WEBVTT - Extremism: The Dangerous Origins of the Radical Right 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:08.160 Hi, everyone, I'm Katy Kuric, and this is next question 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:15.680 I'll never forget. The morning of April nineteenth, nineteen ninety five, 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:19.640 we had just wrapped up the Today Show when we 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:24.119 got word that the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:30.360 had been bombed. We immediately started covering the story. 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:33.160 Good morning, You're looking at a live picture of what's 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:35.880 left of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the site 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:38.600 of the worst terrorist bombing to ever hit the United States. 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:41.080 As a result of the blast, at least thirty six 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:45.400 people are dead, hundreds are injured, one hundreds still unaccounted for. Today, Thursday, 0:00:45.560 --> 0:00:47.800 April the twentieth, nineteen ninety five. 0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:51.120 From NBC News. This is a special. 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:54.680 Edition of The building was in shambles, and I remember 0:00:54.760 --> 0:00:57.840 my heart sinking when I heard there was a daycare 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:00.000 center on the premises. 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:03.920 And also to help this community recover. Katie, Good morning, Brian, 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:04.440 Good morning. 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:07.120 You know it's so horrifying to watch these pictures from Afar. 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.200 I can only imagine how difficult it is to be 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:12.280 there up close. We're going to be getting the very 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:14.319 latest from the White House this morning. We'll be hearing 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:18.520 from several survivors, including I'll also never forget the photo 0:01:18.680 --> 0:01:26.759 of the firefighter carrying a bloodied, battered, yes deceased little girl. 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:31.520 She was just a toddler, one of nineteen kids who 0:01:31.560 --> 0:01:35.560 were killed in the blast. I also actually went to 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:41.759 Oklahoma City and remember a makeshift memorial Teddy bears flowers 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:48.920 all covering a chain link fence. For days, weeks, even months, 0:01:49.240 --> 0:01:52.000 we continue to cover the story because at the time 0:01:52.160 --> 0:01:55.240 it was considered one of the deadliest acts on US 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.080 soil in history. But that's not what we thought at first. 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:01.520 In this half hour, we're going to be hearing from 0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:04.320 a couple of experts on terrorism, both of whom say 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:06.920 the US government is not keeping up with the threat 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:09.600 posed by radical movements, and then later in the hour, 0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:11.760 some of the heroes. So when I heard that Jeffrey 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:16.080 Tubin had written a new book called Homegrown, all about 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:20.320 Timothy McVeagh and the rise of right wing extremism, I 0:02:20.440 --> 0:02:23.880 was anxious to talk to him. Jeffrey Tubin is a 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:28.239 terrific writer, and because he's a lawyer, he often focuses 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:33.320 on major cases. He's written nine books, everything from OJ 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:37.359 to Patricia Hurst. I was anxious to talk to him 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:41.079 to find out what has happened in the years since. 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:45.320 But we began our conversation with the discussion of who 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:50.360 people thought initially were responsible for the bomby, and those 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:54.160 were Middle Eastern extremists. I asked him why, and that's 0:02:54.200 --> 0:02:55.480 how our conversation began. 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:02.800 Well, to answer that question, I give you two explanations. 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:06.720 One which is the more I guess the fairer one 0:03:07.000 --> 0:03:10.079 is it had been a little more than two years 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:14.680 since the First World Trade Center bombing, and Ramsey Yusef, 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:19.639 the mastermind, had just been arrested in February of nineteen 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:21.799 ninety five, just you know, a little more than two 0:03:21.840 --> 0:03:26.240 months before the Oklahoma City bombing, So the issue of 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:31.320 Islamic terrorism was very much in the mix. So that 0:03:31.520 --> 0:03:35.760 is to me a kind of reasonable reason to at 0:03:35.840 --> 0:03:39.920 least raise the possibility. The more sinister and disturbing explanation 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:48.600 is that it was a assumption that Americans couldn't do this, 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:53.240 and that this is just something Americans do not do, 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:58.400 and that was pernicious and wrong. 