Oklahoma City

What the Investigation Missed—and Why It Still Matters

Andrew Gumbel, Roger G. Charles

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780062205636
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In the early morning of April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh drove into downtown Oklahoma City in a rented Ryder truck containing a deadly fertilizer bomb that he and his army buddy Terry Nichols had made the previous day. He parked in a handicapped-parking zone, hopped out of the truck, and walked away into a series of alleys and streets. Shortly after 9:00 A.M., the bomb obliterated one-third of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people, including 19 infants and toddlers. McVeigh claimed he'd worked only with Nichols, and at least officially, the government believed him. But McVeigh's was just one version of events. And much of it was wrong.

In Oklahoma City, veteran investigative journalists Andrew Gumbel and Roger G. Charles puncture the myth about what happened on that day—one that has persisted in the minds of the American public for nearly two decades. Working with unprecedented access to government documents, a voluminous correspondence with Terry Nichols, and more than 150 interviews with those immediately involved, Gumbel and Charles demonstrate how much was missed beyond the guilt of the two principal defendants: in particular, the dysfunction within the country's law enforcement agencies, which squandered opportunities to penetrate the radical right and prevent the bombing, and the unanswered question of who inspired the plot and who else might have been involved.

To this day, the FBI heralds the Oklahoma City investigation as one of its great triumphs. In reality, though, its handling of the bombing foreshadowed many of the problems that made the country vulnerable to attack again on 9/11. Law enforcement agencies could not see past their own rivalries and underestimated the seriousness of the deadly rhetoric coming from the radical far right. In Oklahoma City, Gumbel and Charles give the fullest, most honest account to date of both the plot and the investigation, drawing a vivid portrait of the unfailingly compelling—driven, eccentric, fractious, funny, and wildly paranoid—characters involved.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1. The Road to Oklahoma
• 2. 9:02 A.M.
• 3. We Got Him
• 4. Tim and Terry and James and … That’s It
• 5. War Fever
• 6. The Great John Doe Two Disappearing Act
• 7. The Many Mysteries of “Bob from Arkansas”
• 8. Oklahoma’s Own Private Afghanistan
• 9. Aryan Paradise Lost
• 10. Trial and Punishment
• Afterword: Vengeance and Truth
• Video: Terry Nichols: Fall Guy or Willing Participant?
• Video: The Deadly Earnest and Surprising Charm of Timothy McVeigh
• Video: How The Feds Missed The Big Picture
• Video: The Debutante With The Swastika Tattoo
• Video: The Ghastly Tale of the Unclaimed Leg
• Video: The Missing Explosives that the FBI Overlooked
• Video: Was There a Tip-Off, And Why Won't Anyone Talk About It?
• Video: Was McVeigh the Far Right's Martyr, Or Its Unwitting Nemesis?
• Audio: Anatomy of a Bomb Plot
• Audio: True Believer or Intelligence Agent? The Mystery of Andreas Strassmeir
• Audio: The Madness and Inadvertent Comedy of America's Extreme Right
• Official Document: The FBI's "wanted" notice on Andreas Strassmeir
• Official Document: Terry Nichols's Confession
• Official Document: Heavily redacted FBI document on Strassmeir, McVeigh and Elohim City
• Text: Another story from the federal court buildings
• Text: More shaky alibis on the radical far right
• Text: The mysterious Israelis and the phantom Middle East connection
• Text: The strange story of Robert Jacks and Gary Land
• Text: The extraordinary story of Louis and Sheila Beam
• Text: Jim Ellison returns to Elohim City
• Sources
• Select Bibliography
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• Index
• About the Authors
• Also by Andrew Gumbel
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher