TIMOTHY McVEIGH, the Oklahoma City bomber, has hinted for the first time that he carried out the 1995 truck bombing in retaliation for the cult disaster in Waco, Texas. McVeigh has never before explained his motives for the attack that killed 168 people, including 19 children.
In a series of letters to a reporter, published in Esquire magazine, he has indicated that he was motivated by the FBI siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. The siege ended in a fire killing about 80 cult members in 1993, two years to the day before the Oklahoma blast.
“The public . . . didn’t care when these families died a slow, tortuous death at the hands of the FBI,” he wrote.
The prosecution at McVeigh’s trial alleged that he was motivated by Waco. McVeigh, 32, is due to die by lethal injection on May 16.