Oklahoma City (2017)

Post by **bunniefuu** » 01/31/26 18:36

WOMAN: ...whether to approve or deny the application.

They're the decision-makers.

And you will receive a copy of my proposed recommendation

and can attend that board meeting

and present your information directly to them.

With regard to this proceeding,

basically, there are four elements

that I have to...

Receive information regarding...

[expl*si*n roaring]

Everybody, let's get out of here.

Now!

Watch the electricity line!

REPORTER: All that I can see,

it looks like part of the building

has been blown away.

We'll have to bank around the other side

so I can get a better view of it.

The expl*si*n, though, went off around a.m.,

and we could feel the expl*si*n in the newsroom of Channel

at least five miles from downtown.

ANCHOR: As the chopper goes around the side of the Federal Building...

REPORTER: Jeez, wow!

ANCHOR: Look at that shot.

It is absolutely incredible.

The side of the Federal Building has been blown off.

Jesse?

REPORTER: About a third...

About a third of the building has been blown away.

This is just devastating.

MAN: That morning, I was not in my office.

I was at a fundraiser about miles away.

We had a : start,

when all of a sudden, my phone went off,

and I was told that there'd been some type of an expl*si*n

at the Murrah Building.

The greatest fear I have

is that we have casualties in the thousands.

At any one time, there could be

a couple of thousand people in that building.

MAN: I was assigned to the Oklahoma City police tactical team

at the time.

And we immediately started working our way

towards the building.

There were several vehicles

on the north side of the building in a parking lot,

and all of them were burning.

The black smoke was billowing up.

When I walked up there, there was a hole in the ground

about the size of a swimming pool

that looked like about feet in diameter

and about seven, eight feet deep.

Just a big hole in the ground.

That's when it started really sinking in,

this had to be some kind of b*mb.

WOMAN: When I first got there,

I could see people trapped on different floors,

and they needed to be rescued.

And so I started my way into the building.

I thought to myself,

"Why Oklahoma City?

"It's a quiet place.

"Nothing happens here.

It's not supposed to happen here."

WOMAN: Yeah, we'd always had threats.

You tell somebody,

"I'm sorry, but," you know,

"your claim's denied," or whatever,

and, yeah, and we'd get threats, but not...

Not anything that we ever considered, you know, viable.

There has been a massive expl*si*n

at a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

It happened just a short time ago.

A large portion of that building has collapsed

and fallen away from the rest of the building.

At the moment, we don't have any specific numbers

on injuries or deaths,

but we can tell you that the situation is obviously serious.

WOMAN: I tried to put the building back in my mind,

of, where would he be?

If I have to dig for my son, where should I dig?

And so, that's what I did.

I visualized the first floor, the second floor,

the childcare was here, his crib would be here,

and that's where I wanted to get to.

As I started to climb up the debris and the rubble,

I remember a man yelling,

"You can't go up there, it's too dangerous!"

And I remember telling him, "Our babies are in there!

Our babies are in there!"

I just kept saying, "Our babies are in there."

WOMAN: When I saw the building for the first time,

I just couldn't see

how anybody could have survived any of that.

So at that point, I think my mind was thinking,

"My kids are gone."

MAN: I drove down there and met Claudia.

We walked up to a perimeter

and I asked a officer, I said,

"We have two, two babies in the daycare center.

Can I, can I go in?"

OFFICER [in distance]: Move back, move back, move back.

Move back, move back.

JIM DENNY: I could see people

that are covered with blankets, towels, whatever,

that are gone.

And I'm praying that one of them is not a small child.

MAN: I knew a lot of the people in the building.

I knew the D.E.A. agents that were in the building,

I knew the A*F agents that were in the building,

and those people were friends of mine.

I could not believe what had happened to all of them

and how this could be.

How could somebody get to that state in their life

where they could be so angry and upset

that they would do something like this?

MAN: Who started the w*r?

And who was the aggressor?

That's how I look at the Murrah bombing.

To me, it wasn't a start of a w*r,

it was a counterattack.

The w*r had already been started.

You guys think you can be ruthless?

Let's see how you like it when the...

when the fight is brought to you.

If you continue with sh*t like Ruby Ridge and Waco,

this is what's going to happen.

MAN: Northern Idaho.

It's a remote place, it's a predominantly white place,

and it's the kind of place

where everybody sort of minds their own business.

In the s, a lot of extremist groups found a sanctuary there.

White power!

MAN: What do we need?

ALL: White power!

MAN: One of those groups was the Aryan Nations.

MAN: The Aryan Nations had established itself

in Hayden Lake as a sort of headquarters of hate,

radical right-wing hate.

MAN: We the white race lost the w*r.

A plague known as Jews won the w*r,

infiltrated our bloodstream of our race

in every country in which we reside.

MAN: Richard Butler, like many far-right people at the time,

held that the federal government was in the hands of the Jews.

And the only way to save America

was to assert your Christian sovereignty,

your white Christian sovereignty.

BUTLER: Every major city in the United States is now non-white,

following the catastrophic destruction of our race

in the so-called Civil w*r, or the w*r Between the States.

America shall again become white and Christian.

There'll be a lot of blood running one day.

I don't advocate it, I don't want it.

But it's going to come

as sure as day follows night and night follows day.

MAN: In the s, in America,

the white race was becoming the minority race.

r*cist groups used that as a calling card.

"Come join us, because the white race

is going to be driven to extinction."

MAN: The Aryan Nations attracted people

from all walks of life who were, who were white,

all of them looking for someone to blame for the situation.

And they focused their anger on the federal government.

People like Robert Mathews.

MORLIN: Robert Mathews showed up at the Aryan Nations

in the early s.

And there, he met other young men like him,

who thought that it was just talk.

It was no action.

Bob Mathews said, "The time has come for action."

You Jews get the heck out of here!

I didn't come all the way down here to hear you!

Go over there!

...the words of Jesus Christ...

MAN: Bob Mathews wanted to start a revolution.

He saw the United States government

as a complete and utter enemy, run by Satanic Jews,

that had to be destroyed.

MORLIN: He had or so other followers,

most of whom he had met at the Aryan Nations,

and they decided

that they would basically declare w*r on the U.S.

MAN: As Bob Mathews was formulating a plan for his organization,

he discovered a book called The Turner Diaries,

written by a r*cist named William Pierce.

It was a fictional account of a group of patriots

that came together in a very small number,

much like what Bob was planning to do,

and overthrow the United States government.

And as Bob read this, he thought, "This is us.

This is the plan we need to follow."

MAN: "Unit will secure a large quantity of expl*sives,

"between five and ten tons.

"We will then drive

"into the FBI building's freight receiving area,

set the fuse, and leave the truck."

POTOK: The Turner Diariesculminates

with these anti-government resisters

blowing up the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.

It had this electrifying, energizing effect

on all kinds of people on the radical right.

MAN: The Order is a small group, but a very formidable group,

and they start robbing banks, armored cars,

k*ll whoever they had to k*ll.

They didn't care.

MANIS: Their expertise grew week by week and month by month.

This was an organization that had taken real form

and had real leadership and direction.

And then they formed an assassination squad

to go to Denver.

RADIO ANNOUNCER: You're listening to Alan Berg on KOA.

You never shut up!

I got fed up with you!

You never let me get a word edgewise-- get out of here!

POTOK: The Jewish talk show host Alan Berg

had angered the radical right

by essentially mocking them on his radio show.

If you're not a Christian, you're un-American.

Is that your point, sir?

MAN: That's right! Good point, sir!

NOBLE: He spoke out against the right wing

and the Christian Patriot movement,

yeah, and members of The Order got fed up.

LEVITAS: Alan Berg was shot to death in the driveway of his home.

