Pronunciation
- A story of unknown origin describing plausible but extraordinary past events.
- The legend of Troy was discovered to have historical basis.
- A story in which a kernel of truth is embellished to an unlikely degree.
- The 1984 Rose Bowl prank has spawned many legends. Here's the real story.
- A leading protagonist in a historical legend.
- Achilles is a legend in Greek culture.
- A person of extraordinary accomplishment.
- Michael Jordan stands as a legend in basketball.
- A key to the symbols and color codes on a map, chart, etc.
- According to the legend on the map, that building is a school.
- The text on a coin.
- A fabricated backstory for a spy, with associated documents and records; a cover story.
- According to his legend, he once worked for the Red Cross, spreading humanitarian aid in Africa.
- (UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, colloquial, slang) A cool, nice or helpful person, especially one who is male.
- I've lost my pen! —Here mate, borrow mine. —You legend.
October 1990: McVeigh Ordered to Begin Special Forces Training;
Training Interrupted by Overseas Deployment in Service of New World Order
Army Sergeant Timothy McVeigh receives orders to attend Special Forces training classes beginning November 11, 1990. McVeigh’s ambition is to become a Green Beret.
[PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996]
However, his training is interrupted before it begins, as his unit is called up to go to Kuwait as part of Operation Desert Shield, later Desert Storm . McVeigh’s unit will leave from Fort Riley, Kansas, to a staging area in Germany, and then on to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Before he leaves, McVeigh pays a brief visit to his hometown of Pendleton, New York, where he worries a close friend, his “surrogate mother” Lynn Drzyzga, by telling her, “I’m coming back [from Kuwait] in a body bag.” She will later recall that watching McVeigh walk away “was just like my own son was leaving at that moment.”
[SERRANO, 1998, PP. 32-33]
Sergeant Timothy McVeigh gives three months of military service in the Persian Gulf War as a gunner on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle before returning home; during his time there, he paints the name “Bad Company” on the side of the vehicle. “He was a good soldier,” Sergeant James Ives, who serves with McVeigh, will later recall. “If he was given a mission and a target, it’s gone.”
[NEW YORK TIMES, 4/23/1995; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 34; DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2001; CNN, 2001]
McVeigh earns a Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal while overseas, along with a number of citations and ribbons
[SERRANO, 1998, PP. 25-26]
Staff Sergeant Albert Warnement, the commander of McVeigh’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Kuwait, later recalls: “He was against the National Command Authority’s decision to go to war. McVeigh did not think the United States had any business or interest in Kuwait, but… he knew it was his duty to go where he was told, and he went.”
[STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 110]
Experiences in Kuwait, Iraq - Fellow soldier Todd Regier later recalls that McVeigh was “definitely excited about going to Desert Storm. He was a perfect gunner. He was the best gunner we had.” McVeigh is part of a Bradley crew which spends its first few weeks sitting idly in the Saudi Arabian desert while American aircraft attack Iraqi defenses
Sergeant Anthony Thigpen later recalls that while the other soldiers play cards, write letters, and chat to relieve their boredom, McVeigh spends his time cleaning his weapons. The 2nd Battalion of the 16th Infantry Regiment, McVeigh’s unit, is one of those that makes the initial drive into Kuwait when the invasion begins.
McVeigh’s unit sees less intense action than some, and fellow soldier Roger L. Barnett will later recall that McVeigh shows little interest in shooting unarmed and defenseless Iraqis. At one point, McVeigh shoots an Iraqi soldier from some 2,000 yards away in the head, using the Bradley’s 25mm cannon. McVeigh wins a medal for the shot.
He later recalls of the shooting: “His head just disappeared.… I saw everything above the shoulders disappear, like in a red mist.” He becomes angry when he learns that many Iraqis do not want to fight, and are equipped with inferior gear.
According to an aunt, McVeigh is deeply disturbed about the fighting in Iraq. “When he came back, he seemed broken,” she later tells a reporter. “When we talked about it, he said it was terrible there. He was on the front line and had seen death and caused death. After the first [killing], it got easy.”
While posted in Kuwait, McVeigh writes to a friend in the US that he hates Saddam Hussein: “Chickensh_t b_stard. Because of him, I killed a man who didn’t want to fight us, but was forced to.” However, a fellow soldier, Kerry Kling, later recalls McVeigh being proud of the shot that killed the Iraqi.
Sergeant Royal L. Witcher, McVeigh’s assistant gunner on the Bradley, later recalls the soldiers’ dismay at their experiences with Iraqi soldiers. “I think it kind of shocked most of us,” he will say. “We had thought that they were our enemies, and then for us to encounter something like that with a mass of people giving up.”
After the offensive, McVeigh’s unit is assigned to guard duty, and spends the remainder of the war relatively inactive.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4/1995; STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 113; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 36-38; CNN, 12/17/2007]
McVeigh will later recall being angry at the situation in Kuwait. In a letter to a reporter, he will write:
“We were falsely hyped up [about the enemy]. And we get there and find out that they are normal like you and me. They hype you up to take those people out. They told us we were to defend Kuwait where the people had been raped and slaughtered. War woke me up. War will open your eyes.”
