Original subtitles

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

On April 19, 1995,

a truck bomb exploded in downtown Oklahoma City,

damaging most of the buildings within 48 square blocks.

168 people were killed, more than 500 injured.

It was the deadliest attack by a domestic terrorist

in U.S. history.

When it was learned that the man behind the mass slaughter

was a 26-year-old American, born and bred,

there was anger and confusion.

Why? How?

Finally, years later, Timothy McVeigh gave his answers

to the many questions everyone was asking --

answers that would shock

and enrage the nation all over again.

Here's how it really happened.

♪♪

♪♪

Michel: There's this secluded lake.

It's called Geary Lake.

It's in Kansas.

And this big Ryder truck comes rolling in,

and this fellow gets out.

And he's looking around to see if anybody's there.

He goes to the back of the truck, opens it up,

and there's all of this material to make a bomb.

His co-conspirator arrives a little later,

and they begin making the bomb.

And they picked this place

because it's out away from things.

Herbeck: It took them several hours of very hard work

to mix this bomb, put it in big, plastic barrels

that were arranged inside the truck for maximum impact.

Michel: That's the bomb that Timothy McVeigh

was going to take a day later to Oklahoma City.

♪♪

Throughout all of this, McVeigh's intensity

is completely off the charts.

Nobody is going to get in the way of this bomb

that he's building and delivering.

He's got contingencies where he'll kill anybody

that gets in his way because this bomb --

and I hate to use the word -- but it was his masterpiece.

♪♪

Then, they notice something

not far from where they were building this terrorist bomb.

McVeigh lowers the back door of the truck,

and they're looking out.

He notices a vehicle pull in, and a man and a boy get out.

And he figured it's a father and a son.

And they go out in a boat onto the lake fishing.

He's thinking, "What happens if this guy comes back

and looks inside the truck?"

This wasn't part of the script, but he always has a plan "B."

McVeigh has a Glock on him.

He always has a shoulder holster with his Glock.

McVeigh has reached an opinion that if they come over,

he's gonna shoot the father.

But he didn't want to kill the boy.

McVeigh's periodically checking to see if they're coming in,

but they have to get back to the task at hand,

and that's build the 7,000-pound bomb.

♪♪

Finally, the father gets out of the boat with his son,

and they drive off.

To his great fortune, he never goes very close to the truck.

♪♪

When the bomb was finally finished,

Timothy McVeigh headed South, on his way to Oklahoma City,

got within a two-hour range of it, and parked behind a motel,

and he spent the night there.

♪♪

Herbeck: McVeigh woke up totally focused on what he was doing.

He was a soldier getting ready for his mission.

He'd slept like a baby in the rental truck,

two feet in front of a 7,000-pound bomb.

He very carefully drove into Oklahoma City.

♪♪

April 19, '95, started out just like any other morning.

It was a beautiful spring morning.

I was working at Federal Employees Credit Union,

which was located in the Murrah Building downtown.

I worked on the third floor, and at the time,

I was working as a Visa credit-card clerk.

The Murrah Building was a large federal building

in downtown Oklahoma City.

Had a lot of different federal offices,

everything from Social Security

to Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms

and a variety of things.

There was even a daycare center there.

I spent the first hour actually chatting with all my friends

and not working.

I could have never imagined that something was gonna happen

that would change my life so drastically.

Oak: On the morning of April 19, 1995,

I was wearing a brand-new maternity dress.

I was six months pregnant.

I got to work that morning,

and I went up to my cubicle on the third floor.

The building was right across the street

from the Murrah Building.

But I could never imagine what happened

in the next few minutes could change my life forever.

♪♪

Potok: McVeigh has set up his truck with a double-fusing system.

One of those fuses is a five-minute fuse.

One is a 2-minute fuse.

When he is 4 minutes or something like that away

from the building, he leans down,

and he lights the five-minute fuse.

He's now getting very close to the building.

And he runs up on a red light.

And the red light doesn't change.

And it doesn't change.

♪♪

And he was really freaking out.

"Please let this light turn green."

And the cabin starts filling up with smoke from the fuse.

Michel: And he starts walking away,

heading toward an alleyway further up,

and he's not looking back at the bomb.

He was walking for about a minute, thinking to himself,

"Is that bomb gonna go off or not?"

♪♪

Oak: That morning, I was sitting at my desk,

facing away from the window, and just busy, doing things.

A sign-up sheet was going around for snack day,

and I was trying to figure out what to bring.

As it got close to 9:00, I thought,

"okay, I really better get to work,"

and I ran to my desk and sat down

and started to begin my day.

♪♪

Herbeck: McVeigh was walking for about a minute

and thinking to himself,

"Is that bomb gonna go off or not?"

Every second feels like an hour, and he's thinking,

"Am I gonna have to go back and shoot that bomb?"

He put a bunch of explosives

in one of the corners of the Ryder truck

that he knew would ignite it if the fuses failed.

Potok: He walks across the street.

