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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Day of Terror: Remembering the Oklahoma City Bombing

Aired April 18, 2005 - 22:00   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.


ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: I'm Erica Hill with your HEADLINE NEWS break. Coming up next, CNN presents "A Day of Terror: Remembering the Oklahoma City Bombing."
But first, al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty today to six counts of conspiracy in connection with the September 11th attacks. He plans to fight the death penalty. In a statement of facts presented at today's hearing, Moussaoui said Osama bin Laden had personally selected him to attack the White House with a commercial airliner.

California police have now arrested the woman who claims she found a finger in her Wendy's chili. They say it appears to be part of an elaborate hoax to bilk the fast food chain out of money. Anna Ayala is charged with attempted grand larceny. Police say they still don't know where that finger came from.

And in Florida, cameras rolling as part of a class project captured police handcuffing an unruly 5-year-old girl. She was tearing papers off a bulletin board, climbing on a table, and trying to punch an assistant principal before police were called. An attorney for the girl's mother says he plans to take legal action against the officers.

And that is the latest from HEADLINE NEWS. I'm Erica Hill. Now, CNN's coverage of "The Day of Terror: Remembering the Oklahoma City Bombing."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AARON BROWN, HOST (voice-over): April 19th, 1995.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got a critical.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People running past us had blood all over them. I have never seen so much glass.

BROWN: Domestic terrorism strikes in the heartland of America.

The rescue.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was falling three floors, still in my chair but upside down.

BROWN: The arrest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He said "My weapon is loaded." and I said "Well, so is mine."

BROWN: The emotions.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was as though we entered the gates of hell.

BROWN: April 19th, 10 years later, in their own words, those who lived it then and now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Before September 11th, before Osama bin Laden, there was Oklahoma City, and there was Timothy McVeigh. Welcome to special coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing anniversary on NEWSNIGHT.

Ten years ago tonight, days after the bombing, rescue workers were still desperately searching for victims in the ghastly wreckage of the Murrah federal building. A truck bomb had ripped through that nine-story building and a day care center on the second floor. Hopes of finding any more survivors were fading.

April 19th of '95 changed the way Americans thought about terrorism. The attack killed 168 men, women and children. Hundreds of others were wounded. At the time, the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, a home grown terrorist attack.

A decade later, those who survived it, those who lost loved ones, those who helped in the rescues, and those who covered the catastrophe remember in chilling detail the day that changed the nation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: April 19th began very beautiful. It was a very beautiful spring morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The sky was kind of a turquoise blue. Right there at the sunrise there was some yellows and oranges as the sun crested the horizon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oklahoma's news, weather and traffic.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was listening to the radio, going through different stations, listening to different, you know, morning drive time, like I always did.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I went to work as I always did. And parked underneath the Murrah Building. I had scheduled a meeting with seven of my staff members.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I took the kids into daycare and I parked right in front of the Murrah Building every morning. It was just a normal, regular morning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was just like any normal routine.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It started out as a very good day. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy cow! About a third of the building has been blown away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got a critical!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Smoke and debris and fire on the ground. This is just devastating.

CARRIE HULSEY, FMR. KTOK-RADIO REPORTER: I've got three ambulances around me. There are fire crews. It (INAUDIBLE). People were running from the federal courthouse, falling out of the windows.

I was the first reporter on the scene at the Oklahoma City bombing.

I have just seen a man walking out of the building, he has blood on him from head to toe. There is glass covering this block.

At 9:02, I was right here at the stoplight at 4th and Harvey when the bombing occurred. And about 30 seconds after the bombing occurred, I was on the air and started reporting.

I was just at the stoplight when I heard a large boom and the ground literally moved beneath me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The roof has collapsed. We've got a lot of problems here.

HULSEY: It is an amazing sight. It's as if somebody came and sheered off an entire half of the building. Below it in the parking lot, all the cars are damaged and they're smoking. We are seeing injured people everywhere. Literally dozens of people that are bleeding. Some of them you can't even make them out.

AMY PETTY, TRAPPED SURVIVOR: I felt and heard just a tremendous roaring noise in my head, and everything went black. I could hear people screaming, and I heard my own self screaming. And I was screaming out "Jesus, help me." I thought maybe I'd been shot in the back of my head, was the first thing I thought. Maybe I'd been shot in the back of the head, and that I was falling to the floor. And actually, I was falling three floors. And it was hot and dark. I couldn't see anything. I was actually still in my chair but upside down. And I laid there trying to figure out whether I was dead or alive.

FLORENCE ROGERS, BOMBING SURVIVOR: I remember turning around and kind of leaning back in my chair. And I literally was all of a sudden just started to see the whole building blow up right in front of my eyes. Then all these girls just literally seconds were just gone. And my desk was just sitting at an angle ready to topple over into the hole where all those girls had fallen.

HULSEY: The ambulance crews are just working as fast and furious as they can, trying to get to these people and put them on stretchers and get them to the hospital. Everywhere you look, the buildings have been destroyed. It is really a chaotic situation. People are running around trying to find friends, and co-workers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm sorry. We can't go beyond.

HULSEY: You were on the first floor?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fifth floor.

HULSEY: Fifth floor. You (INAUDIBLE) right? You went under a table?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I went under the table when the ceiling started falling.

DR. BRIAN ESPE, TRAPPED SURVIVOR: I don't know how long after the rumbling stopped and the things stopped falling, when I looked around, I could see the sky, I could see across the street, were before there were walls on all four sides me. Now on three sides of me there were no walls. I was standing looking out the south side of the building, and somebody tapped me on the shoulder, and it was Mark Mulman, the fireman. He said, we're here to take you down. Thank God for Mark, because he talked me down that ladder every step of the way.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The building is (INAUDIBLE) and my moms in there.

ATF AGENT LUKE FRANEY, TRAPPED SURVIVOR: Somewhere around 10:20 to 10:30 is when I heard loud screams coming from outside of the building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go. Go.

FRANEY: I went to the rear wall, looked out the window. And I could see the rescue efforts that had been taking place down there were now ceased, and everyone was running from the building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a live picture. We are told there may be another explosion in the area right now. We don't know exactly what is happening. This is a live picture of people running to the north.

JON HANSEN, FMR. OKLAHOMA CITY ASSISTANT FIRE CHIEF: The call was made to evacuate the building. And we've got what we believed to be an explosive device that one of our crews just found in the building. And I could see Mark Michalic, who I had been talking to on the radio, one of the agents that I worked with in the office. I said, Mark, what's going on. And Mark said, hey, they think they found another bomb. They think it's going to go off. And try to find something sturdy to hang on to. Now, I will remember those words for the rest of my life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: See, they are asking everybody to move back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The explosive device that our crews found was a training device that one of the law enforcement agencies use. It wasn't an active device.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Authorities in this building behind me are coming across more bodies.

BERNARD SHAW, FORMER CNN ANCHOR: One of the emotions I had to deal with was rage, anger. As I sought to be a journalist, dispassionately covering a very emotional story.

For now, that's the latest from this tragic site.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have emergency workers walking around scratching their heads saying they couldn't even estimate the number of victims.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The ambulance would pull up, and multiple victims would pour out, adults, a couple of children. Cars would pull up and unload victims. And we would say, well, did you know him or her? They said, no, we just wanted to help.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: St. Anthony's Hospital has put out a call for trained medical help who can come in and help with the deluge of patients who arrived in the wake of this explosion.

THERESA GREEN, FMR KFOR-TV REPORTER: There was a sense that the first victims were probably those outside of the building, and that the next ones to come would be the badly injured who were in the building, and it would take some time to reach them. And I remember that sense of despair when it became more and more clear that there wouldn't be a second wave. There weren't going to be many lives to save. And that we probably lost a lot of people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was parked in that spot 30 minutes before the bomb went off.