Of the Iraqi soldiers, he will write, “I felt the army brainwashed us to hate them.”
[SERRANO, 1998, PP. 36-37]
Withdraws from Special Forces Training - After returning to the US, McVeigh begins 21 days of Special Services training at Camp McCall, west of Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
He is thrilled to be joining Special Forces, and is confident that he will pass the grueling physical and psychological assessments. However, he leaves the training at Camp McCall during the second day. He later tells people he withdraws because of a leg injury.
Some military officials will say that preliminary psychological screening shows him to be unfit for Special Forces, leading some reporters to conclude that McVeigh was kicked out of training, but those conclusions are inaccurate: McVeigh’s screenings are not processed until long after he leaves, and his withdrawal is entirely voluntary.
McVeigh later says that he begins training with a friend, Specialist Mitchell Whitmire (one source spells his name “Whitmyers,” apparently in error), days after returning from overseas duty.
He will say that he is in poor physical condition, mentally and physically exhausted from his time in combat, and unready for the physical demands of Green Beret training.
He does not accept an offer extended to him and other combat veterans to take some time off and try again at a later date.
Instead, after two arduous days of physical workouts, McVeigh and Whitmire leave the training program before McVeigh’s assessments can be graded and reviewed. On his Statement of Voluntary Withdrawal, McVeigh writes, “I am not physically ready, and the rucksack march hurt more than it should.”
Ives will recall McVeigh as being “extremely disappointed.”
Thigpen later recalls: “Everybody knew he was highly upset. We never knew the reason why he didn’t make it. We figured, you don’t make it, you don’t make it. But he was definitely angry. He was upset, very upset.”
Fellow soldier James Fox later tells a reporter that McVeigh’s withdrawal from Special Forces training was a defining moment for him, saying,
“Whether he withdrew or was kicked out, it still was a failure and very easily he could externalize blame.”
McVeigh then takes a 30-day leave to visit his sister Jennifer in Florida, and to spend some time in upstate New York, where he grew up
[NEW YORK TIMES, 4/23/1995; NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4/1995; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/5/1995; STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 115-119; PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 41-42]
Author Brandon M. Stickney later writes,
“It was revealed in confidence to [me] that answers McVeigh gave on the psychological tests were apparently a bit off-center, not the answers of a man capable of long-term assignments with the exclusive and tight Special Forces.”
Stickney will also write that McVeigh may be suffering from “Gulf War Syndrome,” a mysterious series of maladies apparently caused by exposure to toxic chemicals.
[STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 117-118]
In 1993, McVeigh will write a letter to his sister Jennifer giving a very different explanation of his reason for withdrawing from Special Forces tryouts .
After he returns from active duty, he begins displaying increasingly eccentric behavior.
McVeigh will go on to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City.
Sergeant Timothy McVeigh, a decorated Army gunner, returns from serving three months in Operation Desert Storm.
Disillusioned and discouraged by his experiences and his failure to succeed in Special Forces training, McVeigh returns to Fort Riley, Kansas, and begins displaying increasingly odd behavior, always carrying a weapon and talking incessantly about the constitutional right to bear arms.
His friend and fellow soldier Bruce Williams later recalls that McVeigh is no longer the “Iron Mike” that he had known during training at Fort Benning. “I’d hang out and go to the parties and drink Budweiser,” Williams will recall. “Tim just stayed in his room playing Nintendo.”
McVeigh rents a house off post with two fellow soldiers, Corporal John Edward Kelso and Sergeant Rick Cerney, in Herington, Kansas, some 40 miles from Fort Riley. Kelso later recalls he and Cerney trying to “josh with him” and get him to relax. “It was so easy to put him over the edge,” Kelso will recall. “He was so gullible, so vulnerable. He was so unbalanced about being tough. He was just kind of a nerd.”
Sergeant Royal L. Witcher, McVeigh’s assistant gunner during active duty in Kuwait and Iraq, later recalls that McVeigh is uncomfortable sharing the house with the two, and persuades Witcher to let him move in with him instead. McVeigh moves into Witcher’s Herington home and immediately claims the larger of the two bedrooms, blocking the window with a camouflage poncho.
Witcher later says he knew better than to enter McVeigh’s room. McVeigh keeps at least 10 guns in the house, Witcher will recall, saying: “They weren’t exposed, they were hidden. He had a couple in the kitchen, a couple in the living room under the couch. I think there was one in the bathroom, behind the towels. As you go up the steps there was a little ledge and he kept one in there, a .38 revolver.”
McVeigh also keeps two guns in his car and a shotgun at the home of a sergeant who also lives off post. Witcher never asks why McVeigh keeps so many guns. “I don’t know if he was paranoid or what,” Witcher will recall. “Or maybe he had some friends that were after him. I don’t know.”
On occasion, McVeigh sells guns to fellow soldiers. He cleans all of his weapons twice a week, and takes them to a lake to shoot every weekend. Witcher never recalls McVeigh having any dates.
On a few occasions, the two have conversations. “He was a very racist person,” Witcher will recall. “He had very strong views against, like, political things, like that.” Witcher will say he does not share McVeigh’s racist views: “He pretty much knew my views and he didn’t talk too much about it around me.”
