WEBVTT - Part Six: The Perfect Soldier 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:07.600 M what's being insulted by a Sophie My me. I'm 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:10.840 Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards. Sophie is angry at 0:00:10.840 --> 0:00:13.040 me because I funked up and tried to start the 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:15.400 episode before we were ready. We don't know what's up 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:17.200 or down here. We don't know what's up or down. 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:19.520 I I can't stop thinking about this perry A case 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:25.639 that I'm none of us can sweating. It's like the 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.440 sort of Damocles, but instead of being a sword held 0:00:29.480 --> 0:00:31.160 up by a single string or whatever the hell was 0:00:31.200 --> 0:00:33.400 sort of Damocles was, It's a case of perry A 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:36.159 that I'm just going to throw for no good reason. 0:00:37.080 --> 0:00:40.479 That's the only reason is that he's been saying. His 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:42.800 reason is that he's been saying it. But that's not 0:00:42.880 --> 0:00:46.360 a good reason. No, it's not. And it's a problem 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:49.879 that I have, and like with a drug problem, the 0:00:49.920 --> 0:00:51.559 only way to really get over it is to do 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.720 the most dangerous version of it you can possibly do. Advice, 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:58.000 there are other ways. Nope, I would look that up 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:00.800 or talk to a professional for to decide to throw that. 0:01:01.760 --> 0:01:04.960 I think I have to do this episode. When it 0:01:04.959 --> 0:01:07.440 comes to throwing things in this room. There's no professional 0:01:07.480 --> 0:01:14.039 more experience than me. Yeah, I accept that. I love professional. 0:01:14.400 --> 0:01:18.600 Convinced you should throw it first, Let's start chapter six, 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:24.000 The Perfect Soldier. Yeah. The night Seditious conspiracy trial held 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.640 important lessons for the chief minds behind the white supremacist 0:01:26.720 --> 0:01:29.560 movement when they leaned into their patriotism, their love of 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:32.720 an America that was white and Christian but America. Nonetheless, 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:35.399 they could draw significant sympathy from their fellow white men 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:38.280 and women Swasti cousin clan robes, who are much less 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:41.440 useful than tearful stories of hippie protesters spitting on flags. 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:45.120 The saw continuous growth of both the survivalist and the 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.880 American militia movement. Neither of these things was inherently white supremacist, 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:51.720 but beeman As colleagues have been remarkably successful at seating 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:55.040 their propaganda into gun shows and conventions. As a result, 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:57.960 the early nineties brought them a whole crop of fellow travelers, 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:00.280 men and women who did not identify as not season 0:02:00.360 --> 0:02:02.800 had never held clan membership, but who were also quite 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:05.840 capable of reading the Turner Diaries and identifying with its message. 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:08.760 Randy Weaver is a perfect example of this new sort 0:02:08.760 --> 0:02:11.639 of recruit. He was a former Green Beret, a patriot 0:02:11.680 --> 0:02:14.160 who loved his country and working with his hands. He 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:16.800 and his wife, Vicky were Christian Conservatives. They fell in 0:02:16.840 --> 0:02:20.639 love with the first generation of evangelical TV preachers, men 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.040 like Jerry Folwell. They also read a book called The 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:26.360 Late Great Planet Earth by how Lindsay, which focused around 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.320 using the Bible to predict the near future. Lindsay's book 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:32.440 convinced Randy and Vicky that Gog, an anti Christian empire 0:02:32.480 --> 0:02:36.440 from the Book of Ezekiel, was the Soviet Union. God 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.919 I did say, God Yeah. They became more and more 0:02:40.000 --> 0:02:42.680 drawn into conspiracy theories and convinced themselves that a great 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:45.679 and fiery apocalypse was intimate, imminent and a quote next 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:49.960 from American Experience by PBS concerned citizens, they set out 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:51.760 to spread the word. They were unable to find a 0:02:51.840 --> 0:02:53.720 church that approached these matters with what they felt was 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:55.840 the appropriate level of seriousness, so they held their own 0:02:55.840 --> 0:02:58.480 Bible studies with like minded friends and neighbors. This sparked 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:00.320 the attention of a local reporter who came to do 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:02.600 a story on them. The Weavers, Walter learned, did not 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:05.200 appreciate the results. They felt betrayed, but they had never 0:03:05.240 --> 0:03:07.960 been more sharing their beliefs. A great conflagration was coming, 0:03:07.960 --> 0:03:10.799 and they felt increasingly unsafe in Iowa. Vicky started having 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.280 visions in the bathtub. God was speaking to her, and 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:15.600 God was telling her to go west to find for 0:03:15.639 --> 0:03:18.239 her family a mountain top. They would be safe there. 