1) $8? Y6Y0 May 21 issue — Scanning the family photographs, we see images of an apparently normal child, as ordinary as Sunday dinner with Grandma. Timothy McVeigh stands roudly behind his sister, plays with a model airplane, frolics in the swimming pool. BUT WHAT AMERICA yeams to see is Something quite different: that the man the child has become—the killer with the angular Jace, The buzz cul, the hard and narrow eves—is not aman at all_buta monster. We want To see Timothy McVeigh as evil incarnate, as Satan, as depravity in human form. He has willfully and gratuitously inflicted harm on others—the very definition of an evil act— 7 through a cold, cruel calculation untouched by compassion. There is a reason we need to view McVeigh this way, say scientists who study the human mind and the depths it ean fall to. Doing so allows us to place him in a category labeled Evil with a capital E, but also, mofe importantly. one Ia us. The enormity of McVeigh’s act and the yawning hole in his soul where human compassion should lie, we need to assure ourselves, set him worlds apart from us. But do they? In their search for the nature and roots of evil, scholars from fields as diverse as sociology, psychology, philosophy and theology are reaching a far more chilling conclusion. Most people do have the capacity for horrific evil, they say: the traits of temperament and character from which evil springs are as common as flies on carrion. “The capacity for evil is a human universal,” says psychiatrist Robert 1. Simon, directér of the program in Psychiatry and Law at Georgetown University Schoo! of Medicine. “There is a continuum of evil, of course, ranging from ‘trivial evils’ like cutting someoncoff in traffic, to greater evils like acts of prejudice, to Wassive exils like those perpetrated by serial sexual killers. But within usa afe the roats of evil.” In the shadow ofa century of unspeakable atrocities, from the 2 million killed in Stalin’s purges and gulags to Hitler's extermination of 6 million Jews and the 1.7 million lives snuffed out on the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Cambodia, researchers are seeking answers to a question as urgent as itis profound: if we all have the capacity for evil. why does it become a cality in only some? ! we Ff awe ~ 9:17 pede ‘Answering that requires that they firs| define evil. Last week, at the annual meeting of the r American Psychiatric Association, forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner of the New York University School of Medicine told an overflow audience that evil probably includes an intent cause emotional trauma, to erorzs argo th bles to prolong sulTering nd 0 derive satisfaction from it all, That lst suggests a key trait in many evildoers: fey Jack the capacity for empathy. "They are unable to understand with the mind and feel with iheir gut the pain and terror of another human being. “They cannot see the self in the other,” says Dr. Carl Bell, a psychiatrist at the University of Minois. But while a failure Oof empathy may be a sufficient cause of evil, itis not a necessary one: sociopaths often know full well what their victims feel, and revel in it. To be truly evil see vgid where compassion should be; an evildoer like a serial sexual killer knows full well, but does not care a whit, what another feels. ‘SEE, THE WORLD DOESN’T CARE” Acts of unspeakable evil also seem to require a bent toward dehumanizing others. John Wayne Gacy called the 33 boys he raped, sodomized, tortured and killed “worthlesslittle queers.” Ted Bundy, with the blood of 24 women on his hands, called his victims “cargo” and “damaged gogds.” And no one could dehumanize his victims more than Jeffrey Dahmer; he ate his, When Hitler saw that the 900 Jews fleeing Germany in 1939 on the ship St. Louis had been tumed back by Cuba, refused entry by every other country and had returned to the Third Reich, “he took that as a rationalization,” says Dr. Carl a heyelidss Goldberg, a psychoanalyst at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. “See, the world doesn’t care about these peaple. We can do with them whatever we like’.” MeVeigh, of course, called the babies and toddlers he killed “collateral damage.” Itis normal and—as evolutionary biologists say—adaptive to be self-centered. It keeps us alive. But if there is a single trait that allows lack of empathy and compassion to | argue many psychiatrists, itis the extreme form of self-centeredness alfed narcissism. “Narcissism is the huge multiplier.” says Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, a Teuropsychiatrist at UCLA. “The grandiosity that McVeigh exhibited —t act he would bring down the governiment—shows 1ow badly the hero ethos can go wrong when To shAy isnot grounded in a strict moral code, Nareissism is what allows you to get evil acts At rom seemingly ordinary people,” Grandiosity also allows a person to play god, deciding ES (aA, Mose lives are dispensable in the service af which goals. ig beady “A man’s character is his fate,” wrote Heraclitus more than 2,000 years ago. It is ty deny — | here, inmen’s characters, that scholars seek the distinctive traits that turn the potential for He evil en into its actuality. Goldberg, who has studied killers and sociopaths, argues that the i seeds of evil are sown early in life. If'a child suffers extreme neglect or cruelty, especially ‘a meselE. from a trusted friend or beloved relative, the result is often shame and humiliation: “I was Leek ne not worthy of love from those I love most.” Those feelings, if not countered by Geller... compassion from others inthe ehild’s world, can grow into a self-contempt so profound “* that the only way to survive is to “become indifferent to other people, too,” says Goldberg. “I may not be worthy, but neither is anyone else’.” Someone who hates himself projects Hat haroT one Hs Vstims He “pus hs Hated self ie shoes o ictims. He “puts his hated self in the shoes of the Victim, then fortures and Kills that person,” Simon explains. Studies of sociopaths indeed find that many experienced horrific abuse during childhood, which is a good start toward fostering self-hatred. But abuse also seems to leave a physical trace on the developing brain, assaulting it with a constant barrage of stress hormones. The result is that the child becomes inured to stress and, indeed, to most feeling, Emotionally, he flat-lines. He can no longer perceive another human being’s. distress; he cannot feel what another is feeling One of the most consistent findings about the biology of violence is that sadists and coldblooded killers show virtually no response. to stress—no racing heart, no sweating, no adrenaline rush. EVIL THOUGHTS, But just as evil can spring from a failing of the heart, so, too, can it grow from the head. “You can have people who have a well-developed capacity for empathy, relat ‘who are very close to their friends, but who have been raised in an ideology that teaches them that people of another religion, color or ethnic group are bad,” says psychologist Bruce Perry of the Child Trauma Academy n Houston, Theil actin a way that is, essential than emotion.” But the heart and the head Tnteract. People who grew up amid violence and cruelty are more susceptible to ideologies that dehumanize the other in favor of the self.