McVeigh constantly complains about government intrusiveness, Witcher will recall, taking umbrage with items he reads in the newspaper on a daily basis.
Witcher will remember McVeigh dropping out of the National Rifle Association (NRA) when that organization seems to be softening its stance on the banning of assault rifles.
He begins spending more and more time poring over gun magazines, and spends more and more time in the pawnshops and gun dealerships in nearby Junction City.
Ives will recall that after his failed attempt to join Special Forces, McVeigh becomes involved with extreme right-wing political groups off-post. Ives cannot identify the groups, but, he will say, “cults is what I call them.” Witcher will recall nothing of any such involvement.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 4/23/1995; NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4/1995]
Ives may be referring to a group of soldiers who begin meeting off-base to take action against gun control and government interference in their lives, a group McVeigh meets with at least once. His unit member Robin Littleton later recalls McVeigh becoming increasingly “bitter” and conspiracy-minded, reading books about the Kennedy assassination and becoming “convinced that the government was behind it all. He also started reading a lot of fiction, all of it to do with big business and the military planning on overthrowing the government. He started to rant on about the private armies that were springing up inside the federal government, and how the CIA and FBI were out of control.”
At least one local girl, Catina Lawson, shows some interest in McVeigh, but his anti-Semitic rants and his professed admiration for Adolf Hitler quickly terminate her interest.
[STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 120, 125-127]
Warnement later recalls corresponding with McVeigh in 1992 and 1993, after Warnement is transferred to Germany. “He sent me a lot of newsletters and stuff from those groups he was involved in,” Warnement will recall. He will say that because the literature is so extremist, he throws it away rather than being caught with it. “There were newsletters from [militia leader] Bo Gritz’s group, some other odd newsletters, some from the Patriots; then he sent that videotape ‘The Big Lie’ about Waco. He seemed quite a bit different after the war than he’d been before.”
The Branch Davidian debacle infuriates McVeigh, Warnement will recall. McVeigh is also angered by the use of Army units for drug-enforcement duties on the US-Mexican border, the deployment of infantry during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and UN command over US forces during fighting in Somalia.
“He thought the federal government was getting too much power,” Warnement will recall. “He thought the ATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] was out of control. Then, of course, when Waco happened, he really felt the ATF was out of control.… He wasn’t happy about Somalia, that if we could put the United States under basically UN command and send them to Somalia to disarm their citizens, then why couldn’t they come do the same thing in the United States?… It had a kind of logic to it, but it really didn’t take into account the flip side of things. I kind of had the feeling that he might be headed for trouble because he was never the type of person to back down.”
[NEW YORK TIMES, 7/5/1995]
In February 1992, McVeigh sends Warnement a copy of The Turner Diaries, a racially inflammatory novel about a white supremacist genocide in the US. He also includes a news article concerning a black militant politician.
[PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996]
Accepts Early Discharge - Like many soldiers, McVeigh is encouraged to leave as part of the military’s postwar “drawdown.”
McVeigh soon takes an early discharge and leaves the Army entirely (see November 1991 - Summer 1992). Sergeant James Hardesty, who served in Kuwait with McVeigh, later says that many soldiers such as McVeigh and himself felt like “discarded baggage.”
[NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4/1995; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 42-43]
Fellow soldier Roger L. Barnett later recalls: “He wasn’t the same McVeigh. He didn’t go at things the way he normally did. It used to be, a superior commanding soldier would tell him to do something and he’d do it 110 percent. He didn’t have the same drive. He didn’t have his heart in the military anymore.”
[NEW YORK TIMES, 7/5/1995]
Timothy McVeigh, a nascent white supremacist and survivalist who is in the process of taking “early termination” from the US Army after being denied a position in Special Forces, moves back in with his father in Pendleton, New York.
Initially, he joins a National Guard unit and tries unsuccessfully to join the US Marshals. He is formally discharged from the Army on December 31, 1991.
His final psychological assessment from the Army shows him to be under extreme stress and experiencing a powerful sense of disillusionment with the federal government.
In January 1992, he goes to work for Burns International Security Services in Buffalo after leaving the Guard, and quickly rises to the rank of inspector.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4/1995; PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996; MICKOLUS AND SIMMONS, 6/1997, PP. 810; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 48; DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2001; CNN, 2001; CNN, 12/17/2007]
(A New York Times report later says McVeigh leaves the Army in early 1992. A book about McVeigh, One of Ours, claims that McVeigh returns to Pendleton after leaving the Army around Christmas of 1991.)
[NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4/1995; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 44]
Depressed, Suicidal, Detached, Enraged - Over time, McVeigh becomes increasingly depressed and reportedly considers suicide; friends and colleagues will describe him as deteriorating both mentally and physically, and, in the words of the New York Times, will describe him as “an increasingly unstable man who wavered between gloomy silences and a hair-trigger temper, who lost so much weight he seemed anorexic, and who could follow simple orders but could not handle pressure or take independent action.”
