Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, I'm Katy Kuric, and this is next question
Speaker 1: I'll never forget. The morning of April nineteenth, nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: we had just wrapped up the Today Show when we
Speaker 1: got word that the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City
Speaker 1: had been bombed. We immediately started covering the story.
Speaker 2: Good morning, You're looking at a live picture of what's
Speaker 2: left of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the site
Speaker 2: of the worst terrorist bombing to ever hit the United States.
Speaker 2: As a result of the blast, at least thirty six
Speaker 2: people are dead, hundreds are injured, one hundreds still unaccounted for. Today, Thursday,
Speaker 2: April the twentieth, nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 3: From NBC News. This is a special.
Speaker 1: Edition of The building was in shambles, and I remember
Speaker 1: my heart sinking when I heard there was a daycare
Speaker 1: center on the premises.
Speaker 2: And also to help this community recover. Katie, Good morning, Brian,
Speaker 2: Good morning.
Speaker 1: You know it's so horrifying to watch these pictures from Afar.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine how difficult it is to be
Speaker 1: there up close. We're going to be getting the very
Speaker 1: latest from the White House this morning. We'll be hearing
Speaker 1: from several survivors, including I'll also never forget the photo
Speaker 1: of the firefighter carrying a bloodied, battered, yes deceased little girl.
Speaker 1: She was just a toddler, one of nineteen kids who
Speaker 1: were killed in the blast. I also actually went to
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City and remember a makeshift memorial Teddy bears flowers
Speaker 1: all covering a chain link fence. For days, weeks, even months,
Speaker 1: we continue to cover the story because at the time
Speaker 1: it was considered one of the deadliest acts on US
Speaker 1: soil in history. But that's not what we thought at first.
Speaker 1: In this half hour, we're going to be hearing from
Speaker 1: a couple of experts on terrorism, both of whom say
Speaker 1: the US government is not keeping up with the threat
Speaker 1: posed by radical movements, and then later in the hour,
Speaker 1: some of the heroes. So when I heard that Jeffrey
Speaker 1: Tubin had written a new book called Homegrown, all about
Speaker 1: Timothy McVeagh and the rise of right wing extremism, I
Speaker 1: was anxious to talk to him. Jeffrey Tubin is a
Speaker 1: terrific writer, and because he's a lawyer, he often focuses
Speaker 1: on major cases. He's written nine books, everything from OJ
Speaker 1: to Patricia Hurst. I was anxious to talk to him
Speaker 1: to find out what has happened in the years since.
Speaker 1: But we began our conversation with the discussion of who
Speaker 1: people thought initially were responsible for the bomby, and those
Speaker 1: were Middle Eastern extremists. I asked him why, and that's
Speaker 1: how our conversation began.
Speaker 3: Well, to answer that question, I give you two explanations.
Speaker 3: One which is the more I guess the fairer one
Speaker 3: is it had been a little more than two years
Speaker 3: since the First World Trade Center bombing, and Ramsey Yusef,
Speaker 3: the mastermind, had just been arrested in February of nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five, just you know, a little more than two
Speaker 3: months before the Oklahoma City bombing, So the issue of
Speaker 3: Islamic terrorism was very much in the mix. So that
Speaker 3: is to me a kind of reasonable reason to at
Speaker 3: least raise the possibility. The more sinister and disturbing explanation
Speaker 3: is that it was a assumption that Americans couldn't do this,
Speaker 3: and that this is just something Americans do not do,
Speaker 3: and that was pernicious and wrong.
Speaker 1: Why do you think the so called experts were in
Speaker 1: such denial at the time that an American could do this?
Speaker 3: Well, because I think this is a continuing pattern in
Speaker 3: American life, and it is something that has gone on
Speaker 3: with the Oklahoma City bombing, even after it's been convincingly
Speaker 3: proved that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols acted alone. There
Speaker 3: is a political interest, especially on the American right, in
Speaker 3: the right wing, to say that we don't do this,
Speaker 3: that these kinds of acts are not us, and the
Speaker 3: desire to push the responsibility onto Islamic terrorists as opposed
Speaker 3: to the right wing Americans who did it. It's a
Speaker 3: political act. I mean, it is an attempt to steer
Speaker 3: responsibility away from political, if not allies, people who are
Speaker 3: at least somewhat sympathetic to you. So it is a
Speaker 3: bad thing that we tried to blame foreigners for acts
Speaker 3: that very clearly are entirely native grown.
Speaker 1: Your book is so well written and actually thrilling to
Speaker 1: read in terms of the suspense and everything that transpired
Speaker 1: before and after Oklahoma City. I'm curious why you decided
Speaker 1: to write about this. What caught your eye or your
Speaker 1: attension about Oklahoma City.
Speaker 3: Well, sometimes when I've had book subjects, it's just sort
Speaker 3: of evolved. This book arose from something very specific in
Speaker 3: October of twenty twenty, the FBI arrested a number of
Speaker 3: people in the conspiracy to kidnap Governor Whitmer of Michigan.
