Editing Timothy McVeigh (section)

==Oklahoma City bombing==
{{Main|Oklahoma City bombing}}
[[File:Oklahomacitybombing-DF-ST-98-01356.jpg|thumb|upright|The [[Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building]] two days after the [[Oklahoma City bombing]]]]
Working at a lakeside campground near McVeigh's old Army post, he and Nichols constructed an [[ANFO]] [[explosive device]] mounted in the back of a rented Ryder truck. The bomb consisted of about {{convert|5,000|lb|kg}} of ammonium nitrate and [[nitromethane]].

On April 19, 1995, McVeigh drove the truck to the front of the [[Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building]] just as its offices opened for the day. Before arriving, he stopped to light a two-minute fuse. At 09:02, a large explosion destroyed the north half of the building. It killed 168 people, including 19 children in the day care center on the second floor, and injured 684 others.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ok.gov/health2/documents/OKC_Bombing.pdf|title=Oklahoma City Bombing Injuries|publisher=[[Oklahoma State Department of Health]]|date=December 1998|access-date=August 9, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140518063448/http://www.ok.gov/health2/documents/OKC_Bombing.pdf|archive-date=May 18, 2014|url-status=live}}</ref>

McVeigh said that he had not known that there was a daycare center on the second floor, and that he might have chosen a different target if he had known about it.<ref>See Michel and Herbeck; cf. Walsh:</ref><ref name="vidal">{{cite book |author-link=Gore Vidal |last=Vidal |first=Gore |title=Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace |pages=1, 81 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oF0ZTJEHubcC |isbn=978-1902636382 |year=2002|publisher=Clairview }}</ref> Nichols said that he and McVeigh did know about the daycare center in the building, and that they did not care.<ref name="Global Terrorism Database">[http://209.232.239.37/gtd1/ViewIncident.aspx?id=6621 Global Terrorism Database] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080629211532/http://209.232.239.37/gtd1/ViewIncident.aspx?id=6621 |date=June 29, 2008}}</ref><ref name="washingtonpost.com">{{cite news |author1-last=Romano |author1-first=Lois |author2-first=Tom |author2-last=Kenworthy |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/oklahoma/stories/ok042597.htm |title=Prosecutor Paints McVeigh As 'Twisted' U.S. Terrorist |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=April 25, 1997 |page=A01 |access-date=September 16, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170917164253/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/oklahoma/stories/ok042597.htm |archive-date=September 17, 2017 |url-status=live }}</ref>

McVeigh's biographers, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, spoke with McVeigh in interviews totaling 75 hours. He said about the victims:
{{quote|To these people in Oklahoma who have lost a loved one, I'm sorry but it happens every day. You're not the first mother to lose a kid, or the first grandparent to lose a grandson or a granddaughter. It happens every day, somewhere in the world. I'm not going to go into that courtroom, curl into a fetal ball and cry just because the victims want me to do that.}}

During an interview in 2000 with [[Ed Bradley]] for television news magazine ''[[60 Minutes]]'', Bradley asked McVeigh for his reaction to the deaths of the nineteen children. McVeigh said: {{quote| I thought it was terrible that there were children in the building.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mcveigh-vents-on-60-minutes/|title=McVeigh Vents On '60 Minutes'|date=March 13, 2000|publisher=CBS News|access-date=November 18, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129043826/http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mcveigh-vents-on-60-minutes/|archive-date=2014-11-29|url-status=live}}</ref>}}

According to the Oklahoma City Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), more than 300 buildings in the city were damaged. More than 12,000 volunteers and rescue workers took part in the rescue, recovery and support operations following the bombing. In reference to theories that McVeigh had assistance from others, he responded with a well-known line from the film ''[[A Few Good Men]]'', "You can't handle the truth!" He added, "Because the truth is, I blew up the Murrah Building and isn't it kind of scary that one man could wreak this kind of hell?"<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/29/us/no-sympathy-for-dead-children-mcveigh-says.html | archive-url=https://archive.today/20120713080119/http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/29/us/no-sympathy-for-dead-children-mcveigh-says.html | url-status=live| archive-date=July 13, 2012 | work=The New York Times | title='No Sympathy' for Dead Children, McVeigh Says | first=Jo | last=Thomas | date=March 29, 2001 | access-date=March 28, 2010 }}</ref>