Lynda Haner-Mele, a supervisor for Burns Security in Kenmore, New York, later recalls working with McVeigh at the Niagara Falls Convention Center. She remembers calling him “Timmy” and worrying about his weight loss. “He seemed almost lost, like he hadn’t really grown up yet,” she will say. She is unaware of his Army service, later recalling: “He didn’t really carry himself like he came out of the military. He didn’t stand tall with his shoulders back. He was kind of slumped over.… That guy did not have an expression 99 percent of the time. He was cold. He didn’t want to have to deal with people or pressure. Timmy was a good guard, always there prompt, clean, and neat. His only quirk was that he couldn’t deal with people. If someone didn’t cooperate with him, he would start yelling at them, become verbally aggressive. He could be set off easily. He was quiet, but it didn’t take much.”
Increasingly Radicalized - McVeigh becomes increasingly radicalized, growing more disenchanted with the idea of a federal government and distressed about the possibility of a federal crackdown on gun ownership. He talks about the government forcibly confiscating the citizenry’s guns and enslaving citizens. He writes angry letters to newspapers and his congressman on subjects such as his objection to inhumane slaughterhouses and a proposed law prohibiting the possession of “noxious substances,” and warns against an impending dictatorship if action is not soon taken.
He urges friends to read a novel, The Turner Diaries, which tells the story of a white supremacist revolt against the US government and the extermination of minorities, and gives copies to his friends and relatives.
He begins acquiring an arsenal of guns, and sets up a generator and a store of canned food and potable water in his basement so that he would be self-sufficient in case of emergency.
He applies to join the Ku Klux Klan, but decides against it because, he believes, the KKK is too focused on race and not enough on gun rights.
The Times will later write: “While there was no firm evidence that Mr. McVeigh belonged to any organized right-wing paramilitary or survivalist groups, there was considerable evidence that he sympathized with and espoused their beliefs. He voiced their ideas in conversations, he wrote letters expressing them, he read their literature, and attended their meetings. And he lived, worked, and traded weapons in areas where the paramilitary groups enjoy considerable support, according to numerous interviews.”
In the summer of 1992, McVeigh moves to Michigan to stay with his old Army friend Terry Nichols, telling friends he is leaving to find a “free state” in which to live. McVeigh’s and Nichols’s shared hatred of the federal government continues to grow.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4/1995; PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996; MICKOLUS AND SIMMONS, 6/1997, PP. 810; DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2001; CNN, 2001; DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2006; CNN, 12/17/2007]
Reportedly, McVeigh tells people that the Army has placed a computer chip in his buttocks to keep him under surveillance.
[PEOPLE, 5/8/1995]
McVeigh’s fellow security guard, Carl Edward Lebron Jr., later recalls long conversations with McVeigh that center around “politics, secret societies, some religion and conspiracy theories,” UFOs, and government conspiracies to addict its citizens to illegal drugs.
Lebron wonders if McVeigh himself might belong to a secret society of some sort, perhaps a Freemason sect. Lebron will recall McVeigh showing him Ku Klux Klan newsletters and gold coins, some minted in Canada.
Lebron becomes worried enough about McVeigh’s apparent instability to tape-record some of their conversations, and keep notes of what McVeigh tells him.
What seems to worry Lebron the most is McVeigh’s talk about stealing weapons from Army bases.
In August, McVeigh quits his job at Burns, telling coworkers: “I got to get out of this place. It’s all liberals here.” Lebron bids him goodbye, saying, “Stay out of trouble,” to which McVeigh replies: “I can’t stay out of trouble. Trouble will find me.”
[SERRANO, 1998, PP. 48-57]
Law professor Douglas O. Linder will later speculate that McVeigh’s radicalization may have been triggered, and was certainly deepened, by the FBI’s raid on the Ruby Ridge compound of white supremacist Randy Weaver.
[DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2006]
McVeigh later tells his lawyers that during this time, he became increasingly stressed because of what he will call his “heightened sense of awareness of what the news was really saying.” He becomes increasingly obsessed with the news, raging at politicians for trying to blend politics and the military, and at the government for “strong-arming other countries and telling them what to do.” He becomes increasingly enraged by what he calls the increasing anti-gun sentiment in the US, and the “liberal mindset that all things in the world could be solved by discussion.” He learned in the military that most problems can best be solved by aggression, he will say, citing physical fights he had with fellow soldiers and angry confrontations with fellow security workers.
[PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996]
Movements Cloudy - McVeigh’s movements are somewhat cloudy during this period. A New York Times report will say that McVeigh and Nichols may have lived together in Marion, Kansas, not Michigan, and McVeigh may have moved to Kingman, Arizona, during this time or sometime later.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 4/23/1995]
Future Oklahoma City Bomber - McVeigh will go on to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City, with Nichols’s aid. Haner-Mele will have difficulty believing McVeigh orchestrated the bombing.
“Timmy just wasn’t the type of person who could initiate action,” she will say. “He was very good if you said, ‘Tim, watch this door—don’t let anyone through.’ The Tim I knew couldn’t have masterminded something like this and carried it out himself. It would have had to have been someone who said: ‘Tim, this is what you do. You drive the truck.’”
