Davidians react to McVeigh execution

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Davidians react to McVeigh execution Associated Press WACO, June 11 - Minutes after Timothy McVeigh took his last breath, the iron gates to the former Branch Davidian retreat about 10 miles east of Waco were opening. Clive Doyle was heading to work. The government's violent siege of this now-peaceful, green plot of land may have inspired McVeigh to commit one of the most horrific mass killings in history, but Doyle -- one of the survivors of the 1993 siege at Mount Carmel -- has always distanced the two events. "He's not considered a martyr for us. I've never even met him," Doyle said Monday. "We are not rejoicing; we're not even sympathetic, actually." In his view, McVeigh did not even accomplish the objective of avenging the Branch Davidian disaster because the people at whom he was striking out weren't even in the building he bombed. McVeigh's actions probably drew some attention to the Waco incident, but nothing significant, Doyle said. As a biblical doctrine, Doyle says he supports capital punishment, but said he felt McVeigh's execution left some questions about the bombing unanswered. McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, two years to the day after federal agents ended a 50-day standoff by moving in on the Branch Davidians' compound, which went up in flames with leader David Koresh and more than 80 of his followers inside.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/default.asp

-- Anonymous, June 11, 2001

Answers

He remains, as Jannie Coverdale, the grandmother of two children who died in the bombing, has described him, "the devil in a Ryder truck."

But he has his believers.

"I shudder to think that people like Mr. McVeigh will have any legacy," Mr. Gross said. He said that the only people who would buy, publicly and wholeheartedly, this latest of American conspiracy theories were "a tiny, crazy fringe of people."

"Among that extremely small group," Mr. Gross said, "the sequence of events leading up to his execution will reinforce their beliefs." That will not be thousands of people, he said, but a few hundred.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/10/national/10MCVE.html

Mr. McVeigh's father, Bill, said there was nothing in his son's boyhood that foretold this tragedy. Fellow soldiers said he was a racist, but a lot of people talked the way he did. Only as he neared the end of his service, as he came to read the literature of hate groups, to stockpile guns and to begin talking to others in racist, antigovernment rhetoric, did he seem extreme, said people who knew him then.

But that, too, was just a facade. There was a meanness, a zeal in him, that was hidden still.

Mr. McVeigh has tried to manipulate his legacy, through the book "American Terrorist," in which he admits his guilt but tries to rationalize it, and through letters and carefully selected interviews.

In an April letter to Rita Cosby of the Fox News Channel, Mr. McVeigh wrote that the bombing was a "retaliatory strike," and he described federal agents as soldiers. "Additionally, borrowing a page from U.S. foreign policy," he wrote, "I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U.S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq or other nations."

But it was the federal government that gave Mr. McVeigh - ultimately - the greatest means by which to justify his antipathy, with its own mistakes, said experts on the law and hate groups, and some of the people he hurt with his bomb.

"At its root," it creates distrust of the agency that was charged with upholding the law, said Leonard Zeskind, the founder of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights in Kansas City, Mo., who has studied hate groups for 20 years.

Any credibility that Mr. McVeigh gains is a slap to his victims.

"It's stupid for us to execute him now," said Mr. Welch, who has opposed the death penalty for Mr. McVeigh from the beginning, in part because he sees no good in one more death, in part because he fears that it will erase any chance of finding others who may have been involved.

But now Mr. McVeigh's execution may do the one thing that Mr. Welch and others here cannot abide. It gives people like him evidence that the federal government did not properly prosecute Mr. McVeigh.

"In many ways, they win," Mr. Welch said. "There is no question about his guilt, but now it's tainted."

Experts on the law and on hate groups said that despite the smudge on his prosecution, Mr. McVeigh was still seen as a monster who brutally murdered old people, babies, mothers and fathers.

He is still seen as a perversion, still regarded as a sick and distorted version of what an American soldier is supposed to be. Most of his victims, those still alive, have said they regret this latest development, but still want him to die.

He remains, as Jannie Coverdale, the grandmother of two children who died in the bombing, has described him, "the devil in a Ryder truck."

But he has his believers.

"I shudder to think that people like Mr. McVeigh will have any legacy," Mr. Gross said. He said that the only people who would buy, publicly and wholeheartedly, this latest of American conspiracy theories were "a tiny, crazy fringe of people."

"Among that extremely small group," Mr. Gross said, "the sequence of events leading up to his execution will reinforce their beliefs." That will not be thousands of people, he said, but a few hundred.

But, he pointed out, the frightening fact is that it took only a few people to design and build the bomb. And it only took one, Mr. McVeigh, to drive the truck to the front of the building.

In the way that Mr. McVeigh was affected by the government's actions near Waco will the cloud over Mr. McVeigh's execution convince other extremists of the government's corruption and conspiracies?

Mr. Welch and others in Oklahoma City fear that it may.

"If we had given him a life sentence, he would not be tormenting anyone now," Mr. Welch said. "Terry Nichols isn't tormenting anyone," he said, referring to Mr. McVeigh's co-conspirator, who is serving life in prison.

But even with the government's inadvertent help in lending a smidgen of credibility to Mr. McVeigh's war on that government, his ultimate legacy is one of fire and pain.

In "American Terrorist," by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, Mr. McVeigh referred to the children killed in the blast as "collateral damage" and said that, when he first saw television pictures after the blast, his first feeling was regret for not bringing the whole building down.

His efforts to remake himself, to form his legacy, had been mostly laughed at or ignored. When he said he was not a racist, that it was the gun control aspects of a racist novel, "The Turner Diaries," that moved him, that he joined the Ku Klux Klan only because he wanted one of its T- shirts, both the public and experts on militias and hate groups just shook their heads.

"You don't need to join to get the T-shirt," Mr. Zeskind said.