It was essentially domestic terrorism.

It was born-and-bred Americans inspired by racism,

anti-Semitism, and anti-government ideology.

MANIS: The FBI really didn't know who these individuals were.

But a great break happened for us

when Bob Mathews decided they're going to take down

a Brinks truck that's carrying

multiples of millions of dollars.

So they do.

A very brazen daylight robbery right out on a highway.

They take this thing down.

Bob Mathews is in there, he's clearing out money,

and his p*stol falls out of his waistband.

And we get that p*stol.

MORLIN: They convince some members of The Order to surrender.

But Mathews wouldn't surrender.

And after a two- or three-day standoff,

the FBI moves in on the cabin and a gunfight occurs.

MANIS: I'm just a little ways from the house,

and the b*ll*ts are hitting

right at the trees and the brush line where I'm at.

You know, he's got plenty of weapons,

he's got thousands of rounds of ammunition.

He was committed.

MAN: The next evening, it was starting to get dark,

so we put in some illumination rounds,

and those rounds, one of them or so, caught fire,

and the building started to burn.

MANIS: And then it was like firecrackers,

just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, going off everywhere,

with the cooking-off of the rounds.

At daybreak, I walked up to the remains of the house

and saw a charred body there.

NOBLE: Mathews' death forced the movement, everybody,

to look at themselves:

"Am I really ready and willing to die for the cause?"

MANIS: The FBI was on high alert.

I mean, domestic terrorism now was top order.

And there was a massive amount of investigation and arrests

throughout the United States.

MORLIN: By the mid-'s,

the federal agencies had the lesson of The Order,

so they knew some of the folks

that had come out of the Aryan Nations

were doing bad things-- they were committing crimes,

they were k*lling people.

So the Feds were interested in, who's there,

and what are they doing,

and what are they planning on doing next?

LEVITAS: Randy Weaver was a person with white separatist beliefs

who moved his family from Iowa to Boundary County, Idaho,

to a place called Ruby Ridge.

MORLIN: They were miles or so from the Canadian border.

They had no electricity,

no running water, no indoor plumbing.

We're talking about a cabin

made by Randy Weaver and his wife

on a mountaintop.

These are people that want to be left alone.

WALTER: The Weavers were deeply religious

and they wanted to live in a style

they believed was Old Testament Christian.

They were really imagining this fortress,

this place where they could really separate themselves

from a corrupt and dangerous world.

MAN: I don't know that Randy Weaver knew

at the time that they moved to Ruby Ridge

that they would be so close to the Aryan Nations compound,

which was just miles south.

But they started showing up.

At first, it was purely social.

They attended family picnics, those kinds of things.

But as Randy began to interact more with them,

he bought into the message, the anti-government message.

BUTLER: A movement is growing all over the world.

Good men are coming forth,

men with iron wills

who are determined that their race is not going to die

and become extinct.

MORLIN: By the time Randy Weaver started showing up at the Aryan Nations,

it was just after the whole Matthews episode.

And, unfortunately for Randy Weaver,

the Feds were listening.

LEVITAS: They had lots of events there

designed to potentially recruit harder-core folks

into the compound,

and it was at one of those meetings

that Randy Weaver was spotted by an undercover federal informant.

MORLIN: This guy got next to Randy Weaver

and learned that he was, you know, clearly a r*cist,

that he wanted to live his white separatist lifestyle

in North Idaho,

but that he was having trouble putting two nickels together,

and that he was interested in some income.

And one thing led to another,

and pretty soon, Randy Weaver agrees to saw off some shotguns.

NOBLE: In my opinion, the A*F pretty much entrapped him

into making these shotguns ill*gal

by cutting off too much of the barrel,

and then comes out and wants to arrest him over it.

MORLIN: They figured, "If we arrest this guy

"on federal firearms charges,

"maybe he can lead us to other people

that are doing more dastardly things."

They did think Randy Weaver could be flipped.

BOTTING: So they asked him to be an informant,

which he immediately refused.

Randy Weaver didn't trust the government

and was absolutely not interested

in being an informant.

However, he failed to appear for his next court appearance.

WALTER: Once you don't show up for trial,

the case is assigned to the U.S. Marshals Service.

And the U.S. Marshals Service doesn't know

whether or not Randy Weaver was entrapped

or how those shotguns came about.

They just know they have a fugitive.

BOTTING: The marshals brought in their special surveillance team

and they kind of skunked around the property

trying to find a location

to take him into custody without a problem.

MAN: Well, this is the approach from the east.

MORLIN: One of the things that they decided to do

was to have motion-activated cameras

placed near the Weaver cabin.

The tapes showed that Randy Weaver was there

with his wife and his children and a man named Kevin Harris,

and that they frequently were armed.

They have to have been shaking their heads.

"What are we going to do?

"We go up there, and he's going to sh**t at us,

and we're going to sh**t back."

BOTTING: On the day of the sh**ting,

the marshals had a six-man team they divided into two elements,

and one element of three went up on the mountain

to have a visual on the cabin itself.

The other element was on the ground, closer to the cabin,

when the Weavers' dog caught the scent of the marshals

and went after them.

All we know at that point was, there was a shootout.

MORLIN: Who shot who first is still subject

to, you know, interpretation,

but when it was all said and done,

-year-old Sammy Weaver's dead, the dog's dead,

and so is Federal Marshal William Degan,

k*lled on the property of a white separatist.

The FBI had every reason to think,

when they're dealing with Randy Weaver,

they could be dealing with another Bob Mathews.

WALTER: Because they believe that they are deploying into a firefight

with a group of armed separatists

very much like The Order,

the rationale is given that a surrender warning

doesn't need to be called out,

that that warning has already been given,

so agents can open fire as soon as they see any armed adult.

Well, the Weavers are always armed.

BOTTING: I got there and there were trucks and jeeps

and all kinds of vehicles, you know,

even armored personnel carriers.

It was just overwhelming how much was happening

and how many people were involved.

MORLIN: Where we were,

at the roadblock, it was out of view

of where this base operation was occurring.

But there were, you know,

an assortment of law enforcement people

going across this little bridge.

Neighbors and friends of Randy Weaver

and reporters from all over the country

started gathering there, trying to get information.

If we can tell you something, we will,

but most of it will all come out of Washington, D.C.

MORLIN: We were down a good two miles or so

from where the actual cabin was.

So we had no clue as to what the FBI had in mind.

WALTER: As morning dawns on Ruby Ridge,

a team of ten FBI agents surround the cabin.

These are sn*pers who've been trained to, you know,

to hit a dime from meters.

Randy Weaver, Kevin Harris, and Sara Weaver

decide they're going to go out and check on Sam Weaver's body.

They make their way out with their weapons to the shed

where Samuel has been taken by the family,

when a shot rings out.

Randy is hit in the shoulder.

They run back to the house and another shot rings out.

This shot goes through the door, hits Vicki Weaver in the face,

splinters, and wounds Kevin Harris,

and drops Vicki dead to the floor.

MORLIN: When word came down that Sammy and Vicki Weaver were dead,

the crowd at the roadblock,

which numbered , to , to on occasion,

went crazy.

[protesters yelling]

MAN: You call yourself an American?

These are Americans!

These are God-fearing people!

You don't even know your Constitution.

Go back and read what your founding fathers said.

POTOK: The events at Ruby Ridge lit up the radical right.

Here was a government that would m*rder men, women, and children

in order to pursue whatever their ends were.

Baby K*llers! Baby K*llers!

POTOK: The roadblock became a gathering point

for skinheads, for Aryan Nations members,

for all kinds of people, you know,

furiously shaking their fists

at the Zionist-occupied government.

You're a disgrace to the white race!

MAN: Disgrace to the race!