BROWN: Coming up, the young victims.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My kids hadn't been at day care a half hour and they were dead.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you are just joining us, you are not watching some scene of international catastrophe. You are looking at your own backyard. Downtown Oklahoma City is in flames and smoke right now.

KATHY SANDERS, LOST GRANDCHILDREN CHASE AND COLTON: I looked up the street. I said, Edye, the babies, and I'll never forget the way her face just dropped, and she took off running.

EDYE SMITH LUCAS, LOST CHILDREN, CHASE AND COLTON: Every block I ran, I was like, please, be this building. I didn't want to keep running and not see anything horrible until I got to the Murrah Building, but that's what happened. And when we walked around to where the daycare had overhung the street, I mean, it was just gone. There was nothing left.

SANDERS: That's when my heart died. Edye crumbled to her knees, crying, my babies, my babies, and it was as though we entered the gates of hell.

LUCAS: Come back to me as fast as you can.

You brought a stick in the house?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Uh-huh.

LUCAS: The day of Chase and Colton's funeral, a rescue worker came up to me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I arrived, the boy had a pulse. It was very weak.

LUCAS: He dug through some rubble and found my son Colton.

I love you.

He said he held him for a while until he died.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a day care center in the building. That daycare center would have been devastated.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The employees were very happy about having their kids on site there, where they could feel more comfortable about where they were.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have babies in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One picture that has been sent around the world is the picture of a policeman bringing out one of the young victims.

JOHN AVERA, OKLAHOMA CITY POLICE (RET.): I heard a choking sound, a coughing sound, and we started digging in the place where we heard the noise coming from. We found a baby, and we got no vital signs, no life signs at all. So I just found a fireman and I told him I had a critical baby, could he take the baby from me, I need to go back inside. He put his hands out and took the baby from me.

DELORIS WATSON, GRANDMOTHER OF P.J. ALLEN: I felt that P.J. was alive. When I made it to Children's Hospital, they said, oh, he's been screaming and calling you. He had cuts and lacerations about his head. He had second and third degree burns over the upper 55 percent of his body. He had inhaled much of the gas from the bombing. His lungs were severely damaged, irreparable.

I'm so happy to go home.

At the time of the bombing, P.J. was 18 months.

P.J. ALLEN, OKLAHOMA BOMBING SURVIVOR: My name is P.J. Allen. I'm in the sixth grade. WATSON: He's 11 today.

ALLEN: I remember a lot of it. A long time ago I had asked why I had the thing in my neck and everybody else didn't. And that's how I figured it out. This is Albuterol. It opens up my lungs.

WATSON: P.J.'s lungs were so extremely damaged, they were burned, charred. He no longer had air pockets. So they had to perform a tracheotomy. On January 6th, 2004, his trach came out. And he was able to talk.

ALLEN: The bridge can carry a maximum of about 5,000 cars.

I don't like to be treated different from anyone else.

WATSON: I'll let you finish.

ALLEN: OK.

And if anybody else can do it I can do it, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you are by chance watching this program knowing that you've had a young child down at the hospital and have not been able to locate them, try calling University Hospital.

THU NGUYEN, FATHER OF CHRIS: About 10:00 or so, I found, there's a bombing in Oklahoma City, the downtown area, where I have my wife and my little boy.

PHUONG NGUYEN, MOTHER OF CHRIS: My co-worker come by and ask me, Phuong, is that your Christopher in that daycare in that federal building. I said, oh, my God, it is.

T. NGUYEN: And I stopped by the 7-11 on the way to downtown, and I bought some plastic bag with the intent to pick up my son's body.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is only 5-years-old -- but Christopher Nguyen is going through enough pain to last a lifetime.

CHRIS NGUYEN: When I see the pictures of me in the hospital in the bed, I see like a little boy covered in blood. And I just even at that 5-year-old age, to be hospitalized for something that serious, it's just depressing that there's someone out there who would do that. Some people say I should feel angry about it, but I just feel a sadness because so many people died for nothing. And it's just uncalled for. Killing so many people for just one cause or maybe none at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We mentioned to you earlier the little girl, they have not been able to connect her with her parents, we understand the little girl's name is Rebecca.

JIM DENNY, FATHER OF BRANDON AND REBECCA: The phone rang and it was Claudia. And she said a bomb went off at the federal building. Get down here right away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her 3 1/2-year-old brother Brandon, blue eyes, reddish blond hair, he is still missing.

CLAUDIA DENNY, MOTHER OF BRANDON AND REBECCA: I couldn't move because it was gone. Like my kids were gone. This is Rebecca five days after the explosion.

REBECCA DENNY, 12-YEARS-OLD: On my left side it was just all damaged. They had to do surgery on my face. I had 240 stitches in my face.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three-year-old Brandon Denny suffered serious brain injuries.

C. DENNY: First of all, they said he might not live. And second of all, if he does live, he will never walk or talk again. We proved them wrong. He walks, he talks, he runs. Through all his bad times, you never saw a more positive person. He was always smiling, always positive, even when he felt bad.

BROWN: Still ahead -- buried alive.

PETTY: I started screaming out for help. And one of the men said, I hear you, I hear you. He started yelling, we have a live one. We have a live one.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MELISSA WEBSTER, FMR. EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECH.: The flow of people just never stopped. There was always as soon as you bandaged one person, the next one was ready. People were in there just digging and digging. And we would find a purse, then we would find a body. I remember finding a little baby shoe. And I think at that point it was probably when it hit me the hardest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You look at that and you wonder how in the world would any kind of rescue worker be able to go in there and find somebody.

WEBSTER: You just wanted to feverishly dig, you to try to find a pocket of air or pocket somewhere where there were still live people and live babies and children. And you just didn't find it.

INSPECTOR JERRY FLOWERS, OKLAHOMA CITY POLICE: My partner and I, Steve and I ran directly into the building. You try to move around the steel rebar that held the concrete together was hanging out and sticking out, and protruding -- it is like walking through a gauntlet of pokers, if you will. These things were -- hit you in the head, hit you in the shoulder, stick you in the side, I mean, as you try to work your way through and it is dark. And we're wading through water and crawling up and over, and up and over boulders.

AVERA: We were close to having to be rescued many times when we first went into the building. The debris was deep. And we used the electric cables, actually the ropes to crawl over some of the debris, we had to keep our balance. Bringing people out, we did the same thing. We'd have to -- as we carry them out, we'd have to pull ourselves up and hold on to it. We carried these two ladies out. I saw people laying on the sidewalk, I saw blood running down the gutter.

TERRI SHAW, TRAPPED SURVIVOR: When I first came to, I thought, I'm dreaming. This has to be a dream. I guess I was down there for a couple hours. And somebody would come and my rear end was actually sticking -- that was the only thing, like a little hole.

FLOWERS: As I turned and looked right behind me just feet away, I saw a -- the back side of a person stuck in a wall. All I could see -- I knew it was a lady because she was screaming. I could hear her voice. As I walk over to her, I put my hand on her lower back. And I'm telling her, I'm going to get you out of here. There was no way in the world that I knew I was going to get that lady out.

T. SHAW: Well, they were trying to find some way to get me out. They didn't know how my body was positioned behind the wall I was in. There was so much rubble that got into my eyes, I couldn't see anything. And I just was screaming. Some people wanted me to like shut up because I wouldn't stop screaming. And the ambulance driver who drove me to the hospital said, let her scream all she wants to. It's the best sound I've heard all day.

PETTY: I heard voices off in the distance, men that were saying, you know, "This is where the daycare children should be. Let's split up." I started screaming out for help. And one of the men said "I hear you, I hear you." He started yelling "we have a live one, we have a live one!"