0:03:59.400 --> 0:04:01.920 Why do you think the so called experts were in 0:04:01.960 --> 0:04:05.320 such denial at the time that an American could do this? 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:09.360 Well, because I think this is a continuing pattern in 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:11.520 American life, and it is something that has gone on 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:16.120 with the Oklahoma City bombing, even after it's been convincingly 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:20.560 proved that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols acted alone. There 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:25.320 is a political interest, especially on the American right, in 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.640 the right wing, to say that we don't do this, 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:33.680 that these kinds of acts are not us, and the 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:39.960 desire to push the responsibility onto Islamic terrorists as opposed 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:43.760 to the right wing Americans who did it. It's a 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:47.600 political act. I mean, it is an attempt to steer 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:53.920 responsibility away from political, if not allies, people who are 0:04:53.960 --> 0:04:56.880 at least somewhat sympathetic to you. So it is a 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:04.080 bad thing that we tried to blame foreigners for acts 0:05:04.520 --> 0:05:07.760 that very clearly are entirely native grown. 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:12.000 Your book is so well written and actually thrilling to 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:17.520 read in terms of the suspense and everything that transpired 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:22.840 before and after Oklahoma City. I'm curious why you decided 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.360 to write about this. What caught your eye or your 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:28.119 attension about Oklahoma City. 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:33.080 Well, sometimes when I've had book subjects, it's just sort 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:38.120 of evolved. This book arose from something very specific in 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:44.240 October of twenty twenty, the FBI arrested a number of 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:48.080 people in the conspiracy to kidnap Governor Whitmer of Michigan. 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:51.159 I started looking into that, and it became very clear 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:56.080 almost from the start that most of the perpetrators were 0:05:56.279 --> 0:05:59.960 involved with the Michigan Militia. I had covered the McVeigh 0:06:00.040 --> 0:06:03.440 in Nichols trials in nineteen ninety seven. I didn't go 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.480 to Oklahoma City when it was still you know, in ruins, 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:08.640 but I did cover the trial. So I knew the 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:10.800 facts and in a more detailed way than I know 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:14.480 most stories from that long ago. And I knew that 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:18.640 Terry Nichols and his brother James had been affiliated with 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.360 the Michigan militia, and so I thought to my said, 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:25.760 I know these people, I know what they believe and 0:06:26.360 --> 0:06:29.320 any so I started working, you know, trying to figure 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:32.479 out what was going on there. It was only right 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.719 after the election January sixth, that, of course, January sixth happened, 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:40.320 and it was quite clear to me that the people 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:45.440 who were the co conspirators in the Whitmer kidnapping attempt 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:50.760 and the January sixth people were very similar. That in 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:55.080 turn reminded me that they were like McVeigh and Nichols. 0:06:55.360 --> 0:06:59.920 So that story that the connection between McVeigh and Nichols 0:07:00.640 --> 0:07:05.920 and what came you know, just recently, was really what 0:07:05.960 --> 0:07:09.160 prompted me to write the book. And I found, much 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:13.960 to my surprise and delight, that there was this unbelievable 0:07:14.000 --> 0:07:16.560 source of information at the Brisco Center at the University 0:07:16.600 --> 0:07:18.760 of Texas that no one, almost no one had ever 0:07:18.760 --> 0:07:19.200 looked at. 