Customer Reviews

American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Tragedy at Oklahoma City

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is one of the most compelling and riviting works I have ever read. It is complete, detailed, honest and it does justice to the bombing and to McVeigh. This book will explain to you exactly what happened, and most importantly, WHY it happened. It doesn't bog you down with conspiracy theories and bold statements designed to impress you. It is impressive in and within itself. I casually started reading the beginning of it just a week ago, not intending to dive into it just yet. But I couldn't put it down. The authors are so detailed and complete that it's sometimes difficult to get over all the cold facts and many names they report, but it paints a good picture. I would have preferred that they included even more of McVeigh's own thoughts and opinions in the text. They left out a few minor details that I was interested in like... what ever happened to his older sister? And to his high school girlfriend? They included enough to cause me to feel as if I knew him, however. You'll walk away better informed with a clearer mind and understanding of government, the military, and crime. It is scary, but it is worth it. Everyone ought to read this book.

I just finished the book. Well written and thorough, Michel and Herbeck convinced me that one committed fanatic, and not even an
insane fanatic, Tim McVeigh, is responsible for the Murrah building bombing. He wasn't racist, wasn't a misanthrope, but his extreme hatred of the government (something LOTS of people share) drove him to an act of monstrous evil. As Michel and Herbeck note, this hatred of the government led McVeigh to kill innocents, exactly the kind of evil he laid at the doorstep of the government. Yet McVeigh never seems to have caught on to that.

Immaculately researched (with cooperation from Tim McVeigh and his family)book about the infamous terrorist attack on American soil (somewhat overshadowed now by events on Sept 11)that will dispell many myths and clear up innacuracies.
For what it's worth I felt that McVeigh comes across in the book as quite a likeable fellow, hell if it weren't for that whole bombing thing, pretty much anyone would be glad to call him a friend.
Like many a serial killer, this mass murderer/terrorist isn't a slobbering at the mouth maniac, hiding in the shadows. He was an anti-government zealot who channelled his feelings of disgust and frustration into one act of severe violence. His acts could never be justified by any free-thinking person, however the book is interesting in that it doesn't set out to portray him as some kind of maniac. Just presents the facts in a fascinating and compelling fashion.
Highly recommended.

I think that the focus of all Americans post 9 / 11 on the term "Terrorist" is centered on the Middle East and Afghanistan with good reason. What this book will do for you is to have you remember the horrible home grown incident in Oklahoma City and the type of internal terrorist that is probably still lurking around the fringe of society. This book covers a brief life history of little troubled Timmy. It then tries to tell us what brought him to the realization that to protect his right to own as many guns as he could and to make sure that the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents did not take place again, it was a good thing pack a truck full of explosives and kill almost 200 innocent men, women and children. The book also provides a step by step process on how he prepared the truck bomb and set it off, his capture and the trial.

What troubled me the most was the very cold, level arguments Timmy made to justify his actions, the same arguments that his group of ultra right wing government haters probably can continue to use to justify other terrorist acts. He also tries to wrap his attack on the government around some additional justification concerning the horrible treatment the American's inflicted on the Iraqi military during the Gulf War. Something like we bombed them too much. The authors go on to give us a view of Timmy that shows he really was just a petty two-bit criminal that loved guns. It all adds to the view into his head, that we were dealing with a troubled kid that could not rationally justify his actions.

The last thing that made me think with the book was how easy it was for this guy and his friends to pull this off. UBL sure went to a lot of trouble and cost given the same amount of damage probably could have been done with 10 trucks full of fertilizer and gas. Overall it is a very compelling book that you will not want to stop reading once you start. It is well written and has a good flow.

I read this book shortly after it was released. It was written after the authors spent several days interviewing Tim McVeigh and was released shortly before his death sentence was carried out. Clearly many of the statements in this book are an attempt by McVeigh to justify his actions, including the mistakes he made that ultimately lead to his arrest and conviction. The people of Oklahoma were very upset by the publication of this book and many of the investigators, out of respect for the families who lost loved ones in the bombing, refused to submit to interviews or make any comments to the authors.

I have also read other books about the Oklahoma City bombing written by individuals who had a role in the investigation and found some of these books to be an attempt by some to claim personal credit for the actions of literally hundreds of investigators who worked around-the-clock in order to make sure that the case was thoroughly investigated. Unfortunately, like the Kennedy assassination of John F. Kennedy, people will continue to claim that there was some type of government conspiracy or cover-up and millions of dollars will be spent on unnecessary investigations of the investigation. I personally do not believe that there are any unknown facts or unidentified co-conspirators. Did investigators make any mistakes? I am sure that they did. Anytime you have an investigation of this magnitude, people will make mistakes.

After skipping over many of McVeigh's self serving comments, I was very impressed with the investigative results obtained by the members of the task force. If you compare the details of the conspiracy, as described by McVeigh, with the information developed independently by the investigators prior to McVeigh's trial, you can quickly see that the identification of McVeigh and Terry Nichols was not a rush to judgment, but instead the results of a well run investigation. For anyone wishing to compare the prosecutor's theory of the conspiracy with McVeigh's admissions, I would suggest that they perhaps review some of the McVeigh trial transcripts for comparison purposes rather than using any of the books that have been released to date.

Many individuals have criticized the FBI and the investigation. It appears to me that Weldon Kennedy, who was in charge of the investigation for the first three weeks, did an outstanding job in directing the investigation. If you examine the evolution of the investigation it is obvious that the case was solved during the initial 48 hours. The remaining time was spent rounding out the investigation and following up on thousands investigative leads.

