lou michel is about to meet timothy mcveigh for the first of a series of interviews that will become the backbone of the only authorized biography of the oklahoma city bomber. by may of 1999, mcveigh has been convicted and sentenced to death for the oklahoma city bombing. but he s still appealing the conviction. mcveigh is sitting there drumming his fingers across the table, and he says, you re late. you know, timothy mcveigh considered himself a military man. i said, you re right, i m late, but it was because of all of the security checks i had to go through. and then he smiles at me and he says, i knew it was the government. the men spend the first several hours of the interview with basic small talk. mcveigh eventually delves into a darker place, pulling lou michel into the mindset of someone facing imminent death. i m not going to go into that
that this was very much a domestic event. i think that the first reaction was total shock that it was a kid from the american countryside who had done the work of international terrorists. i think people were intrigued by mcveigh. he was a decorated veteran. he came back from desert storm. so it made it doubly tough for people to figure out. back in mcveigh s birthplace in buffalo, new york, lou michel was looking for a way to work the hometown angle to get to the heart of who this guy really was. the fact that timothy mcveigh lived in niagara county, 15 minutes from my home, i wanted to know how niagara county could spawn such an evil act. i made it my business to become an expert on timothy mcveigh. because it isn t everyday that one of the worst domestic terrorists in american history comes from your backyard.
courtroom and curl into a fetal ball and cry just because the victims want me to. i ve already accepted my death and that said to the victims, you can have what you want. i ll go to my death. you can be happy. i ll be happy. mcveigh was done with life. this was his ultimate statement. i knew i was there to get a confession from him. i learned to put in check on anything that comes out of my mouth, but today i m deciding basically that we ve got to lay down the record as it is. up to this point, mcveigh had said nothing publicly about his involvement in the bombing. but with a death sentence approaching, mcveigh chooses to trust lou michel and wastes little time getting to the core of the story. he begins by describing what drove him to choose the murrah building as his target. there had to be at least two law enforcement agencies in the building.
by may of 1999, mcveigh has been convicted and sentenced to death for the oklahoma city bombing. but he s still appealing the conviction. mcveigh is sitting there drumming his fingers across the table, and he says, you re late. you know, timothy mcveigh considered himself a military man. i said, you re right, i m late, but it was because of all of the security checks i had to go through. and then he smiles at me and he says, i knew it was the government. the men spend the first several hours of the interview with basic small talk. mcveigh eventually delves into a darker place, pulling lou michel into the mindset of someone facing imminent death. i m not going to go into that courtroom and curl into a fetal ball and cry just because the victims want me to. i ve already accepted my death and that said to the victims, you can have what you want. i ll go to my death.
you can be happy. i ll be happy. mcveigh was done with life. this was his ultimate statement. i knew i was there to get a confession from him. i learned to put in check on anything that comes out of my mouth, but today i m deciding basically that we ve got to lay down the record as it is. up to this point, mcveigh had said nothing publicly about his involvement in the bombing. but with a death sentence approaching, mcveigh chooses to trust lou michel and wastes little time getting to the core of the story. he begins by describing what drove him to choose the murrah building as his target. there had to be at least two law enforcement agencies in the building. criteria was vulnerable, but isolated from other buildings so you minimize collateral damage. i didn t have the ability to scope out every federal building in the nation, but i did scope out a number so i could pick the best out among those.