This was the first time the movement had gathered

in such a fashion,

this publicly.

It became a political event of its own.

These were people who saw themselves in Randy Weaver.

You look at what happened

and how many times it could have been averted and avoided.

The idea that the far right had at that moment

that the government was a very dangerous entity,

this case would seem to prove it as completely as possible.

MAN: Mr. Weaver, do you have anything to say?

ZESKIND: Ruby Ridge, more even than Robert Mathews and The Order,

became a central calling card and rallying card

for the far right.

For them, the government was after Weaver's g*ns

and his religion.

And g*ns and religion became the twin pillars

of the white supremacist movement.

MORLIN: In late summer, , after Ruby Ridge,

several members of the extremist movement

saw that as an opportune moment

to sort of gather everybody together

and, "Let's raise hell about this."

One race, one folk, one nation, one people, one homeland!

We're going to have it!

LEVITAS: Louis Beam, former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, said,

now is the time for you as an individual

to commit overt acts of anti-government violence.

Essentially, anybody representative

of government or law enforcement

was a fair and reasonable target.

NOBLE: The government is an enemy of the people.

And in this w*r,

it's an, it's an all-or-nothing, you know.

We're either going to win as the white race

or we're going to lose.

MAN [on radio]: to Operations.

The water is shut off to the federal building.

At this time, the water is shut off.

[sirens blaring]

MAN: Probably about : in the morning,

I got a call at the hospital.

There's a lady who's trapped,

and the only way that we're going to be able

to extricate her and save her life

is to amputate her leg.

So I got an amputation set, I got some nylon rope,

and away I went.

When I got to the building, it was surreal.

There were a lot of first responders there

who had pretty well set things up

so they could take somebody away the minute that they found them.

And then I was led into the basement.

FLOWERS: We could hear people screaming.

We could hear them screaming, we could hear them crying.

You just couldn't see them because it was so dark.

When they fired up these lights,

you could see the floors had fallen on top of each other

and created, like, a dungeon underneath the Murrah Building.

Everywhere you look in this floor

that you could see,

there were these round circles of coagulated blood

that were coming through the cracks of the floor.

These circles were three and four feet in diameter,

and they're everywhere, seemed like everywhere,

and you knew that that was a person that had been crushed.

SULLIVAN: They led me to where Daina was trapped.

There was a first responder with his hand on the beam

that had her leg trapped.

And if it trembled or moved, we were told we had to go.

The beam was lying on her leg, her tibia, just below the knee.

Basically, to do the amputation,

I had to lie with my legs up by her head.

And so I took the traction rope and tightened it down

so that I had a tourniquet.

And then, you know, it's kind of like diving into ice water.

I had to start.

MAN: Get back!

Go, go!

Get them back!

Get them back!

POTOK: Just as I got to where the barricade was,

this incredible scare went through the crowd.

Get your stuff back now!

Someone was yelling they thought

they had discovered a second b*mb: "Get back, get back!"

MAN: We've got a hot device-- get them back!

FLOWERS: They start screaming at us.

"Get out of this building, we have just found another device!"

And of course, everybody's heart sinks,

because we've got people still alive in here.

WOMAN: I was on the eighth floor.

My eyes were in pretty bad shape.

Two of my friends worked their way over to me,

and said, "We've got to get out of here."

I was praying, I was saying,

"Lord, don't let there be any more bombs."

RICKS: It turns out that it was not a real device.

It had been a mockup for one of the agencies there.

But we were still telling people, you know,

that we couldn't guarantee their safety

as they went in there.

FLOWERS: I remember seeing that team down there

working on that girl to amputate that leg.

Everybody's screaming at them, "Get out of there!

Get out of there, the b*mb's going to..."

And they would not leave, they would not leave her.

SULLIVAN: I don't remember how many times

I thought I had completed the amputation.

We would try to extract Daina and she was still caught.

I reached a point where all of the blades were broken

and there was nothing else to do,

but I had in my pocket a pocketknife

that I keep very sharp.

The thing that was keeping us from extracting her

was the quadriceps tendon,

and once I cut through that,

then I could kind of get a sense that the leg was free

and we were able to extract her.

MAN [on radio]: We have two critical patients.

I have one patient that needs immediate transport...

SCHWAB: When I got out of the building,

I sat on the curb waiting for an ambulance.

I couldn't see anything,

but I could hear people yelling, people screaming,

sirens in the background.

And I thought, "What crazy person did this?

Who has come in here and done this terrible thing?"

The bombing in Oklahoma City

was an attack on innocent children

and defenseless citizens.

It was an act of cowardice and it was evil.

Let there be no room for doubt,

we will find the people who did this.

RICKS: The bombing of the Murrah Building

was the largest domestic t*rror1st event

that had ever occurred in the United States.

We probably had close to investigators

that were here in Oklahoma City.

We had forensic teams, b*mb squad teams,

evidence response teams, all kinds of experts,

looking for clues.

MAN: This becomes one of the biggest criminal investigations

in American history.

Every police agency in the country

is in some way trying to track down leads,

because at the very first, they had no idea who did it.

[phone rings]

FBI Hotline.

RICKS: We have had hundreds, if not thousands of leads.

Each one of those is treated very seriously.

But at this point, we cannot speculate

with regard to who is responsible.

We ended up with leads in literally every state,

as well as many foreign countries.

Whenever you have a mass catastrophe,

such as the Murrah bombing,

the assumption is always,

"You've got to have this great conspiracy.

There've got to be multiple people involved."

And we operated under that assumption, as well.

We were getting calls, even just after the bombing happened.

We were getting reports by the thousands,

that, "I saw this, I saw that."

Then we started getting calls over the radio

about Middle Easterners.

"Start looking for Middle Easterners."

There has yet been no claim of responsibility for this bombing,

although if you talk to intelligence sources

and to law enforcement officials,

they all say in their early guess

in this situation

is that this particular bombing

probably has roots in the Middle East.

A U.S. government source has told CBS News

that it has Middle East terrorism written all over it.

WOMAN: I started making phone calls,

trying to find out what was going on

and very quickly found out that the Feds went

and raided an apartment in Dallas

that was occupied by some Middle Eastern guys.

But then someone I spoke to said,

"Do you know what day it is?"

I said, you know, "What?"

I had been off work for a couple of days,

and so, you know,

wasn't paying attention to the calendar that closely.

And someone said, "It's April ."

Immediately it hit me.

This is about Waco.

You know, this is about Waco.

♪ Give me that old-time religion ♪

♪ Give me that old-time religion ♪

♪ Give me that old-time religion ♪

♪ It's good enough for me!

WRIGHT: The Branch Davidians had been in Texas

for over years

by the time that most people outside of Waco

had ever heard of them.

They were an offshoot

of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

They found a place just outside of Waco, called it Mt. Carmel,

and set up this community.

In the late 's,

a young Davidian named Vernon Howell

had a revelation

that God had chosen him to be their leader.

He changed his name to David Koresh

and began preaching his vision of Armageddon

out of the Book of Revelation.

"So how's God going to talk to me in the latter days?"

AUDIENCE: It's going to be written.

And who's going to bring that book?

[audience mumbles answer]

So there'll be no excuses!

HANCOCK: In about May of ,

the sheriff's department in Waco

got a report from a U.P.S. truck driver

about a shipment going to Mt. Carmel.

There was a box that fell apart,

and some pineapple grenade hulls came out of the box.

That's what prompted

the beginning of the A*F investigation.

MAN: That investigation was able to determine

that they were illegally converting automatic weapons

in there,

that they had purchased about $, worth of firearms

during the year prior to it,

and members of the community out there

had heard automatic weapons fire and explosions

coming from the compound.

HANCOCK: Koresh preached increasingly

that they were going to be met with an opposing force.

