TerrorTalks International

This is a podcast about some of the most spectacular terrorist attacks in history. In this podcast, I tell the stories of the terrorists, their victims and the consequences for the survivors and society. About people who will sacrifice their own lives or the lives of others for a political, economic, religious or social goal. Who was behind it, who did they want to hit, and why.

My name is Natasja, and I am a journalist with a Master's in Middle Eastern Studies. Unfortunately, I have experienced terror in my life several times. The massacre in Utøya in Norway happened half an hour's drive from where some of my immediate family lives. A good friend of mine was only a meter away from one of the suicide bombers on the London Underground in 2005. He miraculously escaped with two burst eardrums. Finally, I worked in Afghanistan some time ago, where a major terrorist attack on a local cafe claimed the lives of 21 people. Among other things, the owner, who had served me a layer cake on my birthday the year before. Fortunately, I have never been in the middle of a terrorist attack myself. But these experiences have awakened my curiosity, fascination and, not least, a fear that most people probably know about: It will happen to me someday. That it comes close.

Before you start listening, I must warn you that the podcast contains descriptions and details that can be violent and are unsuitable for especially small children and people who are affected by hearing about murder and violence.

The series is based on journalistic research and contains fictional elements in the shape of made-up scenes and dialogues.

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TerrorTalks International

The most hated man in America

September 09, 2023 • Natasja Engholm • Season 1 • Episode 1

Produced and narrated by Natasja Engholm
Creative input by Lars Hvidberg, https://www.whiteberg.dk/
Male voices by Voice talent Jon Lob

See pictures from today's story and follow me on: TerrorTalks on Facebook and TerrorTalks on Instagram

It was 9.10 AM in the American city of Oklahoma City. The city was waking up, and the citizens were going about their everyday routines. Families were handing over their children in daycare and heading to work. But an ordinary morning was soon to develop into the biggest nightmare. A nearly six-foot-tall, lanky man with a narrow face and dark blond, crewcut hair drove his truck across the city. The tall man had a giant bomb with him in the truck, and seven minutes later, he parked the truck under a government building and lit the bomb's two fuses.
The building had nine floors, a massive glass facade, and several government offices. There was also a nursery in the building, where the employees handed over their children in the morning. It was right below this nursery that the man parked the truck. The man's name was Timothy McVeigh, and he was to be behind the largest domestic, bomb attack in the history of the United States. At 9:02 AM on April 19, 1995, he detonated a bomb that sent blast waves through Oklahoma City and shock waves throughout the United States. However, McVeigh was not alone in the attack; he had an accomplice, Terry Nichols.
From the terrorists' perspective, the attack was well-planned and executed. Yet a few small and foolish mistakes ultimately led to the capture and conviction of Timothy McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols. Many younger listeners may not have heard of this attack. And even those who know about it may have forgotten the details or not heard them. But before 9/11, it was this attack that people talked about and feared would happen again in the United States.

You are listening to TerrorTalks - a podcast about some of the most spectacular terrorist attacks in history. In this podcast, I tell the stories of the terrorists, their victims and the consequences for the survivors and society. About people who will sacrifice their own lives or the lives of others for a political, economic, religious or social goal. Who was behind it, who they wanted to hit, and why.
My name is Natasja Engholm, and I am a Danish journalist with a Master's in Middle Eastern Studies based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Unfortunately, terror has come close to home a few times in my life. The massacre on 69 people on the small island Utøya in Norway happened half an hour's drive from where some of my close family lives.
A good friend was only a meter away from one of the suicide bombers on the London Underground in 2005. He miraculously escaped with two burst eardrums. And finally, I worked in Afghanistan some time ago, where a major terrorist attack on a local cafe claimed the lives of 21 people. Among them was the owner, who had served me cake on my birthday the year before.
Fortunately, I have never been in the middle of a terrorist attack myself. However, these experiences have awakened my curiosity, fascination and, not least, a fear that most people probably know about: that it will happen to me someday. That it comes close.
Before you start listening, I must warn you that the podcast contains descriptions and details that can be violent and unsuitable for especially small children and people affected by hearing about murder and violence.