They had just begun trying to uncover my hand when another voice came up very frantic, and very panicked and said everybody pull out now, there's another bomb. Pull out now. Then, I think, the next part was the hardest part. And that's when I was alone and I was waiting for a second bomb. That was the hardest part. You know, the whole thing you hear other people talk about life flashing before their eyes, you know, when they're at death. You are thinking about your family and your friends and eternity. You're thinking about other things. And so I just prayed and I don't know how much time passed, but I heard voices coming back to me again. And so then they began the tedious work of uncovering me.

When they pulled me out, they said we're going to pull and it's going to hurt. And they did. They counted to three and they pulled and it hurt so bad. It was the best feeling I felt all day. I remember looking around and it looked like a war zone. But I'll never forget what it felt like to breathe in that first breath of fresh air.

WEBSTER: I went to take a shower because I was just filthy. And the water no sooner hit me till I just -- I lost it. I don't know what it was. But it was as soon as I got in the shower, I just started crying. And I bet I cried for the next hour. Because I finally let my emotions in. B. SHAW: I looked into the eyes of rescue workers, and the one impression that came back to me each time was the utter absolute grit of these people. Yes, we've been bombed. Yes, some of us have been murdered. Yes, we're bloody, but we are determined to survive. We're determined to help.

HANSEN: After that we're through with our search, the building will be turned over to the Oklahoma City Police Department.

There was obviously, a kind of relief, yet a let down when we had to call the operation off, knowing that we still had a couple people in the building. We knew where they were, we couldn't get to them because of the structural dynamics of the building. But, wow, it was tough. I mean, it was real tough to try to, especially, communicate that to the families of those victims, that the chances of us finding your loved ones alive were just almost gone toward the end of that effort.

FRANK KEATING, FMR OKLAHOMA GOVERNOR: The building was creaking, the building was dangerous and unstable. And that was an urban area. So they need to take the building down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I knew the two people that were still -- that the bodies that they still hadn't gotten out at that time. And that bothered me some. I knew they had to do it. I mean, I knew that they needed to do that.

HANSEN: I had the honor of standing by Philip and Ken Thompson (ph). They are the sons of Virginia Thompson who was left in the building. And that was an experience I'll never forget as long as I live.

KEATING: All of us got rather teary-eyed because we'd been so emotionally involved with this. But then once the smoke cleared and we could see that the symbol wasn't there, my reaction was to want to go and kick the material. Just kick it, like, you know, you're out of here. It's over. You know, this agony's behind us. We hated what had happened there. And to get it out of our psyche was a very good thing.

BROWN: When we return, the arrest.

CHARLES HANGER, OKLAHOMA HIGHWAY PATROL (RET.): He said my weapon is loaded, and I nudged him a little bit with the barrel of my weapon and I said, well, so is mine.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: I'm Erica Hill with your HEADLINE NEWS break. We'll return to CNN presents "A Day of Terror: Remembering the Oklahoma City Bombing" in just a moment. But first, let's get you caught up on the headlines.

The only person charged in the United States in connection with the September 11th attacks pleaded guilty today to six counts of conspiracy. In a statement of facts presented at the hearing for Zacarias Moussaoui, he said Osama bin Laden personally selected him to attack the White House with a commercial airliner.

Four top Army officers are being cleared of any wrongdoing in connection with prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Among them, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who became the senior commander in Iraq in 2003. The Army says the investigation found the allegations were unsubstantiated.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush is leading a U.S. delegation to the Vatican for the inaugural mass of Pope Benedict XVI this Sunday. This is the second high-profile international trip for Bush. In January, he was sent to tour tsunami damage by his brother, the president.

And that's a look at the headlines. I'm Erica Hill. We return you now to CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (on camera): Ten years ago tonight, Timothy McVeigh was in custody already. He'd already been charged with the bombing at the Murrah federal building here in Oklahoma City.

His arrest came just two days after the explosion ripped through the nine-story building. That was the 19th of April, 1995. One hundred and sixty-eight people, men, women and children, died that day.

It was an act of hatred that would shine a light on the shadowy world in which McVeigh lived. And it also changed the way we thought about the dangers close to home.

B. SHAW: We flew by chartered jet late at night the day of the bombing. As I looked at that building, with all the night lights on it, my only thought was, who could do this?

ELDON ELLIOTT, RYDER SHOP OWNER (RET.): He came in using a different name, put a deposit down to be able to rent a truck. He had a driver's license showing it was Bob Kling. He just seemed like an average, nice, young gentleman. There was nothing about him that would make you suspicious about anything. He was polite, and he wanted a 20-foot truck for what he was hauling. And he rented it to go to Omaha, Nebraska.

SGT. MIKE MCPHERSON, OKLAHOMA CITY POLICE: The truck bomb, there's going to be a crater right where it was sitting. We knew the bomb came up in the truck because that's where it was parked, right on the crater. It just disintegrated the truck. So, at that point you have to start looking at trying to identify the truck.

The rear axle of the truck had blown all the way in front of the Regency Towers. A car was pulling up there about the time of the explosion. And it had hit on the front of that. It was laying there in the street. I got to thinking, there's going to be a stamp number on that axle. We ended up getting the full confidential number on the truck. At that point I called the National Insurance Crime Bureau. They told me that the full V.I.N., that it was a Ryder truck. ELLIOTT: The vice president from Ryder called us, and he said that he was sure that that was the truck that was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing. Just couldn't hardly believe that it was.

HANGER: On the morning of April 19th, 1995, I stopped an old yellow Mercury Marquis for a traffic violation. He wasn't displaying a tag on the rear of his vehicle. When he got out of the car he looked like a clean cut young man that had a military-type appearance, a short hair cut. He also had a light windbreaker or jacket on. It was zipped up just slightly at the bottom.

But as he was removing his billfold from his right rear pocket, that jacket tightened up, and I could see a bulge under his left arm that appeared to me to be a weapon, and I grabbed the bulge on the outside of his jacket and instructed him to get his hands up and turn around. At the same time I was drawing my weapon and stuck it to the back of his head. He said, my weapon is loaded. I nudged him a little bit with the barrel of my weapon and I said, well, so is mine. It was just a routine traffic stop with an individual that happened to be carrying a weapon. I would have ticketed and let him go if he had not had that gun on his person. He would have been on down the road.

ELLIOTT: They brought the sketch artist in the next morning. My mechanic was sitting in there on break the whole time that he was in there on Monday, right close to him. So the mechanic made this sketch for him. I looked at it and said that looked just like him.

ATF AGENT MARK MICHALIC, OKLAHOMA CITY BOMB TASK FORCE: Agents in that area went around to all the hotels and everywhere they could showing these sketches, and asked if anybody would recognize him. It just so happens Mr. McVeigh had stayed in one of the hotels. He rented the truck under the name Bob Kling, but he registered in the hotel under his name.

HANGER: I had ran McVeigh's name, Social Security number, date of birth, also checked on the weapon. The morning I had arrested him I had ran all this information.

MICHALIC: If a person's name is checked through NCIC, there's a signature that's left in the system, and you can determine if somebody's name is actually ran at a certain time. And I called up, telephone rings, Nova County Sheriff's office. And I said, well, sheriff, here's the deal. Highway patrol locked up an old boy Wednesday morning after the bombing, and I think they brought him into your facility. And I think they brought him into your facility. Can you tell me if that's true? He said, sure, Mark, hold on.

HANGER: McVeigh was probably 15 to 20 minutes away from being released from the Noble County jail.

MICHALIC: About five minutes later he said, yeah, yeah, he's arrested. We brought him here into my jail. He said, as a matter of fact, we still got him. I said, you're kidding me? What's his name?