=n Mob evil—the genocidal atrocities in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans — requires something more. In such horrors, the participants were what psychologists call “righteous conformists, convinced of the justice of their cause and content to go along With the crowd. In 1974, in a classic test of the power of confor us into evil, fake) electrical psychologist Stanley Milgram seated volunteers betore a panel o| switches. They were connected, Milgram sad, to someone (actually a Milgram colleague) on whom the volunteer would test the effects of electric shock on learning. Every time the learner got an answer wrong, Milgram told the volunteer he was to throw a more powerful switch. When the volunteers were seated alone, more than half administered the maximum (and potentially fatal) 450-volt shocks—even as their victims screamed in mock agony. Then Milgram seated the volunteers between two others (again, associates of his). If these two showed no qualms about torturing the learners, a Tul percent of the volunteers administered potentially lethal jolts. They went along, They obeyed orders, 2 ler treee oF CAhIy Fm Ge FT a Given this capacity for evil, perhaps we should not be surprised that many individual acts of cruelty and even depravity are perpetrated by men and women who appear, on the outside, perfectly ordinary. Gacy worked asa building contractor, participated in community projects and volunteered at the Lospital to cheer up sick children. Bundy’s friends found him so poised and personable they thought he would run for political office. “I spent 18 years working with people who everyone would call evik—child molesters, murderers—and with a few exceptions T was always struck by their dinariness,” says psychologist Michael Flynn of York College in New York. History's alles ats of roe) oil vegire sts sommblieiheofaien ene Some who showed up-at work, processed The papers thal sent people to the cremaloriums-or the gulag, even participated directly in ethnic cleansing and gang rape—and who in their ‘spare time played with their children and had a soft spot for animals. Most of those who carried out the Holocaust were ordinary Germans “who rationalized the atrocities that they were committing” by viewing Jewish lives as worthless, argued Simon in the fall 2000 issue of Phi Kappa Phi Journal. “The unmistakable lesson is that ordinary, ‘good’ people, devoted to their families, their religion and their country, are capable of inflicting horrific harm on those whom they dehuman ze and demonize.” As Hannah Arendt noted, it is the banality of evil that is so horrific. » SEEKING EXPLANATIONS IN PARTICULARS, The greatest failing of explanations that single out particular experiences or character traits as feeding the wellsprings of evil is that thousands, if not millions, of people have had those same experiences or share those traits. The genesis of Hitler's evil, for instance, is variously ascribed to sexual inadequacy, maternal smothering, patemal violence and narcissistic borderline personality disorder. But those factors describe many people; there has been only one Hitler. That failing suggests to many scientists that we will not find answers to evil in the generalities—childhood abuse, lack of empathy, media violence, an innate bent toward violence. We must instead seek explanations in the particulars: how and by whom and for how long a child was abused; his state of mind when he played a violent videogame; the quotidien interactions with parents that convey a moral code or {ail to. Why doesn’t everyone who plays violent videogames or gets bullied or abused commit acts of evil? Because each life experience affects an individual according to his_innate psychological makeup. For now, we just aren't smart enough to know how those interactions work. But (power effects on weak mindy Ron Rosenbaum, fazi evil may have been the virulently anti-Semitic pamphlets written by auto chief|Henry Ford, circulated in Germany in the 1920s. Hitler cribbed anuch of *Mein{Kampf” from Ford’s “The International Jew.” “The role of hate literature and evil\ideology on a vulnerable mind has been underestimated,” says Rosenbaum. McVeigh¥of course, pored over “The Turner Diaries,” a neo-N: ‘all to arms in which the shero,” Blows up the FBI headquarters with atruck bomb. Advances in neuroscience have tumed up hints of something like the mark of Cain in some minds. Psychiatrist Daniel Amey has studied, through the imaging technique called SPECT, the living brains of 50 murderers ard 200 other violent felons. Without 2 exception, all show reduced activity in the prefrontal cortex (seat of judgment, planning * “and thoughtfulness), overactivily im The anterior cingulate gyrus (the brain's gearshift, which allows 11 fo segue [rom one thought to another) and-abnormalities in the left temporal lobe (involved in mood and temper control). “If you have a left-temporal-lobe problem-you have dark, awful, violent thoushts,” says Amen. “Ifyou have a cingulate- ‘ymus problem as well, you get stuck on the bad thoughts And if you have a prefrontal- cortex problem. you ea supervise the bu houshts yu get stuck on.” ‘One caveat about such findings: they say nothing about the genesis of the brain abnormalities. Yes, the abnormalities may be causative. But they may also be the result of outst tum the capacity for evi] into reality—the self-loathing yerates asserted that no one can know good and yet and yet commits an act sai cals then that person mistook an evil act for a Aker | good one. “In their choice of good and evil,” Socrates said, "[we suffer] from a defect of a ot knowledge.” Quls$gigy, in whose mouth Milton put the words “Evil be now my good.” knows the good, yet consciously chooses evi, Socrates may or may not have been right, About adults, but he nailed the explanation for evil committed by children: without + intending to trivialize the enormity of their ects, one must conclude thi they literally didn’t know any better. Even in normal teenagers, a brain that remjains a {Work in progress means that moral dévelopment may lag, just as the capacity for reasoning, planning and prioritizing does. Both moral judgment (the ability to figure out | Which actions are morally justified) and moral motivation (putting the rights and needs of | gists above one’s own) often elude children, But the moral stage of an Eric Lionel Tate need not have been permanent, It was their tragedy, and ours, that they got their hands on guns before theirs orality matured. Kids who kill seem most deserving oF an asters: the deed was evil, the doer perhaps not LURED INTO EVIL Adults generally have no such out, But they, too, can be lured into evil by the same kor acute sense of aggrievement, and the firm conviction that they are righting a grave wrong("*" pelted) that tums schoolyard victims of bullying inta killers. McVeigh believed he was avenging the deaths at Waco and striking a blow against a totalitarian American government. “I did it for the larger good,” he told the authors of the new book “American Terrorist.” Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, believed that by mailing bombs to scientists and businessexecutives the technologically driven society he loathed would topple. Ramzi Yousef masterminded the bombing of the World Trade Center to strike at “the great Satan’"— America. Such convietiens, sociologist Richard Moran of Mount Holyoke College argued last week in a Washington Post op-ed piece, account for the absence of remorse in such ‘they feel “morally justified in committing their crimes. The justification need not be political. In her rambling confession to drowning her sons Michael, 3, and Alex, 14 months, in 1994 by strapping them into their seats in her Mazda and rolling it into a South Carolina lake, Susan Smith wrote, “I love my children) with all my heart. My children deserve to have the best, and now they will.” She had dispatched them to God. (Of course, her justification may have been no more than after- the-fact rationalizing; she also had a boyfriend who, she thought, would marry her if she were not encumbered with children.) Even an honest miscalculation about means and ends, however, hardly excuses acts like hers, McVeigh’s or Kaczynski’s. “You have a moral responsibility as a human being jous miscalculation,” saySUCLA’s Schwar Acts of evil can also arise from a skewed hierarchy of values, We may call Tony ‘Soprano’s deeds—brutal and coldblooded murders—evil. But we do not call the man imself evil, Tor His actions spring from a belief system rooted in such respected valués as ramily Toyalty and Hial duty’ The danger of trving to explain evil is that we risk falling into the abyss of predestination: that given these life events, this social surround and this personality type, the evil deed was inevitable. Explanation becomes ex: and volition gets eclipsed. To under: ld not betoforgiye all. 7 May 21 issue— We are fascinated with evil because we are fascinated with ourselves. If the Bible is to be believed, alienation from God is the natural habitat of humanity and evil its full-blown manifestation. Indeed, the word “evil” appears