Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 22, 1995 TAG: 9508220070
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOHN KIFNER THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: OKLAHOMA CITY LENGTH: Long
Federal investigators have long known of McVeigh's fondness for ``The Turner Diaries,'' a novel by William L. Pierce, writing under the pseudonym Andrew McDonald (National Vanguard Books, 1978).
It tells the story of an armed overthrow of the U.S. government by a covert group of white supremacists. McVeigh apparently kept a copy with him at all times and hawked the book at gun shows.
Now, an evidence log filed with the indictments shows that another book, ``Armed and Dangerous: The Rise of the Survivalist Right'' (Hill & Wang, 1987), was found on Nichols' coffee table.
The book, a nonfiction work by James Coates, a respected Chicago Tribune reporter, had been checked out of the Mohave County Library in Kingman, Ariz., by McVeigh. A librarian said the book was so long overdue that the library's computer system no longer indicated when McVeigh had checked it out.
A person closely involved in the case said that McVeigh had frequently cited Chapter Two of ``Armed and Dangerous,'' which describes how The Order, a far-right band of criminal terrorists, grew from a small band of bumblers into a heavily armed, well-financed terrorist cadre that used the proceeds of crimes to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to other far-right groups and bought themselves land, guns, vehicles and guard dogs.
The Order staged armored car robberies in 1984 that netted more than $4 million. It also ran a counterfeiting ring and gunned down a Jewish talk show host, Alan Berg, in Denver. The group's leader, Robert Jay Matthews, died in December 1984 in a shootout with the FBI; other known members were captured and jailed.
When McVeigh saw his dream of a guerrilla attack on the government nearly slip away as his key confederate, Nichols, lost his ardor for the bombing, the evidence suggests, he gave ``Armed and Dangerous'' to Nichols to re-inspire faith in the plot.
Whatever role ``Armed and Dangerous'' played in the relationship of the two men, the indictments charge that Nichols helped mix the ingredients of the bomb - two tons of homemade explosives - which McVeigh then drove in a rented truck to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19. The explosion killed at least 167 people including 19 children, 15 of whom were in a day-care center.
Since Pierce, a neo-Nazi former physics professor, wrote ``The Turner Diaries'' 17 years ago, it has become an underground classic among white supremacists and Christian identity survivalist cults.
In an April interview with The Roanoke Times, Pierce said he had checked his database and neither McVeigh nor the Nichols brothers' names were on it. They could have bought their copies through third parties, but people moved by the book often wrote to him, he said.
Despite the similarities between the bombing and the book's plot, Pierce said he doubted his novel was the inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing.
"I can't say I'd be upset [if it were] - I'd be surprised," Pierce said from his home in Hillsboro, W.Va.
"There is no reason to assume the book itself would have given these people ideas they couldn't have got 100 other places," he said. "The fertilizer bomb is the bomb of choice for the terrorist who wants to do a lot of damage.
"The fact is, conditions in this country continue to develop in the direction I foresaw when I wrote the book," he said. "More and more people are realizing what's happening."
McVeigh peddled copies of the book at gun shows around the Southwest after leaving the Army in 1991. One person involved in the case, who asked not to be identified, recently called the book McVeigh's ``bible.''
The Oklahoma City bombing bears an uncanny resemblance to the first big attack by the novel's white-supremacist guerrilla fighters, who drive a truck carrying a homemade bomb made of fertilizer and oil inside the headquarters of the FBI early one morning, wreaking destruction, death and havoc. The book calls this act a ``propaganda of the deed,'' an example intended to inspire others to strike their own blow.
Evidence suggests that McVeigh and Nichols might have followed The Order's guerrilla crime tactics. The federal indictments accuse the two of preparing for the bombing by robbing an Arkansas gun dealer last November and by stealing blasting caps and explosives from a Kansas quarry.
And it sketches a flurry of activity during a period of about eight weeks in the fall of 1994, in which the two men are accused of renting four storage lockers under various false names, stealing the explosives, planning the Arkansas robbery and purchasing 40 50-pound bags of fertilizer that could be turned into explosives by adding fuel oil.
Nichols' lawyer, Michael Tigar, has argued in court papers that Nichols had a falling out with McVeigh and was trying to distance himself and establish a normal family life.
A federal investigator confirmed that, around early April, McVeigh was of the opinion that Nichols might not go along with the bomb plot.
In early spring, McVeigh was growing increasingly upset and angry, a person familiar with the case said, because after all the months of planning and preparations, ``Terry had bailed out on him.''
It was at about this time, he said, that McVeigh took to showing a copy of ``Armed and Dangerous'' to close associates, directing them to the chapter about The Order.
Staff writer Jan Vertefeuille contributed information to this story.
by CNB