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OKC Bombing: 17 Years Ago Today

By Jeralyn, Section Oklahoma City Bombing
Posted on Thu Apr 19, 2012 at 08:34:20 PM EST
Tags: Oklahoma City Bombing (all tags)
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Today is the 17th anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, in which 168 persons were killed and hundreds more injured. It was then, and remains today, the largest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the nation. The Government's investigation into the bombing was, until 9/11, the largest criminal investigation the Government had ever undertaken.

Timothy McVeigh was found guilty and executed in 2001. Terry Nichols was tried in both federal and state court and sentenced to life in prison, a sentence he is currently serving at Supermax in Florence, Colorado.

Speculation has never ceased about whether McVeigh and Nichols acted alone or were aided by others who either went undetected or were ignored during the Government's investigation.

Next week you can get greater insight with the release of Oklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed--and Why It Still Matters by investigative journalists Andrew Gumbel and Roger Charles.[More...]

What makes this book different than others on the OKC bombing is its primary focus: What the feds missed, skipped, botched, or failed to grasp the significance of when conducting the investigation and prosecuting McVeigh and Nichols.

The authors present explanations for many of the shortcomings in the investigation, and their view that the flawed investigation may have impacted the ability to ever know for certain whether anyone else was involved in the planning or execution of the Oklahoma City bombing.

I received an advanced copy of the book because as one of McVeigh's trial lawyers at the guilt phase of his trial, I was interviewed for the book, and it's not uncommon for bloggers to get advance copies of books so they can blog about them.

I expected the book to be thorough, since I could tell from my conversation with Gumbel and follow-up e-mails, which were pretty limited to evidentiary and legal issues and some details on interactions with McVeigh that didn't involve the crime, that he not only had an enormous amount of factual information, but access to sources who could link pieces together in a way very few others had. I was not disappointed.

That's not to say I agree with the premise of the book, which is that the restrictive lens through which the Feds viewed the evidence, and its steadfast determination to limit culpability to McVeigh and Nichols, with peripheral involvement by Michael Fortier, caused the Governm