He said, Timothy James McVeigh. And I screamed, "we got him!" And the whole place just erupted. ELLIOTT: We was down at the Elks that evening and seen it on TV that he was arrested and brought out. And I said, that's the man.

HANGER: And you see that individual with that solemn, grimaced- looking face, and you wonder how anyone could have committed such a horrendous crime against innocent people.

BROWN: A terrorist talks, next.

STEPHEN JONES, MCVEIGH'S TRIAL ATTORNEY: He told me on the very first meeting, he said, I decided to do this. How he assembled the bomb. How he drove it to Oklahoma City.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JONES: At the time I was appointed, Tim McVeigh was being held in a federal prison in Oklahoma, in El Reno, Oklahoma. I went over and stuck out my hand. I said, Mr. McVeigh, my name is Stephen Jones, I'm a lawyer from Enid, Oklahoma. I've been appointed by the federal court to represent you. Shook his hand. And as I did, he said, "well, I heard you were coming."

I can only tell you about my conversation with Tim McVeigh now, because he clearly waived the attorney/client privilege, and the courts have so held.

On that morning, I listened to him virtually all day.

He told me in the very first meeting, he said, I decided to do this. He told me why he chose the Murrah building. Told me how he assembled the bomb, where he got the parts. How he drove it to Oklahoma City and parked on the way down in Blackwell, Oklahoma, came down the next morning. How he lit it when the bomb -- when the truck was paused briefly in front of the Regency towers, that he lit one of the fuses there and then lit another fuse and closed the door and walked away. He took 100 percent of the blame.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy cow!

JONES: Tim McVeigh considered himself a patriot. That was his conviction, that the government had overstepped. It killed people, violated the law. The law had failed to avenge the wrongful deaths of innocent people in Ruby Ridge and Mt. Carmel with the Branch Davidians.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This fire is really rolling now.

JONES: And that it was necessary to strike back in, say, the fashion of John Brown and Harper's Ferry.

HANGER: He had to know that there were children in that building. And I just cannot imagine anybody committing that kind of act against another human being.

JONES: At times he said he knew there was a daycare center there. At other times, he appeared to avoid that. I think that the death of the children was very uncomfortable for him. On one hand, he sought to rationalize it. On the other hand, it was beyond rationalization. And even Tim McVeigh knew that.

But I think the first time he said -- he just looked at me and he said, "children also died at Waco."

He assigned almost all responsibility to himself. I did this, I did that. Terry Nichols helped me with this or that, but he played down the role of Terry, played down the role of anyone else. I think he expected to be found guilty.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We got him!

JONES: He was not surprised by the return of the verdict finding him guilty, nor was he surprised that the jury voted death.

As I recall, we simply exchanged some brief, momentary remark, and then the marshals took him out.

HANGER: If anyone was ever deserving of the death penalty, it was Tim McVeigh.

PAUL HOWELL, VICTIMS WITNESS AT EXECUTION: They got us up about 6:30 that morning. We got in a van. We drove over to the chambers. We was the last ones to go in. They finally opened up the curtains, and he looked over, first of all, to his area where his lawyer was at. Then he turned his head towards us. And he only kept his head there just maybe 30 seconds or less. Enough time for me to see in his eyes -- kind of like dead eyes. There was no feeling whatsoever in the eyes.

In my own heart, I felt like the only way that we, my family or anybody else in the world that had been affected by it, the only way that we could get any peace was to watch him die.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was pronounced dead at 7:14.

JONES: I believe that Tim McVeigh was recruited, that he was not a mastermind. That's my best judgment, that there were others involved. Perhaps their role was more peripheral. Perhaps it could have been stronger. We will never know. Certainly, Tim McVeigh is beyond the ability to relate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Published report says Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols admitted last year to his role in the bombing.

NOLAN CLAY, REPORTER, "THE OKLAHOMAN": It was a confession. He wanted to avoid the death penalty here in Oklahoma. Nobody knew about it until well after the trial. He admitted in this that he was involved in the buying of the materials and that he helped build the bomb, even siphoning diesel fuel out of his own truck when they ran out of racing fuel. It was, I did this, I did that, I was involved in the actual making. And he -- they asked -- prosecutors asked him if he knew of anybody else involved. And he said he did not. B. SHAW: This act of terrorism, this snuffing out of lives, was an unimaginable slap in the face. And the slap was, this can happen. This did happen. Regrettably, possibly, this can happen again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had some kind of an explosion downtown.

BROWN: When we come back, 10 years after, how people are coping.

B. SHAW: I believe you never heal from something like this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The explosion went off around 9:00 a.m. (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stretcher!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out from under the desk and there just wasn't any building left around me.

B. SHAW: People talk about the healing process as if you can take a shower after you've exercised outside on a hot day. I believe you never heal from something like this.

HULSEY: I did lose something that day. It wasn't a family member, but it was that realization that you always grow up thinking nothing's going to happen to you, nothing bad. And that's gone.

C. NGUYEN: I don't know if I consider it exactly lucky, because even though I'm a survivor with the other kids, I have to deal with thinking about why we're here and they're not. And we were all in the building at the same time. Even if we were in different places, we were in the building. And they're dead and we're not. So I have to suffer with that, because it's like a burden.

ALLEN: I think that if God could save me from second- and third- degree burns and a broken arm, since all those other people died, and out of six survivors, God saved me and those other five, he must have something special planned for all six of us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just can't imagine it. There's just bodies laying everywhere. There's people just laying there screaming, trying to get out. I've helped rescue several bodies of a bunch of babies that we've had to drag out. It is just a real gruesome sight.

LUCAS: Certainly a stark reminder of all the people who died here. And it's sad to me just to think that that's what's left for my children. You know, the daycare that they loved. Now they have these two chairs, and that's it.

Whenever I pray about it, I always ask God to tell them I said hi. That's the main thing, like just tell them I said hi and that I love them. And you know, I don't know what happens to children when they die. I don't know if they become adults when they go to heaven. I'm not sure about those kinds of things, but I know that they're safe and they're happy and they're watching out for us. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had some kind of an explosion downtown.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you give me a location?

PETTY: During the time that I was trapped and I was thinking about my life, I thought about the fact that my husband and I didn't have any children. Because at that point, I'm thinking, OK, this is it, my life is over, I'm dying. And I never had a child. And it really bothered me. So, after the bombing and I had this second chance at life, we really rethought the whole no children thing. And I got pregnant. And I have a wonderful 5-year-old that's just absolutely changed my life.

I don't look forward to the day when I have to explain to him what happened to me and what kind of world we live in. Because right now he thinks everybody is good and everybody is wonderful.

FLOWERS: People change and people move on, but I can tell you personally from my standpoint, my grandkids' grandkids will know as much as I know right now. They won't have all the feelings that I've got, but they're going to know what happened on that day of April the 19th. They're going to know the people that lost their lives down there that day as an act of domestic terrorism. And they're going to know that evil is real in this world.

GREEN: Ten years and I still get emotional.

What I want to say is it's not -- an awful thing happened. A really, really horrible thing happened here. And yet, what struck me and what sticks with me is that all of these wonderful things happened, that all of these people stepped up. They didn't have to.

KEATING: Within that community, it was a source of pride, that we did this so well, we love our neighbors so well. We could come together so well as a people. How can good come out of evil? Sometimes it does. In this case, I think good very definitely came out of evil.

C. NGUYEN: Most people should know that life is just too short to live in hatred, because you need it to get what you can out of life while you have the chance.

