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Terror in the Heartland, and a Wary America
Nineteen ninety-five is never very distant in Oklahoma City. Reminders of the year are not everywhere apparent in the small city steeped in civility and modesty, nor are they openly worn. But not far from the surface, 1995—especially April 19, 1995—is close, inescapably close.
On that day, the heart of Oklahoma City was ground zero for the deadliest attack of mass terror in twentieth-century America. The attack came at 9:02 that morning, moments after Timothy J. McVeigh, an embittered Army veteran of the Gulf War, eased a twenty-foot Ryder rental truck into a sidewalk cutout at the north side of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. McVeigh parked the truck, got out, locked it, and walked away without looking back. In the truck’s cargo hold, two fuses burned toward a payload of thirteen 55-gallon drums containing 7,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate and nitromethane racing fuel.1 McVeigh had prepared the huge bomb the day before, with help from a former Army buddy and his principal accomplice, Terry J. Nichols. In the cargo hold, they arranged the drums roughly in the shape of a backward “J” to enhance the bomb’s destructive power.2
McVeigh, who was twenty-six years old, thought that by bombing the Murrah Building he would teach the federal government a grievous lesson for what he considered a series of abuses—in particular, the fiery assault exactly two years before at the compound of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. Nearly eighty people were killed there in 1993 after federal law-enforcement agents closed in on the compound to end a fifty-one-day standoff.3 The Murrah Building housed offices of several federal agencies, including one of McVeigh’s principal targets: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.
At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, the Murrah Building was filling with federal employees and visitors doing routine business at government offices. With no warning, the truck bomb exploded in a terrifying roar that was heard for miles. At first, the detonation was mistaken for a plane crash or a natural gas explosion or an earthquake. The blast’s intensity ripped a gaping hole in the north-facing facade of the nine-story building and violently collapsed all the floors. Scenes of horror and destruction radiated outward from the devastated structure. Buildings across downtown Oklahoma City shuddered and shifted on their foundations. Structures near the explosion were knocked down or badly damaged. The blast’s concussion swept the streets nearby, overturning cars, sending debris and plate-glass shards flying everywhere.
The toll in human lives was staggering and unprecedented for an act of domestic terror in the United States. Inside the stricken building, 163 people were killed, including federal agents, Secret Service personnel, and armed forces recruiters. Five other people were killed nearby. More than 680 people were injured, many of them severely. The fatal victims ranged in age from three months to seventy-three years. They included nineteen children—fifteen of whom were at the America’s Kids day-care center on the Murrah Building’s second floor, the windows of which allowed a view of Northwest Fifth Street and the sidewalk cut-out where McVeigh had parked the truck bomb.
Among the dead were Terry Rees Chumard, 41, a collector of Teddy bears, and Lakesha R. Levy, 21, an airman 1st class who had gone to the Murrah Building that morning to obtain a new Social Security card.4 Donald Fritzler, 64, and his wife, Mary Anne, 57, also died in the blast. It was the day after their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.5 John K. Van Ess III, 67, was another fatal victim. He was to have retired at the end of 1995 from his job at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.6
Jaci Rae Coyne was one of the youngest victims. She was fourteen months old and loved the song about the Itsy Bitsy Spider, which her mother sang to her from the day she was born. “She would run across the room whenever she heard it. But she couldn’t quite get her fingers to make the spider,” her father, Scott Coyne, told the local Daily Oklahoman newspaper.7 Baylee Almon, whose first birthday was April 18, 1995, was fatally injured in the attack. On April 19, around 8:15 a.m., Baylee’s mother had dropped her off at the America’s Kids day care at the Murrah Building and headed to work. Baylee did not want to stay, her mother, Aren Almon-Kok, would recall.8
FIGURE 9. A truck bomb tore away the north face of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on the morning of April 19, 1995, just as its offices were filling with government workers and visitors. The blast killed 168 people and destroyed or damaged some 300 other buildings. (Photo credit: FEMA)
Twenty years on, the bombing’s staggering irrationality and sense of loss it caused are still keenly sensed in Oklahoma City. The city’s grief has eased but has never abated. That this is so is confirmed every year on the morning of April 19, when the bombing is remembered in a solemn ceremony etched in sorrow. The remembrance ceremony takes place at or near the site of the Murrah Building. At 9:02 a.m., the moment in 1995 when McVeigh’s bomb went off with such destructive force, the remembrance service in Oklahoma City falls silent for 168 seconds—one second for each of the bombing’s fatal victims. The silence is heavy and lasts nearly three minutes. It seems twice as long, at least. Later, during the memorial service, survivors and family members, many of them with tears in their eyes and in voices that catch and choke, read the 168 names, one by one.
