The Nineties: A Book

by Chuck Klosterman

On the morning of April 19, 1995, a wiry, inconspicuous twenty-six-year-old man drove a rented Ryder van into downtown Oklahoma City. The van contained 5,000 pounds of explosive material. He parked the vehicle near the entrance of the nine-story federal building, ignited a two-minute fuse, and walked away. The explosion would obliterate the government building’s front façade and cause half of the mid-rise structure to instantly collapse. It killed 168 people (including 19 children, most of whom were in the facility’s day care center). It occurred without any warning, in a city assumed to have no political significance (a detail that amplified the universality of the fear). The perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh, was an American citizen and a decorated military veteran. He’d served in the Gulf War and hated the government. His actions might have been easier to comprehend had he been visibly psychotic, but he was not: Up until his execution in 2001, he spoke of his attack with cogent, clinical language, sometimes writing essays that compared his act of domestic terrorism to memorable military assaults by sovereign nations. He expressed no remorse, once telling a journalist that his coming execution only meant the final score was “168 to 1.” He remained calm and composed while awaiting lethal injection, eating two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream as a final meal. The profile