How the Oklahoma City bombing case prepared Merrick Garland to take on domestic terrorism
Matt Zapotosky and Ann E. Marimow, The Washington Post
Feb. 19, 2021
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The truck bomb leveled a section of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 and injuring hundreds more in one of the deadliest domestic terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. But as Merrick Garland huddled with the lead prosecutor on the case, he urged caution in presenting the massive amount of evidence from the wreckage. Do not bury the crime in the clutter, he said.
Garland, then a top Justice Department official, was encouraging prosecutors to speed the trial along and jettison superfluous findings in their case against Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of carrying out the 1995 attack and executed in 2001, said Joe Hartzler, the team s lead attorney. Hartzler said he found the advice so compelling that he wrote the words on a sheet of paper and hung it on an offic