Oklahoma City Bombing. On the morning of 19 April 1995, a huge explosion ripped through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. Caused by a lethal mixture of diesel fuel and ammonium nitrate packed into a rental truck parked nearby, the blast spread death and destruction throughout a forty‐eight‐square‐block area, overturning automobiles and damaging three hundred buildings. At the time of the explosion, nearly a thousand people were in the Murrah Building, which housed sixteen federal agencies and a day‐care center. The entire north face of the structure collapsed and each of the nine floors received extensive damage. Emergency personnel frantically searched the Murrah Building for survivors. The final human toll numbered 168 killed, including many children, and at least 700 injured.

A short time later, two men were arrested and charged with the bombing. Both had ties to ultra–right‐wing paramilitary groups that viewed the federal government as an evil force to be confronted and destroyed. Timothy McVeigh, a U.S. Army veteran who planted the bomb, was convicted and sentenced to death. Terry Nichols, his accomplice, was sentenced to life in prison. Evidence suggested that the bombing was timed to coincide with the second anniversary of a raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms on the compound of the Branch Davidians, a heavily armed apocalyptic sect in Waco, Texas, led by David Koresh. The raid, in which some eighty Branch Davidians perished when fire of undetermined origin destroyed the compound, had infuriated McVeigh as an example of overweening federal power.

The Oklahoma City bombing stands as the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history. An active survivors' association soon took shape, and the Murrah Building site became a major focus of mourning rituals, including thousands of poems, memorabilia, and teddy bears left at the chain‐link fence surrounding the ruin. In October 1998, architectural plans for a permanent memorial on the site were unveiled at a ceremony attended by Vice President Al Gore and other officials. It was completed and opened to the public on 19 April 2000, the fifth anniversary of the bombing.
See also Post–Cold War Era.

Bibliography

Oklahoma Department of Civil Emergency Management , After Action Report: Alfred R. Murrah Federal Building Bombing, 10 April 1995, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Jon Hansen , Oklahoma Rescue, 1995.
Mark Hamm , Apocalypse in Oklahoma, 1997.
Richard Serrano , One of Ours: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing, 1998.

Richard Lowitt

OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING

OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING (19 April 1995), a devastating act of domestic terrorism, in which political extremist Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. McVeigh's truck bomb, made of fertilizer and diesel fuel, killed 168 people, including 19 children, and injured more than 500 others. Television coverage burned the catastrophe into the nation's psyche with chilling images of bodies being removed from the rubble. The mass murderer turned out to be a 27-year-old decorated U.S. Army veteran of the Persian Gulf War with extreme antigovernment views. McVeigh's motive was to avenge a bloody 19 April 1993 federal raid on the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Tex., in which some 80 people died. The Federal Bureau of Investigation tracked McVeigh down through the Ryder rental truck that exploded in Oklahoma City. An accomplice, Terry Nichols, was implicated through a receipt for fertilizer and a getaway map linked to the blast. The FBI also searched unsuccessfully for an unidentified "John Doe" suspect whom eyewitnesses placed at the crime scene. This phantom suspect, and the trials of McVeigh and Nichols—both of whom pleaded not guilty—fueled theories of a larger conspiracy. But prosecutors maintained the men acted alone, and both were convicted. McVeigh was sentenced to death, and eventually admitted he carried out the strike. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison for his role. Just five days before McVeigh was scheduled to die, his case took a final dramatic turn. The FBI admitted it had withheld 3,135 documents from McVeigh's lawyers. The execution was briefly postponed. But on 11 June 2001, in Terre Haute, Ind., McVeigh was put to death by lethal injection. Through a grant of special permission by the U.S. Attorney General, victims and survivors watched the execution on closed-circuit television in Oklahoma City.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Linenthal, Edward T. The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Serrano, Richard. One of Ours: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. New York: Norton, 1998.

MargaretRoberts

See alsoTerrorism ; Waco Siege .

OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING

See terrorism "The Oklahoma City Bombing" (Sidebar); venue "Venue and the Oklahoma City Bombing Case" (Sidebar).