The Oklahoma City bombing was a heinous attack that killed 168 people. The two men, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, behind the attack were not insane. Still, to understand what made them commit this act, we must look at what happened in their own lives and, not least, an event that took place two years before the attack in a small town in northeast Texas. We will return to the latter.
The hatred and anger that built up in the tall, serious-looking Timothy McVeigh was a combination of his personality, political beliefs and how his life unfolded. Timothy McVeigh was not crazy. In fact, the psychiatrist who examined him in prison after he was arrested said that Timothy McVeigh was
"a decent person who had allowed rage to build up inside him to the point that he had lashed out in one terrible, violent act."
It was not because he was of low intelligence or talentless or without a bright future; he was assessed to have an I.Q. of 126, among the 5% most gifted in the population. Nor is Timothy McVeigh's upbringing believed to have been filled with abuse or violence. Timothy James McVeigh was born in 1968 in New York State, the only son of 3 children by Irish immigrants. His parents divorced when Timothy was 10 years old, and he subsequently lived with his father. Timothy McVeigh described that the first seeds of rage were planted when he was bullied at school and sought refuge in a fantasy world where he dreamed of taking revenge on his bullies. Despite his impressive physique, many perceived him as shy and withdrawn, while others thought he did not retreat into his shell until he became a teenager. His grandfather introduced him to handguns, and Timothy McVeigh occasionally brought pistols to school to impress his classmates. He dreamed of opening a gun shop and, even then, believed in the right to own and use guns. A right that people outside the USA probably have difficulty understanding the importance of, but which is essential to parts of the American population. Timothy McVeigh briefly transitioned to college but soon dropped out and got a job as an armed guard.

Here, several of his colleagues noticed that the interest in the right to bear arms gradually developed into an obsession for Timothy McVeigh. Perhaps this interest led him to enlist in the U.S. Army at 20 in 1988. Here his superiors also noticed his extreme views. At one point, Timothy McVeigh was reprimanded for wearing a White Power t-shirt while attending a meeting of the far-right, racist Ku Klux Klan organisation. The decision to join the military also proved fateful. Because here he met the man who became his co-conspirator in the USA's most prominent domestic terrorist attack.
Terry Nichols was, in many ways, Timothy McVeigh's opposite. Terry Nichols was 13 years older than McVeigh and grew up on a farm in Michigan, which most people outside the USA probably know best for the car city of Detroit. He was shorter than Timothy McVeigh and had a more classically nerdy look, which some might say, suited his dreams of becoming a physicist. He had dark hair with high temples and a side parting, and in photos from around the time of the terrorist attack, he wears steel-rimmed glasses with thick lenses that make it difficult to see his eyes clearly. People who knew him as a teenager have described him as intelligent and bookish, but like Timothy McVeigh, he was also a shy and unmotivated student.

While Timothy McVeigh was a bit of a loner, Terry Nichols was married several times and had both children and stepchildren. In the later trial, several testified that Terry Nichols loved children and, at one point, even became a stay-at-home Dad and looked after the children. Otherwise, the intelligent Terry Nichols, like Timothy McVeigh, did not get much out of his academic skills. In addition to working on his parent's farm, he had small jobs as a carpenter and at an insurance company.
However, Terry Nichols had never been fond of working on the farm. In 1986, at 33, he signed up for the U.S. Army to escape that. Because of his age, he sometimes had difficulty keeping up with the younger soldiers, but even so, he quickly became a platoon leader. Terry Nichols soon met another soldier named Timothy McVeigh. Nichols and McVeigh soon found that they had much in common and became friends. Both were college dropouts, children of divorce, and they shared far-right political interests and a love of guns. The two new friends parted ways temporarily when Terry Nichols left the army in 1989, six years before the Oklahoma City bombing, while Timothy McVeigh participated in the first Gulf War following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Here he was awarded several service medals before leaving the army in 1991. Timothy McVeigh was among the first soldiers to return home from the war. He was proud of his efforts and received a hero's welcome when he returned to the United States. In addition, he was invited to try out for the special forces. Unfortunately, the war in the Gulf had worn him down and ruined his shape. Deep disappointed, he flunked the test and returned to his local base before leaving the army in 1991.

