Bad Day Dawning

That we can learn a lot about a man from the books and films he chooses is borne out by Timothy McVeigh.

One of his favorite films: the 1984 Patrick Swayze epic Red Dawn. It follows a group of small town teens' conversion to guerilla fighters when a foreign army invades America.

Like McVeigh, the teens stock up on survival gear - mainly guns and ammo - in order to defend their country from annihilation.

And one of McVeigh's favorite books: The Turner Diaries written by former American Nazi Party honcho William L. Pierce, under the pen name Andrew Macdonald. Its hero - Earl Turner - responds to gun control by making a truck bomb and blowing up the Washington FBI Building.

Two scenarios - all too familiar.

It was April 19, 1995 - a perfect, sun-drenched Oklahoma morning in springtime. Against a perfect blue-sky background, a yellow Ryder Rental truck carefully made its way through the streets of downtown Oklahoma City.

Just after 9 am, the vehicle pulled into a parking area outside the Alfred P. Murrah Building and the driver stepped down from the truck's cab and casually walked away. A few minutes later, at 9:02, all hell broke loose as the truck's deadly 4000-pound cargo blasted the government building with enough force to shatter one third of the seven-story structure to bits.

Glass, concrete, and steel rained down. Indiscriminately mixed in the smoldering rubble were adults and children alive and dead.

The perpetrator, twenty-seven-year-old Timothy James McVeigh, by now safely away from the devastation was convinced he acted to defend the Constitution, for he saw himself as crusader, warrior avenger and hero.

But in reality, he was little more than a misguided coward. He never even heard clearly the sound of the initial sirens of emergency vehicles rushing to the scene. Because, blocks away, he was wearing earplugs to protect himself from the roar of a blast so powerful it lifted pedestrians off the ground.

One Japanese tourist no stranger to powerful earthquakes called the blast "worse than the worst quake. Because there was no initial warning, no noise to say 'something terrible is going to happen'; it just hit."

When it did, a massive ball of fire momentarily outshone the sun and the north side of the building disintegrated. Traffic signs and parking meters were ripped from the pavement. Glass shattered and flew like bullets, targeting and maiming pedestrians blocks away.

Inside the broken building, survival depended on location at zero hour.

Some of the lucky ones had left their usual posts to get a coffee, deliver documents or simply visit nearby offices. As they did, their offices and fellow workers were blown away.

In the children's day-care center directly above the mobile bomb, devastation was horrific. Upper floors collapsed on those beneath them, setting up a chain reaction that crushed everything and everyone below.

Rescue workers rushed to the scene almost immediately.