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:24.360 Jeff talk about this treasure trove of files donated by 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:28.040 mcveigh's lead attorney, a man I interviewed many, many times 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:32.120 because he did love the camera to the University of Texas. 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:36.480 So first of all, why did he donate them? And 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:39.480 how helpful were they in writing this book? 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:43.760 You know, Katie, I have spent my entire career covering 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:48.240 the law and often covering trials in the aftermath of trials, 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:52.800 and it was the ultimate dream come true to find 0:07:52.800 --> 0:07:57.040 this archive. Stephen Jones was the lead attorney for Timothy McVeigh. 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.880 He assembled, at government expense and in enormous team of lawyers, 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:06.320 like a dozen lawyers investigators. They traveled all over the world, 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:11.960 and they interviewed their client multiple times, and as a result, 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:15.520 every time one of them interviewed their client, they would 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:18.040 write a memo about what McVeigh said and then send 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:22.320 it around to everyone. What Stephen Jones did, which I 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:25.320 had no idea about until I started looking into this, 0:08:25.840 --> 0:08:29.560 is he donated everything, every scrap of paper in connection 0:08:29.800 --> 0:08:33.559 with the McVeigh case to the Brisco Center at the 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:37.480 University of Texas. Now, if there are any lawyers listening, 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:41.560 the first question anybody says is, how can a lawyer 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:46.839 do this? What about attorney client privilege? What about client confidences? 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:53.640 What a client tells his lawyer is protected forever, and 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:57.400 that is true even if the client dies, as Timothy 0:08:57.440 --> 0:09:00.640 McVeigh was executed in two thousand and one. How could 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:05.000 Jones have done this? Well, that's a question that I 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:07.440 put to him, and it's a question he's addressed in 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:13.960 various forms. And his view is that McVeigh, by attacking 0:09:15.000 --> 0:09:22.679 Jones later after his conviction, effectively waived the attorney client privilege. 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.959 I don't think that's true. I don't think it's accurate. 0:09:27.200 --> 0:09:29.000 But who would sue Jones anyway? 0:09:29.160 --> 0:09:31.440 Well, that was the thing and fairness to Stephen Jones. 0:09:31.480 --> 0:09:36.160 Another thing he has said is he realizes how important 0:09:36.160 --> 0:09:39.960 this case was. But the answer to your question is, 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:42.080 I don't think he had the right to give this 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.280 stuff away. I don't think it was right. I thought 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:48.720 he was subject to discipline from the Bar Association. Hasn't happened. 0:09:49.080 --> 0:09:52.720 But I don't think this is what a proper behavior 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:56.880 for a lawyer. Just but it's not my problem. But exactly, 0:09:56.960 --> 0:09:57.720 I mean, that's why. 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:02.120 Are you the first author that really had, you know, 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:05.240 comb through these files. Because other people have written about 0:10:05.240 --> 0:10:06.120 Timothy McVeigh. 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:08.960 I'm not the first person to have looked at any 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:12.920 of it. I don't know that it's ever been cited before. 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:15.559 I'm certainly the first person to look at it in detail, 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:22.000 and it's been there since the early two thousands, but 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:24.560 almost no one has looked at it as far as 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:25.160 I was aware. 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:27.640 Let's go back to those days, Jeff, when you were 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:31.800 covering the McVeigh and Nichols trials in nineteen ninety seven, 0:10:32.320 --> 0:10:35.640 you write that you quote failed to understand, much less 0:10:35.679 --> 0:10:41.040 explain mcveigh's place in the broader slipstream of American history. 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:45.040 With the benefit of hindsight now and a re examination 0:10:45.160 --> 0:10:50.240 of everything that happened before and after the Oklahoma City bombing. 