So when we start getting into the subject

of the Seven Seals,

looks like somebody's going to get

a butt-whuppin' in the near future,

aren't they?

HANCOCK: He believed that the government

was going to try to invade this sacred ground

that was Mt. Carmel.

And so, this actually would be where Armageddon takes place.

BUFORD: People in A*F felt

that if this Armageddon that he predicted didn't come true,

he was going to have to do something to prompt it.

So we decided that we needed to act as quickly as possible.

HANCOCK: Reporters for the Waco Tribune-Herald

had really good sources in local law enforcement,

and they had been tipped

about when the raid was going to go down.

This road's going to be closed soon.

HANCOCK: The morning of the raid,

a reporter was sent to the compound,

and he's driving around

trying to figure out where he is,

when here comes a Buick station wagon,

stops, rolls down the window,

says, "Hey, buddy, are you lost?"

He says, "Yeah, I'm looking for Mt. Carmel.

There's going to be a big raid."

Turns out that the guy in the car

is one of the inner circle of Koresh's followers.

He immediately goes and tells Koresh

what was happening.

That morning,

David said that we had information

that there was going to be a raid today.

The men were arming themselves and the women were told

to go back to their rooms and bunker down.

BUFORD: We were going to be confronting people

on a very large compound.

They had minutes to prepare for us

and began firing on us as soon as we got there.

I heard an M machine g*n being fired.

Then I heard the A.K.-s.

And then I heard the -calibers,

just a brutal, brutal weapon.

[g*nf*re banging and popping]

There's no doubt these people were trying to k*ll us.

[g*nf*re continuing]

The firefight went on for / hours.

And when they finally agreed to a ceasefire,

we were able to get our people and get out.

MAN: Yeah, this is Lynch.

KORESH: Hey, Lynch?

LYNCH: Yeah.

KORESH: That's kind of a funny name there.

Now, listen, now...

LYNCH: Now, who am I speaking with?

KORESH: This is David Koresh.

LYNCH: Okay, David.

KORESH: The notorious.

What'd you guys do that for?

LYNCH: Well, David, what, this, what I'm doing is,

I'm trying to establish some communication links with you.

KORESH: No, no, no, no, no.

Let me tell you something.

LYNCH: Yes, sir.

KORESH: You see, you brought

a bunch of guys out here

and you k*lled some of my children.

We told you we wanted to talk.

How come you guys had to be A*F agents?

How come you try to be so big all the time?

LYNCH: Okay, David...

KORESH: Now there's a bunch of us dead.

There's a bunch of you guys dead.

Now, now that's your fault.

LYNCH: Okay, let's, let's try to resolve this now.

Tell me this, now, you have casualties.

How many casualties?

Do you want to try to work something out?

A*F is pulling back, we're trying to, uh...

KORESH: Why didn't you do that first?

HANCOCK: By the end of this shootout, four A*F agents were dead,

more than a dozen were wounded.

And inside, five Davidians were dead

and David Koresh was wounded.

MAN: Okay, then, move out.

BUFORD: There really wasn't much organization as to how we left.

The three team leaders, all of us,

were wounded very badly.

I was actually put in a blanket and placed on the hood of a car,

and, uh...

I don't remember anything about the... the trip out, actually.

HANCOCK: American law enforcement had never seen anything like this.

They had never had this kind of loss.

They had never been met with this kind of resistance.

There was shock, there was anger,

and there was uncertainty.

REPORTER: Tragedy tonight in Waco, Texas.

At least four federal agents and a member of a cult group

are dead after an hour-long g*n battle at the cult's ranch.

other agents were wounded in the shootout

that started when law officers tried to enter the compound.

MAN [over loudspeaker]: David Koresh, pick up the phone.

The negotiators want to speak with you.

RICKS: The tactic from the very beginning

was trying to negotiate a resolution.

We were willing to spend as long as possible

to try to get the people out.

And particularly, we would focus on the children,

trying to get the children out of there.

MAN: And starting off the evening of the th of February,

we were successful.

We were starting to get kids out.

But we couldn't fathom how in the world

these parents were so latched onto David

that they would abandon their children.

We took videotapes of them

playing on the, on the swing set,

and eating ice cream,

and just communing with one another,

and we sent them back into the compound.

We wanted to do something tangible

so their parents could think, you know,

"Maybe I need to come out and reassume my responsibility

as a parent."

[kids greeting their parents]

SCHROEDER: I didn't decide to send my kids out.

My kids leaving was part of the prophecy.

I didn't know when it was going to happen,

but I knew it would happen.

They weren't David's children.

MAN: He let children go

up until there were no children left in there

except his children.

And he told us, "This is the last one.

The rest are mine."

HANCOCK: The negotiators needed a different way

to approach the situation.

And so it was proposed to Koresh that he make a recording

that could be broadcast

to bring his message to the world,

if he would agree to lead his people out.

Koresh agreed to do this.

Okay, here we go.

We're going to the tape of David Koresh.

KORESH: It's March , .

My name is Dave Koresh.

I'm speaking to you from Mt. Carmel Center.

In the Book of Revelation, commentary states

that what John has written in Scripture

is nothing other than the revelation of Jesus Christ,

which God gave to Him to show to His servants

things which must shortly come to pass...

HANCOCK: They're bringing in buses.

They're bringing in all sorts of people

who are going to help process the folks

coming out of the compound.

They were convinced that he was going to come out.

RICKS: We were at such a high level,

thinking that this thing was going to end.

We were high-fiving each other,

then all of a sudden, everything just stopped.

We were told that David received a message from God

telling them to wait.

SAGE: You went back on your word.

KORESH: That is a lie!

SAGE: That is not a lie.

KORESH: That is a lie!

You will find out in the Judgment...

SAGE: You know as well as I do

that your challenge to open these Seven Seals,

it's garbage, it's a false hope, and you know this.

KORESH: No, it's not.

HANCOCK: Once he didn't come out,

the FBI's tactics pretty quickly became aggressive.

The power was cut.

They blasted lights at the compound.

They had brought in tanks,

so they drove over Koresh's prized cars.

They also set up loudspeakers and they began blasting

Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made for Walking."

♪ One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you. ♪

HANCOCK: Christmas carols, the sounds of dying rabbits,

phones off the hook, and even Tibetan monk chants.

It was clear that the FBI was saying,

"Hey, we're going to show you who's boss."

REPORTER: The standoff outside the Branch Davidian compound

has become a psychological power struggle.

Now, sources tell CBS News that federal agents don't plan

to let this go on indefinitely,

their frustration level is very high,

and if negotiations are not more fruitful,

they may take action by this weekend.

Dan?

RICKS: The story kept growing and growing.

And the press initially was very supportive

of what we were doing,

and very understanding,

but as the days went on,

they started becoming more demanding.

They were saying, "After all, they've k*lled four A*F agents.

Why are you just sitting back and letting them do this?"

We are not going to be jerked around.

We will take whatever action is necessary to get it resolved.

And again, our ultimate goal from day one

is to get it resolved peacefully.

It was probably the number-one story in the United States,

and many of the right-wing Patriot types

started showing up, as well.

They thought this was only about seizing g*ns,

about A*F attacking a church

because they believed in possessing g*ns.

They didn't manage to get into the press conferences,

but somebody else did.

HANCOCK: Louis Beam, the white supremacist

and former Klan leader,

showed up and presented himself as a credentialed reporter.

Are we seeing the emergence of a police state

in The United States?

We figured out who he was pretty quickly.

He'd previously been on the FBI's top ten most wanted list.

And I asked them if they're going to have a police state,

and, uh, they don't want to hear about police state,

A*F black-booted, black-suited, black-helmeted troopers

carrying g*ns, assaulting people.

