Meeting McVeigh
Oklahoma City bomber was self-absorbed til the end,
In any other setting, at any other time, the questions would have meant nothing. Certainly not worth a mention in notes of a first meeting with any new interview subject. But the appointment with the angular young man wearing a fresh crew cut was not just any meeting.
He was Timothy James McVeigh.
Ten months after his dramatic arrest for detonating a 4,800pound fertilizer bomb on the doorstep of the Oklahoma City federal building, there he was, a smile creasing his face and stocking feet propped on a chair, as if relaxing in his own living room.
There was absolutely no sense that he was afraid of what stood before him — a pending trial in what was then the largest mass murder in U.S. history and a likely death sentence. No expression of concern for the grief that consumed a community outside the mud-colored Oklahoma prison walls that contained him.
Rather, on that day in February, he was upset over how he had been characterized in the media and sought to reverse the torrent of public condemnation.
“We really can’t address the facts of the case,” McVeigh said matter-of-factly, as if managing the campaign of a damaged political candidate. “We can’t construct any timeline (of activities leading up to the bombing). We’re looking at a biographical story to straighten some things out.”
It was the start of an unusual meeting — an encounter between journalist and accused terrorist that surely would not happen in the hyper security-conscious post-9/11 world.
The attack in Oklahoma City seemed to mark a period of na- tional transition when law enforcement authorities and defense lawyers — and much of the country — struggled to grasp a new magnitude of evil.
Stephen Jones, McVeigh’s attorney, arranged the meeting in an unusual, if not impossible, effort at an image makeover for the accused terrorist.
The 45-minute session would be one of several individual meetings with reporters. Each was based on an agreement that McVeigh’s comments would not be published until the defense decided when, or if, their client was ready to tell his story publicly. Ultimately, my editors decided that insight into the man accused of such a crime outweighed any concession. (McVeigh’s subsequent execution lifted any remaining embargo.)
Completely unshackled, he greeted me with a handshake, described in my notes as “moist.”
He wore a gray sweatshirt over a bright orange jumpsuit, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. We engaged in some small talk about the weather before he commented on the appearance of a female prison staffer.
“Seeing (her) gets me through the day. You know what I mean?”
The questions I came to ask would get no direct answers.
Where were you coming from when you were stopped by police
“Humor is my way of coping. I do it to relieve stress, more than anything else. Sometimes you got to laugh.”
Timothy McVeigh
after the bombing on Interstate 35, just north of Oklahoma City?
Were you aware that there was a day care center in the building (19 children were among the 168 dead)?
What is your relationship with Terry Nichols?
Did you do it?
Given the opportunity to offer some expression of remorse, he did not — never wavering from his initial refusal to discuss the specific allegations against him.
I did not expect to leave with anything approaching a confession, but I thought some direct questions would prompt at least a few substantial responses.
Instead, he seized on petty personal characterizations that had appeared in news reports. He was bothered by personal criticisms offered by victims’ families of his animated demeanor in pretrial court appearances.
“They (reporters) use words like speed freak, drug addict, neo-Nazi,” he said. “I can’t really head those off. Do not judge thy neighbor unless you walk a mile in his moccasins.”
Of his oft-criticized, upbeat court appearances, he said, “Humor is my way of coping. I do it to relieve stress, more than anything else. Sometimes you got to laugh. … It’s a court of law, not a memorial service.”
His self-absorption, against the backdrop of such enormous loss, was particularly striking. It re- mained a constant theme throughout the session.
He said authorities placed him at undue risk on the evening he was formally charged and led in shackles from a small courthouse in Perry, Okla., as some in an angry crowd yelled, “Baby killer!”
“I was a perfect target,” he said, adding that without a bulletproof vest, he was vulnerable to an attack, similar to the fatal perpwalk shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of assassinating President Kennedy.
He asked about USA TODAY’s circulation and largest distribution day, as if the audience might somehow not be big enough to accommodate his story.
The unvarnished selfishness would shadow my future encounters with him, from his appearances in 1997 in a Denver federal courtroom where I saw him convicted to his execution in 2001 where I was one of 10 reporters to witness his lethal injection.
That morning, when the curtains to the federal execution chamber in Terre Haute, Ind., rolled back, McVeigh looked nothing like the cocky kid I had met in prison or the brash defendant who seemed to enjoy the stage of a federal courtroom.
On the gurney, the 33-year-old bomber appeared as though life had begun to leave him before the lethal mix of chemicals entered his body. He had lost weight. His face was chalky, his eyes hollow.
Offered the chance to speak final words, he said nothing.
He did not express the remorse that even his father hoped he would.
Instead, he provided the warden a copy of the poem Invictus, copied in his slanted handwriting.
“My head is bloody, but unbowed. … I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”
Selfish to the end.