The 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City demolished one-third of the
building, killing 168 people, including 19 children, and injured 684 others – the worst act of domestic
terrorism in American history. The bomb was placed by Timothy McVeigh who intended it to provoke a
right-wing rising as a declaration of war against the Federal government. McVeigh, who made little effort to
avoid detection, was found guilty and duly executed after a relatively short time of six years. McVeigh,
coming from an unsettled but not traumatising upbringing, developed an early obsession with guns which
progressed to the extreme right-wing survivalist movement. He had a good military career and was
decorated in the first Gulf War but became disillusioned after failing to get into Special Forces. Drifting
around gun shows, becoming more extreme, the tipping point was the deaths of white supremacist Randy
Weaver’s wife and son at their home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidians’
compound in Waco, Texas.