Mr. Beam? Let me see this...

ZESKIND: White supremacists, like Beam, saw in this standoff

the same issues that they had decided were important

with Randy Weaver.

The Branch Davidians were not white supremacists.

But now a broader section of the far right

sees itself in Waco, and says,

"We're being suppressed for our beliefs and our g*ns."

Up to the top of the hill, them two white...

Little white buildings up there.

HANCOCK: There was a hill that was about three miles from Mt. Carmel.

It was on a rise that was high enough

that you could just barely see Mt. Carmel in the distance.

This was as close as members of the public

could get to the standoff.

WOMAN: You're next, you're next!

Wake up and understand!

You're next!

HANCOCK: All sorts of folks felt moved to come down

to see what was going on at Waco.

Just, just arrived today.

Just, somebody told me

a lot of people are scared to put something on,

you know, like this.

HANCOCK: Timothy McVeigh

had already apparently been very concerned

about what had happened at Ruby Ridge.

So he came down to Waco

and sold bumper stickers

with pro-g*n, anti-government slogans.

He saw the raid as clear evidence

of what the government would do

to try to confiscate g*ns and persecute g*n owners.

HERBECK: Tim McVeigh loved g*ns.

When he was a kid,

his grandfather taught him all about g*ns:

the safe handling of g*ns and the rights of g*n owners.

They would go out and sh**t together,

go to target practice.

He just loved g*ns,

and the whole belief about a man owning g*ns.

MAN: Pendleton, New York, was white suburbia.

It's near Buffalo.

It's where generations of the McVeigh family had lived.

Growing up,

Tim loved superheroes.

He had a huge comic book collection,

he liked Soldier of Fortune magazine,

and he hated bullies.

Tim was very skinny and tall,

and in high school, he was known as "Noodle" McVeigh.

That was the beginning of a lifelong hatred of bullies.

HERBECK: After high school, he went into the Army.

He just couldn't seem to find the right path to a career.

But the other reason was he loved g*ns.

It gave him access to all kinds of g*ns

and other weapons and he was like a kid in a candy store.

MCVEIGH: I was an admitted g*n enthusiast and so you can't go wrong

both brushing up your skills

and, hell, the Army is free ammunition.

So I wanted to get out

and experience the rest of the world.

I wanted to get out of my isolation of Pendleton.

MICHEL: The Army provided Tim McVeigh with a place where he fit in.

He was the top g*n at Fort Riley in his Bradley fighting vehicle.

His supervisors took notice of him.

He was a leader in the Army.

And then he goes over to Iraq for the first Gulf w*r.

HERBECK: It was in the w*r that McVeigh first started

to become disillusioned with the military

and the United States government.

When he k*lled Iraqi soldiers,

he didn't feel the exhilaration that he thought he would.

POTOK: He took a very, very long sn*per shot

and k*lled an Iraqi soldier.

And he describes seeing this man's head explode.

And he could not see the reason for it.

He could not really understand

what the United States was doing there.

MCVEIGH: My overall experience in the Gulf w*r

taught me that these people were just that, they were people.

They were human beings at the core,

they were no different than me.

Then I had to reconcile that with the fact

that, well, I k*lled them.

MICHEL: He's truly conflicted.

He sees the American government as a bully.

But they summon him home for ranger school, special forces.

And he was willing to put aside his anti-government views

in order to become, you know, the ultimate soldier.

But he's not in top-notch physical shape

and, to his embarrassment, washes out of rangers school.

And the disillusionment compounds itself.

He stayed around the Army for a few more months,

but his heart just wasn't in it anymore.

He went back home and he thought it would be easy

to get a good job because of his Army experience,

but he found that it wasn't.

Failure was eating at him.

He told us that "I feel like I reached a pinnacle in the Army

and then after that everything was just mediocrity."

BEN FENWICK: He becomes more and more disaffected.

He becomes more and more strident.

He began paying attention to the really far-off conspiracies,

like that the United Nations was going to take over

the United States, and he totally bought into them.

And he also becomes very influenced

by The Turner Diaries.

He becomes just gripped by this novel.

HERBECK: He was really interested in this character, Earl Turner,

and his antigovernment views

and his feeling that you needed to take drastic action

to make the government take notice.

And then Ruby Ridge happened.

And Ruby Ridge absolutely enraged McVeigh.

He felt it was m*rder.

He felt it was all about

attacking the rights of people to own g*ns.

POTOK: He was not happy.

He wasn't getting along with his family.

He didn't have a girlfriend.

He took his old beat-up car and essentially began an odyssey,

traveling around the western parts of the country,

kind of absorbing more and more and more of this ideology.

And probably the single most important place

where ideas of the radical right were spread were g*n shows.

LEVITAS: g*n shows were sometimes more than just g*n shows.

The antigovernment message, which cloaked itself

in the paraphernalia of patriotism,

was promoted and peddled at g*n shows all over.

ZESKIND: There were a number of people

who traveled from g*n show to g*n show,

selling and trading,

and Timothy McVeigh became one of these people.

And in the process he met white supremacists

and talked to them.

He sold The Turner Diaries.

He became embroiled in the larger movement.

MICHEL: And then he shows up at Waco.

He can't believe it, that, you know,

American citizens are being held there by government agents.

And it rivets his attention.

MCVEIGH: Who were the aggressors?

Koresh wasn't giving in, that's true,

but the FBI were the aggressors, okay?

Everything they do exudes that they are at w*r.

They're a military force at w*r.

The thing is, who are they at w*r with?

Well, they're at w*r with the American people.

In Waco, Texas, the th day of the siege

at David Koresh's compound is ending

just like the other --

with Koresh and his followers on the inside,

and federal agents outside waiting for something to happen.

MAN: David Koresh, pick up the phone.

The negotiators want to speak with you.

SAGE: As the negotiations continued,

the productivity of those negotiations diminished,

mainly, I think, because David was done sending out the people

that he intended to send out.

KAT SCHROEDER: Those of us that left were leaving because

we were not good for the group.

We were not going to help the group ascend.

So we were kicked out.

The last person came out of that compound on the st of March.

The last child came out the th of March.

We were in a very difficult situation.

You know, you guys, you guys, you do it your way,

I do it my way.

You're going to argue with me,

you catch me on the side of the road somewhere,

and you come and argue with me.

You come pointing g*ns in the direction of my wives

and my kids, dammit, I'll meet you at the door any time.

Nobody's fooled here.

We're not negotiating, okay?

That's over, if it ever existed.

We weren't accomplishing anything.

We were just in a situation

that all it could do was grow worse.

HANCOCK: More and more people within the bureau began to come around

to the idea that they needed to do something

to force Koresh's hand.

So the FBI went to the attorney general, Janet Reno, with a plan

to use armored vehicles to knock holes into the building

and spray in tear gas.

Initially she refused it.

She asked for more information.

So the FBI went back with testimony

from former Davidians of child sexual abuse

going on in Mt. Carmel.

And she saw the videotape evidence of these young girls

with these babies, and it confirmed to her

that this was going on.

At that point, Janet Reno approved the plan.

STEVE SCHNEIDER: Everybody grab your mask.

Everybody grab your mask.

SAGE: A number of times early on,

we had gotten court-authorized permission

to insert microphones into that building.

That morning, we couldn't hear anything live

because there was too much noise, too much ambient noise.

But once the tapes are scrubbed, someone clearly says,

"Put on your masks."

Shortly after that, you distinctly hear

orders to spread the fuel.

SAGE: All the while our guys were inserting tear gas,

they were spreading fuel.

All morning long.

JAMAR: Had we heard that, "Spread the fuel,"

we would have pulled back.

We would have pulled away.

And then, of course, what happened,

it was just devastating to everybody.

