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American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing
From Our EditorsThe 1995 bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City was the worst incident of terrorism in the United States to date. Two years later, Timothy McVeigh was convicted and sentenced to death for masterminding the crime. Now, acclaimed journalists Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, who investigated the bombing for more than five years, reveal the findings of their extensive research, which included more than 75 hours of interviews with McVeigh himself. American Terrorist is sure to be important for a nation still struggling to understand how such a horrible crime could happen on its own soil at the hands of one of its own citizens.
Synopsis
American Terrorist will change, unmistakably and permanently, our understanding of the crime. Journalists Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck have been researching the Oklahoma City bombing -- and the Iife of Tim McVeigh -- since the week the tragedy occurred. They have interviewed more than one hundred and fifty people from every stage of McVeigh's life, from his childhood friends to the psychiatrist hired by the defense team to examine him before his trial. They have garnered the cooperation of McVeigh's father, mother, and sister Jennifer, and gained exclusive access to previously unpublished family photographs and personal effects. And, in April 1999, Michel and Herbeck secured an extraordinary coup: in more than seventy-five hours of interviews, they persuaded Timothy McVeigh to give the first complete, candid, no-holds-barred account of his story -- an account, given with no compensation or right of approval, that American Terrorist sheds light on every aspect of McVeigh's life. It describes his relationship with Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier and the consuming distrust of the government shared by the three. And in its pages every detail of the bombing itself is reconstructed, from the origins of the plot to the moment of detonation and McVeigh's aborted getaway. American Terrorist puts to rest conspiracy theories that have previously gone unresolved. It clarifies the role and responsibility of every person who has been implicated in the plan. And it explains, thoroughly and definitively, how a decorated war hero from rural New York State became the worst mass murderer in the nation's history.
From the Publisher
April 19, 1995. The alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City is ravaged by a vicious bombing that claims 168 innocent lives. Two years later, 29-year-old Timothy McVeigh, a decorated Gulf War veteran, is convicted of the crime and sentenced to death. Most of America knows his name. But only McVeigh himself knows exactly what happened on that ill-starred day. And despite his conviction, he has never gone on record in any forum to discuss the bombing.
Until now. Award-winning journalists Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck have been investigating the bombing for more than five years. They have conducted more than 300 interviews, compiling exclusive testimony from federal investigators, family and friends of McVeigh and survivors' and victims' families. And in 1997 they secured an extraordinary coup: in more than 75 hours of interviews, they persuaded Timothy McVeigh to give a complete account of his story—from his formative childhood experiences, through his days in the Army, to a thorough portrait of the culture of right-wing separatists and gun-show extremism that was the breeding ground for the terrorist plot. It is the deeply unsettling story of an average American son driven to violence by his hatred of government. And its climax—the first and only inside account of the planning and execution of the bombing—answers at last the questions that have haunted Oklahoma City and the nation since that April day.
At once an explosive work of journalism and a uniquely American story, American Terrorist will help bring closure to a wound left too long open in our national psyche.