Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh

by Wendy S. Painting

On February 26, another friendly fire incident during allied bombings killed seven U.S. Army soldiers. Ultimately, during the entire ground war alone, cluster munitions and ‘bomblets’ dropped from U.S. Air Force planes killed at least 14 U.S. troops and wounded an additional hundred. The February 16 incident raised the number of U.S. ‘friendly fire’ casualties to ten out of every fourteen deaths.

McVeigh told his attorneys he had sought treatment for PTSD, but each time, had decided not to pursue it as, “I [didn’t] want to be known as someone with a mental illness.” Further, like many others he felt treatment “was just an excuse, and that I should be able to handle it myself” (Jones Collection). I explore McVeigh’s attempts to get help for his post war difficulties in later chapters.

Eventually, in 1992, a Senate Committee investigation into the U.S.’s sales of unconventional weapons to Iraq issued a report entitled “U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq.”

all teeth, unexplained vomiting and diarrhea, strange moles, skin growths, blurred vision, fatigue, anxiety, ulcers and recurring skin scaled and skin tags. The available portion of medical records reflects that during his three years in the Army, McVeigh sought medical attention on more than seventy occasions for all of these symptoms.

The twenty-five most commonly reported symptoms of the Gulf War Syndrome are: fatigue, skin problems, rashes, memory loss, blackouts, joint pain, headaches, personality changes, diarrhea, muscle pain (weakness, spasms, tremors), pain (back, shoulder, neck, etc.), vision problems, shortness of breath, sleep disturbances, hair loss, numbness in the extremities, bleeding gums, reproductive problems, chest pain, abdominal pain, fever, nausea/vomiting, dizziness, nasal discharges, and sensory sensitivity.

Operations Aircrew?” Research Report. Air War College Air University Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. April 1995; Washington Post, July 2, 1995; New York Times, Dec. 31, 1995. An April 1995 research report by the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base details some of the desirable traits looked for in Special Forces candidates. Included among these were individuals of “above average intelligence,” and who tended to be “assertive; self-sufficient; …not extremely introverted or extroverted…not necessarily people who are emotionally stable” but who were “forthright,” “hard to fool, and not dependent on others.” The report discussed the use and function of psychological testing among the military’s ‘Special Operations’ units. The administering of these tests began in World War I. The purpose of the tests was to “weed out unacceptable draftees and identify potential offenders.” After World War II, the OSS (predecessor to the CIA) recognized the need to “eliminate ‘bad’ recruits” (spies) and so established a ‘school’ of psychologists and psychiatrists to develop better methods to do so. A bad recruit was, among other things, “stupid, apathetic, sullen, resentful, arrogant, or insulting.” Further, undesirables were “blabs…sloths, irritants, bad actors, and free talkers.” Those whom the intelligence communities valued displayed “motivation for assignment; energy and initiative; effective intelligence; emotional stability; social relations; leadership; and security” (3-10). Both...

interpersonal relationships, self-concepts, personality structures, responses to both internal and external stimuli, emotional adjustment and maturity levels, contact with reality, the ways in which conflicts are resolved and identify possible psychological dysfunctions including hypochondria, depression, hysteria, psychosis, paranoia, obsessiveness, mania, and introversion. Included as part of the evaluation were recruits reactions to at least five days of sleep deprivation.

While Jones does not discuss McVeigh’s strange claims to Otto and Coyle, he did write that after he was appointed to the case, Otto cryptically warned him, “When you know everything I know, Stephen, and you will soon enough, you will never think of the United States of America in the same way [again]” (Jones 1998:31).

David Hoffman. The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror Feral House Venice, California, 1998: 61,66, 361. To explain the term ‘Sheep Dipped,’ Hoffman quotes former CIA-DOD liaison L. Fletcher Prouty’s book, The Secret Team. Prouty wrote that Sheep Dipping “is an intricate Army-devised process by which a man who is in the service as a full career soldier or officer agrees to go through all the legal and official motions of resigning from the service. Then, rather than actually being released, his records are pulled from the Army personnel files and transferred to a special Army intelligence file. Substitute but nonetheless real appearing records are then processed, and the man ‘leaves’ the service” (61, 66,361).