As you can see on your screen,

there is a great deal of smoke coming out from the building.

Let's go to Mike Capps...

we can also see some flames there now.

Mike, what can you tell us?

What can you see?

MIKE CAPPS: Well, Bonnie, for the last minutes,

we've watched this M vehicle, this combat engineering vehicle,

make large holes in the side of this building

and pump tear gas in there.

Now we have a very large-scale fire breaking out

on what must be the south side,

right near the front side of this building.

POTOK: I went out to the roadblock,

and was looking through a friend's television camera,

and noticed little tiny licks of flame,

first out of one side of the building,

then out of the other.

And in a matter of it seemed like seconds,

the building was engulfed.

You know, we all stood there waiting to see

the people come out.

You know, there were or people in there.

SAGE: As that fire continued to build, a few adults came out.

One of them had jumped out of the second floor window,

and then she ran back into the fire.

An agent started to run after her, went into the building,

grabbed her, and pulled her out,

and she was ready to ignite.

I mean, there was smoke trailing off of her clothes.

Nine adults came out.

Not one of them brought a child out.

JAMAR: The part that we played cannot be ignored.

We provoked the circumstances,

but David Koresh decided who was going to die.

What happened was to serve his purpose,

and that's the most devastating thing to me,

is I served his purpose to a terrible degree.

BUFORD: When I saw the fire,

all I could think about were the children in there.

You know, the parents had made their own decisions,

but those kids didn't make any decisions.

I literally bawled when I saw it.

It was Armageddon, just like he said it would be.

WRIGHT: At Ruby Ridge, Americans saw the deaths of two people.

But at Waco, they saw massive deaths.

There were people who had a legitimate argument

that there were all kinds of mistakes made

and this could have ended very differently.

But other people were saying this was a government m*ssacre

on a scale nobody had seen before.

It was certainly framed in this manner by the far right,

and the reaction was almost immediate.

We have several witnesses that say that they saw

to people exiting out these double doors

to escape the fire, and that these people were gunned down

in cold blood as they tried to escape.

There were several films made by people on the radical right,

which claimed that this had been a deliberate m*rder.

HANCOCK: One of the earliest was a documentary

called Waco: The Big Lie.

The crucial footage that they used

was footage on the day of the fire,

where they alleged that if you looked at the footage

the right way, that you could see

the tanks actually setting fire to the building.

ARCHIVAL NARRATOR: At the same time as fire was already breaking out

in the back of the house, as you just saw,

as this tank backs out, flame can be seen

sh**ting from the front of it.

When someone could package the footage

that had disturbed everybody in America

with a potent message about, you know, government atrocities,

it touched a chord.

You know, those who had a tendency to doubt the government

were enraged.

HERBECK: When the fire started at Waco,

Tim McVeigh was at a friend's farmhouse up in Michigan.

He was working on a vehicle out in the yard

and somebody yelled out, "Tim, come in here.

You've got to see this on television."

MCVEIGH: I'm watching flames lick out windows,

and I'm watching tanks ram walls,

and my eyes just welled up in tears,

and tears started coming down my cheeks

as I'm watching this scene unfold.

I'm not going to shy away from the word rage.

For me, I felt absolute rage.

HERBECK: For Tim McVeigh, it was all happening

because of the U.S. government, the biggest bully in the world.

[applause]

And just a few months later, the Brady Bill passes.

It has a ban on several as*ault weapons, long overdue.

HERBECK: Like many people, Tim McVeigh was convinced

that the Brady Bill meant that the government

was going to take g*ns away from law-abiding citizens.

A ban on handgun ownership

and restrictions on possession of handguns by minors,

the beginning of reform

of our federal firearms licensing systems.

[applause]

LEVITAS: The combination of the perceived government assassination

of the Weaver family,

the perceived military government murdering

its own citizens in Waco, and then the Brady Bill,

the government coming after your g*ns,

just exploded the recruitment of anti-government extremists.

We have a government that is on the verge

of being completely out of control.

They allow tyrants to come in with hooded masks on,

unidentified, bust down your door.

It's happened all over America.

PHIL DONAHUE: This is the new thing in America.

It's called the militia.

No, they say they're not r*cist.

It's not just about g*ns and possession of g*ns,

but the nd Amendment's involved here, definitely.

They're proud of their nd amendment.

And by God no constable is going to come from some faraway place

and break their door down.

They'll sh**t 'em first.

ZESKIND: There had been a spurt of growth in militia organizations

after Ruby Ridge.

But Waco, and the Brady Bill, accelerates the movement.

By the end of ',

there was a huge underground of armed white supremacist militias

all over the country, all of them dedicated

to resistance to the federal government.

HERBECK: Tim McVeigh didn't actually belong to a militia group

but he certainly had the same opinions

about the government that many of the militia groups had.

For Tim McVeigh,

it was all part of a massive government conspiracy.

All these events, they were all connected

and it was all leading down a path that was going to end

with federal agents coming to his home

and the homes of g*n owners all over America

and storming into those homes and taking their g*ns away.

I think from that moment on,

he was trying to determine what t*rror1st act to commit

against the U.S. government.

WILLIAM PIERCE: "My day's work started a little before : yesterday

"when I began helping Ed Sanders mix heating oil

with the ammonium nitrate fertilizer in unit 's garage."

HERBECK: Tim McVeigh had read in The Turner Diaries

of how, generally, you could build a truck b*mb.

He found other articles

that told him exactly how to build a truck b*mb.

He wanted to do what Earl Turner did:

take down a government building.

McVeigh truly believed that he had two comrades in arms

in Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier.

They go back to the Army.

They all like The Turner Diaries.

They all shared the same antigovernment thoughts.

They all wanted to show that somebody could attack

the U.S. government, that it was that vulnerable.

To get started, they knew that they needed the main ingredient,

which was fertilizer.

POTOK: They start to buy bag after bag after bag of ammonium nitrate.

Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols break into a storage shed

at a quarry and they steal these expl*sive Tovex sausages,

which will make the b*mb more powerful.

HERBECK: It wasn't easy to get some of this stuff.

Some of the expl*sives were not available

to the average citizen.

They spent months and months getting the parts

of this b*mb together.

Fortier's role was very, very limited.

Nichols had a bigger role,

but, really, just following orders from McVeigh.

POTOK: And then, Tim McVeigh manages to get

some -gallon drums of nitromethane racing fuel.

The b*mb that was depicted in The Turner Diaries

was ammonium nitrate and fuel oil.

McVeigh was going to amp up his b*mb really dramatically

by using this much, much more volatile fuel.

HERBECK: During this time that he was driving around

getting his materials for the b*mb,

McVeigh was basically on this anti-government odyssey.

He visited a militia compound, he visited Area in Roswell,

and he visited Waco.

FENWICK: It was very important to him to go bear witness

to what had happened,

to make himself feel that-that place and that moment.

It was also around this time

that he and Fortier and Nichols began selecting

what was going to be the target of their b*mb.

WRIGHT: They went to Little Rock, Arkansas.

They went to Tulsa.

They went to Dallas.

They picked the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, in part,

because the A*F,

who had conducted the raid on the Branch Davidians,

had an office in the building.

They thought it was appropriately symbolic

that they would go after somebody

who was directly connected to Waco.

FENWICK: The Murrah Building had numerous federal offices.

It had HUD, it had the A*F.

It had general accounting offices.

It had military recruiters,

the Social Security Administration,

the DEA was in there.

And there is some question as to whether or not

McVeigh knew there was a day care in there,

but he also kind of indicated

that it wouldn't have made the difference anyway.

Michael Fortier began feeling uneasy about doing this.

He suddenly visualized what was going to happen.

He points out that there were probably going to be

innocent people inside that are going to die.