[NEW YORK TIMES, 5/4/1995]
McVeigh’s cousin Kyle Kraus, who received a copy of The Turner Diaries from McVeigh, puts the book away until after the bombing, when he will reread some of it. Horrified, he will contact the FBI; the copy will become an exhibit in McVeigh’s criminal trial.
[SERRANO, 1998, PP. 51]
February 11, 1992: Future Oklahoma City Bomber Writes Letters to Newspaper Asking if Blood Needs to Be Shed to ‘Reform the Current System’
National Guardsman Timothy McVeigh writes a letter (some sources will call it an “editorial”) that is published in the Lockport, New York, Union-Sun & Journal. His letter, published under the title “America Faces Problems,” reads in part:
“What is it going to take to open up the eyes of our elected officials?
AMERICA IS IN SERIOUS DECLINE. We have no proverbial tea to dump; should we instead sink a ship full of Japanese imports?…
Is a civil war imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that! But it might.”
McVeigh continues:
“Crime is out of control. Criminals have no fear of punishment.
Prisons are overcrowded so they know they will not be imprisoned long.…
Taxes are a joke. Regardless of what a political candidate ‘promises,’ they will increase.
More taxes are always the answer to government mismanagement. They mess up, we suffer.
Taxes are reaching cataclysmic levels, with no slowdown in sight.
The ‘American Dream’ of the middle class has all but disappeared.…
Politicians are further eroding the ‘American Dream’ by passing laws which are supposed to be a ‘quick fix,’ when all they are really designed for is to get the official reelected.
These laws tend to ‘dilute’ a problem for a while, until the problem comes roaring back in a worsened form.
(Much like a strain of bacteria will alter itself to defeat a known medication.)”
McVeigh then writes: “Racism on the rise? You had better believe it… ! At a point when the world has seen communism falter as an imperfect system to manage people; democracy seems to be heading down the same road.… Maybe we have to combine ideologies to achieve the perfect utopian government.… Should only the rich be allowed to live long?”
Lockport is a small town north of Buffalo, and serves McVeigh’s home town of Pendleton. McVeigh will have a second letter published in March 1992, that one mainly focusing on the joys of hunting and extolling the “clean, merciful shot” of the deer hunter. "
Both letters are signed “Tim” and have a preprinted address label pasted beneath the signature. McVeigh will be accused of detonating a massive fertilizer bomb in Oklahoma City; the Union-Sun & Journal managing editor, Dan Kane, will inform the FBI of McVeigh’s letters after McVeigh is taken into custody (see April 21, 1995) on suspicion of perpetrating the Oklahoma City bombing, and reprint them.
Kane will speculate:
“I think the letter was triggered by something that happened in the service. Here’s a man who just got through seeing a lot of blood” in the Persian Gulf war. He was dissatisfied in general with the way the government was operating, and politicians in particular.”
Kane will add: “There was one paragraph in particular that made my heart stop a little bit. It was the one that said, ‘shed blood…’ After Oklahoma City, I certainly look at it as a sort of eerie and prophetic statement.”
[LOS ANGELES TIMES, 4/27/1995; NEW YORK TIMES, 4/27/1995; PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 53; CNN, 12/17/2007]
McVeigh’s letter is in response to a previous letter he wrote to US Representative John LaFalce (D-NY), the representative of his home district, which received no response. McVeigh’s letter primarily focused on his concerns about the illegality of private citizens possessing “noxious substances” such as CS gas for protection.
[SERRANO, 1998, PP. 53]
March 1992 - February 1993:
Sergeant Timothy McVeigh, a former Army soldier, white supremacist, and survivalist, is notified that the Army will send him $1,058 as a signing bonus for his serving a second term. Later that month, he is informed that the government wants the bonus back, with interest.
[PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996; NEW YORK TIMES, 7/1/1998]
Later, McVeigh’s father William McVeigh will tell FBI investigators that the Army called the money an overpayment, not a bonus, and that his son was furious over the incident. Documents later gathered by the FBI show that a form letter from the Department of Defense Finance and Accounting Service is sent to McVeigh at his Pendleton, New York, home on February 15, 1993, two years after he left the Army. The letter asks for either the full $1,058 or a $50 installment within 30 days.
McVeigh replies:
“I have received your notice informing me of my debt owed to you, as well as your threat of referring me to the Justice Department (Big Brother).…
In all honesty, I cannot even dream of repaying you the $1,000 which you say I owe. In fact, I can barely afford my monthly rent.
Assets? The only thing which I own of any value is my car, a 1987 Chevrolet/Geo Spectrum. If you really want the car, go ahead and seize it.…
My car is my only way to get to work; to support myself. But I guess that’s all irrelevant to you. Go ahead, take everything I own; take my dignity. Feel good as you grow fat and rich at my expense; sucking my tax dollars and property, tax dollars which justify your existence and pay your federal salary.
Do you get it yet? By doing your evil job, you put me out of work.”
[NEW YORK TIMES, 7/1/1998]
June 1992: Discharged from National Guard
Former Army soldier Timothy McVeigh is discharged from the New York Army National Guard after a brief stint.
