Jeffrey Toobin is a lawyer and author who spent almost two decades as a CNN legal analyst. The author of nine books, he has delved into subjects ranging from the O.J, Simpson trial, the United States Supreme Court, and both the Obama and Trump White House.
On October 19, 2020, Toobin’s CNN gig took a nosedive. During a Zoom video call between the New Yorker and WNYC Toobin was seen masturbating on camera. As strange as the incident is, it does not diminish Toobin’s skill as a legal analysist, writer and interpreter of Americana. He exemplifies this skill in his latest book Homegrown — Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism (Simon and Schuster New York, 2023).
The book details the life of Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh and the twisted rationale behind his plans to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. It details the trials of McVeigh and co-defendant Terry Nichols, and the strange and sinister world of militiamen and gun show enthusiasts in which the nomadic McVeigh spent the two years before the bombing.
But more importantly, Toobin debunks the myth that would define terrorism as exclusively Islamic. He puts McVeigh’s act of domestic terrorism into the greater context of the American psyche, making a direct connection between the rise of rhetorical violence by the likes of Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh, the Oklahoma bombing, and the events of January 6, 2020, in Washington, DC.
Toobin argues that government prosecutors and the media depicted McVeigh as a “lone wolf,” when in fact he was part of a large and growing right-wing extremist movement. They are known as the “Patriots,” the “Order,” and “Freemen,” who all share an agenda much like McVeigh’s, centered on gun rights, but also featuring a free-floating hostility to the federal government and a fear that America will cease to be a majority white nation.
Toobin focuses on Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was the chief prosecutor in the Oklahoma City prosecution. Garland framed McVeigh’s prosecutions within the context of the sign he has on his office door. DO NOT BURY THE CRIME IN CLUTTER! In other words, just stick to the facts. Don’t cloud the issues.
While this strategy may be correct in many instances, in this case, as Toobin says, “The impression lingered that McVeigh was an aberration, a lone and lonely figure who represented only himself and his sad-sack codefendant (Terry Nichols). This notion, as history would show, was mistaken.” McVeigh was the tip of an iceberg, which prosecutors failed to see, that almost sunk the ship of state on January 6, 2020.
There are two events that must be considered in understanding the radicalization of McVeigh. First was the 11-day government siege of Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in August 1992 that killed Randy Weaver and members of his family. This was followed by the 51-day standoff in Waco, Texas, between federal agents and members of the Branch Davidians, leading to the death of 75 people, including 25 children, that ended on April 19, 1993. While these events at first glance seem to be divergent, Toobin demonstrates how they energized segments of the society against the federal government and caused them to identify with American revolutionaries.
It was common for McVeigh to quote from memory long segments of the Declaration of Independence, asserting that Americans should stand up to tyranny of the federal government just as their forefathers had done in their fight against the British.
By happenstance, the date of April 19, 1993, the final day of the Waco siege, coincided with the anniversary of April 19, 1775, the start of the American Revolution with the battles of Lexington and Concord. By design McVeigh selected April 19 as the date of the Oklahoma bombing.
When Bill Clinton took office in 1993 and the Democrats were in charge, McVeigh’s view of federal law enforcement hardened into a sinister anger. This view hardened even more when Clinton, in 1994, signed the ban on assault rifles. The government was impinging on his right to bear arms. McVeigh hated Bill Clinton and whenever the President came on TV, McVeigh would mutter “Someone should kill that son of a bitch.” He saw the Clinton era as a period when American society was being converted from a free republic into a socialist welfare state.
McVeigh, like others, drew inspiration from The Turner Diaries, a novel written by the white nationalist William Luther Pierce, which depicts a right-wing insurrection against a tyrannical federal government seeking to deprive citizens of their Second Amendment rights to bear arms. The book has become the Bible of right-wing extremism.
In the early 1990s, McVeigh, along with others, promulgated their hatred of the federal government, essentially through word of mouth and limited communications, and fed on the ideology of such magazines as Soldier of Fortune and The Spotlight. The gun-show circuit was another common gathering place. But with the rise of the internet, social media and instant communications, these theories were able to spread like wildfire, radicalizing hundreds of thousands of followers.
Then came the candidacy and election of Donald Trump who added fuel to the fire during his four years in office. Trump chose Waco, Texas, as the site for his first rally of the 2024 campaigns. What louder dog whistle could he blow?
Toobin presents an alarming view of America with the rise of militia movements, the divide between rural and urban segments of the country, the spread of right-wing extremism, growing racism and antisemitism, and the subtle integration of these ideologies into the mainstream of the Republican Party ideology.
The tragic and heart-wrenching stories of the victims of the Oklahoma bombing and the chance occurrences that put some people at the scene are balanced against the cold and calculated way McVeigh bought fertilizer to make the bomb, rented a truck and selected the best location to cause the most damage. But the scariest part is that the next Timothy McVeigh may be the person standing next to you in Walmart.
Lawyers and those who have experience in court proceedings will be fascinated by the chapters that outline the trial of McVeigh and how the lawyers on both sides prepared, especially how defense lawyers — who had an unlimited budget and ran up a almost $20 million dollars in legal expenses — had to deal with a defendant who was proud of his crime. He wanted to assert a “necessity defense” —that is, that what he did was justified to save America from the tyranny of federal America.
Through a quirk in the law, more than 650 boxes containing over a million pages of documents, hours of audio and video recordings, and transcripts prepared by McVeigh’s defense counsel Stephen Jones were donated to the archives of the University of Texas and made available for researchers. Skirting the edges of legal ethics that require attorneys to keep confidential their dealing with their clients, Jones used a loophole in the law, and an attempt to take a substantial tax deduction (which failed) to make public the documents, giving historians and legal scholars a unique look into the mindset of Timothy McVeigh.
In another strange twist of fate, McVeigh spent the last days of his life in the maximum-security prison next door to Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, and near Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing in 1993.
McVeigh was executed in 1997, the first federal execution since 1963. His co-defendant Terry Nichols remains in jail on a life sentence without the possibility of parole. In an unprecedented step, the Justice Department reactivated the closed-circuit transmission that had been used during the trial to broadcast McVeigh’s execution to a conference room at the Oklahoma City airport, where about 230 victims’ relatives came to watch.
McVeigh asked that after his execution his remains be cremated, and his ashes be scattered over the Oklahoma City National Memorial dedicated to the victims of his crime. McVeigh’s last lawyer, Robert Nigh, talked him out of this macabre plan. Instead, the ashes were scattered in the wind into the Rocky Mountains. Toobin concludes the book by saying “By concluding his journey in this way, McVeigh would be everywhere. Where, in a way, he remains.”
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she serves on the Board of the Ohio History Connection, is currently vice president of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission and president of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.
3 Responses to “POINT OF ORDER: Timothy McVeigh — A Homegrown Terrorist by C. Ellen Connally”
Peter Lawson Jones
You must have received A’s on all of your book reports, Judge Connally! Wonderful synopsis. Have you seen “Waco: The Aftermath” on Showtime. Gripping mini-series.
Vincent bolland
I love everything he writes. His research and storytelling abilities are great. I requested it through the library and got it quickly. Another extremely interesting book was Paved Paradise: How parking explains the World by Henry Grabar.
Mel Maurer
A good review. They do indeed walk among us. Trump turned over a big rock and let them out.