more often in the Christian Scriptures than “good”—and with reason. FROM THE BIBLICAL perspective, our natural inclination is to serve ourselves raiher than God—and in the case of a man like Timothy McVeigh, to mete out retribution as ir he were God himself. In this view, evil acts are born of inordinate pride, a moral weakness that manifests itself as strength. Eye Saunt conquer festering self-regard. “Lean will what is right, but I cannot do it,” the \ “Apostle Paul confesses. “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” On this side Of paradise, doing evil seems to come more naturally—and certainly more easily—than doing good. There are no innocents: we are all children of darkness struggling toward the light, SD This why every religion aims ‘at a radical transformation of the self and provides moral guidelines for becoming holy in God’s sight. Jews rely on the laws of Moses and the wisdom of the Talmud; Christians look to the teachings of Jesus, the guidance of the Holy Spirit and especially the power of transforming grace; Muslims seek transformation through total submission to Allah, guided by the recitation of the Quran and the exampleof Muhammad. Every religious tradition also attempts an explanation of evil—and, for believers, a means of escape from its grip 2 ( Evil is more than the sum of individual acts and omissions. Like gas, it expands upon release. Corruption breeds corruption until—as the ancient Persians believed—it seems that twin deities govern the universe: one the god of goodness, order and light, the other the god of evil, chaos and the dark. All religions turn to myths in order to account for the origins of evil. In the most ancient faiths, evil in the form of chaos precedes the advent of human beings, who merely continue it by opposing divipg onder. ~ Hinde and Budaliem both Ve Sa lapping myths involving evil gods and demons. But philosophically they rely on the powerful doctrine of karma, which explains the evil in this life as the fruit of past thoughts and actions in every individual’s previous lives. In Buddhism especially, an abundance of bad karma can produce a future rebirth in one of several hells. But for the Buddha, the real evil is existence itself, since all sentient beings are subject to suffering, death and rebirth, In his view, these evils are ulti y in our attachment to the illusion of a permanent self jin short, evil is explained as ignorance, and the only way to escape the endless cycle of death and rebirth is to realize our own empriness through mediation echnigues aimed at destroying the illusory sense of self. Every monotheism, on the other hand, must struggle with a “metaphysical conundrum: how to.explais. the existence of evil in a world governed by a single creator God who—by the definition of the Hebrew prophets—is both all-powerful and all-good. (Though the Lord is a complicated figure: in the Book of Job, for example, God emerges as an arbitrary and incomprehensible deity even to the righteous.) Judaism, Christianity and Islam all look to the myth of Eden, where evil enters the world through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, humanity's primal parents. From this moral failure, natural evils like suffering and death become our common lot, as does the propensity t0 and refined reflections. In Jewish mysticism, the Lord withdraws from the world he has created, leaving it up to humankind to repair the breach. In Islam, evil arises whenever {he relativity ofthis world fs mistaken forthe Absolute tat ie Allok; avoiding evil mesa asserting the oneness of God and rejecting every form of idolatry, especially of the self, For Wester culture, the most influential theory has been the Christian theology of Saint Augustine, produced during the dissolution of the Roman Empire. As a young man, Augustine was a Manichacan, believing that the cosmos was torn between equally powerful forces of good and evil. But in his later writings as a Christian, Augustine identified evil as the “privation” of the good-—a sort of black hole in the orders of creation at woe ood Gal ils for all that he has brought into being. From this perspective, evil shadows the good like antimatter to matter; it has no existence in itself, but is immensely powerful in ils ability to negate what is and—morally jeaking—what ought to be, hristians, only the gift of God’s own grace can ‘overcome the power of evil in the world anc sanctify the life of the believer. Radical evil—the kind embodied in a Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot_—is personified in the image of Satan; those 20th-century tyrants possess a.malevolence that seems beyond the human. A figure condensed from early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic writings, Satan is a pure spirit created good by God who rebelled of his own free will and was cast for all etemity from God's presence. He remains, for many believers Today, a malign personality of immense intelligence and cunning who tempts a fallen humanity but can never force ee eeanyone to do evil. In short, evil in its classical Christian formulation is the nothing-ness that God permits, that the Devil wills and promotes, and that human beings freely choose when they sin, Dante captured all these facets in his magnificent depiction of hell. There Lucifer, the once brilliant angel of light, now fallen from heaven through the earth to its core, is stuck fast and in a lake of ice. Where God is warmth and plenitude and light, Satan is cold, dark and trapped in the narrowness of the self.” As the subject of art and poetry, Satan is a window on the changing conceptions of evil. In Milton’s “Paradise Lost” he became a proud rebel: ““Tis better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” Milton knew what he was doing, observes historian Jefirey Burton Russell. He made Satan an attractive figure, Russell says, “so we would see ourselves in him,” Later, Romantic poets liked what they saw, transforming Satan into a Promethean ‘Figure who challenges the forces of repression, By the 20th century, Satan had largely disappeared from Western consciousness. The self became the only interesting place to Evil, though. is not so easily dismissed. Today we experience evil as a random menace, ioe id of cosmic significance. We look at people like McVeigh and measure our jistance from him. But deep down we Tear that it is just a matter of inches. And so across the centuries we pray to be delivered from oar enemies and our own shortéomings—to be fi delivered, ultimately, from evil, May 21 issue — Kathleen Treanor had been bracing herself for weeks. Six years after Timothy McVeigh’s devastating bomb killed her in-laws and 4-year-old daughter, she wanted to watch him draw his last breath. Wednesday morning, the day McVeigh was scheduled to die, Treanor planned to rise at 2 and make the hourlong drive from her home in rural Guthrie, Okla., to the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City. There she'd view the early-morning execution on closed-circuit television, along with some 300 other survivors and relatives of victims of the Murrah- building blast. 