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Oklahoma City Bombing
The Murrah Federal Building
in Oklahoma City began on April 19, 1995 with the usual
activity of people arriving to work and dropping their children
off at day care center. By 9 AM, hundreds of employees and
children had arrived at the building. About two or three
minutes later, a Ryder truck filled with two and a half
tons of common farm fertilizer and fuel oil detonated the
fiercest explosion the US had known to that day. As the
black smoke cleared and the fire died, witnesses could see
that the entire front side of the building was gone, exposing
the inside of the nine-story building.
About 169 men, women and children
died under the rubble from the collapsed structure. Several
hundred more sustained serious injuries.
As citizens and the government
considered the possibility of an overseas terrorist and
memorial services were conducted, evidence began to point
to a US citizen. Timothy McVeigh, who had been cited for
driving without a license plate about an hour and a half
after the explosion, was identified two days later by witnesses
who saw him walking away from the building just seconds
before it exploded. McVeigh and his long-time Army comrade,
Terry Nichols, were both charged with the bombing.
In an address to mourners after
the bombing, President William Clinton said, "Let us teach
our children that the God of comfort is also the God of
righteousness. Those who trouble their own house will inherit
the wind. Justice will prevail."
Prosecutors linked the bombing
to the 1993 government raid on the Branch Davidians, a religious
group that had established a large compound in Mount Carmel,
Texas and were believed to be storing weapons. After the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms stood at odds with
the Branch Davidians for 51 days, the FBI raided the compound,
causing a fire that burned the buildings to the ground and
killed more than 80 men, women and children inside. The
Oklahoma City bombing occurred on the second anniversary
of that event.
Six months after the tragedy,
both McVeigh and Nichols both went to trial on the same
charges. After deliberating for almost 72 hours, the jury
found Nichols guilty of conspiracy and manslaughter but
innocent of murder. Because the jury could not agree on
a sentence, US District Judge Richard Matsch imposed a life
sentence. McVeigh, on the contrary, was charged with murder
and received the death sentence. He was executed by lethal
injection June 11, 2001.
The Grahams' Involvement
After the bombing, Oklahoma's Governor Frank Keating
and his wife, Cathy invited Billy Graham to participate
in a special memorial service for the victims of the disaster.
A few weeks before that, Texas Governor George W. Bush's
wife, Laura, had taken Cathy Keating to the crusade in San
Juan, Puerto Rico. Reverend Graham addressed the crowd during
the service, although he states that it was one of the most
difficult things he had ever done. A little more than six
years later, Reverend Graham would address a crowd after
another horrifying and devastating disaster--the terrorist
attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September
11, 2001.
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