0:10:50.640 --> 0:10:55.600 How have you come to understand Timothy mcveay differently? You 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:58.319 must feel at this point you know him pretty intimately. 0:10:58.559 --> 0:11:03.559 I do. I do, and I do feel that the 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:08.120 picture of him that I and others presented it wasn't 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:14.000 exactly inaccurate, but it was very much incomplete. The picture 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:17.120 that you got of Timothy McVeigh from my work, and 0:11:17.200 --> 0:11:20.600 I think for most coverage in the mid nineties, was 0:11:21.000 --> 0:11:27.240 of a lone eccentric, a lone wolf, someone who was 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:34.440 fueled by his own idiosyncratic grievances to do these terrible acts. 0:11:35.000 --> 0:11:38.840 And what the documents that I found at the Brisco 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:43.400 Center and all of my reporting proved to me was 0:11:43.440 --> 0:11:47.600 that's wrong is that Timothy mcveay was part of a movement. 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:52.720 A phrase you to this day often here about McVeigh 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:55.520 is that he was anti government. That's wrong. He was 0:11:55.559 --> 0:11:59.320 not anti government. He was not an anarchist. He was 0:11:59.880 --> 0:12:05.680 anti the government in power then Bill Clinton's government. He 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.040 was a right wing extremist. He was not an anarchist. 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:13.120 He was part of the movement of Newt Gingrich. He 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:17.240 was part of Rush Limbaugh's Dittohead audience. One of the 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:19.880 things he talked about with his lawyers often is that 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:22.960 as he went for these very long drives around the country, 0:12:23.640 --> 0:12:27.199 whether he was going from his home near Buffalo, to 0:12:27.360 --> 0:12:31.679 visiting Nichols in Michigan, to visiting his friend in Arizona, 0:12:31.920 --> 0:12:35.280 to visiting the scene of Waco, or his sister in Florida, 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:39.560 these incredibly long drives, he was always listening to Rush Limbaugh. 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:42.520 I mean, he was part of the right wing movement 0:12:42.600 --> 0:12:46.400 of the nineteen nineties. And one haunting thing he said 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:50.400 to his lawyers was, I knew there was an army 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:53.360 out there, an army out there of people like me, 0:12:53.920 --> 0:12:57.640 but I never found it. And he didn't because he 0:12:57.679 --> 0:13:00.520 didn't have the tools and just to get yet to 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:03.760 one of the larger points of the book, which is 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:09.079 the difference between McVeigh and January sixth, is the Internet 0:13:09.440 --> 0:13:12.760 and social media. Because the people who wanted to kidnap 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:17.240 Governor Whitmer, they could find each other on Facebook, private chats. 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:19.959 If you look at the guy who shot up the walmart, 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:23.920 the guy who shot up the grocery store in Buffalo. 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:25.120 The Tree of Life, the Tree of. 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:30.400 Life guy in Pittsburgh, all of them were radicalized online 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:33.160 and McVeigh didn't have that, and he didn't have the 0:13:33.200 --> 0:13:37.800 opportunity to find others even though he was looking. 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:43.320 When we come back, how the assault weapons band implemented 0:13:43.360 --> 0:13:48.000 in nineteen ninety four may have pushed Timothy McVeigh over 0:13:48.040 --> 0:13:53.440 the edge. If you want to get smarter every morning 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:56.360 with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.440 health and wellness and pop culture, sign up for our 0:13:59.520 --> 0:14:10.960 daily news wake up call by going to Katiecuric dot com. 0:14:11.000 --> 0:14:16.640 And we're back. Tell us a little bit about Timothy 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:20.120 mcvay's personality because it was so long ago, and of 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.760 course his picture and his photograph loom large in my mind. 0:14:24.840 --> 0:14:27.880 But you describe him, I think as a modern day 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:31.360 in cell in some ways. But tell us a little 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:33.400 bit more about him as a person. 0:14:33.680 --> 0:14:37.120 Well, let's start with where he grew up outside Buffalo. 