As soon as he is in alley across the street, he starts to run.

♪♪

Downs: One of my coworkers, she's seven-months pregnant.

She's sitting down beside me.

I took a phone call, was logging on my computer,

and getting ready to ask her, "What do you need?"

When I turned to speak to her...

[ Explosion ]

...all of a sudden, I heard this deafening,

roaring noise in my head.

♪♪

I felt some kind of sensation going over my body, like a wave.

I was kind of blown forward, and I hit my desk.

It was so loud, I thought I'd been shot

in the back of the head.

And I felt this powerful rushing sensation,

like I was falling,

and I could hear people screaming all around me.

And I was falling.

I was actually falling three floors.

♪♪

And this woman was screaming right in my ear,

"Jesus, help me! Jesus, help me!"

And then I realized that was me.

I didn't even recognize the sound of my own voice.

And then, all of that stopped, and it was quiet.

♪♪

I looked up. I saw all the windows were gone.

They were shattered.

I was bleeding down the front of my face,

and I didn't see a single soul.

Downs: I lay there, wondering, "Am I dead or alive?

What just happened?"

My original thought was, "It's the end of the world,

and this is it."

♪♪

McVeigh has a matter of seconds to get to his car,

a yellow 1977 Mercury Marquis.

[ Engine sputtering ]

And he turns it on, and it's grunting and groaning.

Finally, it burst to life.

And McVeigh drives off closer to the speed limit

than he'd ever driven in his life

and heads out of Oklahoma City.

Oak: I think I was in shock.

I mean, I had lost a lot of blood.

I was disoriented.

I just wanted to escape.

Instinct kind of took over, and I just got up and tried

to make my way out of the building

by crawling over all kinds of things that were in the way

and then trying to make my way down the stairs.

I had not felt my baby kick since the time of the explosion.

I was thinking that she may not be okay.

We went out the front door, and it looked like a war zone.

There were people --

♪♪

[ Inhales deeply ]

[ Voice breaking ] There were people just running everywhere.

♪♪

And people screaming and bleeding.

♪♪

Man: There's glass, debris all over downtown Oklahoma City.

Boy, it's just like an atomic bomb went off.

The ceiling went in.

All the windows came in.

It was a deafening roar.

I was covered with glass. I didn't know what was going on.

Woman: I can't believe this is happening.

All I know is I can't see anything.

It is very hard to breathe.

I can barely get air.

I can't really move.

I was actually still in my chair,

and I was upside down under about 10 feet of rubble.

But I had no idea about any of that.

I just knew I was buried.

I heard a siren going off in the distance.

I decided I was still alive.

And I started screaming for help.

Fields: And all the sudden there was a call over the radio

for everybody to evacuate the building.

Man: Back! Go! Go!

Get them back! Get them back!

We just found another bomb.

Man 1: We just heard some loud explosion.

We have a large column of smoke south of this.

Man 2: We just had some kind of explosion downtown.

Flowers: It was about 9:00 that morning,

and this incredible blast, this explosion, went off,

and it shook the whole building.

We had absolutely no idea what had happened.

My first thought was that maybe an airline had crashed.

[ People shouting indistinctly ]

Fields: Fire station I was assigned to was

about 15 blocks north of the Murrah Building.

It was about 9:00 a.m.

We felt the station rattle. We heard the explosion.

We looked back to the south, towards the downtown area,

and that's when we saw the large plume of black smoke,

and we immediately got on the rigs

and self-dispatched ourselves.

Didn't wait for the orders.

Man: We've had an explosion. We need help.

This is the fire department.

I need some ambulances here.

I got some critically hurt people.

Woman: We're at 92 headquarters.

We need ladders in the Southeast corner of the federal building.

Evacuate people from the building.

Man: We're still having some explosions in this fire.

♪♪

People were bleeding and holding rags and shirts

and things against their faces.

♪♪

Man 1: Wow. Holy cow.

About a third -- About a third of the building

has been blown away.

Man 2: Look at the side of that -- just completely demolished.

It looked like someone had taken and just cut out a horseshoe

out of the side of that building.

Man 1: And you can see just smoke and debris and fire

on the ground.

This is just devastating.

Man 3: There are no words to describe this scene.

And I remember this crater that was there

on that side of the building.

It looked like about size of a swimming pool.

That's when I realized this had to have been a bomb.

And I immediately ran into that building.

I could hear people crying and screaming

and "Get me out of here! Get me out of here!"

But you can't see them 'cause it's so dark.

I could hear a very faint crying of a female voice,

and I remember everybody screaming to each other

"Be quiet! Be quiet! Be quiet!"

because we were trying to pinpoint

where that voice was coming from

to try to dig through this rubble

until it finally faded totally away, and it was gone.

And we all knew that this person probably had just died

as we listened to her trying to cry for help.

We set up triage right there and just started treating people.

Clark: You saw the rescuers all around, trying to get into the building.

There were hook-and-ladder trucks,

long ladder trucks trying to get up to the upper floors

because people were still trapped in there.