We are now at the beginning of the 1990s. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were no longer in the army but were still closely linked through their friendship and shared hatred of the American state. At the time, Timothy McVeigh had moved in with Terry Nichols' brother on his farm near Decker, Michigan, whilst Terry Nichols moved back in with his parents. Timothy McVeigh spent more and more of his free time reading about guns, explosives and sniper tactics. His political sympathies had always been with the American right-wing. Still, now he was on his way to extreme extremes, even by American standards.
There is an American militia movement consisting of several private organisations, including paramilitary forces. That is, groups that are not subject to official military control. In the 1990s, they were found all over the United States, and it was estimated that they had between 10,000 and 250,000 members. Timothy McVeigh was also loosely connected to one of these in Michigan and may have attended meetings before the attack. His surroundings also began to have enough of his extreme views. Timothy McVeigh complained to friends that the army had implanted a chip in his buttocks so authorities could monitor him. He resigned his membership in the NRA, an otherwise quite extreme and right-wing American interest organisation that campaigns for the right of private individuals to bear arms. He thought that they had become too lax in their attitudes. In addition, he sent letters to local newspapers complaining about higher taxes and gun restrictions.

Timothy McVeigh was not happy in his private life either. He worked long hours as a guard in a job he hated, and at the same time felt like he didn't have a home. He felt uncomfortable in the company of women and was rejected when he asked a colleague out. His frustrations with his lack of success on the love front may have contributed to him taking up gambling and building up a debt he couldn't pay. During this period, he received a bill for a tax debt for his time in the military of around 1,000 American dollars; he wrote in an angry letter to the authorities:
"Go ahead, take everything I own; take my dignity. Feel good as you grow fat and rich at my expense; sucking my tax dollars and property. "
So that was where Timothy McVeigh was in the early 1990s. Radicalised and, in his eyes, a loser with a rootless existence, full of anger and frustration. Terry Nichols had not fared much better. He regularly participated in anti-government groups, experimented with explosives and took on increasingly right-wing radicalised views. Terry Nichols got divorced and, in the early 1990s, met a 17-year-old Filipino girl through a so-called mail-order bride agency. She was pregnant with another man's child when she arrived in the United States. Together Terry Nichols and the girl had two more children. Terry's stepson suffocated in a plastic bag as a 2-year-old while he was in Terry's care. An accident which, it must be emphasised, Terry, despite his later crimes, was not to blame for.
In the spring of 1992, three years before the terrorist attack, Terry Nichols renounced his American citizenship in a letter to the authorities. Here he wrote
"I am stating that I no longer am a citizen of the corrupt political, corporate state of Michigan and the United States of America."
Later that year, Terry Nichols tried unsuccessfully in a credit card debt lawsuit to argue that the court did not have jurisdiction over him because he did not have citizenship. Of course, the court did not buy that argument.
However, grief and frustrations in private life may have contributed to Terry Nichols projecting his feelings onto the U.S. government. As previously mentioned, he generally hated the American authorities, and this was not improved by the change of government, in 1993, with the democratic Bill Clinton at the helm. He became the symbol of everything the extreme right-wing hated about the ruling elite, along with his wife, Hillary Clinton, and then-Attorney General Janet Reno.

And in 1993, a significant event occurred that directly lit the fuse for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols' plans for a terrorist attack on American soil.

Two years before the Oklahoma City bombing, several events confirmed Timothy McVeigh's and Terry Nichols's hatred of the U.S. authorities. To a great extent, the USA is home to various religious sects and groups. One of them was the strongly Christian doomsday sect, the Seventh-day Adventists called the Branch Davidians, who believed in the imminent return of Jesus. The group leader was Vernon Howell, who changed his name to David Koresh. The group settled on a farm, which they named Mount Carmel Center, near the city of Waco in the southern American state of Texas in 1989. In 1993, the group, especially the leader David Koresh, were accused of sexually abusing minors in a series of articles in the Waco Tribune-Herald newspaper.
In addition, the ATF, a control agency for alcohol, tobacco, weapons and explosives, suspected them of keeping illegal stockpiles of weapons. When the ATF showed up at the farm with a search warrant on February 28, 1993, they were met by gunfire, costing 5 officers their lives. The FBI was called in, and for almost two months, they alternately tried to negotiate and pressure the Branch Davidians to surrender. They managed to free 19 children along the way. Unfortunately, the siege ended under tragic circumstances that are still not fully clear to this day. This gave credence to a rise in conspiracy theories. After a two-month siege, the FBI attacked the building with tear gas in an attempt to force the residents out, and soon after, the building caught fire. 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women and the leader David Koresh, perished in the flames.