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:21.720 The Weavers moved to a place that would later come 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:25.040 to be called Ruby Ridge in Idaho, not far from 0:03:25.200 --> 0:03:29.240 Richard Butler's Aryan Nations compound. Randy Weaver began to visit 0:03:29.240 --> 0:03:31.880 the compound, attending several events and making a few friends 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:34.640 among the neo Nazis. The exact nature of what he 0:03:34.680 --> 0:03:38.560 believed precisely is unclear and heavily debated. It seems that 0:03:38.640 --> 0:03:41.880 he identified with some aspects of Christian identity theology, and 0:03:41.880 --> 0:03:44.800 it's safe to say he was racist by normal people standards. 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:47.680 But it's also fair to say that Randy Weaver was 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:51.160 not really a Nazi or even an ideological white supremacist. 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:53.680 He hung around Arian Nations because he lived in the 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:56.040 middle of nowhere. They were the only people to hang with, 0:03:56.160 --> 0:04:00.000 and he just didn't care about their racism. Ok. Yeah, 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:01.560 he was not the kind of man who'd have joined 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:04.080 a group like the Order, but he would come to 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.160 play an important role in the next step of the 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:10.320 white supremacist movement. Don't don't hang out with that's the thing. 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:13.200 That's the thing. Like you're like, you're like, okay, well, ever, 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:15.080 I know he's evil, but he's kind of cool in 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:19.200 this aspect. I'll be buds with this person. Yeah, that's how. 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:25.440 That's how, that's how. That's how Nazis has Nazi friends. Ye. Now, 0:04:25.600 --> 0:04:27.839 the FBI wound up wire tapping several of the fascists 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:30.720 that Roundy Weaver befriended, was quite immediately obvious to them 0:04:30.760 --> 0:04:33.160 that Mr. Weaver had no plans to overthrow the government, 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:35.800 sparker race war, or do anything more subversive than live 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:38.000 off the land with this family and picnic with Nazis 0:04:38.040 --> 0:04:40.599 from time to time. In fact, when other people in 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:43.679 these wire tap conversations, which are just committing crimes, Randy 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:45.960 would usually say something like, we don't really go in 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:50.400 for that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it's a better response for 0:04:50.480 --> 0:04:55.720 lynchings than sure, but it's not a great response. Well, 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:58.440 the FEDS knew Randy wasn't really dangerous. They saw him 0:04:58.480 --> 0:05:00.480 as the perfect guy to approach is an inform. He 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:02.920 wasn't a true believer and he was very poor. If 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.120 they could entrap him into committing a crime, they could 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:07.160 scare him with prison time until he agreed to wear 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:08.960 a wire and helped him catch him up a big 0:05:09.000 --> 0:05:15.279 fish in the Arian Nations community. Awful offer money, yeah, 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:19.280 just offer him start like that. Yeah, he's not a 0:05:19.320 --> 0:05:22.000 true believer and he's poor. Yeah, okay, so I offer 0:05:22.200 --> 0:05:24.120 money to help you out. That's not what they do 0:05:24.160 --> 0:05:28.760 and it just sucks. Like yeah. An undercover agent approached 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:31.200 Randy and offered him good money to illegally saw off 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:34.320 a couple of shotguns. Now, Randy was not a believer 0:05:34.440 --> 0:05:37.240 in the legitimacy of American gun control regulations and he 0:05:37.279 --> 0:05:40.120 needed to cash, so he happily acquiesced and was subsequently 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:42.679 busted for it. The Feds made their offer and Randy 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:45.440 refused them. He was arrested on federal firearms charges and 0:05:45.480 --> 0:05:48.239 taken to jail. Randy made bail, though, and he fled 0:05:48.279 --> 0:05:50.400 back to Ruby Ridge and hold up with his family 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:52.000 and a whole bunch of guns and the hope that 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:55.599 