Speaker 3: I started looking into that, and it became very clear
Speaker 3: almost from the start that most of the perpetrators were
Speaker 3: involved with the Michigan Militia. I had covered the McVeigh
Speaker 3: in Nichols trials in nineteen ninety seven. I didn't go
Speaker 3: to Oklahoma City when it was still you know, in ruins,
Speaker 3: but I did cover the trial. So I knew the
Speaker 3: facts and in a more detailed way than I know
Speaker 3: most stories from that long ago. And I knew that
Speaker 3: Terry Nichols and his brother James had been affiliated with
Speaker 3: the Michigan militia, and so I thought to my said,
Speaker 3: I know these people, I know what they believe and
Speaker 3: any so I started working, you know, trying to figure
Speaker 3: out what was going on there. It was only right
Speaker 3: after the election January sixth, that, of course, January sixth happened,
Speaker 3: and it was quite clear to me that the people
Speaker 3: who were the co conspirators in the Whitmer kidnapping attempt
Speaker 3: and the January sixth people were very similar. That in
Speaker 3: turn reminded me that they were like McVeigh and Nichols.
Speaker 3: So that story that the connection between McVeigh and Nichols
Speaker 3: and what came you know, just recently, was really what
Speaker 3: prompted me to write the book. And I found, much
Speaker 3: to my surprise and delight, that there was this unbelievable
Speaker 3: source of information at the Brisco Center at the University
Speaker 3: of Texas that no one, almost no one had ever
Speaker 3: looked at.
Speaker 1: Jeff talk about this treasure trove of files donated by
Speaker 1: mcveigh's lead attorney, a man I interviewed many, many times
Speaker 1: because he did love the camera to the University of Texas.
Speaker 1: So first of all, why did he donate them? And
Speaker 1: how helpful were they in writing this book?
Speaker 3: You know, Katie, I have spent my entire career covering
Speaker 3: the law and often covering trials in the aftermath of trials,
Speaker 3: and it was the ultimate dream come true to find
Speaker 3: this archive. Stephen Jones was the lead attorney for Timothy McVeigh.
Speaker 3: He assembled, at government expense and in enormous team of lawyers,
Speaker 3: like a dozen lawyers investigators. They traveled all over the world,
Speaker 3: and they interviewed their client multiple times, and as a result,
Speaker 3: every time one of them interviewed their client, they would
Speaker 3: write a memo about what McVeigh said and then send
Speaker 3: it around to everyone. What Stephen Jones did, which I
Speaker 3: had no idea about until I started looking into this,
Speaker 3: is he donated everything, every scrap of paper in connection
Speaker 3: with the McVeigh case to the Brisco Center at the
Speaker 3: University of Texas. Now, if there are any lawyers listening,
Speaker 3: the first question anybody says is, how can a lawyer
Speaker 3: do this? What about attorney client privilege? What about client confidences?
Speaker 3: What a client tells his lawyer is protected forever, and
Speaker 3: that is true even if the client dies, as Timothy
Speaker 3: McVeigh was executed in two thousand and one. How could
Speaker 3: Jones have done this? Well, that's a question that I
Speaker 3: put to him, and it's a question he's addressed in
Speaker 3: various forms. And his view is that McVeigh, by attacking
Speaker 3: Jones later after his conviction, effectively waived the attorney client privilege.
Speaker 3: I don't think that's true. I don't think it's accurate.
Speaker 1: But who would sue Jones anyway?
Speaker 3: Well, that was the thing and fairness to Stephen Jones.
Speaker 3: Another thing he has said is he realizes how important
Speaker 3: this case was. But the answer to your question is,
Speaker 3: I don't think he had the right to give this
Speaker 3: stuff away. I don't think it was right. I thought
Speaker 3: he was subject to discipline from the Bar Association. Hasn't happened.
Speaker 3: But I don't think this is what a proper behavior
Speaker 3: for a lawyer. Just but it's not my problem. But exactly,
Speaker 3: I mean, that's why.
Speaker 1: Are you the first author that really had, you know,
Speaker 1: comb through these files. Because other people have written about
Speaker 1: Timothy McVeigh.
Speaker 3: I'm not the first person to have looked at any
Speaker 3: of it. I don't know that it's ever been cited before.
Speaker 3: I'm certainly the first person to look at it in detail,
Speaker 3: and it's been there since the early two thousands, but
Speaker 3: almost no one has looked at it as far as
Speaker 3: I was aware.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to those days, Jeff, when you were
Speaker 1: covering the McVeigh and Nichols trials in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: you write that you quote failed to understand, much less
Speaker 1: explain mcveigh's place in the broader slipstream of American history.
Speaker 1: With the benefit of hindsight now and a re examination
Speaker 1: of everything that happened before and after the Oklahoma City bombing.
Speaker 1: How have you come to understand Timothy mcveay differently? You
Speaker 1: must feel at this point you know him pretty intimately.