During a visit to Terry Nichols' farm in Michigan, Timothy McVeigh saw the images from Waco on television and began to cry. Ordinary Americans, mainly the extreme right-wing, were furious and believed that the FBI had handled the situation miserably. That was true of Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh as well.
Timothy McVeigh said to two of the others present:
"I didn't define the Rules of engagement in this conflict. The rules, if not written down, are defined by the aggressor. it was brutal, no holds barred. Women and children were killed at Waco… "You put back in the governments faces exactly what they're giving out".
A way of thinking that many terrorists use to justify their actions.
Timothy McVeigh himself visited Waco while the siege was taking place. Here he was interviewed by a journalism student from Southern Methodist University, where he said:
"The government is afraid of the guns people have because they have to have control of the people at all times. Once you take away the guns, you can do anything to the people. You give them an inch, and they take a mile. I believe we are slowly turning into a socialist government. The government is continually growing bigger and more powerful, and the people need to prepare to defend themselves against government control."
The Waco siege became the primary motivation for Terry Nichols and Timothy McVeigh to translate their hatred and radicalisation into a terrorist attack. Timothy McVeigh believed that the FBI behaved like soldiers, so a counterattack would be justified in his twisted world. Perhaps even to be considered retaliatory strikes in a war. The two began discussing how to avenge the many deaths. Timothy McVeigh had become increasingly radicalised in his thinking and behaviour - he started selling caps with the ATF's logo and bullet holes in them and brochures titled "The U.S. Government declares open war against the people". He also began experimenting with making pipe bombs and other smaller explosives. Before Waco, it does not seem that Timothy McVeigh or Terry Nichols had plans for an attack, so that must be seen as the direct catalyst.

In planning, Timothy McVeigh considered assassinating the then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, one of the best-known FBI agents who participated in the Waco events. Slowly, however, another idea began to take shape: They wanted to bomb a federal state building, preferably with many dead, so the message became even more apparent. Timothy McVeigh had the following criteria for selecting the target for the attack: It had to house at least two of three federal agencies—the ATF, the FBI, and the DEA, all of which were involved in Waco. If other government agencies had offices in the building, that was just a bonus.
In December 1994, half a year before the attack, the choice finally fell on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The building was named after a state judge, had 9 stories, and housed 14 state agencies, including the DEA, ATF, and the Army and Navy recruiting offices. The building also had a glass facade that Timothy McVeigh expected would shatter during an explosion. That, he predicted, would likely result in more significant human casualties. Which he was also right about. Finally, the open space around the building was suitable for good pictures for propaganda purposes. The choice of the date for the attack on April 19, 1995, was also symbolic: it was the second anniversary of the tragic end of the Waco siege.

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols spent two whole years of their lives planning the insane attack. Terry Nichols had bought a farm in Herington in the southern state of Kansas, which borders Oklahoma in the north. Timothy McVeigh had settled in Arizona, which borders California to the west but is half a day's drive from Oklahoma City. The perfect storm of two, especially in their eyes, failed lives, anger, frustration, a sense of injustice towards the "system", and an event they had to avenge. Perhaps it would have ended differently if just one of these components had not been present. But together, it literally became a ticking time bomb that they felt they had to detonate.
How exactly the planning took place, and how much each of them was involved? There is disagreement among the sources. We know that Timothy McVeigh was the prime mover in the planning, but he and Terry Nichols bought and stole the materials they needed to make a gigantic bomb. The explosives, including artificial fertiliser, weighed over three tonnes – the same as a full-grown rhinoceros. Four days before the attack, Timothy McVeigh rented a small truck under the cover name Robert D. Kling, and 3 days before, he and Terry Nichols drove to Oklahoma City, where they parked a getaway car several blocks from the Murrah Federal building. On the vehicle, they left a note that read:
"Not abandoned. Please do not tow. Will move by April 23 (needs battery and cable)."
The last two days leading up to the attack Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols spent mixing the chemicals for the bomb. When they were done, Timothy McVeigh made an ignition system with two-time fuses that could be controlled from the truck's cab. They led from the cab through plastic tank pipes to the bomb. When the two men had finished their work, they separated - Terry Nichols returning home to Herington and Timothy McVeigh driving the truck to a motel room he had rented in Junction City, both in the neighbouring state of Kansas to the north, less than four hours' drive from Oklahoma City.

The day after April 19, 1995, at 9:02 AM, the truck that Timothy McVeigh had left three minutes earlier exploded in front of the north side of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The explosion destroyed a third of the building, which felt like a minor earthquake, creating a crater the size of half a tennis court. It took just seven seconds for the northern part of the building to collapse while the entire glass facade, as Timothy McVeigh had predicted, shattered into millions of pieces. The subsequent pressure wave from the bomb caused the rest of the building to collapse. Buildings up to four blocks away were destroyed or damaged. But worst of all was the human cost. 168 people died that day or the following days from their wounds. The youngest was just 3 months old, while the oldest was 73. 19 of the victims were children who were present in the nursery. Three of the victims were pregnant.