Growing numbers of Americans gravitated towards conspiracy theories as a way to make sense of actual or suspected parallel, but unseen, realities and realms populated by shadowy government and institutional forces. According to commentator Peter Knight, writing in 1999, the language of conspiracy that dominated the decade and its related “canon” of conspiracy theories (common subjects of popular entertainment and historical revisionism) involved any number of federal agencies’ plots and cover-ups but of all the conspiracy theories that circulated, those about the 1960s “‘Lone nut’ assassinations were the cornerstone of skepticism toward government.” According to public opinion polls, in 1964, 87% of Americans accepted the Warren Commission’s official account of the JFK assassination. In 1993, 77-80% believed some type of government conspiracy was involved in the assassination of JFK, and in 1995, 90% rejected the notion that Oswald acted alone.

Even the government was skeptical of the government. In 1992, President Clinton requested that Webster Hubbell, possible Justice Department appointee, find the answers to two pressing questions: “Who killed JFK?” and “Are there UFO’s?”3 That same year, in order to help counter conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination, former president Gerald Ford, the only surviving member of the Warren Commission, requested that the CIA and House Select Committee on Assassinations publicly disclose all their files related to the murder which still remained classified.

Not surprisingly, the sponge-like McVeigh was an ardent X-Files fan, and after learning of the prosecution’s request to disqualify X-Files fans from the pool of potential jurors, he requested that his attorneys specifically include them on the jury and insisted that the defense jury-screening questionnaire include the question of whether or not potential jurors were fans of the X-Files. To illustrate his reasons, he had attorney Randy Coyne, who had never seen the show, record an episode and view it with him. McVeigh told Coyne the show was about “covert meetings in the night, secret goings-on” and focused on a “ghost government.” In a memo written to the other members of the defense team shortly after, Coyne said, “It is clear to me that the government will desperately try to keep all X-Files fans off Tim’s jury.” Coyne then attempted to explain the show to the rest of the team, telling them it was about two FBI agents who “find that the darker forces of evil are actually clandestine government officials and agencies.” Coyne added that as they watched the episode, McVeigh insisted on replaying one particular scene wherein Agent Scully chooses not to kill the person believed to have murdered her sister, and declares, “The truth is, no court, no punishment is ever enough.”

The turn of the millennium witnessed a spate of analysis by academic pundits of conspiracy theories. Some went so far as to claim that their proliferation had, by the 1990s, reached dangerous epidemic proportions and had “injected toxins into the public

discourse” resulting in a full-blown paranoid virus whose symptoms among the body politic included heightened public fear and widespread cynicism.5 Since then, a growing number have sought to move beyond the paranoid style thesis and, in doing so, have advanced more sympathetic takes on conspiracy theories themsel...

In 2009, historian Kathryn Olmstead built on the work of 1990s-era conspiracy theorists by examining why, exactly, such a large number of Americans believed their own government would engage in conspiracies against them and the relationship this belief had to actual conspiracies. She found that, despite their “seeming outlandishness” the wide array of conspiracy theories all had “at least one thing...

“because the most dangerous conspiracies and conspiracy theories flow from the center of American government, not from the margins of society.”

limits of acceptable belief and discourse by calling attention to the broader historical and socio-cultural contexts surrounding them. The very label “conspiracy theory” functioned not only as

description of a certain kind of narrative but also as a label deployed to disqualify certain topics from legitimate public discussion. The rash of criticism which followed the release of Stone’s JFK revealed that its subject and its claims stood in direct opposition to existing, yet often unperceived “regimes of truth.”

conspiracy theories and the often right-leaning groups who propagated them. The tinfoil hat wearing, pathological political paranoiac offenders typified by McVeigh, reportedly saw black helicopters everywhere they looked, fearing U.N. troops would soon round up U.S. citizens and relocate them in concentration camps as part of the ever-dreaded New World Order. Nearly overnight, the bombing transformed conspiracy theorists into possible terrorists and, eventually, the U.S. State Department concluded that these “subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation” caused terrorism.