Speaker 3: I do. I do, and I do feel that the
Speaker 3: picture of him that I and others presented it wasn't
Speaker 3: exactly inaccurate, but it was very much incomplete. The picture
Speaker 3: that you got of Timothy McVeigh from my work, and
Speaker 3: I think for most coverage in the mid nineties, was
Speaker 3: of a lone eccentric, a lone wolf, someone who was
Speaker 3: fueled by his own idiosyncratic grievances to do these terrible acts.
Speaker 3: And what the documents that I found at the Brisco
Speaker 3: Center and all of my reporting proved to me was
Speaker 3: that's wrong is that Timothy mcveay was part of a movement.
Speaker 3: A phrase you to this day often here about McVeigh
Speaker 3: is that he was anti government. That's wrong. He was
Speaker 3: not anti government. He was not an anarchist. He was
Speaker 3: anti the government in power then Bill Clinton's government. He
Speaker 3: was a right wing extremist. He was not an anarchist.
Speaker 3: He was part of the movement of Newt Gingrich. He
Speaker 3: was part of Rush Limbaugh's Dittohead audience. One of the
Speaker 3: things he talked about with his lawyers often is that
Speaker 3: as he went for these very long drives around the country,
Speaker 3: whether he was going from his home near Buffalo, to
Speaker 3: visiting Nichols in Michigan, to visiting his friend in Arizona,
Speaker 3: to visiting the scene of Waco, or his sister in Florida,
Speaker 3: these incredibly long drives, he was always listening to Rush Limbaugh.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was part of the right wing movement
Speaker 3: of the nineteen nineties. And one haunting thing he said
Speaker 3: to his lawyers was, I knew there was an army
Speaker 3: out there, an army out there of people like me,
Speaker 3: but I never found it. And he didn't because he
Speaker 3: didn't have the tools and just to get yet to
Speaker 3: one of the larger points of the book, which is
Speaker 3: the difference between McVeigh and January sixth, is the Internet
Speaker 3: and social media. Because the people who wanted to kidnap
Speaker 3: Governor Whitmer, they could find each other on Facebook, private chats.
Speaker 3: If you look at the guy who shot up the walmart,
Speaker 3: the guy who shot up the grocery store in Buffalo.
Speaker 1: The Tree of Life, the Tree of.
Speaker 3: Life guy in Pittsburgh, all of them were radicalized online
Speaker 3: and McVeigh didn't have that, and he didn't have the
Speaker 3: opportunity to find others even though he was looking.
Speaker 1: When we come back, how the assault weapons band implemented
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four may have pushed Timothy McVeigh over
Speaker 1: the edge. If you want to get smarter every morning
Speaker 1: with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on
Speaker 1: health and wellness and pop culture, sign up for our
Speaker 1: daily news wake up call by going to Katiecuric dot com.
Speaker 1: And we're back. Tell us a little bit about Timothy
Speaker 1: mcvay's personality because it was so long ago, and of
Speaker 1: course his picture and his photograph loom large in my mind.
Speaker 1: But you describe him, I think as a modern day
Speaker 1: in cell in some ways. But tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit more about him as a person.
Speaker 3: Well, let's start with where he grew up outside Buffalo.
Speaker 3: His father worked at a GM plant that made mostly
Speaker 3: air conditioners for thirty years. His grandfather worked at the
Speaker 3: same GM plant for thirty years. There was a stability
Speaker 3: in that community that by the time tim was growing
Speaker 3: up was gone. So this sense of economic location was
Speaker 3: a big part of it. Also, his parents had a
Speaker 3: unhappy marriage. And here here's where you know a lot
Speaker 3: of people's parents have unhappy marriages, but here there's a
Speaker 3: particularly distinctive fact that to me always seemed highly relevant.
Speaker 3: In the family, there were two daughters and one son,
Speaker 3: and McVeigh was in the middle. The mother kept moving
Speaker 3: out during his teenage years, and every time she moved away,
Speaker 3: she took the two daughters, but not tim And it
Speaker 3: always seemed to me like a kind of Sophie's choice
Speaker 3: situation where your mother doesn't pick you, and that I
Speaker 3: think had a psychological impact on him, and the way
Speaker 3: he talked about his mother with tremendous bitterness, that she
Speaker 3: was a drunk and a slut, and who knows when
Speaker 3: any of that was true, but that anger against women
Speaker 3: came through in his later life. After high school, he
Speaker 3: went to a business college for a while, didn't do
Speaker 3: well there. He enlisted in the army. He was a
Speaker 3: very good soldier, a very effective soldier, won a bronze
Speaker 3: star in the First Gulf War. But when he came back,
Speaker 3: he tried out for the Green Berets for special Forces,
Speaker 3: and he bombed out of the test almost immediately, and
Speaker 3: so in nineteen ninety one ninety two, that was when
Speaker 3: his life sort of fell apart because he wasn't in
Speaker 3: the military, he couldn't make a connection with a woman,
Speaker 3: he had no financial prospects. There was nothing for him
Speaker 3: in Buffalo, and that's when he turned to the political extremism.
Speaker 1: A lot of depictions of McVeigh portray him as sort
Speaker 1: of a freakish outsider, but you make the point that
Speaker 1: his views were very much aligned was sort of mainstream
Speaker 1: Republican doctrine at the time.
