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CNN Live Saturday
McVeigh Will Be Moved to Holding Cell Before Sunday Morning
Aired June 09, 2001 - 17:12 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Timothy McVeigh is said to be keeping to himself as his date with death draws near. Sometime between now and Sunday morning, McVeigh will be moved from death row at the federal penitentiary at Terre Haute to the prison's so-called "death house." CNN's Susan Candiotti is there -- Susan.
SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello, Martin. As we wait for official word that Timothy McVeigh has been moved to a holding cell, McVeigh's lawyer tells me that his client has been spending this day in various ways. For example, he is spending this day calling his family, visualizing them, writing letters. McVeigh's lawyer also tells me that McVeigh's military training is what is helping him to prepare to die, in fact, that he is doing well.
So, now, a look back at this Gulf War hero who became the worst mass murderer in American history.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CANDIOTTI (voice-over): Without warning, Timothy McVeigh startled his father by joining the Army in May of 1988. He found himself at Fort Benning, Georgia, in basic training.
McVeigh took to Army life right away. He loved everything about it, the discipline, the toughening-up, the order. He set his sights on Special Forces and wearing a green beret.
DAVID DILLEY, MCVEIGH'S ARMY BUDDY: He was a perfectionist when it came to anything to do with the Army.
CANDIOTTI: David Dilley served in the Army with McVeigh and became one of his few friends there.
DILLEY: He was the best soldier I met when I was in the Army, by far. He -- everything we did, he excelled at. He was the best, always. And if he wasn't the first time we did it, the next time coming around he would be.
CANDIOTTI: He says for McVeigh, it was always about being prepared for the worst.
DILLEY: He believed in survivalism. He thought something was going to happen -- famine, war, I don't know, something -- some kind of catastrophe was going to happen, and he was going to be ready. CANDIOTTI: McVeigh was more than ready when he was called up for combat in the summer of 1990 for the Gulf War as part of the famed First Infantry Division, the Big Red One. McVeigh soon became a sergeant and a gunner in the 216th of Charlie Company on a Bradley fighting vehicle, which he named Bad Company, after a song by the '70s rock group of the same name.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
PAUL RODGERS, MUSICIAN (singing): With the gun, I make my final stand.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CANDIOTTI: When the war ended, he was one of a select group of soldiers assigned to protect General Schwarzkopf during the Iraqi surrender. McVeigh was awarded the Bronze Star for his war service and invited to try out for the Green Berets.
But McVeigh was out of shape when he returned from the Gulf War and refused to put off his tryout. The training was too physically demanding for McVeigh, and he washed out in three days. His once- bright military future was fading.
At the end of 1991, only nine months after the end of the Gulf War, McVeigh left the Army and returned home to Pendleton, angry, depressed, and even suicidal, according to McVeigh's biographers.
He started traveling to gun shows, buying and selling weapons, preaching a message like the one in "The Turner Diaries," a message about the evils of government.
His travels also took him to rural Michigan to visit the family farm of his old Army buddy, Terry Nichols. Nichols left the Army on a hardship discharge because his wife and children needed him at home. He never served in the Gulf War.
Nichols' brother James was running the farm and always welcomed Tim. They had all shared the same view of the government.
JAMES NICHOLS, TERRY NICHOLS' BROTHER: Government at its best is a necessary evil, at its worst is a tyrant.
CANDIOTTI: They also shared the same love of guns and fierce defense of the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, which they thought was being slowly eroded by an evil government.
McVeigh also traveled to Arizona to see another like-minded Army pal, Michael Fortier, who lived near Kingman, an area popular with militia members and where McVeigh felt comfortable.
In the summer of 1992, McVeigh was incensed by a standoff at Ruby Ridge, Idaho. FBI agents killed the wife and son of white separatist Randy Weaver, wanted for selling illegal sawed-off shotguns to police informants.
McVeigh saw the siege as a government plot by self-righteous federal agents to take guns away from the common man.
LOU MICHEL, CO-AUTHOR, "AMERICAN TERRORIST": He has an uncontrollable rage for the federal government. This was his war against the government for what he believed were intrusions on the civil rights of lawful gun owners. You have Waco.
CANDIOTTI: Waco, spring 1993, the federal government finds itself in a six-week standoff with the Branch Davidians and cult leader David Koresh over possession of illegal firearms. McVeigh pays a visit there to see what's happening. He tells a young reporter from Southern Methodist University the Waco standoff is just the beginning, as Americans will never give up their guns.
By April 19, federal agents storm the compound when the Davidians refuse to surrender. About 80 perish in a firestorm, including 21 children.
McVeigh watched the drama unfold on television back in Michigan, while visiting Terry and James Nichols.
NICHOLS: We stood there in disbelief, total disbelief. We knew what happened, that it was being burned on purpose.
CANDIOTTI: The government has always maintained it did not cause the bloodshed, but McVeigh believed government agents were murderers. Waco became the most defining moment in McVeigh's life. It was his battle cry.
MICHEL: Then in 1994, Congress was percolating with the assault ban weapon (sic) in the spring, and by the fall, September, President Clinton signed it into law. And at that point, he decided that he needed to go into a, quote, "action mode."
CANDIOTTI: Moving into that "action mode," McVeigh enlists the help of Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier to get materials for making a bomb, a bomb McVeigh wanted to use to teach the government a lesson it would never forget.
McVeigh wrote his sister Jennifer a haunting letter. "Something big is going to happen in the month of the Bull," the month of April.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CANDIOTTI: Timothy McVeigh is expected to make a final statement before his execution. His lawyer tells me that McVeigh's current plans include, to quote from a 1875 poem written by William Ernest Henley, that reads in part: "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."
The question is whether McVeigh will apologize, will he express any remorse -- Martin.
SAVIDGE: Susan Candiotti in Terre Haute, Indiana, thank you very much.
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