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:42.480 His father worked at a GM plant that made mostly 0:14:42.520 --> 0:14:48.040 air conditioners for thirty years. His grandfather worked at the 0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:52.600 same GM plant for thirty years. There was a stability 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:56.080 in that community that by the time tim was growing 0:14:56.160 --> 0:15:01.600 up was gone. So this sense of economic location was 0:15:02.240 --> 0:15:06.120 a big part of it. Also, his parents had a 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:12.000 unhappy marriage. And here here's where you know a lot 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:14.480 of people's parents have unhappy marriages, but here there's a 0:15:14.520 --> 0:15:19.800 particularly distinctive fact that to me always seemed highly relevant. 0:15:19.920 --> 0:15:23.120 In the family, there were two daughters and one son, 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:27.280 and McVeigh was in the middle. The mother kept moving 0:15:27.320 --> 0:15:31.360 out during his teenage years, and every time she moved away, 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:34.680 she took the two daughters, but not tim And it 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:37.360 always seemed to me like a kind of Sophie's choice 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:42.320 situation where your mother doesn't pick you, and that I 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:46.760 think had a psychological impact on him, and the way 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:50.200 he talked about his mother with tremendous bitterness, that she 0:15:50.360 --> 0:15:52.720 was a drunk and a slut, and who knows when 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:56.120 any of that was true, but that anger against women 0:15:56.680 --> 0:16:01.600 came through in his later life. After high school, he 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.440 went to a business college for a while, didn't do 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:07.360 well there. He enlisted in the army. He was a 0:16:07.760 --> 0:16:12.120 very good soldier, a very effective soldier, won a bronze 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:15.720 star in the First Gulf War. But when he came back, 0:16:16.120 --> 0:16:18.920 he tried out for the Green Berets for special Forces, 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:22.920 and he bombed out of the test almost immediately, and 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:28.360 so in nineteen ninety one ninety two, that was when 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:30.560 his life sort of fell apart because he wasn't in 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:33.400 the military, he couldn't make a connection with a woman, 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:37.640 he had no financial prospects. There was nothing for him 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:41.560 in Buffalo, and that's when he turned to the political extremism. 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:46.160 A lot of depictions of McVeigh portray him as sort 0:16:46.200 --> 0:16:49.480 of a freakish outsider, but you make the point that 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:54.320 his views were very much aligned was sort of mainstream 0:16:54.720 --> 0:16:57.240 Republican doctrine at the time. 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:01.040 Right, That's right. I mean, it's important to remain sort 0:17:01.080 --> 0:17:04.400 of what was going on in American politics at that point. 0:17:04.640 --> 0:17:10.560 In nineteen ninety four, Nut Gingrich led America led the 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:15.160 Republicans with the Contract with America to a huge victory 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:18.240 in the midterm elections, where they retook the House, they 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:23.800 retook the Senate, and Bill Clinton was almost a marginal 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:28.080 figure in the lead up to the ninety four elections. 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:32.640 One of the ways Bill Clinton wanted to restore some 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:37.040 sort of political success was in September of nineteen ninety four, 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:40.240 he succeeded in getting Congress to pass the assault weapons 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:46.120 ban over furious Republican opposition. That was the act that 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:49.640 convinced McVeigh to conduct the bombing you know, I think 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:53.240 many people may remember that McVeigh was anguished and very 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:57.440 angry about the situation in Waco when the FBI raided 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:01.199 the Branch Davidian compound. Seventies six people were killed, and 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:05.560 that's true, But people forget how angry he was about 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:11.120 the assault weapons ban, which was a very conventional Republican view. Now, 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:16.879 obviously most Republicans did not engage in terrorism, but his 0:18:17.720 --> 0:18:23.680 views were an exaggerated version of very conventional Republican views 0:18:23.720 --> 0:18:24.280 of that era. 