the federal allies would not follow. They did but the 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:58.040 attempted arrest did not go well. The U. S. Marshall 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:00.000 was shot dead by the Weaver clan and the authority 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:03.040 He's responded with a blizzard of indiscriminate gunfire which killed 0:06:03.080 --> 0:06:05.680 Randy's fourteen year old son, the family dog, and his 0:06:05.760 --> 0:06:08.359 unarmed wife Vicky. They were trapped in the cabin with 0:06:08.400 --> 0:06:12.000 her corpse for like days. It was hard. Yeah, it's 0:06:12.000 --> 0:06:15.040 a terrible story. A standoff in suit. The law came 0:06:15.040 --> 0:06:18.120 in with helicopters, armored vehicles and the kind of militarized 0:06:18.160 --> 0:06:20.440 police that looked familiar to us now, but we're new 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:23.840 when terrifying. Back in nineteen two, the media descended on 0:06:23.920 --> 0:06:26.400 Ruby Ridge too, and the assault on the Weaver families 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:29.400 was spread virally throughout the far right. The Weavers were 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:32.800 the perfect poster family to illustrate government overreach. Footage of 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:35.760 black helicopters hovering over Ruby Ridge and sat like pictures 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:38.080 of Vicky Weaver were almost tailor made to sell the 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:40.560 idea that the New World Order was coming for decent, 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:45.040 white Christian gun owning Americans. Well, yeah, he handed that 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.720 one out on the platter. Yep. Louis Beam and his 0:06:47.800 --> 0:06:51.440 fellow fascists knew a great opportunity when one came a knocking. Later, 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:53.440 in nineteen ninety two, while Ruby Ridge was still in 0:06:53.480 --> 0:06:55.560 the news, the leading minds of the white supremacist movement 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:58.360 gathered in Estes Park, Colorado, for a summit on how 0:06:58.600 --> 0:07:01.960 precisely they could use this tragedy to their advantage. The 0:07:01.960 --> 0:07:04.880 summit was convened by Pete Peters, a Christian identity preacher 0:07:04.920 --> 0:07:07.720 from Colorado and the head of a sizeable Christian identity church, 0:07:07.920 --> 0:07:11.200 the Lapport Church of Christ. Here's how Leonard Zeskin summarizes 0:07:11.240 --> 0:07:13.760 the proceedings in Blood and Politics. For two and a 0:07:13.840 --> 0:07:16.600 half days, they met in committee, deliberated in plinary sessions, 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:18.800 and engaged in the kind of one on one conversations 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:21.640 known in the parlance of business professionals as networking. They 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:23.840 made decisions in the name of Jesus Christ and Yahweh, 0:07:23.840 --> 0:07:26.800 sang onward Christian soldiers, and otherwise conducted themselves in a 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:29.960 manner of quiet resolve appropriate for their surroundings, and y 0:07:30.040 --> 0:07:32.840 m c a facility abudding the park. No guns were waived, 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:34.600 and even the most heated rhetorics seemed to have the 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:38.160 blood drained out of it. Estes Park signified a radical 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:40.480 shift in the tactics of the white power movement, like 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.360 the through Aryan Nations Congress. We mostly know it was 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:45.720 disgusted at Estes Park. Because of the things that happened 0:07:45.800 --> 0:07:50.480 after it, the Nazis started reaching out to more moderate Americans. 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:53.760 Louis Beam published an article in his new magazine ironically 0:07:53.840 --> 0:07:57.440 named the Seditionist because he'd gotten been declared innocent of sedition. 0:07:58.240 --> 0:08:00.840 He called for leaderless resistance in the a of Ruby Ridge. 0:08:01.040 --> 0:08:03.720 Big Star one militia with members in Texas, Oklahoma, and 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:06.720 New Mexico, carried out grenade launcher and mortar training exercises 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.560 in rural Texas. The Montana Militia published a guide book 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:12.880 on how to engage in domestic terrorism. In nineteen, law 0:08:12.920 --> 0:08:15.920 enforcement across the nation found thirteen explosives. Cash is meant 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:18.080 to be used in attacks is varied as a National 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.680 Afro American museum in Ohio and a Black church in 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:23.240 Los Angeles. None of this made the news in a 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:25.640 big way because of something that happened in mid nineteen, 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:29.600 the siege of the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, Texas. 0:08:30.080 --> 0:08:32.560 The Branch Davidians were not a Christian identity sect and 0:08:32.600 --> 0:08:34.839 their leader, David Koresh, was not affiliated with the White 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:36.960 Supermansist movement. But the a t F siege of their 0:08:37.000 --> 0:08:39.720 compounds so soon after Ruby Ridge was easy for Louis 0:08:39.760 --> 0:08:43.000 Beam and his comrades to propagandizes around. Now, this is 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:45.280 not an audio book about the Waco disaster, and I 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:47.360 won't even try to cover what happened there in detail. 