It was immediately apparent that the bomb had caused unimaginable casualties. Many of the victims were unrecognisable and had to be identified using X-rays, dental records, fingerprints, blood samples or DNA tests. Many victims in buildings suffered hearing damage from the combination of the glass and the blast wave. The last survivor, a 15-year-old girl, was rescued from the ruins at seven that evening, but the search for dead and survivors continued the next day. A nurse was killed when she was hit by falling rocks in connection with the search for victims. 16 days after the bomb went off, all but three victims had been found, and the search was called off.
The same morning after the bomb went off, Officer Charlie Hanger was on patrol in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. Hanger was initially in another area to help, but soon after the bomb, he was told to drive back to his own district. After a short time, Hanger drove past a yellow Mercury without a license plate and signalled the driver, with the blue flashing lights, that he should pull over to the side. The officer immediately sensed that something was wrong.

This was no ordinary traffic offence. Charlie Hanger asked the driver to leave the car and walk towards him. Out stepped Timothy McVeigh. He was wearing a black blouse with three-quarter sleeves and a white t-shirt on the outside with the text: Sic semper tyrannis, Latin for so it always goes with tyrants. These were the words that John Wilkes Booth shouted after the assassination of American President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Booth supported the Confederacy during the American Civil War and perceived Lincoln as the enemy in the same way that Timothy McVeigh perceived the American state as the enemy 130 years later.
Hanger asked where Timothy McVeigh was going.

"I'm moving to Arkansas and going through Oklahoma to pick up more of my belongings," Timothy McVeigh replied.
But there was no suitcase in the trunk and no change of clothes. When Hanger asked Timothy McVeigh to see his driver's license, Timothy McVeigh motioned to his jacket. As he did so, Hanger caught a glimpse of the outline of a weapon in his windbreaker. He also discovered an extra cartridge magazine and a knife during a further search.
"My gun is loaded," said Timothy McVeigh.
"So is mine",

the officer replied, then arrested Timothy McVeigh for possessing a concealed weapon. Hanger still had no idea what a giant fish he had caught in the net. Had he not discovered the gun, Timothy McVeigh would have escaped with a fine on the spot. Timothy McVeigh was put into the patrol car, and they drove to the local police station. Along the way, the police radio constantly reported on the Oklahoma City bomb, but Timothy McVeigh never commented on it. Instead, he talked about how fast the patrol car could go and when he could get his gun back.
At the police station, two more lucky and somewhat random things happened that benefitted the investigators.
Timothy McVeigh had either lost or tried to hide a business card in the patrol car with the text:
"TNT at 5 dollars a stick. Need more."
And secondly, Timothy McVeigh was supposed to be brought before a judge on the same day, but unfortunately, due to personal reasons, the judge could not appear. The result was that Timothy McVeigh had to spend one more day and one night in jail. It was lucky for the FBI, who had launched a hunt for the perpetrators. They initially suspected Islamists or drug cartels. Just two years earlier, in 1993, an attack had taken place on the World Trade Center in New York by Islamists. So not the famous attack on September 11, but an attack in revenge for American foreign policy and support for Israel. The attack killed 6 people and injured over 1,000. And as many may have seen in the Netflix series Narcos, the United States was a big part of the war against the drug cartels in Central and South America. It was, therefore, a more widely accepted theory than the idea that two United States inhabitants could have done that to their fellow citizens.
The FBI probably wouldn't have had enough evidence to charge him if he had only spent a day in jail. But now the evidence was abundant despite the years of careful planning. And with more and more evidence pointing to Timothy McVeigh, it was an advantage that the FBI knew where they had him.
While FBI agents were examining an axle and the remains of the license plate from the remnants of the truck used in the attack, they found a connection to a specific rental agency in Junction City, Kansas. Here the owner was able to help draw up a sketch of the person who had rented the truck - a serious-looking man with close-cropped hair who matched Timothy McVeigh's description. Also, Timothy McVeigh had made an elementary mistake that ultimately helped bring him down. He protected himself with a fake name and I.D. card during the preparations. Five days before the attack, he parked the truck at a motel in Kansas. When he checked into the motel, he initiated a conversation with the owner and, in a moment of distraction, signed his own name.
Terry Nichols continued to help with the bombing plans right up until the day before the terrorist attack. He helped park the getaway car, load the explosives into the truck and mix the ingredients for the bomb.
However, Terry Nichols had told Timothy McVeigh that he would not help blow it up, so he was at his family's home in Herington. Two days after the attack, he turned himself in when he learned he was wanted. When the authorities searched his home, they found blasting caps, pistols and a receipt for large quantities of ammonium nitrate – used in fertiliser and to make bombs.