B. SHAW: You never recover from something like this. How can you? You don't heal. You contend, you cope, you live, but I don't believe you heal. I think there's an indelible scar in the mind and on the heart.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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Aired April 18, 2005 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ERICA HILL, HEADLINE NEWS ANCHOR: I'm Erica Hill with your HEADLINE NEWS break. Coming up next, CNN presents "A Day of Terror: Remembering the Oklahoma City Bombing."
But first, al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui pleaded guilty today to six counts of conspiracy in connection with the September 11th attacks. He plans to fight the death penalty. In a statement of facts presented at today's hearing, Moussaoui said Osama bin Laden had personally selected him to attack the White House with a commercial airliner.

California police have now arrested the woman who claims she found a finger in her Wendy's chili. They say it appears to be part of an elaborate hoax to bilk the fast food chain out of money. Anna Ayala is charged with attempted grand larceny. Police say they still don't know where that finger came from.

And in Florida, cameras rolling as part of a class project captured police handcuffing an unruly 5-year-old girl. She was tearing papers off a bulletin board, climbing on a table, and trying to punch an assistant principal before police were called. An attorney for the girl's mother says he plans to take legal action against the officers.

And that is the latest from HEADLINE NEWS. I'm Erica Hill. Now, CNN's coverage of "The Day of Terror: Remembering the Oklahoma City Bombing."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AARON BROWN, HOST (voice-over): April 19th, 1995.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got a critical.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People running past us had blood all over them. I have never seen so much glass.

BROWN: Domestic terrorism strikes in the heartland of America.

The rescue.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was falling three floors, still in my chair but upside down.

BROWN: The arrest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He said "My weapon is loaded." and I said "Well, so is mine."

BROWN: The emotions.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was as though we entered the gates of hell.

BROWN: April 19th, 10 years later, in their own words, those who lived it then and now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Before September 11th, before Osama bin Laden, there was Oklahoma City, and there was Timothy McVeigh. Welcome to special coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing anniversary on NEWSNIGHT.

Ten years ago tonight, days after the bombing, rescue workers were still desperately searching for victims in the ghastly wreckage of the Murrah federal building. A truck bomb had ripped through that nine-story building and a day care center on the second floor. Hopes of finding any more survivors were fading.

April 19th of '95 changed the way Americans thought about terrorism. The attack killed 168 men, women and children. Hundreds of others were wounded. At the time, the worst terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil, a home grown terrorist attack.

A decade later, those who survived it, those who lost loved ones, those who helped in the rescues, and those who covered the catastrophe remember in chilling detail the day that changed the nation.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: April 19th began very beautiful. It was a very beautiful spring morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The sky was kind of a turquoise blue. Right there at the sunrise there was some yellows and oranges as the sun crested the horizon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oklahoma's news, weather and traffic.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was listening to the radio, going through different stations, listening to different, you know, morning drive time, like I always did.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I went to work as I always did. And parked underneath the Murrah Building. I had scheduled a meeting with seven of my staff members.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I took the kids into daycare and I parked right in front of the Murrah Building every morning. It was just a normal, regular morning.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was just like any normal routine.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It started out as a very good day. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy cow! About a third of the building has been blown away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got a critical!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Smoke and debris and fire on the ground. This is just devastating.

CARRIE HULSEY, FMR. KTOK-RADIO REPORTER: I've got three ambulances around me. There are fire crews. It (INAUDIBLE). People were running from the federal courthouse, falling out of the windows.

I was the first reporter on the scene at the Oklahoma City bombing.

I have just seen a man walking out of the building, he has blood on him from head to toe. There is glass covering this block.

At 9:02, I was right here at the stoplight at 4th and Harvey when the bombing occurred. And about 30 seconds after the bombing occurred, I was on the air and started reporting.

I was just at the stoplight when I heard a large boom and the ground literally moved beneath me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The roof has collapsed. We've got a lot of problems here.

HULSEY: It is an amazing sight. It's as if somebody came and sheered off an entire half of the building. Below it in the parking lot, all the cars are damaged and they're smoking. We are seeing injured people everywhere. Literally dozens of people that are bleeding. Some of them you can't even make them out.

AMY PETTY, TRAPPED SURVIVOR: I felt and heard just a tremendous roaring noise in my head, and everything went black. I could hear people screaming, and I heard my own self screaming. And I was screaming out "Jesus, help me." I thought maybe I'd been shot in the back of my head, was the first thing I thought. Maybe I'd been shot in the back of the head, and that I was falling to the floor. And actually, I was falling three floors. And it was hot and dark. I couldn't see anything. I was actually still in my chair but upside down. And I laid there trying to figure out whether I was dead or alive.

FLORENCE ROGERS, BOMBING SURVIVOR: I remember turning around and kind of leaning back in my chair. And I literally was all of a sudden just started to see the whole building blow up right in front of my eyes. Then all these girls just literally seconds were just gone. And my desk was just sitting at an angle ready to topple over into the hole where all those girls had fallen.

HULSEY: The ambulance crews are just working as fast and furious as they can, trying to get to these people and put them on stretchers and get them to the hospital. Everywhere you look, the buildings have been destroyed. It is really a chaotic situation. People are running around trying to find friends, and co-workers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm sorry. We can't go beyond.

HULSEY: You were on the first floor?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fifth floor.

HULSEY: Fifth floor. You (INAUDIBLE) right? You went under a table?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I went under the table when the ceiling started falling.

DR. BRIAN ESPE, TRAPPED SURVIVOR: I don't know how long after the rumbling stopped and the things stopped falling, when I looked around, I could see the sky, I could see across the street, were before there were walls on all four sides me. Now on three sides of me there were no walls. I was standing looking out the south side of the building, and somebody tapped me on the shoulder, and it was Mark Mulman, the fireman. He said, we're here to take you down. Thank God for Mark, because he talked me down that ladder every step of the way.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The building is (INAUDIBLE) and my moms in there.

ATF AGENT LUKE FRANEY, TRAPPED SURVIVOR: Somewhere around 10:20 to 10:30 is when I heard loud screams coming from outside of the building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go. Go.

FRANEY: I went to the rear wall, looked out the window. And I could see the rescue efforts that had been taking place down there were now ceased, and everyone was running from the building.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have a live picture. We are told there may be another explosion in the area right now. We don't know exactly what is happening. This is a live picture of people running to the north.

JON HANSEN, FMR. OKLAHOMA CITY ASSISTANT FIRE CHIEF: The call was made to evacuate the building. And we've got what we believed to be an explosive device that one of our crews just found in the building. And I could see Mark Michalic, who I had been talking to on the radio, one of the agents that I worked with in the office. I said, Mark, what's going on. And Mark said, hey, they think they found another bomb. They think it's going to go off. And try to find something sturdy to hang on to. Now, I will remember those words for the rest of my life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: See, they are asking everybody to move back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The explosive device that our crews found was a training device that one of the law enforcement agencies use. It wasn't an active device.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Authorities in this building behind me are coming across more bodies.

BERNARD SHAW, FORMER CNN ANCHOR: One of the emotions I had to deal with was rage, anger. As I sought to be a journalist, dispassionately covering a very emotional story.

For now, that's the latest from this tragic site.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have emergency workers walking around scratching their heads saying they couldn't even estimate the number of victims.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The ambulance would pull up, and multiple victims would pour out, adults, a couple of children. Cars would pull up and unload victims. And we would say, well, did you know him or her? They said, no, we just wanted to help.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: St. Anthony's Hospital has put out a call for trained medical help who can come in and help with the deluge of patients who arrived in the wake of this explosion.

THERESA GREEN, FMR KFOR-TV REPORTER: There was a sense that the first victims were probably those outside of the building, and that the next ones to come would be the badly injured who were in the building, and it would take some time to reach them. And I remember that sense of despair when it became more and more clear that there wouldn't be a second wave. There weren't going to be many lives to save. And that we probably lost a lot of people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I was parked in that spot 30 minutes before the bomb went off.