11's Nor THAT SHE EXPECTED the execution to bring an end to her grief, something she says won’t happen until “they throw dirt on my grave.” But she figured MeVeigh’s death would at least bring justice. “We've all been waiting for this man to be silenced,” she told NEWSWEEK. “That won’t happen now At least not as soon as the victims’ families thought. The decision to delay MeVeigh’s execution stunned the country, but no group of Americans took the news harder than the survivers and the families of the 168 dead. For months they'd prepared for the execution, and for the blizzard of publicity that would accompany ij. Many found the constant media exposure overwhelming, and they awaited the day reporters would Stop calling and MeVeigh would disappear from their television screens. “II's very ubset le thing just goes on and on,” say whotrapped under rubble for six hours after the explosion. “Every night I go home and Usoase the news channels because I’m sick to death of him.” ‘Some of the families are openly angry at the FBI, bewildered that thousands of documents in one of the bureau’s most extersive investigations could simply be lost. “I think this whole situation stinks,” says Patti Hall, who was badly injured in the blast. “I absolutely think that the credibility of our justice system should be checked out.” Yet many others have been reluctant to judge the government too harshly. “I’m glad they found it a week before instead of a week after,” says Susan Walton, who was visiting the Murrah credit union at the time of the bomb ng and has required more than two dozen operations to repair her injuries. “That way, there isn’t any doubt cast on the verdict.” Ifthe execution had gone forward despite the last-minute evidence, some of the victims say, it would have only fueled conspiracy buffs. “It would have been another opportunity for McVeigh to laugh in the face of the government,” says bombing survivor Richard Williams, who believes the Feds did the right thing by delaying the execution. The FBI's willingness to come forward with the documents could wind up strengthening the case against McVeigh, making it even more difficult for anti-government fringe groups to make a martyr of him. “I think it shows how honest our lustice Department really is,” says Jim Denny, whose two children narrowly escaped death in the bombing. “It — completely goes against what MeVeigh believed about the government. They could have taken the documents to the archives and hidden them away and nobody probably ever __ ‘would have found them.” Frustrating as the delay may be for the families of the victims, none seemed concemed that McVeigh would eventually escape his death sentence. “I really don’t see him getting off,” Treanor says. “He'll pay for this.” For that, she says, she is willing to wait. May 12— A significant number of Americans believe the government deliberately withheld evidence in the Oklahoma City bombing, according to a new NEWSWEEK poll. FORTY-THREE PERCENT say the failure to disclose more than 3,000 pages of interview reports was an attempt to conceal something embarrassing to government or law enforcement—even if it wasn’t relevant to MeVeigh’s guilt or innocence, the poll shows. Forty percent say the failure was the result of an accident or bureaucratic error. Still, 79 percent of Americans polled by NEWSWEEK say the error doesn’t make them less supportive of the death penalty in general and 72 percent say Timothy McVeigh should still be executed. Fifty-five percent say the development makes them. think co-conspirators were involved in the bombing, On Friday, Attomey General John Ashcroft said Timothy McVeigh’s execution for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P, Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City would be delayed until June 11. MeVeigh’s original execution date was May 16. Forty six percent of people in the poll say the execution should not be televised at all; 34 percent say it should be shown on closed-circuit television only Tor family members of the victims to watch. If executions in general were televised for the public, a resounding 72 percent said they would not watch undgpany a tances, In the latest “NEWSWEEK poll, 25 percent say they oppose te death Saal Ry in all cases. That’s upfrom 19 percent in a June 2000 NEWSWEEK poll and up from 17 percent in 1995, Almost half (49 percent) of Americans polled say new DNA evidence suggesting that some people sentenced to death have been wrongly convicted has had a major effect on. their views toward the death penalty. Thirty-nine percent say the same thing about recent news reports of mistakes in crime labs leading to wrongful convictions in capital cases. For this Newsweek poll, Princeton Survey Research Associates interviewed 1,057 adults aged 18 and older by telephone on May 10 and May 11. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The case of 14-year-old Nathaniel Brazil, convicted this week of second-degree murder for shooting a teacher, has reignited debate over whether juvenile offenders should be tried as adults. In the past decade, largely in response to high profile school shootings and a spike in violent cr:me by juveniles which has since subsided, all states but one enacted or toughened laws making it eas. to try people under age 18 as adults The laws, which have been denounced by human rights organizations like Amnesty International as a violation of international norms, have resulted in hundreds of teen-agers being sentenced to long terms and sent to adult prisons. Since 1976, :7 people have been executed for crimes committed while they were under 18 while another 80 remain on death row Brazill faces 25 years to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for killing English teacher Barry Grunow. His sentencing is scheduled for June 29 JEB BUSH SPEAKS OUT The Brazill conviction prompted an unusual response from Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, brother of President Bush (news - web sites), who said the youth should not be sentenced as an adult, even though he had been tried as one. ““There is a different standard for sensitivity to the fact that a ld-ye said. There should be not a little adult,'" he Bush's intervention may reflect some recent data indicating that_public support for punishing minors as adu.ts is weakening. One public opinion oll released in Haren ound that 7? parcsnt belisved juvenile offenders should be tried in juvenile court. “We may be seeing perhaps a glimmer of hope that the pendulum is beginning to swing away from these harsh policies as people becone more educated about the fact that they don’t work and they are unfair, '* said Marc Schindler, a lawyer with the Youth Law Center in Washington DeBut there is also evidence suggesting the opposite. In California last year, voters approved 2 ballot proposition that required children as young as 14 to be tried in adult criminal court for murder and certain other violent crimes. A federal appeals court later ruled that part of the. constitutiona: and struck it down. Legislation was introduced in Congress twice require tough treatment for so-called juvenii( bill was not enacted either time, but sp: again with a new bill next week. four years that would superpredators.'' The —— duled Critics say treating teen-agers as if they were adults is ineffective as a deterrent, puts the young people at severe risk of abuse in prison, turns them into hardened criminals and is applied disproportionately against black teens. In one study in Cook County, Illinois, 99 percent of the youth tried as adults were black or Hispanic. In another study of 2,584 cases in 18 jurisdictions, 82 percent of the juveniles tried as adults were Statistics do not confirm the widely held public perception that youth crime is out of control, according to Vincent Schiraldi of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. “there has been a wave of anti-youth sentiment but in fact, almost every way you measure it, this generation is better behaved than their baby-boomer parents. The juvenile homicide rate is the lowest it's been aince 1966,'' ha said. ~~ FLORIDA LEADS NATION Florida leads the nation in sending youths to adult prison, according the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington research institute. One in three of the state's 70,000 prisoners entered the system for crimes committed when they were 17 or younger. fast year, the state legislature passed a measure that allows 16 and 17~year-olds to be sentenced to life in prison for using a handgun in a Florida is also one of 15 states that allows prosecutors rather than jusaes to decide wigties 4 chit should be Sistas aa adult CritTos say that kind of leeway Temipts prosecutors, who may be trying to build political careers, to grandstand oy going after young offenders and saying they aze *“tough on crime.'