Speaker 3: Right, That's right. I mean, it's important to remain sort
Speaker 3: of what was going on in American politics at that point.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety four, Nut Gingrich led America led the
Speaker 3: Republicans with the Contract with America to a huge victory
Speaker 3: in the midterm elections, where they retook the House, they
Speaker 3: retook the Senate, and Bill Clinton was almost a marginal
Speaker 3: figure in the lead up to the ninety four elections.
Speaker 3: One of the ways Bill Clinton wanted to restore some
Speaker 3: sort of political success was in September of nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: he succeeded in getting Congress to pass the assault weapons
Speaker 3: ban over furious Republican opposition. That was the act that
Speaker 3: convinced McVeigh to conduct the bombing you know, I think
Speaker 3: many people may remember that McVeigh was anguished and very
Speaker 3: angry about the situation in Waco when the FBI raided
Speaker 3: the Branch Davidian compound. Seventies six people were killed, and
Speaker 3: that's true, But people forget how angry he was about
Speaker 3: the assault weapons ban, which was a very conventional Republican view. Now,
Speaker 3: obviously most Republicans did not engage in terrorism, but his
Speaker 3: views were an exaggerated version of very conventional Republican views
Speaker 3: of that era.
Speaker 1: Let's listen to Bill Clinton as he's signing the assault
Speaker 1: weapons ban on September thirteenth, nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 4: This bill makes it illegal for juveniles to own handguns,
Speaker 4: and yes, without eroding the rights of sportsmen and women
Speaker 4: in this country, we will finally ban these assault weapons
Speaker 4: from our street that have no purpose other than to kill.
Speaker 3: Gosh, it could be yesterday. But when you see mcveigh's reaction,
Speaker 3: and you see mcveigh's obsession with gun rights in the
Speaker 3: Second Amendment, it is one of the clearest connections between
Speaker 3: McVeigh and January sixth, twenty twenty one, that the fixation
Speaker 3: of gun rights on the right is so intense and
Speaker 3: so powerful and really bigger than any other issue, Bigger
Speaker 3: than abortion, bigger than taxes. That's what the modern right
Speaker 3: wing cares about, and it's what McVeigh cared about.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing Chris Murphy of Connecticut, though, talking about
Speaker 1: how guns have become a proxy for so much more
Speaker 1: than just Second Amendment rights.
Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more, which makes it all the more
Speaker 3: important to people, because if you are saying to someone,
Speaker 3: I want to eliminate your right to buy an AR fifteen,
Speaker 3: you're not just talking about AR fifteen's You're talking about
Speaker 3: an entire worldview. It becomes an existential threat to you
Speaker 3: as a person, taking away your salt weapon. And that's
Speaker 3: how McVeigh saw it, and that's how a lot of
Speaker 3: people see it today.
Speaker 1: You talk about Timothy mcvey's personality, but what about Terry Nichols,
Speaker 1: He helped him build the bomb?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: How did those two hook up? And you have Mike
Speaker 1: Fortier as well.
Speaker 3: The three of them met on the first day of
Speaker 3: basic training when they all enlisted in the army in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, But they were three very different figures
Speaker 3: with some aspects in common. McVeigh was from outside Buffalo,
Speaker 3: a land of industrial decline. Terry Nichols was from the
Speaker 3: Thumb of Michigan, an area of agricultural decline. His family
Speaker 3: were small farmers who just couldn't make it anymore, and
Speaker 3: so in that respect, their lives were very parallel. Mike
Speaker 3: Fortier was from a grim town called Kingman, Arizona, and
Speaker 3: all he wanted to do was get high and was
Speaker 3: different from the two of them, and was not actively
Speaker 3: involved in the conspiracy. He knew about it, but he
Speaker 3: did not participate in it. But Nichols is a very
Speaker 3: different personality than McVeigh. McVeigh was an evil person. He
Speaker 3: was also highly intelligent, effective, organized, resourceful, and really smart
Speaker 3: in certain ways. Nichols was a screw up from day
Speaker 3: one whose life cascaded from one failure to the next.
Speaker 3: You know, he bombed out of his attempt to go
Speaker 3: to college. He never really got a job. I mean,
Speaker 3: he left to his own devices. Would never, I think,
Speaker 3: have conducted the Oklahoma City bombing on his own, but
Speaker 3: led by McVeigh, did participate in the conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Mike Fortier ended up basically cooperating with the government.
Speaker 3: He became the star witness for the government in its
Speaker 3: case against McVeigh, and at one point they drove across
Speaker 3: the country together and McVeigh took him to Oklahoma City
Speaker 3: and said, look, this is where I'm going to set
Speaker 3: off the bomb. The horror of Mike Fortyer's story is
Speaker 3: that if he had gotten off his ass and made
Speaker 3: one phone call to the FBI and said stop this guy,
Speaker 3: because he's really going to do it, he could have
Speaker 3: saved dozens and dozens of lives.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how mcveigh's and Nichol's convictions galvanized the right wing.
