The chief conspirators, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, met in 1988 at Fort Benning during basic training for the U.S. Army.[17] Michael Fortier, McVeigh's accomplice, was his Army roommate.[18] The three shared interests in survivalism.[19][20] They expressed anger at the federal government's handling of the 1992 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) standoff with Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge as well as the Waco siege—a 1993 51-day standoff between the FBI and Branch Davidian members which began with a botched ATF attempt to execute a search warrant leading to a fire fight (it is unknown whether ATF agents or Branch Davidians fired the first shot) and ended with the burning and shooting deaths of David Koresh and 75 others.[21] In March 1993, McVeigh visited the Waco site during the standoff, and then again after its conclusion.[22] McVeigh later decided to bomb a federal building as a response to the raids.[12][23][24][25]
McVeigh later said that he had contemplated the assassinations of Attorney General Janet Reno, Lon Horiuchi, and others in preference to attacking a building,[24] and after the bombing he said that he sometimes wished he had carried out a series of assassinations instead.[26] He initially intended only to destroy a federal building, but he later decided that his message would be better received if many people were killed in the bombing.[27] McVeigh's criterion for potential attack sites was that the target should house at least two of three federal law enforcement agencies: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), or the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He regarded the presence of additional law enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service or the U.S. Marshals Service, as a bonus.[28]
McVeigh, a resident of Kingman, Arizona, considered targets in Missouri, Arizona, Texas, and Arkansas.[28] McVeigh stated in his authorized biography that
he wanted to minimize non-governmental casualties, so he ruled out a 40-story government building in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of the presence of a florist's shop on the ground floor.[29] In December 1994, McVeigh and Fortier visited Oklahoma City to inspect McVeigh's target: the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.[23] The Murrah building had been previously targeted in October 1983 by white supremacist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, including founder James Ellison and Richard Snell. The group had plotted to park "a van or trailer in front of the Federal Building and blow it up with rockets detonated by a timer."[30] After Snell's appeal for murdering two people in unrelated cases was denied, he was executed the same day as the Murrah bombing.[31]
The nine-story building, built in 1977, was named for a federal judge and housed fourteen federal agencies including the DEA, ATF, Social Security Administration, and recruiting offices for the Army and Marine Corps.[32] The Murrah building was chosen for its glass front—which was expected to shatter under the impact of the blast—and its adjacent large, open parking lot across the street, which might absorb and dissipate some of the force, and protect the occupants of nearby non-federal buildings.[29] In addition, McVeigh believed that the open space around the building would provide better photo opportunities for propaganda purposes.[29] The attack was planned to take place on April 19, 1995, to coincide with the anniversary of the Waco siege and the 220th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.[33]
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing