investigating
the facts. Beneath the pile of concrete and twisted
steel were clues. And the FBI was determined
to find them.
It
didn’t take long. On
April 20, the rear axle of the Ryder truck
was located, which
yielded a vehicle identification number that
was traced to a body shop in Junction City, Kansas.
Employees at the shop helped the FBI quickly
put together a composite drawing of the man
who had rented the van. Agents
showed
the drawing around
town,
and local hotel employees supplied a name: Tim
McVeigh
A
quick call to the Bureau’s Criminal
Justice Information Services Division in West
Virginia on April 21 led to an astonishing
discovery: McVeigh was already in jail. He’d
been pulled over about 80 miles north of
Oklahoma
City by an observant Oklahoma State Trooper
who noticed a missing license plate on his
yellow
Mercury Marquis. McVeigh had a concealed weapon
and was arrested. It was just 90 minutes after
the bombing.
From
there, the evidence began adding up. Agents
found traces of the chemicals
used in the explosion
on McVeigh’s clothes and a business card
on which McVeigh had suspiciously scribbled, “TNT
@ $5/stick, need more”. They learned about
McVeigh’s extremist ideologies and his
anger over the events at Waco two years earlier.
They discovered that a friend of McVeigh’s
named Terry Nichols helped build the bomb and
that another man—Michael Fortier—was
aware of the bomb plot.
 |
| FBI
agents help lead Timothy McVeigh from
an Oklahoma courthouse on April 21, 1995.
AP Photo. |
The bombing was quickly solved, but the investigation
turned out to be one of the most exhaustive in
FBI history. No stone was left unturned to make
sure every clue was found and all the culprits
identified. By the time it was over, the Bureau
had conducted more than 28,000 interviews, followed
some 43,000 investigative leads, amassed three-and-a-half
tons of evidence, and reviewed nearly a billion
pieces of information.
In
the end, the government that McVeigh hated
and hoped to topple swiftly captured him and
convincingly convicted both him and his co-conspirators.
FBI
History