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:50.439 What's important for our purposes is the end result. On 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.280 February nine, a t F agents attempted to serve a 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:57.959 search warrant about sexual abuse and illegal weapons charges people 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:01.079 inside the compound open fire. Four agents, five branch Davidians 0:09:01.080 --> 0:09:04.040 were killed, and the situation evolved into a bloody siege. 0:09:04.440 --> 0:09:07.400 In April, Mnintaine, the FBI, who taken control of the situation, 0:09:07.640 --> 0:09:10.280 launched an assault on the compound. In the ensuing melee, 0:09:10.360 --> 0:09:12.880 several fires broke out and quickly swept through the structures. 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:14.560 By the time the smoke had cleared and it was 0:09:14.600 --> 0:09:17.280 all over, fifty three adults and twenty three children were dead. 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:22.800 Not many. Yeah, it was a funkload of people. Yeah. 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:25.439 The whole tragedy was in arguably a clusterfuck on behalf 0:09:25.440 --> 0:09:28.200 of the federal government, which of course helped groups like 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:31.960 the Fashions more people. Yeah, so they'd started after ss 0:09:32.000 --> 0:09:34.160 park like reaching out to militias and stuff, and again 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:38.520 trying to like um propagandizing directly to militias, being like, 0:09:38.559 --> 0:09:41.000 instead of just sending out like Nazi propaganda to guys 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:43.120 who aren't going to bide in Nazis, what if we 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:46.439 focus on like pictures of this dead woman, like dead 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:48.200 white woman killed by the government and try to scare 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:50.199 them that way, and then you know, if they if 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.559 they're interested in that, maybe they'll gradually start reading some 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:58.280 of our other terrorist propaganda. So Kirk Lyons, a close 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:01.000 friend of Louis Beam and a white supremacist militia leader himself, 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:03.439 sent out an issue of his group's fundraising newsletter that 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:05.679 featured a photo of a spiling fourteen year old girl 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:07.920 who died in the Waco siege. The girl was, of 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:10.720 course white, and her photo was captioned, why we Fight. 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:14.840 There were dozens, hundreds, and eventually thousands of other similar 0:10:14.840 --> 0:10:18.320 pieces of propaganda. Gradually, day by day and month by month, 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:21.839 explicitly fascist white supremacist groups began to wrap their ideological 0:10:21.880 --> 0:10:25.240 claws around the militia movement and suck in ever more patriots. 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:28.400 British journalist John Ronson was one of the few reporters 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:30.120 who spend a great deal of time embedded with the 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:32.920 fringe right during this period. He actually visited the ruins 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:35.640 of the Branch Davidian compound several years after the siege 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.560 with Randy Weaver in Toll. They wound up having a 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:41.440 conversation with several members of the Michigan Militia who were 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:43.720 there taking part in a vigil for the people who 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:46.320 died at Waco. One of these people told him, we 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:48.360 are here to ask for these people's forgiveness for sitting 0:10:48.400 --> 0:10:50.440 around on our butts and watching it on TV. What 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:52.800 happened at Ruby Ridge and Waco will never happen again 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:56.360 under any circumstances. If it does, there will be immediate retaliation, 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:02.640 armed resistance from the Michigan Militia. Now, the Michigan Militia 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:05.320 in this time had about twelve thousand members, which was 0:11:05.400 --> 0:11:07.440 a significant searche for it in the wake of Ruby 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:10.160 Ridge and Waco. One of those members was a young 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:15.840 Desert storm veteran named Tim McVeigh. Here we go. Timothy 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:18.480 McVeigh was born. Oh wait, it's time for an ad plug, 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:24.760 isn't it. Sophie. You know what, I think you really 0:11:24.760 --> 0:11:29.400 are great at this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:33.680 You know there's nothing that goes with Tim McVeigh like well, 0:11:33.760 --> 0:11:36.920 fertilizer bomb. But other than a fertilizer bomb. No, Sophie, 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:39.880 you're saying that's not a good ad plug. Um, there 0:11:39.880 --> 0:11:42.480 are a lot of things better than McVeigh, and those 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:49.040 things are the ease. You know what does less damage 0:11:49.160 --> 0:11:52.760 the Tim McVey the products and services advertised on this show. 