BROWN: Coming up, the young victims.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My kids hadn't been at day care a half hour and they were dead.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you are just joining us, you are not watching some scene of international catastrophe. You are looking at your own backyard. Downtown Oklahoma City is in flames and smoke right now.

KATHY SANDERS, LOST GRANDCHILDREN CHASE AND COLTON: I looked up the street. I said, Edye, the babies, and I'll never forget the way her face just dropped, and she took off running.

EDYE SMITH LUCAS, LOST CHILDREN, CHASE AND COLTON: Every block I ran, I was like, please, be this building. I didn't want to keep running and not see anything horrible until I got to the Murrah Building, but that's what happened. And when we walked around to where the daycare had overhung the street, I mean, it was just gone. There was nothing left.

SANDERS: That's when my heart died. Edye crumbled to her knees, crying, my babies, my babies, and it was as though we entered the gates of hell.

LUCAS: Come back to me as fast as you can.

You brought a stick in the house?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Uh-huh.

LUCAS: The day of Chase and Colton's funeral, a rescue worker came up to me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When I arrived, the boy had a pulse. It was very weak.

LUCAS: He dug through some rubble and found my son Colton.

I love you.

He said he held him for a while until he died.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is a day care center in the building. That daycare center would have been devastated.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The employees were very happy about having their kids on site there, where they could feel more comfortable about where they were.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I have babies in there.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One picture that has been sent around the world is the picture of a policeman bringing out one of the young victims.

JOHN AVERA, OKLAHOMA CITY POLICE (RET.): I heard a choking sound, a coughing sound, and we started digging in the place where we heard the noise coming from. We found a baby, and we got no vital signs, no life signs at all. So I just found a fireman and I told him I had a critical baby, could he take the baby from me, I need to go back inside. He put his hands out and took the baby from me.

DELORIS WATSON, GRANDMOTHER OF P.J. ALLEN: I felt that P.J. was alive. When I made it to Children's Hospital, they said, oh, he's been screaming and calling you. He had cuts and lacerations about his head. He had second and third degree burns over the upper 55 percent of his body. He had inhaled much of the gas from the bombing. His lungs were severely damaged, irreparable.

I'm so happy to go home.

At the time of the bombing, P.J. was 18 months.

P.J. ALLEN, OKLAHOMA BOMBING SURVIVOR: My name is P.J. Allen. I'm in the sixth grade. WATSON: He's 11 today.

ALLEN: I remember a lot of it. A long time ago I had asked why I had the thing in my neck and everybody else didn't. And that's how I figured it out. This is Albuterol. It opens up my lungs.

WATSON: P.J.'s lungs were so extremely damaged, they were burned, charred. He no longer had air pockets. So they had to perform a tracheotomy. On January 6th, 2004, his trach came out. And he was able to talk.

ALLEN: The bridge can carry a maximum of about 5,000 cars.

I don't like to be treated different from anyone else.

WATSON: I'll let you finish.

ALLEN: OK.

And if anybody else can do it I can do it, too.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If you are by chance watching this program knowing that you've had a young child down at the hospital and have not been able to locate them, try calling University Hospital.

THU NGUYEN, FATHER OF CHRIS: About 10:00 or so, I found, there's a bombing in Oklahoma City, the downtown area, where I have my wife and my little boy.

PHUONG NGUYEN, MOTHER OF CHRIS: My co-worker come by and ask me, Phuong, is that your Christopher in that daycare in that federal building. I said, oh, my God, it is.

T. NGUYEN: And I stopped by the 7-11 on the way to downtown, and I bought some plastic bag with the intent to pick up my son's body.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He is only 5-years-old -- but Christopher Nguyen is going through enough pain to last a lifetime.

CHRIS NGUYEN: When I see the pictures of me in the hospital in the bed, I see like a little boy covered in blood. And I just even at that 5-year-old age, to be hospitalized for something that serious, it's just depressing that there's someone out there who would do that. Some people say I should feel angry about it, but I just feel a sadness because so many people died for nothing. And it's just uncalled for. Killing so many people for just one cause or maybe none at all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We mentioned to you earlier the little girl, they have not been able to connect her with her parents, we understand the little girl's name is Rebecca.

JIM DENNY, FATHER OF BRANDON AND REBECCA: The phone rang and it was Claudia. And she said a bomb went off at the federal building. Get down here right away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Her 3 1/2-year-old brother Brandon, blue eyes, reddish blond hair, he is still missing.

CLAUDIA DENNY, MOTHER OF BRANDON AND REBECCA: I couldn't move because it was gone. Like my kids were gone. This is Rebecca five days after the explosion.

REBECCA DENNY, 12-YEARS-OLD: On my left side it was just all damaged. They had to do surgery on my face. I had 240 stitches in my face.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three-year-old Brandon Denny suffered serious brain injuries.

C. DENNY: First of all, they said he might not live. And second of all, if he does live, he will never walk or talk again. We proved them wrong. He walks, he talks, he runs. Through all his bad times, you never saw a more positive person. He was always smiling, always positive, even when he felt bad.

BROWN: Still ahead -- buried alive.

PETTY: I started screaming out for help. And one of the men said, I hear you, I hear you. He started yelling, we have a live one. We have a live one.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MELISSA WEBSTER, FMR. EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECH.: The flow of people just never stopped. There was always as soon as you bandaged one person, the next one was ready. People were in there just digging and digging. And we would find a purse, then we would find a body. I remember finding a little baby shoe. And I think at that point it was probably when it hit me the hardest.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You look at that and you wonder how in the world would any kind of rescue worker be able to go in there and find somebody.

WEBSTER: You just wanted to feverishly dig, you to try to find a pocket of air or pocket somewhere where there were still live people and live babies and children. And you just didn't find it.

INSPECTOR JERRY FLOWERS, OKLAHOMA CITY POLICE: My partner and I, Steve and I ran directly into the building. You try to move around the steel rebar that held the concrete together was hanging out and sticking out, and protruding -- it is like walking through a gauntlet of pokers, if you will. These things were -- hit you in the head, hit you in the shoulder, stick you in the side, I mean, as you try to work your way through and it is dark. And we're wading through water and crawling up and over, and up and over boulders.

AVERA: We were close to having to be rescued many times when we first went into the building. The debris was deep. And we used the electric cables, actually the ropes to crawl over some of the debris, we had to keep our balance. Bringing people out, we did the same thing. We'd have to -- as we carry them out, we'd have to pull ourselves up and hold on to it. We carried these two ladies out. I saw people laying on the sidewalk, I saw blood running down the gutter.

TERRI SHAW, TRAPPED SURVIVOR: When I first came to, I thought, I'm dreaming. This has to be a dream. I guess I was down there for a couple hours. And somebody would come and my rear end was actually sticking -- that was the only thing, like a little hole.

FLOWERS: As I turned and looked right behind me just feet away, I saw a -- the back side of a person stuck in a wall. All I could see -- I knew it was a lady because she was screaming. I could hear her voice. As I walk over to her, I put my hand on her lower back. And I'm telling her, I'm going to get you out of here. There was no way in the world that I knew I was going to get that lady out.

T. SHAW: Well, they were trying to find some way to get me out. They didn't know how my body was positioned behind the wall I was in. There was so much rubble that got into my eyes, I couldn't see anything. And I just was screaming. Some people wanted me to like shut up because I wouldn't stop screaming. And the ambulance driver who drove me to the hospital said, let her scream all she wants to. It's the best sound I've heard all day.

PETTY: I heard voices off in the distance, men that were saying, you know, "This is where the daycare children should be. Let's split up." I started screaming out for help. And one of the men said "I hear you, I hear you." He started yelling "we have a live one, we have a live one!"