WRIGHT: McVeigh told him, "There has to be a body count."

He said, "The government's not going to sit up and take notice

unless there's a body count."

"They can always build a new building,

but a body count will get their attention."

MCVEIGH: From a military perspective, to get a message across,

you need to hurt them where they hurt the most.

The only way they're going to feel something,

and the only way they're going to get the message

is with a body count.

MICHEL: Tim picks April for the bombing

because it will be the anniversary of the fire at Waco.

On Easter Sunday, three days before,

Tim McVeigh calls Terry Nichols and says it's time.

HERBECK: He and Nichols, separately,

drove from Kansas to Oklahoma City.

McVeigh took his $ getaway car

and stashed it in a little parking lot.

He put a sign in the window, "Please Do Not Tow,"

and then they drove back to Kansas.

The next day McVeigh goes alone, apparently,

to rent a truck in Junction City,

the big Ryder truck that he will use as a b*mb.

HERSLEY: They asked him: "Do you need insurance on it?"

He said, "No, I won't need any insurance."

And they said, "Do you need any extra days?"

And he answered, "No, I won't need any extra days."

We actually have him on video coming in to the McDonald's

about a mile away from where he picked up the truck.

HERBECK: April was b*mb making day.

McVeigh drove the truck out to Geary Lake State Park,

where they would assemble the b*mb.

He was extremely upset

because Nichols was starting to get cold feet.

He threatened to k*ll Nichols and his family

if Nichols refused to help him with the final preparations.

MCVEIGH: The b*mb was primarily assembled by myself,

with a little assistance from another,

who was under duress to assist me.

I was the one that primed the charges,

that crimped the caps to the fuse, primed each barrel,

made sure there was redundant fusing systems.

And it only took three hours.

FENWICK: After they get the b*mb built,

Terry Nichols made it very clear he was not going to join McVeigh

the morning of the bombing.

And so they said goodbye, shook hands, Nichols wishes him luck,

and then he gets in the truck and he drives south.

HERBECK: He was nervous as he drove into Oklahoma City,

but I don't think he ever second-guessed himself.

I don't think he ever thought for a minute

that this was the wrong thing to do.

When he got close to the building,

he pulled the truck over,

and lit two different fuses leading back to the b*mb.

HERSLEY: The last video that we have of him was at :

in front of the Regency Tower Apartments.

At that point in time, he was about

a block and a half west of the Murrah Building.

NORFLEET: As I was driving past,

I noticed this yellow Ryder truck

pull into in the loading zone in front of the building.

A young man got out of the truck.

He had a military haircut and the T-shirt, and I thought,

"Well, okay, that's a sergeant or something

"checking into the command.

"But what in the world is he doing

going away from the building?"

MCVEIGH: I walked very slowly toward the YMCA.

Once I got in the blind alley of the YMCA,

I did jog because I knew nobody was looking.

[expl*si*n]

FLOWERS: Later that morning,

we went into the south side of the building, not knowing

what we were fixing to walk into was the daycare center.

The granite floor was all busted and broken

and just, you know, going every which way.

And as I'm fixing to go in,

one of the Oklahoma City officers comes walking out

carrying a little boy.

It's where the elevators used to be!

I can't.

Let me have him. I can't.

FLOWERS: And I just turned

and took a second breath and went into the daycare center.

We were moving debris, we were picking up boulders.

Literally everyone was digging on their hands and knees,

trying to get to these kids.

[siren wailing]

GARRETT: The children were coming out one by one.

Brandon was severely injured.

So was Nekia.

Rebecca, um, just seemed to me, and I...

it just seemed as though she was just dipped in blood.

The next baby that they brought out,

they went to lay this baby on the ground.

They had these perfectly folded white sheets

and they would bring another one out,

and they would bring another one, and another one.

And they lay them in a line, wrapped in these sheets.

And then a nurse came, and she moved the blanket

back from their feet,

and she was writing things, and she tagged their little feet.

And I think that's when reality, you know, set in,

that my son Tevin's not coming home.

FLOWERS: When a baby's body was carried out of that building,

even though one person carried that baby,

[voice breaking]: we all carried that baby.

And when we laid him down onto that makeshift morgue

and lined those children up out there,

that was really a hard thing to see,

because that was all of our kids.

That was everybody's kids.

That wasn't just one person's child.

They belonged to everybody.

The emotions that we felt and still feel to this day

from what we saw was just remarkable.

And the kids that survived and came through that

was just absolutely incredible.

JIM DENNY: Our children ended up at two different hospitals.

And once we found them,

we just made up our minds

that Claudia was gonna be with Rebecca

and I was gonna be with Brandon.

[unintelligible conversation]

When I got there, Brandon had just had

a four-and-a-half-hour brain surgery.

How's Daddy's big boy, huh?

DENNY: He had a piece of something blown into the upper left side

of his head that went into his brain.

Dr. Reynolds, his neurosurgeon, could not tell us

whether he'd live or not.

We knew for an absolute fact

that our children were feet from it.

feet from a massive b*mb.

There was five children sitting at a table

in the daycare center, and one in the bathroom.

And those six survived.

CLAUDIA DENNY: When I saw Rebecca for the first time,

the doctor said, "She's going to be fine."

She has a lot of cuts, bruises,

and she has a broken collarbone.

But she was alive.

At : that day, our world ended.

And then when we found our kids,

our new world began at : on April .

I love you, baby.

How you doing today, sir?

We're currently conducting an investigation

into the Oklahoma City bombing.

Do you usually travel this road very much?

RICKS: We operate under the premise

that the evidence leads you to where you want to go.

We have to gather every bit of evidence that we can

and then start trying to form hypotheses and theories

as to what has transpired.

Did you notice a Ryder truck?

The first real break of the investigation,

which happened within hours of the bombing,

was we found the rear axle

of what turned out to be the b*mb truck.

HERSLEY: On the rear axle assembly, there's what's called

a confidential vehicle identification number,

which was PVA.

I'll never forget that number.

TONGATE: We were able to trace that number to a Ryder truck

assigned to Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, Kansas.

RICKS: We immediately deployed special agents

to that Ryder truck rental shop.

We learned that it had been rented by a gentleman

with a South Dakota driver's license

by the name of Robert Kling.

We had three principal witnesses there inside the truck rental.

They described a military type person, about six foot tall,

thin, close shaven.

They also believed that there was a second person with him,

so we called these John Doe number one

and John Doe number two.

Our agents flooded the area of Junction City.

One particular agent went to the Dreamland Motel,

and he asked the manager, "Has anybody been in here

with a Ryder truck?"

TONGATE: She said, "Yes.

"I had a customer who stayed here in room

"that had a Ryder truck parked at the motel,

and I last saw him on Tuesday morning, April the th."

After talking to her about the Ryder truck,

they show her the sketch, and she recognizes it.

She pulls out her records,

and for all of McVeigh's planning,

he apparently had a moment of weakness

and he signed his own name to the register.

HERSLEY: So that really got us.

We wanted to know who Tim McVeigh was.

So what we did

was go into the National Crime Information Center

and run an offline search,

and try to find out if anybody named Tim McVeigh

has been arrested anywhere in the United States

in the recent past.

RICKS: It turns out that a highway patrolman

has arrested someone by the name of Timothy McVeigh.

HERBECK: He was heading off toward Kansas in this old Mercury Marquis.

He'd got on the interstate, and a state trooper pulled him over

because he had no license plate on the back of his car.

HANCOCK: The trooper then notices a bulge under the driver's jacket,

and says, "Is that a g*n?"

The driver acknowledges, "Yes, it is,"

and Tim McVeigh is put under arrest

and taken to the county jail.