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:27.520 Let's listen to Bill Clinton as he's signing the assault 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:31.600 weapons ban on September thirteenth, nineteen ninety four. 0:18:33.760 --> 0:18:36.960 This bill makes it illegal for juveniles to own handguns, 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:41.840 and yes, without eroding the rights of sportsmen and women 0:18:41.880 --> 0:18:45.479 in this country, we will finally ban these assault weapons 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:49.280 from our street that have no purpose other than to kill. 0:18:50.800 --> 0:18:56.640 Gosh, it could be yesterday. But when you see mcveigh's reaction, 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.480 and you see mcveigh's obsession with gun rights in the 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:04.840 Second Amendment, it is one of the clearest connections between 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:09.680 McVeigh and January sixth, twenty twenty one, that the fixation 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:13.560 of gun rights on the right is so intense and 0:19:13.680 --> 0:19:18.240 so powerful and really bigger than any other issue, Bigger 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:22.160 than abortion, bigger than taxes. That's what the modern right 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:24.639 wing cares about, and it's what McVeigh cared about. 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:29.000 I remember hearing Chris Murphy of Connecticut, though, talking about 0:19:29.359 --> 0:19:33.720 how guns have become a proxy for so much more 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:36.639 than just Second Amendment rights. 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:40.320 I couldn't agree more, which makes it all the more 0:19:41.000 --> 0:19:45.200 important to people, because if you are saying to someone, 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:49.680 I want to eliminate your right to buy an AR fifteen, 0:19:49.960 --> 0:19:53.120 you're not just talking about AR fifteen's You're talking about 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:57.240 an entire worldview. It becomes an existential threat to you 0:19:57.320 --> 0:20:02.200 as a person, taking away your salt weapon. And that's 0:20:02.240 --> 0:20:04.520 how McVeigh saw it, and that's how a lot of 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:05.480 people see it today. 0:20:06.080 --> 0:20:10.639 You talk about Timothy mcvey's personality, but what about Terry Nichols, 0:20:11.000 --> 0:20:12.479 He helped him build the bomb? 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:12.840 Right? 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:16.440 How did those two hook up? And you have Mike 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:17.680 Fortier as well. 0:20:17.760 --> 0:20:19.560 The three of them met on the first day of 0:20:19.640 --> 0:20:22.480 basic training when they all enlisted in the army in 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:26.520 nineteen eighty eight, But they were three very different figures 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:32.520 with some aspects in common. McVeigh was from outside Buffalo, 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:37.200 a land of industrial decline. Terry Nichols was from the 0:20:37.240 --> 0:20:43.520 Thumb of Michigan, an area of agricultural decline. His family 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:47.560 were small farmers who just couldn't make it anymore, and 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:52.160 so in that respect, their lives were very parallel. Mike 0:20:52.240 --> 0:20:57.479 Fortier was from a grim town called Kingman, Arizona, and 0:20:57.560 --> 0:20:59.919 all he wanted to do was get high and was 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:02.360 different from the two of them, and was not actively 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:05.399 involved in the conspiracy. He knew about it, but he 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:11.080 did not participate in it. But Nichols is a very 0:21:11.080 --> 0:21:17.679 different personality than McVeigh. McVeigh was an evil person. He 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:24.400 was also highly intelligent, effective, organized, resourceful, and really smart 0:21:24.600 --> 0:21:29.320 in certain ways. Nichols was a screw up from day 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:33.719 one whose life cascaded from one failure to the next. 0:21:34.040 --> 0:21:36.320 You know, he bombed out of his attempt to go 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:40.400 to college. He never really got a job. I mean, 0:21:40.560 --> 0:21:45.040 he left to his own devices. Would never, I think, 0:21:45.400 --> 0:21:48.840 have conducted the Oklahoma City bombing on his own, but 0:21:49.080 --> 0:21:53.320 led by McVeigh, did participate in the conspiracy. 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:58.800 Mike Fortier ended up basically cooperating with the government. 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:01.360 He became the star witness for the government in its 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:05.240 case against McVeigh, and at one point they drove across 0:22:05.240 --> 0:22:09.200 the country together and McVeigh took him to Oklahoma City 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:11.240 and said, look, this is where I'm going to set 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:16.919 off the bomb. The horror of Mike Fortyer's story is 0:22:16.960 --> 0:22:21.200 that if he had gotten off his ass and made 0:22:21.280 --> 0:22:25.160 one phone call to the FBI and said stop this guy, 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:28.000 because he's really going to do it, he could have 0:22:28.080 --> 0:22:30.199 saved dozens and dozens of lives. 