Speaker 1: He had a hard time, and of course he wasn't
Speaker 1: a very charismatic person who could recruit other people. But
Speaker 1: what impact did the trial and the conviction have on
Speaker 1: this growing movement of right wing extremists in this country?
Speaker 3: A tremendous effort to distance McVeigh from the movement. There
Speaker 3: was a full congressional investigation in the later nineties led
Speaker 3: by a congressman from from California and Dana Robacher, who
Speaker 3: met I won't say manufactured, but used really bogus evidence
Speaker 3: to suggest that Terry Nichols was really in league with
Speaker 3: Islamic terrorists. It was, it was, It was ridiculous. But
Speaker 3: I think it's it's it was part of the effort
Speaker 3: that the right way on the right wing to say, well,
Speaker 3: he really wasn't one of us.
Speaker 1: Do you think anyone else was involved?
Speaker 3: I don't. I you know, this is something I took
Speaker 3: very seriously. Now on the left, Interestingly, just as there's
Speaker 3: been an attempt on the right to distance McVeigh from
Speaker 3: the right wing movement, there's been an attempt on the
Speaker 3: left to associate McVeigh with the broader right wing movement
Speaker 3: and to suggest that there were lots of people who
Speaker 3: wanted to blow up the MURV building. There is absolutely
Speaker 3: no evidence that I've seen that anyone was involved in
Speaker 3: this bombing except McVeigh, Nichols, and Fortier in the sense
Speaker 3: that he knew about it, even if he didn't participate.
Speaker 1: You interviewed President Clinton for your book, and he told
Speaker 1: you that he was almost immediately convinced that this was
Speaker 1: homegrown terrorism.
Speaker 3: This to me, was the most interesting reporting experience I
Speaker 3: had when I was working on Homegrown, just because of
Speaker 3: the order you do reporting, you know, you never know
Speaker 3: exactly how it's going to unfold. I had interviewed several
Speaker 3: people who were in the White House on April nineteenth,
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five, and as you pointed out, a lot
Speaker 3: of people on television were saying these were Islamic terrorists,
Speaker 3: like the first World Trade Center bombing, and these were
Speaker 3: people who were in the Oval Office with Clinton at
Speaker 3: the time. And Clinton, of course didn't say this publicly.
Speaker 3: He didn't want to prejudge the investigation. But he said
Speaker 3: to them, this was not foreign, this was homegrown. These
Speaker 3: were the militias. I know these people. And so when
Speaker 3: I went to interview Clinton after talking to these other people,
Speaker 3: I said to him, well, how did you know that
Speaker 3: it was domestic when everybody was saying that it was foreign.
Speaker 3: And he proceeded to tell me, you know, I knew
Speaker 3: these people from Arkansas. And then he started reciting chapter
Speaker 3: and verse of right wing extremism, including some very violent,
Speaker 3: deadly stuff that he had dealt with in Arkansas when
Speaker 3: he was governor. And meanwhile, I'm interviewing Bill Clinton in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, and he is telling me about day
Speaker 3: by day events in nineteen eighty three, eighty fourty five.
Speaker 3: I went backed and checked it out. His memory was impeccable.
Speaker 3: So it was fascinating to me that Clinton understood the anger,
Speaker 3: the passion, the violence that was so evident in THEIA movement,
Speaker 3: and he saw in the Oklahoma City bombing before the
Speaker 3: experts did who was really behind it.
Speaker 1: Fascinating and I sometimes think that the government doesn't get
Speaker 1: enough credit. I mean, the way they handled the aftermath
Speaker 1: of Oklahoma City, the fact that he was arrested Timothy
Speaker 1: McVeigh what ninety minutes after the bombing by a very
Speaker 1: alert state trooper who noticed his license plate was missing.
Speaker 3: Right, there's a lot, there's some.
Speaker 1: Was serendipitous and someone was just really good investigation.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the FBI gets criticized for a lot,
Speaker 3: and for good reason. They did a superlative job, and
Speaker 3: Trooper Charlie Hager also did something amazing. But just to
Speaker 3: remind people how this all unfolded, the bombing took place
Speaker 3: at nine o two am on April nineteenth. It was
Speaker 3: this horrible explosion and then two blocks away, something came
Speaker 3: through the air and nearly crushed someone who was in
Speaker 3: a Ford Fiesta right there. It was a truck axle,
Speaker 3: and everybody could tell this came from very far away.
Speaker 3: The axle had a ven number, a vehicle identification number
Speaker 3: on it. It's traced to Rider Truck Rental. Rider says
Speaker 3: that truck was rented in Junction City, Kansas by a
Speaker 3: guy named Robert Kling three days earlier. FBI agents go,
Speaker 3: they fan out over Junction City, Kansas. They go to
Speaker 3: all the motels. They go to the Dreamland Motel, this
Speaker 3: kind of sleazy motel right by the highway, and they
Speaker 3: asked the proprietor and they say, has anybody been here
Speaker 3: with a rider truck? And they say, yeah, a guy
Speaker 3: parked a rider truck three days ago and he stayed here.
