Oklahoma City Bombed: America's Deadliest Domestic Terror

A Ryder truck packed with 4,800 pounds of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane fuel detonated outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City at 9:02 AM on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680. The blast carved a crater thirty feet wide and eight feet deep, collapsed the building's entire north face, and damaged or destroyed 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius. Nineteen of the dead were children in the building's second-floor daycare center, America's Tiny Tot Daycare, which took the full force of the explosion. Timothy McVeigh, a 27-year-old Army veteran who had served in the Gulf War and earned a Bronze Star, built and detonated the bomb with help from his co-conspirator Terry Nichols. McVeigh chose the date deliberately: April 19 was the second anniversary of the federal assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, which had killed 76 people. He viewed the Oklahoma City bombing as retaliation against a federal government he considered tyrannical, targeting a building that housed offices of the ATF, DEA, and other federal agencies he blamed for Waco and the Ruby Ridge standoff. Initial speculation pointed to Middle Eastern terrorists. Within ninety minutes of the blast, McVeigh was pulled over by Oklahoma state trooper Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate, sixty miles north of Oklahoma City. Hanger arrested him for carrying a concealed weapon. McVeigh sat in a county jail for two days, nearly released on bail, before FBI investigators matched his description to witness accounts. The speed of his capture was a matter of luck rather than investigation. McVeigh was convicted and executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001. Nichols received life without parole. The bombing prompted massive increases in federal building security, including vehicle barriers, reinforced construction, and setback requirements that reshaped government architecture. It also shattered the assumption that terrorism in America was a foreign threat. The deadliest attack on American soil before September 11 was committed by a decorated American soldier.