He is granted a general discharge “under honorable conditions.” His reason for discharge is “incompatible occupation,” a description often applied to reservists whose employers want them to work full time.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 4/27/1995]
Summer 1992: Visits Future Fellow Conspirator
Former Army soldier Timothy McVeigh makes what apparently is his first visit to Decker, Michigan, to visit his Army friend Terry Nichols (see March 24, 1988 - Late 1990). It is the first of many visits between McVeigh and Nichols.
[PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996]
McVeigh has quit his job as a security guard in upstate New York, and is beginning a life of long, solitary drives around the country, supporting himself by selling and trading guns and materiel (including ammunition, blast simulators, and even atropine, an antidote to chemical warfare) at gun shows.
He tells friends that one reason he has chosen to leave his home of New York State behind is because of its “out of control” welfare and social services programs and high taxation.
McVeigh does a brisk business buying and selling anti-government propaganda and manuals teaching the reader to build homemade bombs and survival techniques.
[STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 143-144; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 55-57]
McVeigh and Nichols share a virulent hatred of the federal government and other right-wing views. They will soon begin a conspiracy that will culminate in the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.
August 21-31, 1992: Appalled by Government Handling of Ruby Ridge Standoff
White supremacist Timothy McVeigh closely follows the culminating events of the Ruby Ridge, Idaho, siege. McVeigh is appalled by the government’s conduct, as is his friend Terry Nichols, with whom he is staying.
[DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2001; CNN, 12/17/2007]
McVeigh has been closely following the events at Ruby Ridge since the siege began in April 1992, both in local newspapers and in publications such as the National Rifle Association’s American Hunter and the racist, separatist Spotlight, and will complain that the mainstream media gives only the government’s version of events.
He will later recall this as a “defining moment” in his life.
[STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 147-148; PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996]
November 1992: Moves into Apartment, Obtains KKK Membership Card
White supremacist Timothy McVeigh moves out of his father’s house in Pendleton, New York, and into a nearby apartment.
During this time, he may have a brief affair with a married woman. Also, sometime during this period, he obtains a Ku Klux Klan membership card in Harrison, Arkansas, and drives to Michigan, where he meets his friend Terry Nichols’s brother James Nichols.
He begins receiving subscription copies of the white supremacist magazine The Spotlight.
[PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996]
Late 1992: McVeigh's Sister Illegally Sends Brother Ammunition through Mail
Jennifer McVeigh, the sister of future Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, illegally mails her brother 700 rounds of military ammunition, suitable for use in a machine gun or assault rifle, when an upstate New York gun shop, Johnson’s Country Store, refuses to do so.
The actual time of this incident is unclear, but it is most likely during the time when McVeigh is staying with his friend and future bombing conspirator Terry Nichols in Michigan.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 8/4/1995; STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 150]
January 23, 1993 - Early 1994: Networks with Racists, Militia Members at Gun Shows
White separatist Timothy McVeigh, already mulling over plans to bomb an Oklahoma City federal building, quits his job with an upstate New York security company, sells all of his belongings except what will fit into his car, and begins traveling around the US attending gun shows and militia events. Not all militia movements are characterized by the racist ideology that helps impel McVeigh, but many are, and many white hate groups are making common cause with militias.
McVeigh ekes out enough money selling knives, fatigues, and copies of The Turner Diaries to continue his travels, and meets a number of like-minded people.
One gun collector who knows McVeigh from the circuit will later tell investigators: “He carried that book all the time. He sold it at the shows. He’d have a few copies in the cargo pocket of his cammies. They were supposed to be $10, but he’d sell them for $5. It was like he was looking for converts.… He could make 10 friends at a show, just by his manner and demeanor. He’s polite, he doesn’t interrupt.”
The gun collector, who refuses to give his name to a reporter, also recalls McVeigh living mostly in his car and carrying a “big pistol” with him at all times.
An undercover detective will later recall McVeigh showing people at one 1993 gun show in Phoenix how to convert a flare gun into a rocket launcher, and giving out documents with the name and address of the FBI sniper who had shot the wife of white supremacist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge.
Psychology professor Gerald Post will later say, “Gun shows have become town hall meetings for racists and antigovernment radicals.”
At McVeigh’s trial, prosecutors will say that McVeigh used the gun shows to “fence stolen weapons, make contacts to buy bomb materials, and hone his terrorist skills.”
During his travels, McVeigh writes to his sister Jennifer, saying that the government is planning to disarm gun owners and incarcerate them in concentration camps.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 7/5/1995; PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996; DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2001]
Author Brandon M. Stickney will later write:
“Today, this part of McVeigh’s life would be difficult even for Tim to document, but it was during this odyssey of uncertainty that he became seriously involved in a dangerous world. Tim was now driven by a desire for ‘citizen action,’ or a movement by the people to alter the liberal thinking of politicians and officials in power.… [I]t is believed that during those lost days, he was frequently exposed to the growing ‘paramilitary’ underworld of Michigan and other states. Groups whose members were upset with taxes, political corruption, and incidents like Ruby Ridge spoke of organizing ‘militias.’”
[STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 150]
Meets Fellow Anti-Government Figures at Gun Shows - Along the way, McVeigh meets Andreas Strassmeir, the head of security for the far-right white supremacist community at Elohim City, Oklahoma. He also meets gun dealer Roger Moore at a gun show; McVeigh’s partner Terry Nichols will later rob Moore as part of McVeigh and Nichols’s bomb plot.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 7/5/1995; PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996; DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2001; NICOLE NICHOLS, 2003]
Moore is an outspoken man who loudly boasts about his love of country and his hatred for the federal government. He frequently says he would be more than willing to take part in a violent assault against federal law enforcement officials, but, he says, his girlfriend, Karen Anderson, will not let him get involved in such activities. He will later tell a reporter:
“I don’t give a sh_t. I’ll put on my flak vest, take a bunch of godd_mn guns in my van, and if I get in a firefight, so be it. I wanna run around and dig up a lot of stuff, but she will not let me go anywhere.”
[SERRANO, 1998, PP. 59]
Admires Davidian Attack on Federal Law Enforcement Officials -
McVeigh has recently developed a crippling habit of gambling on football games, and has maxed out several credit cards, severely damaging his financial status, though by the end of 1992 he had paid off all but one $10,000 debt.
According to his later recollections, he is depressed and frustrated by his inability to find someone to love.
He spends some time in Florida, living with his sister and working for her husband as an electrician.
He meets Moore while in Florida, and shares a table with him at one gun show. He finds Miami too loud and the people offensive, so he leaves shortly after his arrival. It is at this time that he first learns of the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco, and while watching news coverage of the event, tells his sister that the Davidians “must be doing something right, they are killing Feds.”
[PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996]
March 1993: Visits Site of Branch Davidian Siege
Future Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh goes to the site of the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas, to see if the gun ownership rights of the Davidians are being curtailed.
Federal agents block his passage to the compound, but McVeigh stays for a few days sellling bumper stickers, pamphlets, and literature; among his offerings are titles such as:
“Make the Streets Safe for a Government Takeover,”
“Politicians Love Gun Control” (featuring a Nazi swastika and a Communist hammer and scythe),
“Fear the Government that Fears Your Gun,” and
“A Man with a Gun is a Citizen, A Man without a Gun is a Subject.”
McVeigh is particularly horrified by the FBI’s use of Bradley fighting vehicles, the tanks he manned during Desert Storm, in the siege.
He tells a student reporter: “The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.”
The normally self-effacing and reticent McVeigh even climbs up onto the hood of his car to be seen and heard better. “You give them an inch and they take a mile,” he says of the federal government. “I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.”
McVeigh leaves Waco after a few days and goes to Kingman, Arizona, to visit an Army buddy, Michael Fortier ; he later goes to Arkansas to meet with a gun-dealing friend, Roger Moore, who calls himself “Bob Miller” at the gun shows they frequent; though he wants to build ammunition with Moore, McVeigh does not stay long, and later recalls Moore as being a dictator and a “pr_ck.”
During his time in Waco, McVeigh becomes known to federal agents, in part because of an interview with a reporter from Southern Methodist University’s school newspaper, the Daily Campus. The published interview, printed on March 30, includes a photograph of McVeigh.
[PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 67-70; DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2001; SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER, 6/2001; NICOLE NICHOLS, 2003; DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2006]
He is also captured on film by a crew from the Texas television station KTVT, a CBS affiliate, sitting on the hood of his car just outside the compound.
[STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 155]
Later he will tell friends at a Pennsylvania gun show that he crawled up to the perimeter fence erected by the FBI around the Davidian compound “without being seen by any of the agents,” and will warn one gun dealer, George (or Greg) Pfaff, that the Davidian standoff “could be the start of the government coming house-to-house to retrieve the weapons from the citizens.”
[SERRANO, 1998, PP. 71]
The college reporter, Michelle Rauch, will later testify in McVeigh’s criminal trial. She will recall meeting McVeigh on a hill outside the Davidian compound, where protesters and observers are gathered. She will recall that the hilltop was “a few miles” from the compound, making it difficult for the people gathered there to see any of the activities around the compound. McVeigh tells Rauch that the local sheriff should have just gone down with a warrant and arrested Davidian leader David Koresh.
Rauch will recall McVeigh as being calm, and finds his statements quite helpful to her understanding of the protesters’ objections to the FBI standoff. Her article quotes McVeigh as saying,
“It seems like the ATF [referring to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, sometimes abbreviated BATF] just wants a chance to play with their toys, paid for by government money”;
“The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people”; “You give them an inch and they take a mile”;
“I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government”; and
“The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control.”
McVeigh, according to the article, considers the BATF mere “pawns” of the federal government, and blames the government for the standoff, saying it violated the Constitution in surrounding the Davidian compound. The standoff, he says, is just the first step in a comprehensive government assault on the citizenry and Americans should be watchful for further actions.
[DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2006]
April 1993: Meets Elohim City White Supremacist at Gun Show
White separatist Timothy McVeigh meets white supremacist Andreas Strassmeir at a gun show in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Strassmeir is the chief of security at Elohim City, a white supremacist compound in eastern Oklahoma.