Speaker 3: What was his name, Timothy McVeigh. And then they found
Speaker 3: that that person had ordered Chinese food from the Hunam
Speaker 3: restaurant on and he had ordered food from Room twenty
Speaker 3: five because they had the phone records under the name
Speaker 3: Robert Kling. So that's how they discovered that Robert Kling
Speaker 3: and Timothy McVeigh were the same person. He used Timothy
Speaker 3: McVeigh to rent the hotel room.
Speaker 1: What a dope? Maybe a credit carding, No, no.
Speaker 3: It was all cash. He was careless, he made a mistake.
Speaker 3: And then the state the state trooper again the crazy coincidences.
Speaker 3: Charlie Hanger, who I have to say, is like the
Speaker 3: coolest guy in the world was. I interviewed him ninety
Speaker 3: minutes after the bombing. He is he is pissed because
Speaker 3: he wants to be sent to Oklahoma City where all
Speaker 3: the action is, but they say, no, continue your regular patrols.
Speaker 3: He sees a broken down old Mercury marquis driving north
Speaker 3: away from Oklahoma City with no license plate. He pulls
Speaker 3: the car over and as the guy gets out of
Speaker 3: the car, the driver of this car he as his
Speaker 3: jacket opens that he's carrying a gun, and he spins
Speaker 3: him around and puts him against the car. You to
Speaker 3: frisk him, and McVeigh says to him, you know that
Speaker 3: gun's loaded, and Charlie Hager puts the gun to mcveay's
Speaker 3: the base of mcveig's skull and says, so is mine,
Speaker 3: which is like the badass line of all time. I
Speaker 3: just love that. Anyway, he brings him in because in
Speaker 3: Oklahoma at that time, to carry an unregistered gun is
Speaker 3: a crime. Let's fast forward to today, when the right
Speaker 3: wing government of Oklahoma has ended that requirement. If Tim
Speaker 3: McVeagh had been arrested today, Charlie Hager couldn't have arrested him.
Speaker 3: All he could have done is give him a ticket
Speaker 3: for having anno license plate, because it's legal now to
Speaker 3: carry an unlicensed gun in Oklahoma. They put mcveigh's name
Speaker 3: in the database of people arrested, and they discover we
Speaker 3: have this guy in custody in Oklahoma. They call the
Speaker 3: courthouse in the jail and they say, do you have
Speaker 3: a guy named Timothy McVeigh there. Yeah, we're about to
Speaker 3: release him because it was such minor charges, and they
Speaker 3: start screaming, don't release him, don't release him, and they
Speaker 3: send a helicopter and that's how they get him.
Speaker 1: I know the book has been often for a scripted series,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty much writing myself right there.
Speaker 3: So I hope so.
Speaker 1: From my lips to God's ear when we come back.
Speaker 1: How Bill Clinton's reaction to what happened in Oklahoma City
Speaker 1: resurrected his presidency. Let's talk about the remarks Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: delivered at the memorial service at the Oklahoma Fairgrounds. You
Speaker 1: describe it as one of the most consequential of his presidency.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 6: You have lost too much, but you have not lost everything,
Speaker 6: and you have certainly not lost America, or we will
Speaker 6: stand with you, or as many.
Speaker 3: Tomorrows as it takes.
Speaker 6: To all my fellow Americans.
Speaker 4: Beyond this hall, I say, one thing we owe those
Speaker 4: who have sacrificed is the duty to purge ourselves of
Speaker 4: the dark forces which gave rise to this evil.
Speaker 1: Why was it such an important address?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the national feeling of horror and outrage
Speaker 3: was was really profound. I mean, remember, this is nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five, it's before nine to eleven. There has really
Speaker 3: never been an event like this in modern American history.
Speaker 3: And Clinton, who you know, he wasn't a senator, he
Speaker 3: was a governor. So he had done a lot of funerals,
Speaker 3: he had comforted people. And you know, the thing that
Speaker 3: many people to this day remember about Bill Clinton is
Speaker 3: that he felt other people's pain. And in his speech
Speaker 3: at the Oklahoma City Fairgrounds, you know, he really captured
Speaker 3: that feeling of national sorrow and national purpose where he
Speaker 3: really rose to the occasion. And after losing control of
Speaker 3: the House and Senate in the previous midterms November, this
Speaker 3: is only five months later, this was really the beginning
Speaker 3: of Bill Clinton's political resurrection, which continued into his reelection.
Speaker 3: The following year.
Speaker 1: You contrast Bill Clinton's handling of the bombings aftermath with
Speaker 1: that of Merrick Garlands. Let's listen to now ag Garland
Speaker 1: talking about his role during his confirmation hearings.
Speaker 7: From nineteen ninety five to nineteen ninety seven. I supervised
Speaker 7: the prosecution of the perpetrators of the bombing of the
Speaker 7: Oklahoma City Federal Building, who sought to spark a revolution
Speaker 7: that would topple the federal government. If confirmed, I will
Speaker 7: supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed
Speaker 7: the Capitol on January sixth, a heinous attack that sought
Speaker 7: to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy, the peaceful transfer
Speaker 7: of power to a newly elected government.