The attack in Oklahoma City was the most brazen and spectacular act of terrorism in a year remarkable for the frequency with which terrorism intruded. Four days after the bombing, the elusive Unabomber struck for what would be the final time in an intermittent, seventeen–year letter-bombing spree. The month before the bombing in Oklahoma City, members of a Japanese cult attacked the Tokyo subway system with Sarin gas, killing twelve people and sickening more than 5,000 others. In early October 1995, the blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and nine other militant Muslims were convicted in federal court in New York City of plotting terror attacks and assassinations across the city. Rahman was sentenced to life in prison. In addition, a secret U.S. National Intelligence Estimate warned presciently in 1995 that Islamist terrorism posed a coldblooded threat to the country.9
The bombing in Oklahoma City was so deadly, horrific, and unsettling that it stood out among the episodes of terrorism in 1995. It projected consequences long afterward, notably in the rise of preemptive security measures that would become ever tighter, more conspicuous, and more commonplace. The broad and lasting effects of the Oklahoma City bombing lie not in awakening Americans to the deadly threat of domestic terrorism, nor in exposing vulnerabilities of American life. The epiphany was not of that sort. Rather, as this chapter will discuss, the bombing in Oklahoma City signaled the rise of a more guarded, more suspicious, more security-inclined America, and of what can be called “a national psychology of fear.”10
As dimensions of the bombing became clear, the question “Why Oklahoma City?” was asked everywhere. It was such an unassuming city—a place, the Daily Oklahoman newspaper said the day after the attack, “where terrorists don’t venture. . . . Car bombs don’t kill children here.”11 As the newspaper’s reporting suggested, it seemed so improbable that Oklahoma City would be the theater of such carnage and terror, the target of such a vicious and irrational attack. Amid the chaos that morning, individuals were thrust unwittingly and unexpectedly into the vortex created by the bombing. Their actions and split-second decisions were to shape and define how the attack on the Murrah Building would be remembered for years afterward.
It is almost impossible to think about the bombing and not conjure the image of the Oklahoma City fireman delicately cradling the battered body of a lifeless little girl. The photograph captured like no other image the senselessness of the attack. It did so in ways that words could not. The image was taken by an amateur photographer and was the result of a near-miss turn of fate.
On the morning of April 19, 1995, Chuck Porter, a twenty-five-year-old loan specialist, was at work in a high-rise about two and a half blocks from the Murrah Building. At 9:02 a.m., the building shook violently, knocking objects from desks and people to the floor. Through the window
s, Porter could see a rising cloud of smoke and debris: the signature of a controlled demolition of a nearby building, Porter thought to himself. That might be worthy of a few photographs for his portfolio. With that in mind, Porter took an elevator headed for the lobby. He was going to go to his car to retrieve his camera. But en route, Porter thought again. “I don’t really want to go over there for that,” not for a building demolition, he told himself. He got on an elevator, going up. It had climbed three floors and Porter reconsidered again: he would go and take those photographs after all.12
From the car he retrieved his camera, a Canon A2E, and headed on foot toward the smoke, now thick and billowing. Glass shards were on the streets and the sidewalks. “Holy cow,” Porter said to himself, “what is this?” He began taking photographs. The corner of Robinson Avenue and Northwest Fifth Street offered Porter a view of the Murrah Building. Its facade was nearly gone, as if some gigantic, diabolic force had come down and scooped it away. “That’s not a demolition,” Porter thought to himself.
Porter moved down the street, taking pictures as he went. He saw bloodied people who were staggering or lying on the sidewalk. He passed a man with a bloodied shirt pulled up to his head. He came upon a cluster of people tending to an injured woman. From the corner of his eye, Porter saw a police officer across the street, clutching a bundle. He was running. Porter traced the officer’s movement with his camera and snapped a photograph as he handed the bundle, the battered body of a little girl, to a fireman. A split second later, Porter took the photograph of the fireman gazing at the infant cradled in his arms. The little girl was Baylee Almon, and, at the moment of Porter’s photograph, she was dead or dying of her injuries. Holding her was Chris Fields, a captain in the Oklahoma City fire department. Porter knew none of that at the time. As if on autopilot, he moved on, circling the shattered building twice, taking forty-eight frames in all before returning to his office. He was not aware that he had taken what would become the defining image of the Oklahoma City bombing.13
FIGURE 10. The iconic image of the Oklahoma City bombing was of a firefighter cradling the battered body of a little girl. The image was taken by an amateur photographer and won a Pulitzer Prize. (Photo credit: ©Charles Porter IV/ZUMA Press/Corbis)
Office workers in downtown Oklahoma City were sent home around 10 that morning, and Porter took his film to the one-hour photo-processing service at a Wal-Mart store. His photos were ready within thirty minutes. Porter flipped through them, mostly to see if they were in focus. They were. He called a friend at the University of Central Oklahoma, his alma mater, and offered to show him the photos.
“You don’t need to waste your time with me,” he told Porter. “You need to go and get those to somebody who might want to see them.”
“Who?” Porter asked.
“I don’t know,” his friend said. “Associated Press, somebody.”
“Who is the Associated Press?” Porter asked.
“They’re probably in the phone book,” his friend replied.
Porter consulted a telephone directory, found the address for the Associated Press bureau in Oklahoma City, and drove there. He found the place a madhouse, given the demands of covering the bombing. Porter was granted a few moments to show the photographs to Lindel Hutson, the bureau chief, and David Longstreath, a staff photographer.
