Was the Oklahoma City Bombing aTerrorist Act?Terrorism and Counterterrorism - Comparing Theory and Practice -Week 2 Assignment

Eric Vought

Write an essay that answers the following questions:What was the verdict of the judge: Were the terms terrorist and terrorism

used with regard to the perpetrator and the incident?Do you think this incident should be labelled terrorism, when looking at the

Academic Consensus Definition of terrorism by Alex Schmid? Write down whichelements of the Academic Consensus Definition you think are most relevant andwhich ones do not correspond to your chosen event at all.

The Oklahoma City Bombing occurred just after 9 AM on 19 April 1995when Timothy McVeigh detonated a truck full of explosives outside the MurrahP. Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (US). The explosion killed 168people, including 19 children in a day-care center, and left additional hundredsinjured. Terry Nichols assisted with the bombing, and the Fortiers were impli-cated in the conspiracy.1 In the context of the recent Chattanooga, Tennesseeshooting by Muhammad Youseff Abdulazeez, Glenn Greenwald points out boththe difficulty and importance of discerning whether a particular act is terroristin nature particularly when the targets are arguably combatants.2

Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were each charged with 11 federalcrimes in relation to the bombing and found guilty by the jury:

Conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction to kill people and destroyfederal property;

Using a weapon of mass destruction that caused death and injury; The malicious destruction of federal property by explosives; and Eight counts of first-degree murder of federal law enforcement officers.3

McVeigh was sentenced to death and Nichols to life imprisonment. None ofthe charges explicitly mention terrorism, although in the opening statements ofthe McVeigh trial, federal prosecutor Joseph Hartzler does refer to an act ofterror. In plain, simple language, it was an act of terror, violence, intend intended to serve selfish political purpose.4 Hartzler goes on to describe thepolitical motivations of McVeigh in exacting revenge on the US government for

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2the Waco and Ruby Ridge attacks. The motivations alleged by Hartzler matchthe literature found on McVeigh at his arrest5 and with the letter he wrote to FoxNews journalists immediately prior to his execution6. In that letter, McVeighclaimed that his actions were justified by a war with the US government whichprompted him to select the federal building (housing, among other things, anFBI office and the ATF.7

The fact that McVeigh chose to characterize his actions as an act of warmakes Alex Schmids early working definition of terrorism particularly appropri-ate, [i]f the core of war crimesdeliberate attacks on civilians, hostage takingand the killing of prisonersis extended to peacetime, we could simply defineacts of terrorism as peacetime equivalents of war crimes. 8 Even if wetake McVeighs justification at face value and were to accept that the federallaw enforcement were combatants, the fact that he placed the bomb directlyunder a daycare center9 would make the attack the equivalent of a war crimeand therefore qualify it as an act of terrorism by that definition. McVeigh alsoadmitted that he considered and discarded setting the bomb off at night whenfew casualties would be expected because that would not have the propagandaeffect he intended10 11. However, McVeigh contends that he did not know thatthe daycare center was there, did not see it during his scouting mission, andwould have changed the target location had he known12.

The Revised (2011) Academic Consensus Definition of Terrorism (ACDT)states:

Terrorism refers on the one hand to a doctrine about the presumedeffectiveness of a special form or tactic of fear-generating, coercivepolitical violence and, on the other hand, to a conspiratorial prac-tice of calculated, demonstrative, direct violent action without legalor moral restraints, targeting mainly civilians and non-combatants,performed for its propagandistic and psychological effects on variousaudiences and conflict parties.13

Schmid also expounds and numbers individual elements of his definition. McVeigh,with the help of Nichols (ACDT Element 3, Perpetrator), planned and executedthe premeditated (ACDT Element 9, Intent) violent attack (ACDT Element 5).McVeigh argues that he was attacking federal law enforcement. Of the 168 vic-tims, only 8 were law enforcement, leaving 160 civilians (19 children).14 Thismeets targeting mainly civilians and non-combatants.

Schmid also emphasizes the indirect effects of terrorism: the true target ofthe violence is not the direct victims, but the propaganda and psychologicaleffect on the audience (ACDT Element 7). As noted above, McVeigh rejectednight bombing to generate casualties for propaganda effect (ACDT Element 4).He also included this quote from the Turner Diaries (in reference to a fictionalattack on a federal office building) in the propaganda packet he expected au-thorities to find (ACDT Element 6, threat-based communication, and Element8, fear/dread):

The real value of our attacks today lies in the psychologicalimpact, not in the immediate casualties, Turner writes in his diary.

3More important, though, is what we taught the politicians and thebureaucrats. They learned this afternoon that not one of them isbeyond our reach. They can huddle behind barbed wire and tanks inthe city, and they can hide behind the concrete walls of their countryestates, but we can still find them and kill them.15

McVeigh argued that he was not restrained by moral limitations because hisenemy (the US government) recognized no such restraints at Waco, Ruby Ridgeand in Iraq.16 By characterizing his actions as a war, he acknowledged a widerdoctrine (ACDT Element 1) of unrestrained violence to right the wrongs heperceived (ACDT Element 2). ACDT Element 10 (Campaign) does not fit inthe sense that only one attack was executed, but it seems reasonable to concludefrom his letter and characterization of a war against the government, that hewould have conducted additional attacks if not captured and that he expectedhis attack to be a model for others to copy.

The bombing therefore fits the ACDT elements quite well but for the for-tuitous fact that the bomber was apprehended and others did not take up thecause. Even with the question of the legitimacy of federal law enforcement ascombatants, the act fits the overall definition of terrorism equally well.

Notes1Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Oklahoma City Bombing 20 Years Later. https:

//stories.fbi.gov/oklahoma-bombing/ (2015-07-07)2Glenn Greenwald. The Chattanooga Shootings: Can Attacking Military Sites of a

Nation at War be Terrorism? The Intercept. 17 July 2015. https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/17/can-attacking-military-sites-nation-war-terrorism/

3Ibid.4Joseph Hartzler. Opening statements of prosecutor Joseph Hartzler, April 24, 1997.

McVeigh Trial Homepage. University of Missouri at Kansas City. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcveigh/prosecutionopen.html (2015-07-07)

5Lou Michel and Dan Harbeck. American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the OklahomaCity Bombing. (United States: ReganBooks, 2001) 226-229.

6Rita Cosby. McVeighs Apr. 26 Letter to Fox News. Fox News. Thursday, April 26,2001. http://www.webcitation.org/5wow5v4MK

7Ibid.8United States Department of State, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 (Washington, DC:

Office of the Secretary of State, Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, April 2004),p. xii. Quoted in Joshua Sanai. How to Define Terrorism. Perspectives on Terrorism, vol.II, no. 4 (2008)

9FBI. The Oklahoma City Bombing 20 Years Later.10Cosby. McVeighs Apr. 26 Letter to Fox News.11Michel and Harbeck. American Terrorist. 22512Ibid. 188.13Alex P. Schmid. "The Definition of Terrorism" in The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism

Research edited by Alex Schmid, 39-157 (New York: Routledge, 2011) at 86.14FBI. The Oklahoma City Bombing 20 Years Later.15Michel & Harbeck. American Terrorist. 22816Cosby. McVeighs Apr. 26 Letter to Fox News.