Publisher's Synopsis
A major news event: The first book to tell the true and complete story of the most horrific act of domestic terrorism in US history - as informed by exclusive interviews with the bomber Timothy McVeigh, as well as his family and 300 others. On April 19, 1995, the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City was destroyed by a bomb that claimed 168 lives, including those of 19 children. In June of 1997, 29-year-old Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the bombing and sentenced to death. But McVeigh, whose case is currently up for appeal, has never publicly confirmed or denied his role in the bombing; he has never given a complete accounting of exactly what happened that day, or in the days and months preceding the event. Until now. Investigative journalists Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck have covered the story of the Oklahoma City bombing since McVeigh was first named as a suspect. And now they have secured an extraordinary coup: the first extensive interview with the killer McVeigh, conducted over more than 75 hours and furthered by an extensive correspondence with the authors.;In these pages, the authors have reconstructed every last detail of the conception, planning, and execution of this tragedy. McVeigh has given this exhaustive account freely, without any compensation or approval, and his contributions have been supplemented by over 300 other interviews with others - from his family to survivors of the bombing. The details of this account will on their own make this book a page-one newsmaker - and will almost certainly influence the fate of others whose day in court awaits. But Michel and Herbeck have gone beyond merely reconstructing the bombing. In these pages they offer the first complete portrait we have had of McVeigh's life: of the formation of his character from childhood through his Gulf War experience and the plunge into the world of anti-government extremists and gun-show agitators that fanned the flames of his hatred. This will be the definitive account of the making of America's most chilling mass murderer.
