Timothy McVeigh

Timothy James McVeigh was an American right-wing terrorist who destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in 1995, killing 168 people, and injuring around 600.

McVeigh was a Gulf War veteran and gun freak weapons enthusiast, and was connected to the militia movement. He was inspired at least in part by The Turner Diaries, a neo-Nazi dystopian novel depicting a racial apocalypse. It has since been argued by fellow terrorist Ted Kaczynski that his fascination with the book related purely to its terrorism and did not extend to its racism.

McVeigh, who believed that a totalitarian New World Order was coming, stated that his attack was a response to the U.S. government's previous sieges of armed cultists at Waco and Ruby Ridge. He had visited Waco during the standoff to express his solidarity with those in the compound. The Oklahoma City bombing was his act of revenge, and he saw his victims' deaths as acceptable collateral damage, as terrorists invariably do. According to the book American Terrorist, after reading John Ross' novel  (appropriate, eh?), he decided it might have been better if he had carried out an assassination campaign instead of an act of mass murder and destruction.

McVeigh was executed in 2001, exactly three months before 9/11. Relatives of McVeigh's victims watched the execution on closed circuit television.

McVeigh's life and death have also been the subject of numerous conspiracy theories. These primarily revolve around the notion that the Oklahoma Bombing was a false-flag terror attack; conspiracy theorists argue that McVeigh was a "patsy" and that he is still alive, his execution being staged, or that there was another bomber involved ("John Doe #2").