* Palm Beach prosecutor Barry Krischer, who was running for re-election at the time he was handling the Brazill case, commissioned a private poll last year asking whether juveniles accused of murder should be charged as adults, his spokesman told the Palm Beach Fost this month.Krischer said he had no choice but to try Brazill as an adult because there was no sentence in the juvenile justice system sufficiently severe for the crime he had conmitted. Several studies have found that juveniles prosecuted as adults are more likely to commit another crime than those handled by the juvenile justice system. Youths put into adult prisons are also 7.7 times more likely to commit suicide and five times more likely to be raped than those held in juvenile facilities.May 8 — He is a soldier in his own strange, twisted war. He sees himself as a patriot, not for the Bronze Star he won in a faraway desert but for blowing up a federal government building in the heart of America. He cries for those who died in the flames of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, not for the 168 people killed by the 7,000-pound bomb he unleashed in Oklahoma City. SIX YEARS AGO, Timothy MeVeigh drove across Oklahoma’ dusty flatlands and into the nation’s nightmares, his mysterious rage packed tighter than the 55-gallon drums of ammonium nitrate he hauled in the back of his rented Ryder truck. Today, the stone-faced man who became a symbol of homegrown terrorism sits in the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. His execution, originally scheduled for May 16, is on hold, at least for 30 days and possibly longer, pending court action by his lawyers. But should his execution proceed, the 33-year-old Gulf War veteran will face death without apology. For him, the bombing was necessary to take down a bully — the US government. “My decision to take human life at the Murrah Building — I did not do it for personal gain. I ease my mind in that. ... I did it for the larger good,” he told the authors of the recently published “American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & The Oklahoma City And the 19 children buried in smoldering debris? He called them “collateral damage” argot for civil militar ig description, but Richard Burr, a Houston lawyer who represented McVeigh for five years, offers an explanation: McVeigh saw the bombing as a military mission and sealed off his emotions. “He doesn’t in his mind see individual people with smiling faces he killed,” Burr says. “He can’t let himself think about people killed. He still can’t. It would be overwhelming. He couk rate it. He couldn’t stand it emotionally.” ‘MeVeigh’s bombing of the federal building on April 19, 1995 — the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil — was More thai a Tragedy] It touched a nerve in the nation’s consciousness, heightening anxieties over terrorism that once seemed a far-off, foreign phenomenon. ‘America had encountered terrorists before — notably the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 — but|this was different. This was not Islamic radicals. This was the boy next door. ‘Timothy McVeigh was a scrawny kid from a broken home who loved comic books, “Star Trek” and fast cars and grew up to be a fan of “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill.” A young man who longed for a serious romance. A soldier’s soldier who dreamed of becoming a Green Beret and who, one former Army buddy says, had potential to be a general. Burr notes that “there are pieces of his life that are very sad to him,” especially not having @ lasting relationship with a woman. The tears that have come are not for his own disappointments, but for something that evolved into a bitter personal cause.“He cries frequently when he thinks abcut the people in Waco,” Burr explains. “There occasionally are flickers of that depth of feeling about family members, about lost opportunities in life. ... He is not a monster.” FRIENDS REMAIN BAFFLED But his monstrous act still baffles some friends and neighbors, who wonder how a .00d kid and a proud soldier tumed into a terrorist. “It doesn’t seem to be Tim, the stories they tell,” says Monsignor Paul Belzer of Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Pendleton, N.Y. where McVeigh was confirmed and where his father still attends Mass. “He would have had to change his personality drastically. That's possible. But I just don’t shink that he did.” “Tn interviews and letters, MeVeigh has drawn his own map of the troubled road he followed to the Murrah building: Disillusionment with the hunger and death that w. vith America’s ‘Success in the Gulf War Anger over a new assault weapons ban. And two episodes that sent so-called “patriot” fringe groups into ar uproar — the FBI standoff with white separatist Randy Weaver and his family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, that ended in the fiery deaths of some 80 people “In his view, this happened out of necessity,” Burr says of the Oklahoma bombing. “It was needed to prevent the future deaths of many, many people at the hands of the U.S. government. He believed that totally.” FEW WARNINGS SIGNS It would be hard to see many warning signs from MeVeigh’s childhood. Timothy James McVeigh grew up in Pendleton, a rural community about 20 miles north of Buffalo, a middle child surrounded by two sisters. “He had a very gentle way with little kids and he always had a great love of animals,” says Liz McDermott, a former next-door neighbor who remembers McVeigh’ ‘two cals, Tough Clyde and Shakespeare — in honor of the April 23 birthday he shared with the bard. In high school, McVeigh was bright enough to win a modest scholarship, but his grades were unremarkable. In his yearbook, he listed his future plans: “Take it as it comes, buy a Lamborghini, California girls,” y the time he graduated, he had a growing interest in survivalism and guns. A short stint at a junior college ended in frustration and McVeigh became a security guard for an armored car service, once showing up in bandoliers. In May 1988, a month after he turned 20, he enlisted in the Army, In basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., he first met Terry Nichols, a failed farmer fom Michigan who embarked on his own new life by joining the Army at the improbable age of 33. They quickly found a mutual love of guns and a shared resentment toward any government interference, particularly when it came to restrictions on bearing arms. zi A MODEL SOLDIER jis that seeming contradiction, McVeigh became by all accounts a model soldier — tough, strong, dedicated“He was a standout individual,” says Maj. Terry Guild, who served as MeVeigh’s platoon commander briefly after the Gulf War. “When | knew him, you would have never questioned his loyalty or his integrity or his duty. McVeigh seemed to find himseif in the Army. His uniform was always dry-cleaned and pressed. He was always the first to show up for work details and the one who worked hardest. But there seemed to be two Tim McVeighs: The disciplined, super-efficient soldier who became a sergeant within 2% years, and the budding survivalist who believed some kind of doomsday was on the way and rented a storage locker to stockpile supplies He also began embracing the conspiracy teachings of extremist groups in which the federal government was the villain. In the Gulf War, McVeigh excelled on the battlefield, but he was disturbed by what he encountered: Iraqis desperate to surrender, starving children, widespread destruction caused by American bombing. — |, = fe ad been struggling to find meaning in life before the Army and he found it there and lost it there. ... His passion about the government began to turn against t government,” Burr says. At the end of 1991, McVeigh returned to New York with a slew of commendations and medals, but could find work only as a security guard WACO FUELED RAGE Two years later, the siege at Waco so fired his fury that he drove to the edge of the Branch Davidian compound, hawking anti-government bumper stickers. He was visiting the Michigan farm of Terry Nichols and his brother, James, when he watched the disastrous end on television He also became a regular at weekend gun shows where conspiracy theories ran wild about black helicopters, the New World Order and the government taking away guns from its citizens. By the fall of 1994, he had hatched his bomb plot, choosing the Oklahoma City federal building because it was an easy target McVeigh planned the attack for April 19, 1995, the second anniversary of Waco. It also was the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord in 1775, which launched the American Revolution. The final preparations came the day before when, according to MeVeigh’s account in “American Terrorist,” he and Terry Nichols mixed, then loaded thousands of pounds of explosives onto the truck. Years later, when he acknowledged to the authors that he bombed the building, he licated he never intended to kill children and that if he had known a day-care center ‘was on the second floor, he “probably would have shifted the target.” 