Speaker 1: You recently wrote a piece for The New York Times
Speaker 1: really comparing Merrick Garland's response and timeline after January sixth
Speaker 1: to the way he dealt with the Oklahoma City bombing.
Speaker 3: And again, you have to remember what was going on
Speaker 3: at the same time. The Oklahoma City bombing is April
Speaker 3: of nineteen ninety five. The OJ Simpson case is at
Speaker 3: its peak of national obsession in that at that time,
Speaker 3: on the April nineteenth, that's where I was I was
Speaker 3: covering the O. J. Simpson case. Garland was repelled by
Speaker 3: all the publicity and the way the prosecutors got so
Speaker 3: much attention, and the way there was so much, you know,
Speaker 3: craziness associated with OJ. He has this tremendous aversion to
Speaker 3: publicity about legal matters. He thinks it should be dealt
Speaker 3: with just just in the courtroom. In his role in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five and nineteen ninety seven, I can understand
Speaker 3: that one ground for criticism I think of him in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety seven is we need to hear more of
Speaker 3: the Merrick Garland. From his confirmation hearings, he has essentially
Speaker 3: stopped talking about the investigation of January sixth. He says,
Speaker 3: you know, you can get into trouble if you give
Speaker 3: too much pre trial publicity. That's true only in the
Speaker 3: most extreme cases. We have a situation now where Donald
Speaker 3: Trump and much of the Republican Party is trying to
Speaker 3: revise the history of January six is trying to say
Speaker 3: these people are political prisoners, that what they did was
Speaker 3: not was not so terrible. And Garland, with this aversion
Speaker 3: to publicity, which was born in the OJ case in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five, is staying on the sidelines as a
Speaker 3: public figure, and I think that's a disappointment, but I
Speaker 3: think it's also something that can be traced to what
Speaker 3: went on in the mid nineties.
Speaker 1: He has an aversion to publicity but also to making
Speaker 1: a broader political statement, right with his cases.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And you know, Bill Clinton, in addition to the
Speaker 3: speech at the Oklahoma City Fairgrounds, which was not political,
Speaker 3: he gave a series of speeches in the spring and
Speaker 3: summer of nineteen ninety five where he was saying, look
Speaker 3: at the violence in the language of people on talk
Speaker 3: radio about politics today. And you know, Rush Limbaugh knew
Speaker 3: who that was directed at, and he was all wounded innocence, like,
Speaker 3: don't blame me. Neither one of them knew how right
Speaker 3: Clinton was. That McVeigh was inspired by Rush limbas style rhetoric,
Speaker 3: and that is something that now, as Attorney General, Garland
Speaker 3: could be saying, but he chooses not to.
Speaker 1: In fact, we have some sound of Rush Limbaugh from
Speaker 1: twenty ten trying to connect Bill Clinton and Janet Reno
Speaker 1: to the Oklahoma City bombing and Waco. Let's listen to that.
Speaker 5: Let me ask you a question, what was a more
Speaker 5: likely cause of the Oklahoma City bombing, talk radio or
Speaker 5: Bill Clinton and Janet Reno's hands on management of Waco,
Speaker 5: the branch Davidian compound, and maybe to a lesser extent,
Speaker 5: Ruby Ridge. Don't forget that the Oklahoma City bombing occurred
Speaker 5: two years to the day after the Waco invasion. President
Speaker 5: Clinton's ties to the domestic terrorism of Oklahoma City are tangible.
Speaker 5: Talk radios ties are non existent.
Speaker 3: Your reaction, Wow, I never heard that before. That's fascinating
Speaker 3: I and perverse in the extreme, is that by supervising
Speaker 3: the situation in Waco where tragically so many people died
Speaker 3: seventy six people died, Bill Clinton should have known. Wrestling
Speaker 3: bas says that that was going to lead to Timothy
Speaker 3: mcveay's violence, which is so perverse and crazy that it's
Speaker 3: even hard to know how to respond to it. But
Speaker 3: it is indicative of how the right is trying to
Speaker 3: distance themselves and have continued to try to distance themselves
Speaker 3: from the fact that Timothy mcveay was a right wing
Speaker 3: extremist at.
Speaker 1: The same time. Didn't Waco fuel his actions?
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely, And it is true that McVeigh chose the
Speaker 3: date April nineteenth because it was the second anniversary of Waco,
Speaker 3: but to turn that into it's the fault of the
Speaker 3: people who were trying to deal with the situation in Waco.
Speaker 3: And obviously it did not work out well and it
Speaker 3: was not a good moment for the FBI. But the
Speaker 3: idea that that somehow means they are responsible for Tim
Speaker 3: mcvay's criminal act is perverse in the extreme.
Speaker 1: Do you think Rush Limbaugh realize that Timothy McVeigh listened
Speaker 1: to him non stop on these road trips.
Speaker 3: I don't think he did, because, frankly, no one knew
Speaker 3: how passionately McVeigh followed Limbaugh until I found the records
Speaker 3: of it in his discussion of it in these in
Speaker 3: these papers at the Brisco Center at the University of Texas.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in what has galvanized the movement almost step
Speaker 1: by step, leading to where it is today after nine
Speaker 1: to eleven our attention obviously turned overseas while we weren't looking,
Speaker 1: was something the farious happening.
