Gore Vidal Promises Even More McVeigh Revelations
By Ed Cropley
8-17-1
EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Author Gore Vidal promised Thursday to make another revelation on the Oklahoma City bombing case which he says may suggest executed convict Timothy McVeigh did not detonate the bomb that killed 168 people.
Vidal, one of contemporary America's harshest critics, published an article last week in Vanity Fair magazine on the killer who, along with his motives, remains one of the great enigmas of modern times. There is more to come, he says.
"There's a researcher out there -- I used him a great deal for this (Vanity Fair) piece and I'm using him some more," Vidal told an audience at Britain's Edinburgh Book Festival.
The American writer, who maintained a three-year correspondence with the bomber, said the researcher had unearthed evidence which contradicted McVeigh's insistence he acted alone on the day of the bombing.
"I'm about to drop another shoe -- (the researcher) knows at least five of the people who were involved in the making of the bomb and its detonation," Vidal said. "It may well be that McVeigh didn't do it."
McVeigh, a decorated U.S. Army veteran, was executed in June for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City -- the bloodiest act of domestic terror ever committed on American soil. Terry Nichols was jailed for helping plan the crime but was not present when it was committed.
Disgusted at the Federal Bureau of Investigation's storming in 1993 of the Branch Davidian sect's headquarters at Waco, Texas, in which 80 people were killed, one-time Gulf War hero McVeigh declared war on the U.S. state, Vidal said.
"In a letter to me, he said 'When I saw -- contrary to all law - - that the FBI was using military tanks to attack the building, I thought only the Chinese did that sort of thing to their people'," Vidal told the audience.
But what sparked McVeigh's murderous indignation was symptomatic of the corrupt state of modern America, Vidal said.
"What is happening is reflective of a government totally out of control and a secret police -- which is what the Federal Bureau of Investigation is -- not accountable to anybody." |