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:56.480 You gotta pick one of these, Sophie. That one's great. 0:11:56.720 --> 0:12:05.000 All right, perfect, let's roll to Dick Pills. We're back. 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:08.160 We're back. We're talking about how good I am at 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:11.280 making ad plugs. Start talking about that. Still talking about 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:13.280 this is good. I can talking about it. You know. 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:19.000 I can't stop talking about this case of perry A. Yeah, yeah, 0:12:19.880 --> 0:12:23.320 just listen to that. It has to be thrown. I 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:27.280 don't know. There's only ten. There aren't twelve. Yeah, there aren't. 0:12:27.760 --> 0:12:33.280 So it's safe. It's you it. No, I have to 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:39.640 I have to. Well. Timothy McVeigh so uh. He was 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:43.920 born on April. McVeigh grew up in Pendleton, New York, 0:12:44.120 --> 0:12:46.160 and had an early childhood that was pretty standard for 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.359 the seventies and eighties. He watched Gumby and Truth or Consequences. 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:51.640 He played cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers with 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:54.640 other kids in the neighborhood. Timberford playing the good guys 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:58.400 as he saw them, cops or cowboys wherever possible. He 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:00.959 was sickly and somewhat prone to act sentence, hurting himself 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:02.640 in all sorts of ways young boys who spent a 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:04.240 lot of time and in the woods tend to do. 0:13:04.559 --> 0:13:06.679 Tim was an energetic boy, and he might have been 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:08.480 someone who'd wound up on riddle and had he been 0:13:08.520 --> 0:13:11.040 born a decade or two later. He was constantly in 0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:13.320 trouble from minor things. But he also had a good heart, 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:16.439 as this story from American Terrorist, the Fantastic Biography of 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.839 McVeigh makes clear. Tim was playing near the pond when 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:21.920 he noticed one of the older neighborhood boys carrying a 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:24.560 burlap sack. The sack was weighted down with rocks, but 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:26.720 the curious Tim could see there was something else wriggling 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.000 in the sack. He watched as the older boy pitched 0:13:29.000 --> 0:13:31.000 the sack out into the pond, where it quickly sank 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:33.240 to the bottom. What was that, Tim asked, running to 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:35.560 the far shore of the pond where the neighborhood boy stood. 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:37.719 Those are kittens, my dad had The boy answered, in 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:39.760 a matter of fact tone, we had to get rid 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:42.559 of them. For Tim, who loved animals and especially kittens, 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:44.600 the realization of what he had witnessed hit him hard. 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:48.200 He cried about the incident for days. So part of 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:49.560 what we're trying to ask here is, you know, we 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:51.760 talked about Robert Matthews a little bit earlier. We talked 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:53.600 about Louis beat. These are guys who are pretty brutal. 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:58.000 Early on, Matthews was a drop of society from age eleven. Uh, 0:13:58.040 --> 0:14:00.800 Louis Beam like immediately wanted to fight and go to 0:14:00.840 --> 0:14:03.839 war and kill. Tim McVeigh is a sensitive kid who's 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:06.719 like heartbroken when he sees someone being cruel to animals. Yeah, 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.360 it's confusing. He's not the kind of guy who would 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:13.320 have wound up joining George Lincoln Rockwell's Nazi party, which 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:16.920 both Matthews and Beam are the kind of guys speared 0:14:16.920 --> 0:14:20.280 by that um. The story of Tim McVeigh is the 0:14:20.320 --> 0:14:24.080 story of how a young mind got enraptured with this 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:28.440 kind of terroristic apocalyptic ideology. Who wouldn't have gotten caught 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:30.200 in the first iteration of it. This is a guy 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:32.520 who