“What could this kid have that we don’t have?” Hutson thought. He nearly sent Porter on his way. Instead, Hutson said: “Yeah, well, let’s take a look.” He flipped through five or six photos before one caught his attention. It was of the police officer handing the little girl’s body to the fireman. “I was pretty much stunned by that one,” Hutson recalled. And by the next one, too. It was of the fireman, cradling the little girl.14
Hutson turned to Longstreath. “We’re gonna have to have these,” he said.15
“Do you mind if we use them?” Hutson asked. Porter said he did not, and handed Hutson the negatives. Hutson told Porter to take a seat and fill out some paperwork, giving his name and address and contact information. “We’ll be right back with you,” he said.
The photos were soon sent on the Associated Press wire to its newspaper clients; magazine and television clients were excluded.
Hutson returned and asked Porter, “OK, so now what do you want for these?”
“What are you talking about?” Porter replied.
“We will pay you for one-time use,” Hutson said, “whatever you want.”
Porter was surprised. “I have no idea,” he told Hutson. “I have no clue. I’ve never done this. I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“But I’ll tell you what,” Porter said. “You have my name. You have my address. You send me a check, whatever you think is fair. Whatever you think is right and fair, you send me a check, and that will be good enough for me.”
“OK,” said Hutson. “Good enough.”
With that, Porter went home. He thought his photos might appear the next day in the Daily Oklahoman. Porter had little understanding about the workings of the Associated Press. Within the hour, he learned much more about the wire service and its worldwide reach.
The phone rang at Porter’s apartment. At the other end was a woman with a striking British accent who asked Porter if he had taken the photographs of the little girl and the fireman.
“Sure, yeah,” he replied. “I did. How did you get my name?”
“Well, I got it from the Associated Press,” the caller said. “Can you tell me about the fireman and about the baby?”
“I don’t know anything about them,” Porter replied. “I have no clue. How did you get my name?”
“Do you know what the AP wire is?” she asked.
Porter said he did not. Not really.
“Let me ask you one question then,” she said. “Tell me how you will feel knowing that the photographs that you took are going to be on the cover of every newspaper worldwide tomorrow?”
“You’re kidding,” Porter told her.
“No, I’m not,” she said, adding: “Mark my words, Mr. Porter. Any newspaper you pick up tomorrow will have your photographs” in them.
She was quite right. Porter’s photographs appeared in newspapers around the world. The images were stunning, and they moved even veteran journalists to tears. The national editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, Ashley Halsey, went into the parking lot after the newspaper had gone to press that night, and wept. “I have never done that before,” he said later. “It touched me very deeply, because I have a child that same age.”16
The little girl’s identity was not widely known until the next day. That morning, Aren Almon-Kok picked up the Daily Oklahoman and saw on the front page, below the newspaper’s fold, a compact version of Porter’s photograph. She said she immediately recognized the little girl in the photo as her daughter, Baylee. “I knew that it was her,” she said. “I don’t know why.”17
By the time Porter had taken his memorable photos, Timothy McVeigh was out of Oklahoma City, driving north toward Kansas, undetected and unimpeded. After leaving the Ryder truck parked in front of the Murrah Building, McVeigh had worked his way north and east on foot, zig-zagging through alleys and parking lots. He entered a long alley, about a block and a half from the truck, when he heard the roar. McVeigh was wearing earplugs and the buildings on either side of the alley offered some protection from the blast. Even so, the explosion’s roar was deafening. McVeigh could see buildings wobble from the concussion. Shards from shattered plate glass windows rained down around him. McVeigh told his biographers that he kept walking, never looking back to assess the devastation his bomb had wreaked on Oklahoma City.18
McVeigh soon reached the parking area where, three days before, he had left his getaway car—a massive and exceedingly ugly 1977 Mercury Grand Marquis. It was a yellow sedan twenty feet long, with a primer spot prominent on one quarter panel.19 The Mercury was so hulking that a previous owner had referred to it as the “party barge”—meaning that the car could be d
riven to a party and not be damaged were it to strike every tree on the way home.20 McVeigh slipped into the Mercury to make his escape from Oklahoma City. The engine failed to turn over. He tried again and again, and finally the car started. By 9:10 a.m., he was on his way out of town, traveling north on Interstate 35.21
The Mercury was not bearing a rear license plate—intentionally so, McVeigh told his biographers, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck. He “wasn’t exactly eager to get caught,” they wrote, but “there was a part of him that was curious to see how things would play out if he did.”22 The missing plate was an obvious invitation to police to stop his car. About eighty miles north of Oklahoma City, McVeigh was pulled over by Charles J. Hanger, a veteran Oklahoma highway patrolman known for his unbending, by-the-book approach to police work. “He’d arrest his own mother for a traffic violation,” a friend of his would tell a reporter for the New York Times.23
Hanger had little reason to believe that pulling over the Mercury would become anything more than a routine traffic stop. He flipped on the emergency lights of his cruiser, and the driver of the Mercury pulled over. Hanger opened the door of his cruiser and stood behind it, to give himself some cover should the traffic stop turn violent. “Step out,” he shouted to the driver. The door to the Mercury swung open and the driver turned away from the steering wheel and sat on the edge of the front seat.
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