MICHEL: The T-shirt he is wearing

says sic semper tyrannis-- "thus ever to tyrants."

It was what John Wilkes Booth shouted when he shot Lincoln.

For two days McVeigh languished in the jail

and nobody really knew who he was.

Other than the fact that he was illegally carrying a weapon,

the police had no suspicions about him.

RICKS: We called up the courthouse there and learned

that Timothy McVeigh was just getting ready to appear

before the judge and was about ready to be released.

So we said, you know, "Put a hold on him.

We're on our way."

MICHEL: Two federal agents interview him

in the Noble County sheriff's office.

And the agents start by saying, "Do you know why we're here?"

And McVeigh says,

"Does it have something to do with the bombing?"

I am pleased to announce that one of the individuals

believed to be responsible for Wednesday's terrible attack

on the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City

has been arrested.

FENWICK: Once they know they've got their guy,

the decision's made to take him to a more secure facility.

The word is leaked out to the press,

which broadcasts it on TV,

so people drive there from all over to see this.

[crowd shouting, booing]

POTOK: I and the rest of the country saw Timothy McVeigh

for the very first time.

And we understood in a kind of flash

that there were enemies within this country.

Not foreign t*rrorists, but red-blooded Americans

who were engaged in a w*r against America.

FENWICK: It was just the lightning moment of recognition.

This was the guy in the sketch.

It was that guy.

I think everybody felt this sudden sense of betrayal.

I think everyone thought, "You're one of us."

REPORTER: Mr. President,

is there a sense now, sir, that this was not a foreign threat?

Let me say that I have never,

and the Justice Department has never said,

that it was a foreign threat,

but the most important thing that you understand

is that even though this is a positive development,

this investigation has a lot of work still to be done in it.

RICKS: The capture of Timothy McVeigh

really just launched the investigation.

The circumstances, obviously, indicated

that he was directly involved, but, you know, to what extent?

His driver's license had an address in Decker, Michigan.

We dispatched agents to that location

and we find out that the gentleman there

by the name of James Nichols had a brother, Terry,

presently residing in Herington, Kansas.

We ended up executing a search warrant on Terry Nichols' home

in Kansas, and that search warrant was a gold mine.

In there we found a receipt for , pounds of fertilizer.

We found a cordless drill that turned out to be

a key piece of evidence.

But probably themost important piece of evidence

that we found was a calling card in the name of Daryl Bridges,

who shared the same address in Decker, Michigan.

HERSLEY: There were calls made on the calling card.

We determined where every one of those calls was placed from,

the duration of the call, and who the call was made to.

So we saw many calls to chemical companies, to barrel companies,

to racetracks, all kinds of places

Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols were contacting

to try to acquire b*mb components.

We also found out about Michael Fortier

through the calling card.

He knew more than we did about the bombing.

He knew, for example, that Tim McVeigh,

when he was staying at their house in Kingman,

had taken all these soup cans down from the kitchen

and showed Michael Fortier's wife exactly how he was going

to construct the b*mb inside the back of that Ryder truck.

Last night, Timothy McVeigh was charged in the bombing

of the Murrah Federal Building here in Oklahoma City.

Two brothers, James Douglas Nichols and Terry Lynn Nichols,

are currently in federal custody

and are being held as material witnesses.

Another suspect, whom we have identified

as John Doe number two, remains unidentified and at large.

RICKS: A mistake was made.

The artist conception has him with a Carolina Panthers cap on.

It turns out that a guy had happened to be

in the Ryder truck rental shop

the day before Timothy McVeigh was.

His description is almost to a T.

MCVEIGH: Is there a John Doe two?

Either way I can answer it should be scary

because, number one, if there are other people,

that means they're still out there.

On the other hand, if it was just me, that in itself,

isn't that pretty scary that one man could do that?

That's why "You can't handle the truth" is the perfect line,

because the truth is it was just me.

FENWICK: The prosecution hit McVeigh's defense team

with everything they had.

Michael Fortier's testimony was crucial and damning,

but he also told a very poignant story.

He talked about how he would have a dream at night

that he was calling people to warn them,

and then he'd wake up, and he was in jail,

and he hadn't made the call,

and that people were dead because of him.

I was the second witness in the trial,

and as I sat in that witness stand,

it seemed just like an arm's reach away was Timothy McVeigh.

He did look me in the eyes, and he did try to intimidate me,

but I was far from being intimidated.

GARRETT: When I had to testify, and people would ask later,

"How did you sit in the room with the man

who m*rder*d your son?"

And I told them my story is more powerful

than me yelling at him.

My story is more powerful than my fist.

I'm not going to go to his level.

You know, I deserve better; Tevin deserved better.

Every victim of the bombing deserved better than that.

McVeigh all along wanted a necessity defense,

that he had no choice but to b*mb to building.

He did not want to claim some widespread conspiracy,

which members of the defense team wanted.

McVeigh wanted no part of that

because, number one, it wasn't true

and, number two,

he did want credit for this thing he had done.

And no evidence has ever surfaced that anybody but him,

with-with a little bit of help from his two Army buddies,

pulled this off.

He built this b*mb.

He designed it, he built it, and he was proud of that.

ZESKIND: There was no massive conspiracy.

That much is clear.

But the idea that Timothy McVeigh was a lone k*ller

is wrong-headed because it absolves the movement

from which it all sprang.

Timothy McVeigh was not on his own.

He was a creation of the white supremacist movement.

He carried The Turner Diaries around

and read it to people.

He lived at the g*n shows.

He met Neo-Nazis and visited with them.

He was part of this movement.

And the idea that there was no connection

between the white supremacist movement

and the events in Oklahoma City is patently false.

There was a strong connection, and it was a deep connection.

WRIGHT: When the verdict was read,

McVeigh's demeanor didn't change at all.

He didn't even blink.

I think he fully expected to get the verdict

and he fully expected to get the death penalty,

and he expected to die

because I think he wanted to be a martyr.

FENWICK: He thought he was starting the next American Revolution.

I think he did exactly the opposite,

because he showed the human face

of what it really means to attack a government,

a government of the people.

SCHWAB: We were the government.

We weren't bad guys.

We were mothers and fathers and daughters and sons

and grandparents who had a job to do.

Supposedly you don't have job satisfaction

if you work for the government.

I never heard that type of talk in our office.

We were very proud of what we did.

MCVEIGH: Death penalty is...

would you call it an oxymoron?

Death is not a penalty, it's an escape.

They treat me like a trophy,

like they've got me, they're gonna k*ll me, "We've won."

They didn't win.

In the crudest terms: -.

NORFLEET: He died without a word.

There was no pain.

There was no regret.

Because I looked into his eyes

before they were closed that last time,

and saw the same deep anger and resentment and rage

that I had seen in that trial several years before.

FLOWERS: Justice was served.

That don't bring them back.

It just won't bring them back.

But it closes a door on that chapter,

and that's exactly what happened

when they lowered the boom down on Timothy McVeigh.

JIM DENNY: We didn't go to the execution.

We had no time to worry about that.

Our total focus, regardless of whatever it took,

was our children.

Our children and our family.

CLAUDIA DENNY: We were very blessed.

But it's been hard for us.

I mean to watch Brandon struggle, as he's struggled,

for the last years.

Faith, family, and friends--

that's how we survived through all of this.

But also it makes me wonder why a little bit.

I mean, I don't question it all the time,

but sometimes I question why.

And I do have a little bit of the survivor guilt

that my children survived and some of the others didn't.

[siren wailing]

GARRETT: I still have hope that no one ever again becomes so enraged

with hatred and prejudice and judgment

that they think the only thing to do is to k*ll

and harm other people.

I have hope that through all of this

that love is stronger than any t*rror1st attack.

I have hope that that would never happen again.

♪