would only have been caught by the changes made 0:14:32.520 --> 0:14:35.240 of the movement's propaganda outreach. Interest is park. I think 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.680 that's that's the story we're talking about today. Well, good, 0:14:38.720 --> 0:14:41.600 that's interesting. So Tim fell in love with guns at 0:14:41.600 --> 0:14:43.880 an early age. His grandfather first took him shooting when 0:14:43.920 --> 0:14:46.600 he was seven. This probably sounds crazy to some people, 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.240 particularly in Los Angeles where we read this, But I 0:14:49.360 --> 0:14:51.360 started shooting at the same age that Tim did, when 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:54.200 I was a little kid living in fucking rural Oklahoma. Um, 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:56.640 so it's pretty normal in that era. And Tim's grandpa, 0:14:56.720 --> 0:15:00.000 everyone said Ed McVeigh was a stickler about firearm safety 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:02.320 and considered safe gun ownership to be an integral part 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.360 of American citizenship. So he likes guns, but he doesn't 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:08.160 like killing things. He's like a target shooter and stuff like. 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:10.760 He's yeah, being small and sort of weird. Tim McVey 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:12.800 was a bit of a magnet for bullies. He developed 0:15:12.800 --> 0:15:15.240 a deep hatred of bullying and a reflective rage at 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:17.960 the side of anything he saw his bully behavior, whether 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.400 it came from an individual or an institution. Tim's parents 0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:23.560 divorced when they were young. His sisters chose to go 0:15:23.600 --> 0:15:25.560 with their mother, but Tim stayed with his father so 0:15:25.600 --> 0:15:28.680 that he would not have to be alone since the kid. 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:31.720 After the Oklahoma City bombing, a number of pundits would 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:34.040 try to tie Tim's parents divorce to his evolution as 0:15:34.040 --> 0:15:36.600 a terrorist. This would seem to be an overstatement, but 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:39.040 he did tie his mother leaving his father to broader 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:41.840 social trends, later stating in an interview that in the 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:44.320 past thirty years, because of the women's movement, they've taken 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:47.400 an influence out of the household. Yeah. I mean, I 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:49.720 could see that as being a formative spot for why 0:15:49.760 --> 0:15:53.360 you don't like women. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which maybe makes 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:55.640 him a little bit more sympathetic to the kind of 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:58.760 propaganda put out by these groups. If you start to 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:02.080 think of the government as boy yeah yeah. When one 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:03.920 reads about McVeigh, they get the feeling that had he 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:05.720 been born later, he might have found a home within 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.120 the alt right. For one thing, he was obsessed with 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:11.600 the Star Wars movies and identified heavily with Luke Skywalker 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.080 as the eighties. Yeah, special Boy, Special Boy, blowing up 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:22.880 the big evil thing. Yeah, special dragon Boy. As the 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:25.600 eighties rolled along and home computer started to become more common, 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:28.480 McVeigh became one of the first generation of computer nerds. 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.320 He was on the Internet before basically anyone else. His 0:16:31.440 --> 0:16:35.560 handle on those early message boards was the Wanderer. We 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:38.080 can't know everywhere McVeigh went in the early Internet, but 0:16:38.120 --> 0:16:40.840 it's unlikely to be pure coincidence that Timothy grew obsessed 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:43.240 with survivalism and the Second Amendment during the years he 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:46.400 was most involved in Nassan internet culture. It's entirely possible 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:48.920 he came across some of Louis Beam's writings during this time. 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:50.640 We know for a fact that he fell in love 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:52.400 with a book we've already talked about a lot in 0:16:52.400 --> 0:16:55.120 this series. You want to guess what it is, Turner Diary. 