Terry Nichols was sentenced to 161 life sentences without the possibility of parole. The judge called Terry Nichols a terrorist and said:
"No American citizen has ever brought this kind of devastation; you are in U.S. history the No. 1 mass murderer in all of U.S. history."
Terror is always, and without exception, senseless. In this case, it cost the lives of 168 innocent people, Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death and executed, and Terry Nichols will die in prison.
One of the most heartbreaking and well-known photos that symbolised the tragedy was a picture of firefighter Chris Fields emerging from the rubble with an infant in his arms. The little girl died at a nearby hospital. Taken by a bank employee, the photo won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and was carried in newspapers and magazines for months after the attack. Baylee Almon's mother said of the photo:

"It was very hard to go to stores because they are in the checkout aisle. It was always there. It was devastating. Everybody had seen my daughter dead. And that's all she became to them. She was a symbol. She was the girl in the fireman's arms. But she was a real person that got left behind."
77-year-old grandmother Jannie Coverdale lost her two grandsons, Aaron, and Elijah, aged 5 and 2. She tried to run into the ruins but was held back by a policeman as she screamed:
"But you don't understand. I have to get my babies out".
Three days later, her grandchildren were found dead in what was once a nursery and kindergarten.
Some children were not directly involved in the attack but were still highly affected by the horrific aftermath. Many lost either or both of their parents and had to grow up with foster parents or other families. Seven children lost one parent, and 10 children became orphans. In addition, the children naturally suffered from emotional trauma from the incident.
Timothy McVeigh later stated that he was unaware of the daycare when he targeted the building and asked if he had known.
"... might have given me pause to switch targets. That's a large number of collateral damage."
I now believe that there is a solid reason to doubt that. With two years of research and planning, he had plenty of opportunities to investigate the site and change plans. 10 months later, on June 2, 1997, Timothy McVeigh was found guilty and sentenced to death. He sat on death row on what was dubbed "bombers row" along with other terrorists, such as Unabomber Ted Kascynski and Ramzi Yousef, behind the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. He was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, six years after the attack, without showing remorse. In fact, he said his only regret was not blowing up the entire building. The execution was attended by relatives of the victims, among others. One of them, Larry Whicher, whose brother died in the attack, described Timothy McVeigh as having.
"totally expressionless, blank stare. He had a look of defiance and that if he could, he'd do it all over again."
Timothy McVeigh believed his horrific deeds would inspire Americans who espoused his political ideas to take up arms. He couldn't have been more wrong: Most right-wing extremist and militia groups, like the rest of America, condemned the attack. And no domestic terrorist has attempted anything like this since. The Oklahoma City bombing was supposed to make Timothy McVeigh a martyr for the right-wing fringe. Instead, he earned the title "most hated man in America."
However, the fact that Timothy McVeigh failed in making an immediate right-wing revolt at the time does not mean that the threat from domestic right-wing terrorism in the United States is not present today. Though the far right may only constitute a small percentage of the Republican party and its voters, that is all it takes to form new domestic terror groups and carry out an attack like the Oklahoma City bombing. In a way, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols may be considered forerunners for the new type of terrorism named "anti-government" extremism that we witnessed when a mob of Trump supporters attacked the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. But that is another story for another episode.

You have listened to TerrorTalks, a podcast about terror and radicalization.
This episode was written, produced and narrated by me, Natasja Engholm, while Jon Lobb voiced the men in the story. Also, a big thank you to consultant and journalist Lars Hvidberg, who contributed with sparring and wise thoughts. You will find the episode's sources in the show notes where ever you listen to your podcast. I would also appreciate it if you would give me a positive rating.
In the next episode, you can hear about an attack that shocked the Muslim world and changed the history of an entire country, especially for women. You can also follow TerrorTalk's social media on Instagram and Facebook, where you can see pictures from today's story