Mr. McVeigh will die an enigma, said many who have followed his case, never fully explaining why he did what others only talked about doing. Even his writings give no real clue to his character.

His motives for the bombing were addressed, but hardly made clear, in letters to friends and others. In those letters, he seemed to be quoting from antigovernment pamphlets.

In a letter to Robert Popovich, a former neighbor of Terry L. Nichols's, Mr. McVeigh wrote: "It was at this time, after waiting for nonviolent checks and balances to correct ongoing federal abuses and seeing no such results, that the assault-weapons ban passed, and rumors subsequently surfaced of nationwide Waco-style raids scheduled for the spring of 1995 to confiscate firearms. It was in this climate then that I reached the decision to go on the offensive, to put a check on government abuse of power, where others had failed in stopping the federal juggernaut run amok."



-- Anonymous, June 12, 2001


http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/13/national/13WACO.html? pagewanted=print
June 13, 2001

Branch Davidians Shed No Tears for McVeigh

By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK

WACO, Tex., June 12 — Their ranks are small these days, outnumbered by the 80 crape myrtles planted at the Mount Carmel compound to commemorate each of the Branch Davidians who died here eight years ago.

Their arguments are fierce, for no fewer than three factions of Branch Davidians have laid legal claim to the 77-acre property outside the city, producing yet another bizarre standoff, with separate churches for two factions and a histrionic display by the third, which dismisses the entire 51- day siege by federal agents at the compound as a diversion.

"The standoff was a cover-up of over 30 years religious persecution of the original church including land ripoffs, judicial oppression and murder by poison," a sign just inside the entrance reads. It is the first of several displays to greet curious tourists who still thread the roads east of Waco to visit the site.

Yet the Branch Davidians all agree on one point: Timothy J. McVeigh, who cited his rage over what happened here as the prime reason he blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City two years to the day later, will be no martyr for their cause.

"I don't mourn him, and we would never support what happened in Oklahoma City," said Sheila Martin, 54 years old, in reaction to Mr. McVeigh's execution on Monday. "I wish Timothy McVeigh had come and talked to us. If he really had all that anger, I would have told him to redirect it in a different way. I would have asked him to come and help rebuild our church."

Mrs. Martin's husband and four of her seven children died in the fire that consumed the Branch Davidians' compound on April 19, 1993, shortly after federal agents in tanks rammed the building in an effort to drive the people out.

Clive Doyle, 60, a former government currency printer in Australia who escaped the flames but lost his daughter, Shari, 18, in the fire, also said he saw no honor in Mr. McVeigh's action.

"Retaliation is not what we're about," Mr. Doyle said. "And Tim McVeigh is not any sort of champion from our point of view."

The ruins of the compound's foundation peek out in the tall grass, where children of some Davidians play among the artifacts left behind, including two burned-out buses and a motorcycle that belonged to David Koresh, the group's leader.

A rival faction to the one Mr. Doyle and Mrs. Martin follow has erected a headstone at the compound, memorializing "all the men, women and children who were victimized and brutally slaughtered" in the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing.

Several antigovernment extremist groups carried accounts of Mr. McVeigh's execution on their Web sites, though with little characterization of the man; one, posted by Posse Comitatus, a paramilitary group, issued a call for Monday to be commemorated as Timothy James McVeigh Day.

"The day that this soldier is called home will henceforth be remembered," the site said, "and his efforts will not be forgotten." It added: "The blood of our fallen martyrs shall be avenged!"

But for the Branch Davidians, any prospect of violence, whether in response to what happened here or to Mr. McVeigh's execution, would be abhorrent.

The siege at Mount Carmel began on Feb. 28, 1993, after several dozen federal agents tried to arrest Mr. Koresh on weapons charges, and a gun battle left four agents and six Branch Davidians dead.

Government officials said the Branch Davidians deliberately set fire to the compound and that many inside died of gunshot wounds they inflicted on each other or themselves as the flames spread; the Branch Davidians say tear gas from the tanks ignited the fire. The damage was so severe that neither side has been able to prove what happened.

Last fall, a federal judge in Waco ruled that the government owes nothing to the surviving Branch Davidians or to the families of sect members who died in the fire. About 100 plaintiffs had filed a wrongful- death suit.

In a separate trial, held in state court, the three factions have battled over ownership of the compound, but the matter remains unresolved.

No one disputes that the Branch Davidians still own the property, but no one agrees just who the rightful Branch Davidians are. The sect's roots date back to the 1930's, when disgruntled members of the Seventh- day Adventist Church broke to form their own church.

This year on April 19, the eighth anniversary of the fire, the Branch Davidians held their annual memorial and the bell at the new chapel pealed for those who died in the fire. Mr. Doyle, who has burn marks on his arms from the inferno, read the names, breaking into tears when he recited his daughter's.

Most remaining members expressed a bedrock faith that Mr. Koresh and the others would return to earth someday.

"He's going to come back," Catherine Matteson, who is 85, said of Mr. Koresh. "He'll be back with the Seven Seals, and the Seven Seals will tell you everything."

After losing four children in the fire and the fifth afterward to meningitis, Mrs. Martin has two left, Danny, 14 and Kimmy, 12. They come to services at the compound on Saturday, the Davidians' sabbath, but their beliefs aren't particularly fervent, she said.

"They're typical teenagers," she said. "They'll say, `Is it 4 o'clock yet, Ma? O.K., Ma, it's time to go home and get something to eat.' "

"I'm still waiting for them to come back," she added, referring to her husband, Wayne, and to their children who died in the fire. "I'm still waiting. It feels a little closer. But it's hard.

"Some days I thank God that there's a floor to wash, dishes to do, a lawn to mow, anything to keep busy," she said. "Because the waiting is hard."



-- Anonymous, June 13, 2001

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