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:59.800 It's rob Oh I lovely. Oh, it's beautiful, beautiful book. 0:17:00.200 --> 0:17:01.680 But that was a lie. He he fell in love 0:17:01.720 --> 0:17:04.600 with the Turner Diars. You were right, Katie, Yeah, God, yeah. 0:17:04.680 --> 0:17:06.760 He first heard about the Turner Diaries from an ad 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:09.600 and soldier of Fortune magazine. He ordered the book by 0:17:09.640 --> 0:17:11.720 mail and fell madly in love with it. Now for 0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:13.480 the rest of his life, he'd insist that the book's 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:15.679 gun rights advocacy was what drew him to it, not 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:18.800 its depiction of a genocidal worldwide race war. And it's 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:20.679 kind of possible he was telling the truth. Again, like 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.640 Randy Weaver, Tim McVeigh is definitely a racist, but that's 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:27.600 not his motivation, just like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:29.560 really think he's probably telling the truth when he was 0:17:29.600 --> 0:17:31.280 like mostly just into it because it had a lot 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:33.960 of violent scenes and it was about like a gun 0:17:34.000 --> 0:17:37.080 control revolution. Like the racism he could take or leave. 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:41.439 That's not great. He has to be racist for this, 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:43.760 But he wasn't racist enough that he wouldn't have joined 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:48.960 the Order just because of that, exactly. Yeah, yeah yeah, 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:51.679 post Estes Park, the Turner Diaries remained one of the 0:17:51.720 --> 0:17:54.600 lynchpins of white supremacist recruitment in the US. Ads for 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:57.399 written magazines like Soldier of Fortune often posed the question, 0:17:57.640 --> 0:17:59.920 what will you do if the government comes for your gun. 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:02.959 None of this is to say that McVeigh wasn't racist. 0:18:03.000 --> 0:18:04.639 He grew up in a place where everyone was white, 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:06.480 at age nineteen, he got a job as a guard 0:18:06.480 --> 0:18:09.320 on an armored car. He later recalled his colleagues expressing 0:18:09.320 --> 0:18:12.240 casual racism towards black residents on the East side of Buffalo, 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.320 and eventually he adopted those beliefs and their propensity for 0:18:15.400 --> 0:18:18.680 using racial slurs. Racism was a fact of Tim's life, 0:18:18.840 --> 0:18:21.640 but again it wasn't like the main thing for him. 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:24.600 What was his main thing? We're guns. During his time 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:26.959 as a security guard, mcveah spent most of his recreational 0:18:27.000 --> 0:18:29.200 time shooting. He eventually got in trouble with his neighbors 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:31.520 for doing show so, and this seems to have influenced 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.040 his desire to join the army. He basically just like 0:18:34.600 --> 0:18:37.919 with guns. Yeah, McVeigh was an excellent recruit and by 0:18:37.920 --> 0:18:40.440 all accounts, a very good soldier. He fell in love 0:18:40.480 --> 0:18:43.240 with most aspects of army life, although he disliked the 0:18:43.240 --> 0:18:46.199 emphasis training placed on killing. In a later interview, who 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.679 We're called twenty times a day, it would be blood 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:50.879 makes the grass grow. Kill, kill, kill. You would be 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:53.120 screaming that until your throat was wrong. If somebody put 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:54.879 a video camera on that, they would think it was 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:59.040 a bunch of sickos. You're right thing to say after 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:02.800 blowing up a federal building filled with babies, but a 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:06.520 valid point on base. McVeigh continued to read far right literature, 0:19:06.560 --> 0:19:09.280 devouring conspiracy theories about the United States and the United 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:12.439 Nations conspiring to steal the freedoms and guns of Americans. 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:14.919 He handed out copies of the Turner Diaries to his 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:17.520 closest comrades. He was warned several times by friends who 0:19:17.600 --> 0:19:20.920 read the book that people would think he was a 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:29.000 good stuff around, good for them, maybe report him all. Yeah, 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:31.320 the go for would give Tim McVeigh his first chance 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:35.360 to actually use guns against other human beings, and interestingly enough, 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:37.439 he seems to have hated it. He was not on 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:39.800 board with the whar from the beginning. McVeigh felt the U. 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:42.359 S Military should only get involved in conflicts that directly 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:45.160 affected the lives of American citizens. He saw the US 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:48.880 intervention against Iraq as bullying, and Tim McVeigh hated bullies. 0:19:49.400 --> 0:19:51.560 When he shipped over to Iraq, McVeigh was the gunner 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:54.199 on a Bradley fighting vehicle during a battle in country. 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:56.960 He killed two Iraqi soldiers with the Bradley's very large 0:19:57.000 --> 0:19:59.840