0:22:30.920 --> 0:22:37.679 I'm curious how mcveigh's and Nichol's convictions galvanized the right wing. 0:22:38.200 --> 0:22:40.439 He had a hard time, and of course he wasn't 0:22:40.760 --> 0:22:45.679 a very charismatic person who could recruit other people. But 0:22:45.960 --> 0:22:49.840 what impact did the trial and the conviction have on 0:22:49.920 --> 0:22:54.840 this growing movement of right wing extremists in this country? 0:22:56.080 --> 0:23:03.320 A tremendous effort to distance McVeigh from the movement. There 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:08.720 was a full congressional investigation in the later nineties led 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:12.960 by a congressman from from California and Dana Robacher, who 0:23:14.280 --> 0:23:19.400 met I won't say manufactured, but used really bogus evidence 0:23:19.840 --> 0:23:24.040 to suggest that Terry Nichols was really in league with 0:23:24.359 --> 0:23:28.600 Islamic terrorists. It was, it was, It was ridiculous. But 0:23:28.640 --> 0:23:32.080 I think it's it's it was part of the effort 0:23:32.240 --> 0:23:35.359 that the right way on the right wing to say, well, 0:23:35.400 --> 0:23:36.640 he really wasn't one of us. 0:23:36.920 --> 0:23:38.920 Do you think anyone else was involved? 0:23:39.200 --> 0:23:41.320 I don't. I you know, this is something I took 0:23:41.440 --> 0:23:45.080 very seriously. Now on the left, Interestingly, just as there's 0:23:45.080 --> 0:23:49.200 been an attempt on the right to distance McVeigh from 0:23:49.240 --> 0:23:51.639 the right wing movement, there's been an attempt on the 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:55.800 left to associate McVeigh with the broader right wing movement 0:23:55.840 --> 0:23:58.800 and to suggest that there were lots of people who 0:23:58.800 --> 0:24:02.600 wanted to blow up the MURV building. There is absolutely 0:24:02.680 --> 0:24:05.919 no evidence that I've seen that anyone was involved in 0:24:05.960 --> 0:24:10.120 this bombing except McVeigh, Nichols, and Fortier in the sense 0:24:10.160 --> 0:24:12.399 that he knew about it, even if he didn't participate. 0:24:13.080 --> 0:24:18.320 You interviewed President Clinton for your book, and he told 0:24:18.359 --> 0:24:23.080 you that he was almost immediately convinced that this was 0:24:23.160 --> 0:24:24.359 homegrown terrorism. 0:24:25.000 --> 0:24:28.359 This to me, was the most interesting reporting experience I 0:24:28.440 --> 0:24:30.879 had when I was working on Homegrown, just because of 0:24:30.880 --> 0:24:32.960 the order you do reporting, you know, you never know 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.119 exactly how it's going to unfold. I had interviewed several 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:39.120 people who were in the White House on April nineteenth, 0:24:39.240 --> 0:24:43.360 nineteen ninety five, and as you pointed out, a lot 0:24:43.359 --> 0:24:47.560 of people on television were saying these were Islamic terrorists, 0:24:47.640 --> 0:24:50.080 like the first World Trade Center bombing, and these were 0:24:50.080 --> 0:24:53.880 people who were in the Oval Office with Clinton at 0:24:53.920 --> 0:24:56.600 the time. And Clinton, of course didn't say this publicly. 0:24:56.640 --> 0:24:59.800 He didn't want to prejudge the investigation. But he said 0:24:59.840 --> 0:25:04.440 to them, this was not foreign, this was homegrown. These 0:25:04.440 --> 0:25:08.640 were the militias. I know these people. And so when 0:25:08.640 --> 0:25:12.000 I went to interview Clinton after talking to these other people, 0:25:12.640 --> 0:25:15.919 I said to him, well, how did you know that 0:25:16.040 --> 0:25:18.959 it was domestic when everybody was saying that it was foreign. 0:25:19.520 --> 0:25:24.200 And he proceeded to tell me, you know, I knew 0:25:24.200 --> 0:25:27.959 these people from Arkansas. And then he started reciting chapter 0:25:28.080 --> 0:25:33.240 and verse of right wing extremism, including some very violent, 0:25:33.520 --> 0:25:37.560 deadly stuff that he had dealt with in Arkansas when 0:25:37.600 --> 0:25:40.040 he was governor. And meanwhile, I'm interviewing Bill Clinton in 0:25:40.080 --> 0:25:43.320 twenty twenty two, and he is telling me about day 0:25:43.320 --> 0:25:45.880 by day events in nineteen eighty three, eighty fourty five. 0:25:45.960 --> 0:25:49.199 I went backed and checked it out. His memory was impeccable. 0:25:49.280 --> 0:25:55.040 So it was fascinating to me that Clinton understood the anger, 0:25:55.160 --> 0:26:00.760 the passion, the violence that was so evident in THEIA movement, 0:26:00.840 --> 0:26:04.479 and he saw in the Oklahoma City bombing before the 0:26:04.560 --> 0:26:06.760 experts did who was really behind it. 0:26:06.920 --> 0:26:11.120 Fascinating and I sometimes think that the government doesn't get 0:26:11.240 --> 0:26:15.000 enough credit. I mean, the way they handled the aftermath 0:26:15.200 --> 0:26:18.200 of Oklahoma City, the fact that he was arrested Timothy 0:26:18.280 --> 0:26:21.879 McVeigh what ninety minutes after the bombing by a very 0:26:22.280 --> 0:26:26.800 alert state trooper who noticed his license plate was missing. 0:26:26.880 --> 0:26:28.720 Right, there's a lot, there's some. 0:26:28.920 --> 0:26:32.359 Was serendipitous and someone was just really good investigation. 0:26:32.720 --> 0:26:36.320 I mean, you know, the FBI gets criticized for a lot, 0:26:36.560 --> 0:26:40.760 and for good reason. They did a superlative job, and 0:26:40.960 --> 0:26:44.840 Trooper Charlie Hager also did something amazing. But just to 0:26:45.400 --> 0:26:49.480