They had just begun trying to uncover my hand when another voice came up very frantic, and very panicked and said everybody pull out now, there's another bomb. Pull out now. Then, I think, the next part was the hardest part. And that's when I was alone and I was waiting for a second bomb. That was the hardest part. You know, the whole thing you hear other people talk about life flashing before their eyes, you know, when they're at death. You are thinking about your family and your friends and eternity. You're thinking about other things. And so I just prayed and I don't know how much time passed, but I heard voices coming back to me again. And so then they began the tedious work of uncovering me.

When they pulled me out, they said we're going to pull and it's going to hurt. And they did. They counted to three and they pulled and it hurt so bad. It was the best feeling I felt all day. I remember looking around and it looked like a war zone. But I'll never forget what it felt like to breathe in that first breath of fresh air.

WEBSTER: I went to take a shower because I was just filthy. And the water no sooner hit me till I just -- I lost it. I don't know what it was. But it was as soon as I got in the shower, I just started crying. And I bet I cried for the next hour. Because I finally let my emotions in. B. SHAW: I looked into the eyes of rescue workers, and the one impression that came back to me each time was the utter absolute grit of these people. Yes, we've been bombed. Yes, some of us have been murdered. Yes, we're bloody, but we are determined to survive. We're determined to help.

HANSEN: After that we're through with our search, the building will be turned over to the Oklahoma City Police Department.

There was obviously, a kind of relief, yet a let down when we had to call the operation off, knowing that we still had a couple people in the building. We knew where they were, we couldn't get to them because of the structural dynamics of the building. But, wow, it was tough. I mean, it was real tough to try to, especially, communicate that to the families of those victims, that the chances of us finding your loved ones alive were just almost gone toward the end of that effort.

FRANK KEATING, FMR OKLAHOMA GOVERNOR: The building was creaking, the building was dangerous and unstable. And that was an urban area. So they need to take the building down.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I knew the two people that were still -- that the bodies that they still hadn't gotten out at that time. And that bothered me some. I knew they had to do it. I mean, I knew that they needed to do that.

HANSEN: I had the honor of standing by Philip and Ken Thompson (ph). They are the sons of Virginia Thompson who was left in the building. And that was an experience I'll never forget as long as I live.

KEATING: All of us got rather teary-eyed because we'd been so emotionally involved with this. But then once the smoke cleared and we could see that the symbol wasn't there, my reaction was to want to go and kick the material. Just kick it, like, you know, you're out of here. It's over. You know, this agony's behind us. We hated what had happened there. And to get it out of our psyche was a very good thing.

BROWN: When we return, the arrest.

CHARLES HANGER, OKLAHOMA HIGHWAY PATROL (RET.): He said my weapon is loaded, and I nudged him a little bit with the barrel of my weapon and I said, well, so is mine.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HILL: I'm Erica Hill with your HEADLINE NEWS break. We'll return to CNN presents "A Day of Terror: Remembering the Oklahoma City Bombing" in just a moment. But first, let's get you caught up on the headlines.

The only person charged in the United States in connection with the September 11th attacks pleaded guilty today to six counts of conspiracy. In a statement of facts presented at the hearing for Zacarias Moussaoui, he said Osama bin Laden personally selected him to attack the White House with a commercial airliner.

Four top Army officers are being cleared of any wrongdoing in connection with prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Among them, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, who became the senior commander in Iraq in 2003. The Army says the investigation found the allegations were unsubstantiated.

Florida Governor Jeb Bush is leading a U.S. delegation to the Vatican for the inaugural mass of Pope Benedict XVI this Sunday. This is the second high-profile international trip for Bush. In January, he was sent to tour tsunami damage by his brother, the president.

And that's a look at the headlines. I'm Erica Hill. We return you now to CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN (on camera): Ten years ago tonight, Timothy McVeigh was in custody already. He'd already been charged with the bombing at the Murrah federal building here in Oklahoma City.

His arrest came just two days after the explosion ripped through the nine-story building. That was the 19th of April, 1995. One hundred and sixty-eight people, men, women and children, died that day.

It was an act of hatred that would shine a light on the shadowy world in which McVeigh lived. And it also changed the way we thought about the dangers close to home.

B. SHAW: We flew by chartered jet late at night the day of the bombing. As I looked at that building, with all the night lights on it, my only thought was, who could do this?

ELDON ELLIOTT, RYDER SHOP OWNER (RET.): He came in using a different name, put a deposit down to be able to rent a truck. He had a driver's license showing it was Bob Kling. He just seemed like an average, nice, young gentleman. There was nothing about him that would make you suspicious about anything. He was polite, and he wanted a 20-foot truck for what he was hauling. And he rented it to go to Omaha, Nebraska.

SGT. MIKE MCPHERSON, OKLAHOMA CITY POLICE: The truck bomb, there's going to be a crater right where it was sitting. We knew the bomb came up in the truck because that's where it was parked, right on the crater. It just disintegrated the truck. So, at that point you have to start looking at trying to identify the truck.

The rear axle of the truck had blown all the way in front of the Regency Towers. A car was pulling up there about the time of the explosion. And it had hit on the front of that. It was laying there in the street. I got to thinking, there's going to be a stamp number on that axle. We ended up getting the full confidential number on the truck. At that point I called the National Insurance Crime Bureau. They told me that the full V.I.N., that it was a Ryder truck. ELLIOTT: The vice president from Ryder called us, and he said that he was sure that that was the truck that was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing. Just couldn't hardly believe that it was.

HANGER: On the morning of April 19th, 1995, I stopped an old yellow Mercury Marquis for a traffic violation. He wasn't displaying a tag on the rear of his vehicle. When he got out of the car he looked like a clean cut young man that had a military-type appearance, a short hair cut. He also had a light windbreaker or jacket on. It was zipped up just slightly at the bottom.

But as he was removing his billfold from his right rear pocket, that jacket tightened up, and I could see a bulge under his left arm that appeared to me to be a weapon, and I grabbed the bulge on the outside of his jacket and instructed him to get his hands up and turn around. At the same time I was drawing my weapon and stuck it to the back of his head. He said, my weapon is loaded. I nudged him a little bit with the barrel of my weapon and I said, well, so is mine. It was just a routine traffic stop with an individual that happened to be carrying a weapon. I would have ticketed and let him go if he had not had that gun on his person. He would have been on down the road.

ELLIOTT: They brought the sketch artist in the next morning. My mechanic was sitting in there on break the whole time that he was in there on Monday, right close to him. So the mechanic made this sketch for him. I looked at it and said that looked just like him.

ATF AGENT MARK MICHALIC, OKLAHOMA CITY BOMB TASK FORCE: Agents in that area went around to all the hotels and everywhere they could showing these sketches, and asked if anybody would recognize him. It just so happens Mr. McVeigh had stayed in one of the hotels. He rented the truck under the name Bob Kling, but he registered in the hotel under his name.

HANGER: I had ran McVeigh's name, Social Security number, date of birth, also checked on the weapon. The morning I had arrested him I had ran all this information.

MICHALIC: If a person's name is checked through NCIC, there's a signature that's left in the system, and you can determine if somebody's name is actually ran at a certain time. And I called up, telephone rings, Nova County Sheriff's office. And I said, well, sheriff, here's the deal. Highway patrol locked up an old boy Wednesday morning after the bombing, and I think they brought him into your facility. And I think they brought him into your facility. Can you tell me if that's true? He said, sure, Mark, hold on.

HANGER: McVeigh was probably 15 to 20 minutes away from being released from the Noble County jail.

MICHALIC: About five minutes later he said, yeah, yeah, he's arrested. We brought him here into my jail. He said, as a matter of fact, we still got him. I said, you're kidding me? What's his name?