2 But his explanation had a chilling footnote: ic horror over the children’s death distracted from his political message. STANCE HASN’T SOFTENED Since his conviction in 1997, McVeigh has not softened his defiance or his scorn. In a series of letters to a former Oklahoma reporter, some of which recently were published in Esquire magazine, he talked mostly about favorite movies and television shows. But in one, he said: “I have nothing against the citizens of Oklahoma (except for the continuing ‘woe-is-me’ crowd).”April 9 issue— The date was April 19, 1995: 220 years to the day after Lexington and Concord; two years to the day after Waco. He awoke with the sun on this Wednesday, yawning and stretching in the cab of the Ryder truck. He'd slept like a baby in the rental, two feet in front of a 7,000-pound bomb—nearly three-quarters the weight of the device that devastated Hiroshima. HE HAD LEARNED IN THE ARMY how to sleep without being comfortable, He'd also learned how crucial sleep was when you were preparing for action. He got out, stretched again, and examined his truck. He gave it a thorough walk- around, checking the tires, making sure that the rear and side doors to the cargo box were securely locked. He made sure that nothing ‘ooked out of the ordinary. He checked the .45-caliber Glock semiautomatic handgun he carried close to his heart, in a leather holster across his chest. It could fire 16 bullets without reloading, and he was prepared to use it to kill anyone who interfered with his task, Then he checked his wristwatch. He didn’t want to reach the target too carly, He wanted to be sure that there were plenty of people in the nine-story building—enough people to make President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno, and other government leaders pay attention. The T-shirt he chose to wear on this occasion said it all. On the front of the shirt was a drawing of Abraham Lincoln. Underneath the drawing was the Latin refrain that John Wilkes Booth had screamed after he assassinated Lincoln SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS, or “Thus ever to tyrants.” On the back of the shirt was a proture of a tree Gripping blood, bearing a quotation, from Thomas Jefferson: THE TRI OM TIME TO TIME WITH THE BLOOD OF PATRIOTS lot of Blood will be shed today, he thought. Innocent a will suffer. But he had decided that there was no other way. ‘The truck was in good running order. He'd checked all the fluid levels the night before, when he stopped for gas in southem Kansas, topping off the tank with forty dollars’ worth of unleaded. ‘Timothy J. MeVeigh tumed the key in the ignition, threw the Ryder into gear, and headed for Oklahoma City. Four days shy of his 27th birthday, McVeigh detonated a truck bomb to destroy an office building filled with people he had never met—a mission he considered an act of war, vengeance for the federal government's actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. His attack ‘would kill 168 people, 19 of them children; it was the worst act of domestic terrorism in American history, an unthinkable crime. In “American Terrorist,” we trace MeVeigh’s fateful joumey—from a middle-class upbringing in upstate New York to the fields of batile in the Persian Gulf War to the grim confines of death row. We elicit for the first time MeVeigh’s own defiant confession to one of the worst crimes ever perpetrated on American soil. “I bombed the Murrah Building,” he stated flatly, adding later: “It was my choice, and my control, to hit that building when it was full.”We interviewed McVeigh for more than 75 hours, chronicling what McVeigh’ life has been like behind bars—his relationship with three of the world’s most notorious terrorists on “Bomber’s Row,” in Colorado’s Supermax prison, and his disturbing musings from death row in Terre Haute, Indiana. He is unepologetic about the destruction he caused, dismissing the children killed in the blast as “collateral damage.” “I understand what they felt in Oklahoma City,” he said. “I have no sympathy for them.” He insists that the bombing has changed the way the government deals with militias, and forced the Feds to come to terms with its own actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. He seeks to absolve his co- conspirators—Terry Nichols, who was sentenced to life for his role in planning the bombing, and Michael Fortier, who was imprisoned after admitting he misled authorities about his knowledge of the plot. McVeigh discusses his troubled mother, and reveals his flirtation with trying to start a family of his own. Ifhis execution goes as scheduled in May, MeVeigh will be the first American put to death by the federal government since 1963. The government is considering a closed- circuit broadcast of the execution for survivors of the victims; McVeigh himself, defiant to the end, wants the world to watch his de: TV. This is the story of the terrible grime he committed and of the mind and metives of a cold-blooded killer. Nobody in downtown Oklahoma City took much notice of the yellow rental truck as it rumbled up NW Sth Street a few minutes before 9 a.m. Keeping his eyes peeled for onlookers, McVeigh pulled the truck briefly over to the side of the road, just long enough to pull out a disposable lighter and ignite the five-minute fuse to his bomb. The sizzling fuse began to fill the truck cab with smoke and the acrid smell of buming gunpowder. As he continued along NW Sth Street, MeVeigh had to roll down both windows to let some of the smoke out. Just past the Regency Towers apartment complex, a block from the target building, MeVeigh had to stop for a traffic light. Now, he lit the shorter bomb fuse—the one he had measured at approximately two minutes. For the longest thirty seconds of his life, McVeigh sat watching the red light, with both fuses burning. His fingers tight on the steering wheel, he glared up at the light, willing it to change. The light tured green. MeVeigh made sure to ease away from the intersection. No stomping on the gas pedal. No frantic movements. McVeigh spotted the location he had chosen for the bomb—a drop-off point, several car lengths long, cut into the sidewalk on the north side of the structure. As calmly as any delivery-truck driver making a routine drop-off, McVeigh parked right below the tinted windows of the America’s Kids Day Care Center on the second floor. (“Had I known there was an entire day-care center, it might have given me pause to switeh targets,” MeVeigh would later say, indicating that in his view the children’s deaths distracted attention from the signal h= was sending the government.) MeVeigh counted off the seconds to himself as he walked north into an alley off NW 6th Street. He was now about 150 yards from ground zero, the spot where he had left his truck. MeVeigh broke into a jog for the ‘rst time. That bomb should have blown by now, he thought, For an instant he wondered if something might have gone wrong. Oh man, am 1 going to have to walk back there and shoot that damn truck?Then he heard the roar. And felt it The Murrah Building’s explosion lifted MeVeigh a full inch off the ground, Even muffled by earplugs, with the YMCA and other buildings forming a buffer, the sound ‘was deafening. It was the equivalent of three tons of TNT, When he looked up, McVeigh could see buildings wobbling from side to side, plate glass showering down into the street around him. He felt the concussion buffeting his cheeks. dust like at Waco, MeVeigh thought. Reap what you sow. McVeigh refused to look behind him, never stopped to gaze at his handiwork. He kept walking, eyes straight ahead, toward his beat-up getaway car, still parked in a lot several blocks from the blast site, its PLEASE DO NOT TOW sign still in the windshield. When he got behind the