McVeigh will go on to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City; a precursor of the McVeigh-Nichols bomb plot was hatched in 1983 by Elohim City residents.
McVeigh will make at least two visits to Elohim City before carrying out the bombing, though federal investigators will rule out any involvement by Strassmeir or any other Elohim City residents in the bombing plot.
[DOUGLAS O. LINDER, 2006]
April 19, 1993 and After: Appalled and Inflamed by Waco Debacle
Many white separatists and right-wing militia members are aghast, appalled, and infuriated by the violent end to the Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas.
Two of those are future Oklahoma City bombers Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh; when McVeigh watches the flames devour the Davidian compound, he stands in Nichols’s living room and weeps. McVeigh has already visited the compound during the siege; in the following weeks, he revisits the scene, collecting pamphlets from the Davidians, taking photographs, and even taking samples of the charred wood left behind.
McVeigh begins wearing, and selling at gun shows, caps that depict the BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) logo with bullet holes in them .
He sells flares that can be used as missiles.
Moreover, he and Nichols soon begin practicing with explosives and agitating for violent assaults on government officials with local militia members.
McVeigh later tells interviewers:
“I didn’t define the rules of engagement in this conflict. The rules, if not written down, are defined by the aggressor. It was brutal, no holds barred. Women and children were killed at Waco and Ruby Ridge. You put back in [the government’s] faces exactly what they’re giving out.”
McVeigh’s favorite magazine, Soldier of Fortune, later publishes articles calling the FBI and BATF “the Gestapo” and accusing the government of funneling illegal drugs into the country through the auspices of the DEA; McVeigh will read these articles, and other more overt anti-government publications that directly accuse the government of plotting to enact “new Wacos” throughout the country, with a new fervor.
Another favorite is a videotape, “Waco: The Big Lie,” promoted by militia leader Linda Thompson, who accuses the government of deliberately plotting the deaths of everyone inside the Davidian compound and setting the compound afire by shooting flames at the building through a tank.
McVeigh will later claim to have learned the “real truth” about the siege after meeting a former Davidian, Paul Fatta, on the gun show circuit. Nichols’s neighbor Phil Morawski will later recall of McVeigh: “He said he witnessed part of the siege at Waco and was very upset about it; the government overstepped its bounds. Waco is kind of like the battle cry for Tim and many others.”
McVeigh’s friend Michael Fortier will later recall discussing the Davidian debacle with McVeigh, saying, “We both concluded that the federal government had intentionally attacked those people and may not have intentionally started the fire, but they were certainly the cause of the fire and potentially murdered those people in Waco.”
Fortier’s wife Lori will recall McVeigh’s position differently: according to her recollection, McVeigh believes that “the government murdered those people.” After the bombing, Dennis Mahon, the head of the Oklahoma cell of the White Aryan Resistance, will tell federal officials about McVeigh, whom he claims to have known under an alias:
“I met Tim Tuttle, but I didn’t know he was alias Tim McVeigh. I met him at gun shows He sold military stuff, knives, gun parts, camouflage uniforms.… And we talked about Waco. And I said: ‘What comes around goes around. If they keep doing this terrorism on our people, terrorism’s going to happen to them…’ He said: ‘Probably. Probably so.‘… Timothy McVeigh is my hero. Wish we had a thousand more like him. He took action.”
Mahon will later be identified by one witness as the person driving the Ryder truck for McVeigh on the day of the Oklahoma City bombing, though the identification is in doubt, and Mahon will not be charged for playing a part in the bombing.
[STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 155, 159; PBS FRONTLINE, 1/22/1996; SERRANO, 1998, PP. 76-78; NICOLE NICHOLS, 2003; CNN, 12/17/2007]
McVeigh will send videotapes about the Davidian tragedy, such as “Waco: The Big Lie,” to his friends, including his former coworker Carl Lebron, his former Army comrade Albert Warnement, and his neighbors Richard and Lynn Drzyzga. Lebron considers the videotapes “nonsense,” and the Drzyzgas become concerned that McVeigh may actually believe the “nutty” “paranoia” of the information in them. McVeigh will also write a letter to his childhood friend Steve Hodge, breaking off their friendship because Hodge is not sufficiently enraged by the Davidian tragedy.
[SERRANO, 1998, PP. 78]
McVeigh is not the only one preaching active retribution for Waco. James Nichols, Terry’s older brother, says they are planning to kill law enforcement officials. Paul Izydorek, a family friend, will later tell a CNN reporter:
“Evidently, James had told [Izydorek’s son] one or two times about how they were going to kill cops and judges and, you know, really clean house on all the local government. I didn’t take it serious but I guess maybe that’s what the heck they was really talking about, maybe they was a lot more serious, you know, than I realized.”
[STICKNEY, 1996, PP. 156]
NONE OF THIS IS TRUE.
SOME OF IT MAY HAVE HAPPENED, OTHERS MAY HAVE PERCIEVED THESE SOME OF THESE THINGS AS HAVING HAPPENED, OR REMEMBER IT THIS WAY.
BUT WHAT YOU SEE ABOVE IS ALL JUST A STORY.
MUCH OF IT TOTAL FANTASY.
Here's What Really Happened...