He said, Timothy James McVeigh. And I screamed, "we got him!" And the whole place just erupted. ELLIOTT: We was down at the Elks that evening and seen it on TV that he was arrested and brought out. And I said, that's the man.

HANGER: And you see that individual with that solemn, grimaced- looking face, and you wonder how anyone could have committed such a horrendous crime against innocent people.

BROWN: A terrorist talks, next.

STEPHEN JONES, MCVEIGH'S TRIAL ATTORNEY: He told me on the very first meeting, he said, I decided to do this. How he assembled the bomb. How he drove it to Oklahoma City.

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JONES: At the time I was appointed, Tim McVeigh was being held in a federal prison in Oklahoma, in El Reno, Oklahoma. I went over and stuck out my hand. I said, Mr. McVeigh, my name is Stephen Jones, I'm a lawyer from Enid, Oklahoma. I've been appointed by the federal court to represent you. Shook his hand. And as I did, he said, "well, I heard you were coming."

I can only tell you about my conversation with Tim McVeigh now, because he clearly waived the attorney/client privilege, and the courts have so held.

On that morning, I listened to him virtually all day.

He told me in the very first meeting, he said, I decided to do this. He told me why he chose the Murrah building. Told me how he assembled the bomb, where he got the parts. How he drove it to Oklahoma City and parked on the way down in Blackwell, Oklahoma, came down the next morning. How he lit it when the bomb -- when the truck was paused briefly in front of the Regency towers, that he lit one of the fuses there and then lit another fuse and closed the door and walked away. He took 100 percent of the blame.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Holy cow!

JONES: Tim McVeigh considered himself a patriot. That was his conviction, that the government had overstepped. It killed people, violated the law. The law had failed to avenge the wrongful deaths of innocent people in Ruby Ridge and Mt. Carmel with the Branch Davidians.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This fire is really rolling now.

JONES: And that it was necessary to strike back in, say, the fashion of John Brown and Harper's Ferry.

HANGER: He had to know that there were children in that building. And I just cannot imagine anybody committing that kind of act against another human being.

JONES: At times he said he knew there was a daycare center there. At other times, he appeared to avoid that. I think that the death of the children was very uncomfortable for him. On one hand, he sought to rationalize it. On the other hand, it was beyond rationalization. And even Tim McVeigh knew that.

But I think the first time he said -- he just looked at me and he said, "children also died at Waco."

He assigned almost all responsibility to himself. I did this, I did that. Terry Nichols helped me with this or that, but he played down the role of Terry, played down the role of anyone else. I think he expected to be found guilty.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We got him!

JONES: He was not surprised by the return of the verdict finding him guilty, nor was he surprised that the jury voted death.

As I recall, we simply exchanged some brief, momentary remark, and then the marshals took him out.

HANGER: If anyone was ever deserving of the death penalty, it was Tim McVeigh.

PAUL HOWELL, VICTIMS WITNESS AT EXECUTION: They got us up about 6:30 that morning. We got in a van. We drove over to the chambers. We was the last ones to go in. They finally opened up the curtains, and he looked over, first of all, to his area where his lawyer was at. Then he turned his head towards us. And he only kept his head there just maybe 30 seconds or less. Enough time for me to see in his eyes -- kind of like dead eyes. There was no feeling whatsoever in the eyes.

In my own heart, I felt like the only way that we, my family or anybody else in the world that had been affected by it, the only way that we could get any peace was to watch him die.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He was pronounced dead at 7:14.

JONES: I believe that Tim McVeigh was recruited, that he was not a mastermind. That's my best judgment, that there were others involved. Perhaps their role was more peripheral. Perhaps it could have been stronger. We will never know. Certainly, Tim McVeigh is beyond the ability to relate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Published report says Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols admitted last year to his role in the bombing.

NOLAN CLAY, REPORTER, "THE OKLAHOMAN": It was a confession. He wanted to avoid the death penalty here in Oklahoma. Nobody knew about it until well after the trial. He admitted in this that he was involved in the buying of the materials and that he helped build the bomb, even siphoning diesel fuel out of his own truck when they ran out of racing fuel. It was, I did this, I did that, I was involved in the actual making. And he -- they asked -- prosecutors asked him if he knew of anybody else involved. And he said he did not. B. SHAW: This act of terrorism, this snuffing out of lives, was an unimaginable slap in the face. And the slap was, this can happen. This did happen. Regrettably, possibly, this can happen again.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had some kind of an explosion downtown.

BROWN: When we come back, 10 years after, how people are coping.

B. SHAW: I believe you never heal from something like this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The explosion went off around 9:00 a.m. (INAUDIBLE).

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Stretcher!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out from under the desk and there just wasn't any building left around me.

B. SHAW: People talk about the healing process as if you can take a shower after you've exercised outside on a hot day. I believe you never heal from something like this.

HULSEY: I did lose something that day. It wasn't a family member, but it was that realization that you always grow up thinking nothing's going to happen to you, nothing bad. And that's gone.

C. NGUYEN: I don't know if I consider it exactly lucky, because even though I'm a survivor with the other kids, I have to deal with thinking about why we're here and they're not. And we were all in the building at the same time. Even if we were in different places, we were in the building. And they're dead and we're not. So I have to suffer with that, because it's like a burden.

ALLEN: I think that if God could save me from second- and third- degree burns and a broken arm, since all those other people died, and out of six survivors, God saved me and those other five, he must have something special planned for all six of us.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just can't imagine it. There's just bodies laying everywhere. There's people just laying there screaming, trying to get out. I've helped rescue several bodies of a bunch of babies that we've had to drag out. It is just a real gruesome sight.

LUCAS: Certainly a stark reminder of all the people who died here. And it's sad to me just to think that that's what's left for my children. You know, the daycare that they loved. Now they have these two chairs, and that's it.

Whenever I pray about it, I always ask God to tell them I said hi. That's the main thing, like just tell them I said hi and that I love them. And you know, I don't know what happens to children when they die. I don't know if they become adults when they go to heaven. I'm not sure about those kinds of things, but I know that they're safe and they're happy and they're watching out for us. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We had some kind of an explosion downtown.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Can you give me a location?

PETTY: During the time that I was trapped and I was thinking about my life, I thought about the fact that my husband and I didn't have any children. Because at that point, I'm thinking, OK, this is it, my life is over, I'm dying. And I never had a child. And it really bothered me. So, after the bombing and I had this second chance at life, we really rethought the whole no children thing. And I got pregnant. And I have a wonderful 5-year-old that's just absolutely changed my life.

I don't look forward to the day when I have to explain to him what happened to me and what kind of world we live in. Because right now he thinks everybody is good and everybody is wonderful.

FLOWERS: People change and people move on, but I can tell you personally from my standpoint, my grandkids' grandkids will know as much as I know right now. They won't have all the feelings that I've got, but they're going to know what happened on that day of April the 19th. They're going to know the people that lost their lives down there that day as an act of domestic terrorism. And they're going to know that evil is real in this world.

GREEN: Ten years and I still get emotional.

What I want to say is it's not -- an awful thing happened. A really, really horrible thing happened here. And yet, what struck me and what sticks with me is that all of these wonderful things happened, that all of these people stepped up. They didn't have to.

KEATING: Within that community, it was a source of pride, that we did this so well, we love our neighbors so well. We could come together so well as a people. How can good come out of evil? Sometimes it does. In this case, I think good very definitely came out of evil.

C. NGUYEN: Most people should know that life is just too short to live in hatred, because you need it to get what you can out of life while you have the chance.

B. SHAW: You never recover from something like this. How can you? You don't heal. You contend, you cope, you live, but I don't believe you heal. I think there's an indelible scar in the mind and on the heart.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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