wheel, his eighteen-year-old getaway car wouldn't start. He tried several times; the engine wouldn’t tum over. McVeigh smelled gasoline. He stomped the gas pedal to the floor. No luck. He tried again, and again Finally, the old engine coughed to life. MeVeigh put the pedal to the floor. His tires squealed as he hauled ass out of the parking area. /do not want to get caught in Oklahoma City, he thought. le was certain that many had died, and he had no regrets. In fact, he could feel the anxiety leaving his body It’s over, he thought. In fact, McVeigh’s journey was just beginning. He was convicted in federal court in 1997, sentenced to death and whisked off to Colorado's Supermax prison. For a man awaiting the ultimate punishment. he seemed markedly, almost willfully, unconcerned. Any way the wind blows, doesn’t really mater to me, he thought, recalling the line from ‘ ‘Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” On a personal level, McVeigh would welcome death; it ‘would be his crowning achievement. The government, he reflected, would be doing him a favor, ending a long march that had turned hollow in the final years. His execution would bea relief, He sometimes found himself wishing the final moment would come sooner, rather than later. “I’ILbe glad to leave this f—up world,” he said. “Truth is, I determined mostly through my travels that this world just doesn’t hold anything forme,” In MeVeigh’s Opinion, his sentence is nothing more than siate- assisted suicide, “I knew I wanted this before it Happened. I knew my objective was a state-assisted suicide and when it happens, isin your face, motherf —s. You just did something you're trying to say should be illegal for medical personng).” In prison, McVeigh found himself reminded of his old dream of becoming a survivalist. Looking at the conerete and steel-reinforced walls of the ultramodern Supermax, McVeigh thought, /'ve always wanted to live in a bunker, and now here Iam. He shared the disciplinary unit with ex:raordinary company. The three other cells were occupied by Theodore Kaczynski, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, and Luis Felipe. Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber, had been the last of the four to arrive at the Colorado prison. He was serving four consecutive life sentences in connection with sixteen mail bombings and attempted bomb ngs he had perpetrated in seven states between 1978 and 1995. Ramzi Yousef was serving a 240-year sentence for his conviction as the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. In addition tothe bombing, which killed six people, injured a thousand, and caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, Yousef was also convicted of plotting to bomb eleven airliners as they crossed the Pacific Ocean with American passengers. Luis Felipe, a native of Cuba who had been in and out of prison since age nine, was the founder of the New York City chapter of the ultraviolent Latin Kings street gang, Known by the nickname “King Blood,” Felipe ftom his prison cell had ordered the beatings and murders of several people on the outside—including one beheading. With McVeigh added to the mix, the four constituted one of the most fearsome groups of prisoners ever housed in one facility at one time, let alone one disciplinary wing. One day McVeigh received a newspaper clipping in the mail that featured color photographs of him, Kaczynski, Yousef, and Felipe. The letter writer asked McVeigh to autograph the article. In a chilling move, McVeigh happily obliged, signing it “The A- Team! T.J.M.” Some at the prison called the disciplinary wing “Celebrity Row”; to other “Bomber Row.” When the four were first assembled at the Supermax, they were completely isolated from the rest of the prison population—and from each other. When prison officials eased some of the restrictions on the four men some months later, they were allowed to take their outdoor exercise at the same time. And, through the walls of cages placed about ten feet apart, the four terrorists would exchange conversation. With Felipe, McVeigh found he shared an appetite for women, and the two began trading pornography—"smut books,” as they called them. With Yousef, McVeigh found himself involved in deep political discussions; Yousef even made frequent, unsuccessful attempts to convert him to the Muslim faith. With Kaczynski, MeVeigh shared his fondness for the outdoors and wildemess. Of all the inmates McVeigh came to krow at the Supermax, he found he had the most in common with the fifty-seven-year-old Kaczynski. Initially, Kaczynski had refuused to speak with MeVeigh. In truth, Kaczynski had some misgivings about the way McVeigh had executed the Oklahoma City bombing. In time, though, Kaczynski came to believe that his fellow bomber had, like him, been demonized by false media reports. ‘There was more than just a mutual appreciation for the outdoors between them; their political views often coincided. McVeigh once gave Kaczynski a copy of “Tainting Evidence: Inside the Scandals at the FBI Crime Lab,” by John F. Kelly and Phillip K. Wearne, a book about the alleged ‘manufacture of evidence by federal agents. The book struck a nerve in Kaczynski, who genuinely came to like McVeigh. “You were in the Persian Gulf War?” Kaczynski asked one day. “Yes, sir,” MeVeigh answered. “Ironic, isn’t it? In Desert Storm I got medals for killing people.” Kaczynski laid out his feelings about McVeigh and the bombing at Oklahoma City in an eleven-page letter to the authors of this book. “On a personal level I like McVeigh and I imagine that most people would like him,” Kaczynski wrote, improbably enough. “He was easily the most outgoing of all the inmates in our range of cells and had excellent social skills. He was considerate of others and knew how to deal with people effectively, He communicated somehow even with the inmates on the range of cells above ours, and, because he talked with more people, he always knew more about what was going on than anyone else on our range” wasKaczynski said he never asked McVeigh if he was guilty of the bombing in Oklahoma City, and MeVeigh never told him. But Kaczynski’s critique of the Oklahoma City bombing offered a surprisingly humanistic perspective, though one that still accepted the notion of strategic domestic terrorism: "[A]ssuming that the Oklahoma City bombing was intended as a protest against the U.S. government in general and against the government’s actions at Waco in particular, | will say that I think the bombing was a bad action because it was unnecessarily inhumane.” Soon after Kaczynski's arival, he, McVeigh, Yousef, and Felipe were moved to an eight-cell range, where greater freedom and more communication were permitted. Also on the range was his old friend and accomplice, Terry Nichols, who joined McVeigh at the Supermax in 1998 following his federal court conviction and life sentence. McVeigh had little trouble establishing friendships with those around him. But Nichols refused to acknowledge McVeigh’s existence. On December 23, 1997, a Denver jury convicted Nichols of one count of conspiracy in the bombing and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter. He was acquitted of first- degree murder charges, and of using a weapon of mass destruction. The message from jurors: they believed Nichols played a part in the bombing, but were not convinced that he intentionally took part in the killings and injuries at the Murrah Building. He would later be sentenced to life in prison. Now, at the Supermax, McVeigh tried hard to draw Nichols out. He attempted to get a reaction from his former partner by joking about the conspiracy theory Stephen Jones had put forth in his book about the case. Jones contended that Nichols had gone by the code name “The Farmer” during his trips to the Philippines; now, every once in a while, McVeigh would break the silence and yell “Hey Farmer!” down toward Nichols’s cell. He never got a response. “Nichols might be pissed at me,” McVeigh concluded. One day, looking through the narrow window at the back of his cell, McVeigh noticed another accomplice, Mike Fortier, standing in an open portion of the recreation yard. Fortier, who helped stow McVeigh’s