The Oklahoma City Bombing
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In the midst of this atmosphere of optimism and change, Timothy McVeigh drove a rented truck full of explosives to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The explosion killed 168 people (including 19 children) and injured more than 680, as well as damaging and destroying many surrounding buildings. Until the attacks of September 11, it was the largest terrorist attack on American soil, and it remains the single largest domestic terrorist attack in American history.
The site is now home to the Oklahoma City National Memorial. The memorial was designed by Oklahoma City architects Hans and Torrey Butzer and Sven Berg and dedicated by President Clinton on April 19, 2000, exactly five years after the bombing. Oklahoma City has since rebuilt, and except for the memorial, there is little evidence of the bombing.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation led an investigation, known as OKBOMB, the largest criminal case in America's history (FBI agents conducted 28,000 interviews, amassed 3.5 short tons (3.2 t) of evidence, and collected nearly one billion pieces of information). Special Agent in Charge Weldon L. Kennedy. commanded the largest crime task force since the investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The task force included 300 FBI agents, 200 officers from the Oklahoma City Police Department, 125 members of the Oklahoma National Guard, and 55 officers from the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety.
Read more about this topic: History Of Oklahoma City
Famous quotes containing the words oklahoma, city and/or bombing:
“I know only one person who ever crossed the ocean without feeling it, either spiritually or physically.... he went from Oklahoma to France and back again ... without ever getting off dry land. He remembers several places I remember too, and several French words, but he says firmly, “We must of went different ways. I don’t rightly recollect no water, ever.””
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts.”
—Ivan Illich (b. 1926)