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It is a place so moving and peaceful, it's hard to imagine such terrible violence happened here. As you walk through the National Memorial for the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, a sense of reverence overwhelms you. It feels more like a religious place than the quiet plaza it is.
Two walls, one marked with 9:01, the other with 9:03, stand on either side of a large reflecting pool, symbolizing the moment--9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995--when a massive explosion destroyed much of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, 19 of them children.
"You just want to cry. How could anyone do anything like this?" says Ron Stahl, my guide. Ron's an old friend and former colleague from KOCO-TV Oklahoma City. Ron was one of the first reporters on the scene, doing live reports from the station's helicopter.
"It was the farthest thing from my mind that someone would do that intentionally. I thought it was a gas explosion of some sort," Ron explains as we walk through the grounds of the memorial. We look at the 168 chairs placed on a grassy slope, with the names of each victim etched on them.
Ron and I knew the Murrah Building well, having gone there often to cover stories involving federal agencies. I had not been back to Oklahoma City since I left nearly 16 years ago, but as I stood there, haunting familiarity gripped me. I had walked into the building countless times, including many trips around 9 a.m.
"And why here? What did Oklahoma City ever do to anybody?" Ron asks with anguish. Oklahoma City seemed like a place of such folksy innocence. Terrible things happen in cities like New York, Chicago or Detroit, but perhaps that was Timothy McVeigh's point--to show America just how vulnerable any place can be when a terrorist decides to act.
As Tim's date with death approaches, I discovered surprising ambivalence in the city where the victims of McVeigh's hate lived.
"The people who really support the death penalty think it's the best thing to happen to McVeigh, but many others here say he should live with what he did every day of his life, and that would be more punishment. I think people are tired of McVeigh trying to be a martyr," Ron notes.
But when the government executes McVeigh, one of the worst mass murderers ever will get the reward he seeks, hero status and attention for his small, perverted cause.
"Execution by the government is nothing but premeditated murder," James Nichols remarks, as we talk on his farm in Decker, Mich. James' brother, Terry, was convicted of conspiring with McVeigh to carry out the bombing, and McVeigh had lived with the Nichols brothers on the farm after leaving the Army, through which he and Terry met.
James Nichols believes vital questions about the bombing remain unanswered. For instance, could only one or two persons pull off such an act? What was the real nature of the explosives involved? Were foreign interests involved? How would the anti-government crowd benefit from such a terrible deed?
"If he's put to death, we will never know the answers, then, will we?" James Nichols argues. He's convinced McVeigh was a pawn in a larger conspiracy, that even may have involved the government. Quoting terrorism expert Craig Roberts, James Nichols notes, "If you believe this bombing was done by McVeigh and (Terry) Nichols, you're wrong."
James likes Tim McVeigh, and they share many anti-government attitudes, but he is convinced McVeigh doesn't even understand what he got into.
"Because I believe he was duped. He doesn't even know he was duped. That's an embarrassment, and he can't admit it," says James.
Nichols says there still is a big "if" in his mind about McVeigh's guilt, but he believes "the death penalty is an easy way out for him--he doesn't have to live with this anymore."
James and I talk about the days following the bombing, when federal agents raided the farm and searched the place for evidence linked to the bombing, and suggested that McVeigh and Terry Nichols practiced fertilizer bomb building here.
"No, no, we never mixed ammonium nitrate and fuel oil here, never, never. We used dynamite to blow up stumps, but not when Tim was around," James insists.
As James and I talk, a Ryder Truck tools down the road in front of the farm. The irony stuns both of us, and adds to the strange connections I have with McVeigh.
I first heard of him the day of the raid on the Nichols farm as I, along with a flock of reporters, nested in Decker. We knew the suspect, McVeigh, had been picked up in the little town of Perry, Okla. Gee, I've been there, I thought. Then we learned he was from Upstate New York. "Where?" I asked. Some place called Pendleton. Hell, I know where that is, too.
It hit me. Tim McVeigh and I had the strange bond of, at that time, probably being the only two people on God's earth to actually set foot in Perry, Pendleton and Decker. Three dots on the map, to which McVeigh's murders gave fleeting fame.
I hope I don't have much else in common with Tim. He's for the death penalty. I'm against it. It does nothing to punish or, as Tim hopes, honor murderers.