bombmaking materials and falsely told investigators he knew nothing of the Oklahoma City plans, had been sentenced to twelve years in 1998, and had also recently been transferred to the facility. McVeigh wanted to find a way to tell Fortier that he wasn’t upset at him for testifying. He figured that Fortier might be blaming himself for McVeigh’s receiving the death penalty, and he wanted to tell him that it was his own doing. But in the end McVeigh couldn't bring himself to speak so openly about his carefully calculated plan to have the government execute him. He feared that by making it known he had sought “a deluxe suicide-by-cop package” (when a distraught person induces law enforcement to kill them) it might somehow hurt his chances of realizing it, MeVeigh could only hope that his easygoing manner would let Fortier know he did not hate him But MeVeigh says there was one final item he did manage to raise with Fortier. “Mike,” MeVeigh said. “You were in front of the Murrah Building, right?” Fortier looked around. “Yeah.” “Well, did you see a day-care center?” “No.” “Well, I didn’t, either.” ‘Though he maintains his position that he has no real regrets over his actions, McVeigh has confessed that he feels sorry for what happened to Nichols and Fortier.could be held against them,” he says now, “Because, in a conspiracy, you're all in it as one. Other people’s crimes can be held against you.” He remains outraged that Fortier and Nichols could face such serious punishment when they had no idea when the bombing was to occur. Appropriating Jack Nicholson’s line from “A Few Good Men"—a film he saw on cable while in prison—MeVeigh fired back at those who refused to believe that he alone could have been responsible for the bombing: "You can’t handle the truth—because the truth is, it was just me.” ‘As MeVeigh thought more seriously about death, the realization that he would be leaving this world wi eb ren into it became a preoccupation. It was one OF the few things he had failed to fully anticipate when deciding to end his life. Ever since his arrest, McVeigh had received a steady strea ul essed, fomantic interest in him. From time to time he revisited the idea he had mentioned to the defense-team psychiatrist—the notion of smuggling his sperm out of prison for an artificial insemination. But McVeigh tried to rein in his biological urge to father a son or daughter. If he ever managed to do so, he decided, he would have to do so anonymously. The life that any child of Timothy McVeigh’s would have in American society, he was certain, “would be hell.” By the summer of 1999, meveigh was moved to the nation’s only federal death-row facility, in Terre Haute, Indiana. MeVeigh was offered an opportunity to take part in a inting class a few times each week, but again, he refused. “I can’t paint worth a damn,” he says. Instead he sleeps as long as he can, putting off the start of each day for as long as possible before Fising at nine or so. He tums on “CNN Headline News.” one of the few things he still enjoys in prison. Lunch arrives at 10:30. After an aftemoon nap comes dinner, often as early as 3 or 4 p.m., followed by a stand-up count of all inmates. In between, McVeigh reads and writes letters or watches programs on his TV, a thirteen- inch black-and-white set with cable to which he has twenty-four-hour access. The subject of his death is on his mind, He doesn’t believe in autopsies for prisoners afer execution. He doesn’t w: is brain, lookin, for clues ahaut whatmade him tick. He intends to demand that his body be cremated immediately after the execution, He is angry that Congress, after his conviction, revoked his privilege to be buried in a military cemetery. Many Americans, MeVeigh believes, will want to see him executed with their own eyes. And he may accommodate their wishes. Some of the families of Oklahoma City bombing victims have pushed for closed-circuit television of his execution, just as they did for the trial. Should they succeed, McVeigh plans to go one step further. “Lf they do that, I’m going to throw it buck in their face. I’m going to demand they televise it nationally,” he says. “I'm going to say, If'you want to make a spectacle of it, I'm going to point out exactly what you are doing, What I’m going to do is contact a ‘media outlet that has heavy money for lawyers, like a CBS "60 Minutes’ or a CNN, [and tell them] You guys fight the battle for me. If you want this exclusive film, you use your lawyers and fight it.” Pointing to CBS’s decision to air one of Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s assisted suicides on national TV, McVeigh believes that one of them may do exactly that He has already sent letters to the major networks, advising them of this possibility (which is remote, though it is Teasible that hackers could broadcast a closed-circuit feed over the “did not calculate or know enough about conspiracy law to know that my actionsInternet). McVeigh’s stubborn refusal to express regret has been echoed on television by a figure who had remained enigmatic throughout his trial: his mother. Suffering from psychiatric problems, Mickey Hill gave an interview to Tampa's WTSP-TV in December 1999. Her family cringed as Mickey compared the bombing deaths to the O. J. Simpson murder case, the World Trade Center bombing, and fatal air erashes. “Every bombing of shooting is a big case,” she said. “Plane crashes—there’s more people killed in a plane crash than was killed in Oklahoma. And yet these people think they’re the only victims? Ij do feel sorry for them, but let’s face it. This happened four and a half years ago. Let’s get out of our minds. Let’s get it out of our lives.” ople in Oklahoma City and elsewhere. McVeigh privately agreed with his mother’s remarks, although he was well aware that she had enraged the public. He is surprised that he and his mother had reached such like-minded conclusions separately, since they have never discussed the issue. “Weird, he observes, “especially since | barely write her and | don’t call.” The temptation to link MeVeigh’s ‘cist his mother’s history of S7a0e benavior sTRes him as inevitable: “People on the outside will say “See, he does think like his mother. It’s genetically inked They've both paveios"T Row Tia = aoig to Bethe rensions —Hlis mother was involuntarily committed to mental hospitals Three Times after the bombing. She had begun telling people that she suspected the FBI might have been ‘Gombing, she would contious ta slaim iat enple aoe tgiching and vowing hex_-and Tat she was somehow under the protection of the CLA. As he awaits his execution, he refuses to consider his actions through any lens but the single-minded one that casts him as a patriot. He clings to the position that his act was needed to right a faltering America. “L bombed the Murrah Building,” he acmits now. In a separate interview, he adds, “I like the phrase ‘shot heard ‘round the world,” and | don’t think there’s any doubt the Oklahoma City blast was heard around the world. “A shrink might look at what I have to say and decide, “He’s a psychopath or sociopath. He has no respect for human life.” Far from that—I have great respect for human life. My decision to take human life at the Murrah Building—I did not do it for McVeigh clings stubbornly to a vision of himself as a crusader; in his final statement before execution, he says, he intends to inveke the text of “Invictus” by William Emest Henley—a poem famous for the lines “I am the master of my fate/ I am the captain of my soul.” MeVeigh noted especially a line from the third stanza—"Beyond this place of wrath and tears” —which he knew many would view as an apt description of Oklahoma City in the wake of the bombing. But he has yet to waver from his contention that the .S. government was becoming a bully that needed to be defied. “Once you bloody the bully’s nose, and he knows he’s going to be punched again,” “he’s not coming back around.” But McVeigh refuses to accept the notion that, to millions of people around the world, he is the ultimate bully. That it was his act that shattered the lives of hundreds of innocent people, and for a moment shook America’s confidence in its own security. His day of reckoning is coming,