This new batch of “folk devils” invigorated the paranoids’ counterparts, the debunkers, who, in 1996, said conspiracy theories had spun out of control and had “leaked into the real world and created havoc.” Built from “bad information” clogging the roads of the

emergent digital highway, they acted as “thought contagions” that spread “information diseases.” Works like JFK and the X-Files that “expose millions to their counter-narratives” now became a source of transmission for this disease. McVeigh and his ilk possessed a form of “dangerous knowledge” said to be infecting the mainstream on both the political left and right and a conspiratorial ideology that many now claimed led its adherents to commit hate crimes.

Guilty Agent; a witting undercover operative for shadowy defense agencies in a nationwide sting operation that resulted in the bombing.

Army personnel in an experiment called ‘MKUltra.’”

Some Experimental Wolf accounts depict Calspan, a defense establishment research facility where McVeigh briefly worked after leaving the Army, as instrumental in the bombing story. In such stories, Calspan becomes a staging ground for darker and more sinister tales wherein McVeigh acts as an unwitting puppet controlled by mysterious and faceless handlers, (often Jolly West), sanctioned and funded by government black budgets. In addition, while so-called credible mainstream commentators briefly note McVeigh’s assignment at Calspan, they view it as inconsequential to both the bombing and the ideology he harbored.

one chapter speculates about McVeigh’s possible experiences as a security guard at the Buffalo-based defense contractor. Constantine,

Culver described Dr. Jolly West, who, he reminded readers, also happened to be Jack Ruby’s former psychiatrist, was a “proponent” of mind control “biochips,” and therefore, McVeigh’s most likely mind-controller. In Culver’s theory, McVeigh’s handlers recruited him to be the “straw man” and “patsy” for the bombing based on his history of following orders and because they knew he would not ask too many questions about his mission. In keeping with the Experimental Wolf formula, Culver highlights the history of the CIA’s MKUltra program to justify his allegations about Dr. West. Although Culver notes that West denied rumors that he had examined McVeigh at Tinker AFB immediately after his arraignment, Culver dismisses the denial as just another part of the cover-up. According to Culver, McVeigh was probably guilty of, at the least, driving the Ryder truck. But behind the scenes and throughout “the entire operation,” he had been under the influence of brainwashing by puppeteers working at the behest of still other, invisible conspirators, whose motives included the demonization and targeting of militias and the passage of counter-terrorism legislation.

Skolnick’s estimation, McVeigh’s handlers include Iraqi military officers apparently evidenced by George Bush’s former business relationship with Saddam Hussein and his, Cheney’s and Hillary Clinton’s connections to a French company that sold chemicals to Iraq.

McVeigh himself entertained the possibility that his execution might be faked.

Only by the grace of his current Department of Defense security clearance status and New York state concealed pistol permit did McVeigh obtain a job, picking up where he had left off, working for $5 an hour as an armed security guard; this time for Burns International Security.

sometimes McVeigh confused appropriate civilian versus military protocols when interacting with the public.

Still, her observations were consistent with those of McVeigh’s friends, family, COHORTS and his legal team; all of whom noticed a unique character trait. His successes and ability to lead seemed to depend upon his having practiced, rehearsed, memorized and perfected with precision tasks required of him, but when unexpectedly asked to articulate what he knew or act spontaneously he had great difficulty, became impatient and got upset if things did not go by the book. Tim McVeigh’s real strength, they said, was in following orders; not necessarily giving or getting others to follow them, a trait that comes to bear on the bombing, his particular role in it and later construction of non-Lone Wolf theories and narratives about it.

When asked to elaborate on the exact nature of his political stresses, he responded, “It’s tough to offer examples of political stress at this point because it would take ten pages to explain, but they came from my heightened sense of awareness of what the news was really saying. The news would come on, and I would watch it. I was reading the papers more in depth than I used to, even.” Bill McVeigh corroborated this when he recalled the alarm he felt upon seeing his son’s recurring “outbursts,” yelling and throwing things at the television.