I believe that the book is an important read for someone interested in cases of this nature, because McVeigh refused to be interviewed by the FBI. The only information that was available from the defendant's prospective prior to the release of this book, was the McVeigh "confession" that appeared in the Dallas Morning News. This "confession" was apparently leaked to the newspaper by investigator's who were working for McVeigh's defense team and then were terminated before the trial began. This book gives the reader an opportunity to glimpse into the mind of an American monster.

An extremely chilling, yet fascinating, look into the mind of an ordinary American turned domestic terrorist. Once I started reading I couldn't put it down. McVeigh was a man that acted out a horrible plan but I couldn't help become interested in the thought-process behind all of it. Definitely worth a read.

The two authors, reporters for the Buffalo News, did an admirable job at fillingin the background of McVeigh but fail to address two central issues. They appear to accept at face value McVeigh's claim to have done it all himself. However the finances of the bombing do not hold up to scrutiny. McVeigh traveled widely without any visible means of support. The authors claim the money gained in the robbery of a gun dealer did not go to him. If so, where did the money come from to finance this operation? For clues to that, see Stephen Jones' book, "Others Unknown".
The other crucial issue which they do not address, is how a single fertilizer bomb do so much damage to a modern concrete, steel reinforced building? Why are there two blasts which show on the siesmograph within seconds that morning? Again, the authors do not address that. That McVeigh was in on it, cannot be disputed. But there's a "rest of the story" here. Maybe we will learn it after we learn who killed JFK...

Books about terrorists and sociopaths always seem to inspire reviewers to use words like "chilling." It may be a cliche, but this massive, exhaustively researched biography of Timothy McVeigh is just that -- chilling. You will be left with a good understanding of how McVeigh did it, and why he says he did it. I would have liked more psychological insights into McVeigh's state of mind, however. How does an intelligent kid from a pretty ordinary blue-collar family go from somewht alienated teenager (nothing atypical there) to decorated soldier to gun nut to obsessed drifter to mass murderer? At one point the book quotes McVeigh's court-appointed psychiatrist who says it's "unfortunate" that McVeigh didn't get some "counseling." Isn't that the understatement of the century!

The road from Ruby Ridge to Oklahoma City is littered with the bodies of innocents. A few were gunned down by federal agents, but the vast majority were murdered by anti-government zealot Timothy McVeigh, the twisted subject of this journalistic tour de force. The reportage in American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Tragedy at Oklahoma City is among the finest ever published. The authors remind us that at its root terrorism is a crime, and never lose sight of the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children in Oklahoma. Yet Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck present a compelling portrait of McVeigh and approach in an even-handed manner the excesses of federal law enforcement that encouraged a reluctant war hero to massacre his fellow citizens.

Meticulous research and details about McVeigh's family life, miitary service, and his final descent into darkness tell us more about the man than even the tortured explanations offered by the killer himself. Yossef Bodansky, author of Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, probably was or would be surprised to learn that years before Osama claimed innocent American civilians were legitimate targets because they pay taxes, McVeigh gave a similar rationale for the murder of the federal employees at the Murrah Building. McVeigh's comparison of the government workers with fictional Death Star clerks in the movie Star Wars is as bizarre a justification for mass murder as any offered to date by bin Laden.

The authors present facts that can allow a reader to put the massacre into historical context. Three passages in the book leap out. The first is a comment by former FBI profiler Clint Van Zandt that the "war" that started at Ruby Ridge between zealous law enforcement and extreme libertarians met its turning point at Oklahoma City. The next is the almost astonishing admission by President Bill Clinton that he should have stopped the federal action at Waco, which is viewed on television by a cheering McVeigh while he awaits the death penalty. The third highpoint appears in the final chapter. McVeigh is housed at the same maximum security prison with Ramzi Yousef, the Muslim nutcase who bombed the World Trade Center the first time, and with Theodore Kaczynksi, another native-born bomber who maimed and killed his fellow citizens. Yousef pleads with the atheist McVeigh to convert to Islam, and Kaczynksi describes the Oklahoma City bomber as a person with excellent social skills and reveals a degree of envy of his fellow American terrorist. These vignettes are better than fiction, and almost support a prominent Harvard professor's recent thesis that "terrorism works".

The human element is always just beneath the surface in American Terrorist. The stark horror inflicted on the people of Oklahoma and America is made vivid by the survivors and the families of the dead. McVeigh's father is a tragic, sympathetic man who seems to have lived under a dark cloud his entire adult life. Even McVeigh, who intentionally took the lives of almost 200 people, comes across as much more than the evil act that forever will be associated with him.

As noted above, the authors can't and won't answer the question "why?" But they end the book with that one-word question, and even if McVeigh had not become the first American executed under the federal death penalty statute in modern time he could never have answered it himself.

It's a futile query as old as evil itself.

I read this book, and it is an excellent study of McVeigh. However, let me point out that I read the hardcover version, which was published before Tim's execution. Still, Tim had many ups and downs of his life. I'm sure that many people, myself included, have some sort of disrespect for the government, and the authors present Tim's case remarkably presented. But instead of using letters to congressmen urging them to change the system, McVeigh decided to take human life to make his case. This shows how extreme hatred of the government can become if one's twisted mind believes that killing is the only way to be heard. Second, I kind of sympathize with some periods of McVeigh's life that I've pretty much led myself, such as isolation from the social world (except for, in McVeigh's case, gun enthisiasts). This is a must read and an alert that any crazy American can fight for rights by selfishly ending promising lives.