Speaker 3: One of the things that really shocked me. I have
Speaker 3: a long epilogue in Homegrown, which is which chronicles not
Speaker 3: in a detailed way, but in a somewhat comprehensive way
Speaker 3: right wing violence that has taken place during subsequent years.
Speaker 3: This is not lone wolf activity, even if individuals are
Speaker 3: not working with others. It is a movement that uses
Speaker 3: violence as a matter of course, and they are more
Speaker 3: active when Democrats are in power than when Republicans are.
Speaker 1: What is the state of sort of domestic terrorism today?
Speaker 3: Well, in recent years moved largely to the form of
Speaker 3: mass shootings as opposed to bombs. If you look at
Speaker 3: many of the mass shootings, not all of them, but
Speaker 3: many of them, whether it's shooting up the gay nightclub
Speaker 3: in Orlando, or the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh,
Speaker 3: or the walmart in El Paso or grocery store in Buffalo.
Speaker 3: These are right wing extremists who were radicalized by the Internet,
Speaker 3: and it is easy in this country to get your
Speaker 3: hands on a semi automatic weapon, an assault weapon like
Speaker 3: AR fifteens, and so many of these shootings have been
Speaker 3: with AR fifteens and other assault weapons. That's where the
Speaker 3: focus is in terms of law enforcement looking for it,
Speaker 3: but it's very hard when there are thousands and thousands
Speaker 3: of AR fifteens in circulation in this country. Right wing
Speaker 3: extremism is now largely conducted through assault weapons. Rather than
Speaker 3: bombs like McVay. But the people are just as dead.
Speaker 3: This is the world we live in. And you know,
Speaker 3: one reason I wrote Homegrown is this story of nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five is a story of what's going on in
Speaker 3: the world in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: In fact, you write that the events of January sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one saw the full flowering of mcveag's legacy
Speaker 1: and contemporary politics. Let's listen to Alex Jones just before
Speaker 1: the insurrection.
Speaker 7: Tomorrow is the right day.
Speaker 8: We don't quietly take the election fraud. This will be
Speaker 8: their waterloo, this will be their destruction, the global as
Speaker 8: storie here the lordless.
Speaker 1: One to play God.
Speaker 8: They are not God. And the answered to their nineteen
Speaker 8: eighty four.
Speaker 3: Is sobent seventy, such savent.
Speaker 8: Souventy such sovent souventy six.
Speaker 3: Salvage the prologue to my book. The chapter is called
Speaker 3: seventeen seventy six. And one of the links between McVeigh
Speaker 3: and Alex Jones and the ex insurrectionists is this weird
Speaker 3: obsession with the founding fathers and the sense that our
Speaker 3: rebellion against the federal government is just like our forefather's
Speaker 3: rebellion against the British. Timothy McVeigh had memorized much of
Speaker 3: the Declaration of Independence. Most people don't know much about
Speaker 3: the Declaration of Independence after the first famous opening. Much
Speaker 3: of the Declaration of Independence is a justification for why
Speaker 3: we were fighting the British, and this has become sort
Speaker 3: of right wing code. Marjorie Taylor Green talks about the
Speaker 3: Declaration of Independence and the duty to rebel against tyrants.
Speaker 3: So when you think about the links between McVeigh and
Speaker 3: the January sixth people, it's not just a gun obsession,
Speaker 3: it's not just a belief in violence. It's an identification
Speaker 3: with the American Revolution and a justification for their actions,
Speaker 3: just like the people in seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 1: It's hard to believe that in twenty twenty five it
Speaker 1: will be the anniversary thirty year anniversary of the Oklahoma
Speaker 1: City bombing. How do you assess those thirty years? I mean,
Speaker 1: where are we now versus where we were then?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't want to say something good came of it,
Speaker 3: but you know, people of Oklahoma to this day they
Speaker 3: talk about the Oklahoma standard, which is civic involvement that
Speaker 3: was part of the response and that is something that
Speaker 3: is worth I don't think celebrating is the right word,
Speaker 3: but at least recognizing. But you know, we are a
Speaker 3: country on the negative side where right wing violence is
Speaker 3: a persistent problem. It didn't start with Timothy mcveay, but
Speaker 3: this attempt to sort of put McVeigh in a box
Speaker 3: as someone who was an aberration. That's why I wrote Homegrown,
Speaker 3: to show that he was not an aberration and that
Speaker 3: his legacy lives on in both people and ideas that
Speaker 3: are pursuit.
Speaker 1: Listen to this day, Jeff Tuban Homegrown, Timothy McVeigh and
Speaker 1: the Rise of right Wing Extremism. It's a terrific book.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming in to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Thanks Katie, thanks for listening everyone. If you have a
Speaker 1: question for me or want to share your thoughts about
Speaker 1: how you navigate this crazy world reach out. You can
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Speaker 1: Next Question is a production of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media.
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