In late 1991 and early 1992, there was a lot in the news. Robert Gates became the director of the CIA. Lebanon released the last of U.S. hostages held there. A U.S. District Court cleared Col. Oliver North of all charges against him relating to the Iran-Contra debacle. Iraq rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding they allow U.N. weapons inspectors and other personnel unconditional access to their weapons facilities and prevented weapons inspectors from taking possession of documents relating to their nuclear weapons program, resulting in a four-day standoff. The International Atomic Energy Agency ordered Iraq to destroy all facilities manufacturing nuclear weapons and the last oil fire in Kuwait was extinguished much sooner than originally anticipated, through the amazing work of Red Adair and company.

After leaving the Army, he attempted to move on and put the past behind him by ignoring and trying to forget about his secret assignment but one day, a mysterious man unexpectedly arrived at the doorstep of his fathers house, reminded him of his obligations and warned that, if he failed to comply with his orders, he would face criminal charges.

His claimed belief of being tracked by the Army is absent from or under-emphasized and under-examined in all previously published accounts and remains an issue which, whether real or not, appears to play a very important part in the secret life of Timothy McVeigh.

Thus, although technically a demotion, he requested a transfer back to guard duty and, specifically, that he be assigned to Calspan, a local defense contractor whose main facility is located across from the Buffalo International Airport.

was secretly paid $2 more than his supervisors. The money, he said, had not been included in his regular paycheck, and instead, he picked it up at the Burns office so the other guards would not find

In one of the Calspan buildings, McVeigh discovered that the federal government was renting out space for a secretive law enforcement project called Operation North Star.

operated a secret drug interdiction program from office space at Calspan.

He claimed the document stated that mini submarines were bringing drugs into the country and that, quote, “dredging operations on the Mississippi River were to support the access of submarines into the United States of America.”

controlling targeted civilian populations by way of an integrated military and civilian police force whose roles and methods would be interchangeable

(i.e. police become more militarized and the military engages in civilian policing and domestic social-control functions). The Low Intensity Conflict goal was further outlined and advanced in the 1989 Defense Authorization Act (DAA), which defined the post-Cold War role of the military as one increasingly blended with civilian policing, justified by claims that the transport of illegal drugs over the border posed a “direct threat to the sovereignty and security of the country.”

Rangers. In 1989, under the authorization of the DAA, Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney initiated Operation Alliance, a Department of Defense-led effort based in Texas that, in coordination with federal, state, and local agencies, ostensibly attempted to facilitate a rapid response to the threat of illegal drugs, firearms and other contraband from crossing the U.S.-Mexican border.

While NORTHSTAR began as part of the counter-offensive in the War On Drugs, it came to take on national security and counter-terrorism functions as well.

The role of the National Guard in the new ‘total integration’ policy was significant and Guard troops could perform arrests and needed no warrant to search private property, including homes and automobiles.

In order to pursue the War on Drugs, the Clinton administration continued to erode existing Posse Comitatus restrictions. The “war model” or “military model” of crime control led not only to an increased militarization of civilian police, now greatly assisted by the military and operating with a “war mentality,” but also further use of the military in civilian law enforcement, intelligence and counter-intelligence operations. Justifications in the name of the drug war were somewhat nullified in the minds of some however, because of previous and more recent revelations of the CIA’s and military’s role in drug-smuggling operations.

As McVeigh guarded NORTHSTAR’s regional headquarters at Calspan, his other employer at the time, the National Guard, was coordinating with another multi-agency task force as well, this one headed by the FBI, called PATCON (short for Patriot Conspiracy). While McVeigh was seemingly aware that NORTHSTAR existed (although not necessarily under that name), PATCON’s existence was unknown to the public until 2007, when it was revealed through a Freedom Of

Information Act request (although many details surrounding...

In early April 1992, McVeigh requested a complete set of his military records including, among other things, a list of service related medals, awards, commendations, and his medical files. Then, on May 1, 1992, he wrote the letter to the NYNG requesting an early discharge, citing as his reason a “recent promotion at my full-time place of employment” that conflicted with his NYNG obligations. Attached to McVeigh’s letter was one written on his behalf the same day by his supervisor at Burns:

Immediately after his NYNG discharge McVeigh sought employment and took entrance exams with the very agencies