Last modified on Mon 1 Feb 2021 12.50 EST
The message was a stark one. “America is in serious decline,” the person wrote. “Is a civil war imminent? Do we have to shed blood to reform the current system? I hope it doesn’t come to that! But it might.”
It reads like an entry on a message board popular with the insurrectionists who broke into the US Capitol on 6 January – expressing a sentiment at once shocking and shockingly routine in 2021 America.
But the words are from 1992 America, written in a letter to a newspaper by Timothy McVeigh, who three years later would carry out the Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest incident of domestic terrorism in US history. An anti-government, white supremacist army veteran, McVeigh set off a truck bomb underneath a day care facility in a federal building, killing 168 people including 19 children.
President-elect Joe Biden's pick for attorney general was moved by his experience in Oklahoma City after the 1995 bombing.
Merrick Garland held a top position at the U.S. Justice Department at the time of the domestic terrorist attack and came to Oklahoma City to coordinate the investigation. He later oversaw the prosecution that led to the conviction of bomber Timothy McVeigh.
In an oral history for the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum, he spoke of how the response of the people of Oklahoma City affected him.
He recalled in the 2013 interview how the Salvation Army had set up a chow line for law enforcement and rescue workers at a makeshift headquarters a few blocks north of the blast site.
Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum Thunder Free Day okgazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from okgazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum Thunder Free Day okgazette.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from okgazette.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.