One of the guys that was on our rescue ladder

extended it up rescuing a gentleman

from one of the upper floors of the building.

That kind of stuff went on all day.

Concrete slabs were broken.

They were as big as a bed of a pickup.

You didn't just walk into a room.

You crawled up, you crawled over,

you crawled around, and you crawled through.

And that's what we did.

A firefighter had handed me a light.

I flipped that light on, and all the floors had pancaked

right on top of each other.

So, you could see these circles of about 3 or 4 feet

in diameter, circles everywhere of coagulated blood.

When we looked at these floors and this blood

was coming down through the cracks,

it actually looked like the floors were actually bleeding.

But we knew what it was.

That's when it really hit home what we were up against.

Downs: I couldn't see. I couldn't move.

It was hot.

And there was a horrible smell.

Finally, I hear men's voices.

And they're saying, "Let's split up.

Let's look for the daycare children."

And I was really confused because

I worked on the third floor,

and the daycare was on the second floor.

I didn't realize we were all at the bottom of the building.

But I started screaming like crazy at this point,

and one of the men said,

"I hear you. We can't see you.

We have to follow the sound of your voice.

Keep talking to us."

And, so, we keep yelling back and forth at each other

until the voices get closer and closer and closer.

My right hand was actually

sticking out of the side of the rubble pile.

And, so, one of the men brushed against my head,

and I said, "that's me. That's me.

I'm right here."

At this point, I thought they were gonna grab my hand,

one, two, three, pull me up and out.

But that's not what happened.

Fields: And all of a sudden, there was a call over the radio

for everybody to evacuate the building.

I heard other voices, and they were screaming,

"There's another bomb! There's another bomb!

Everybody get out now!"

Man: Get back! Go! Go!

Get them back! Get them back!

Downs: And my rescuer starting talking over the voices, saying,

"Amy, we're gonna be right back."

I began saying over and over again my name.

"Tell my husband I love him," because this was it.

I was saying goodbye.

And they left, and I was alone.

♪♪

Hanger: As I turned on my emergency lights,

I could tell the driver of this yellow

Mercury saw me.

And he's thinking, "I could kill this guy if I want."

Welcome back.

A few minutes after first responders

arrived at the Murrah Building in downtown Oklahoma City,

reports of a second bomb sent everyone running for cover,

forcing those still trapped inside to face

their impending deaths on their own.

♪♪

Man 1: Go back -- another bomb.

Go back! Get back!

Man 2: Go! Go! Get them back! Get them back!

Downs: I'm here, buried under feet of rubble.

My reality was, "another bomb is getting ready to go off."

They got a hot spot. Get them back!

♪♪

[ Crying ]

Downs: And I can't leave.

I was terrified because I realized my life was over.

My life was over, and I never even lived it.

And I was filled with regret.

I remember one of the thoughts I had was

that I was dying, and I'd never been a mother.

And all of the sudden, in a split second,

I had this horrible regret that I've never had a child.

I started praying and begging God to let me live.

And I thought about all the changes

I would make, you know, if I could just have a second chance.

Ronan: Approximately 60 miles north of Oklahoma City,

a state trooper named Charlie Hanger stumbles

on the most-wanted man in America.

On April 19, 1995, I'm within about a mile of

where I'm going to exit off the interstate,

and I see this old, yellow Mercury.

I noticed on the rear bumper, there was no license plate.

As I turned on my emergency lights,

I could tell the driver

of this old, yellow Mercury saw me.

He was slowing down and pulling over.

I opened my door, and I yelled for the driver to get out.

The door opens up, but he doesn't immediately get out.

The driver, he sits there thinking for a minute or two.

And he's thinking, "I could kill this guy if I want"

because he has his Glock in his shoulder holster.

At that very moment, he makes the decision, no,

he's not gonna kill the officer.

He's gonna wait and see what happens.

And a few seconds later, he stands up,

begins walking toward me.

♪♪

I begin questioning him.

I said, "Do you have a driver's license?"

At that time, he goes to his right-rear pocket

to retrieve his billfold.

He's just starting to pull his jacket back,

and I noticed a bulge under his left arm

that I thought was a weapon.

It was not legal in the state of Oklahoma

to carry a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle at that time.

And he looks me in the eye, and he says, "I have a weapon."

But I'm telling him at the same time,

"Get your hands and turn around."

He says, "My weapon is loaded."

At that time, I nudge him in the back of the head

with the barrel of my pistol, and I said, "Well, so is mine."

And then I handcuffed him and put him in my patrol unit,

and we started our trip to the Noble County Jail.

♪♪

We get to the Noble County Jail.

That's a small jail, only one jailer on duty.

There is a television hanging on the wall.

It's not supposed to happen here, but it did.

And at times, I would see my prisoner

looking up at the television and looking back down

but never making any comments.

It's an amazing scene -- this little county jail.

They have no idea who they have in custody.

So, McVeigh sits there, you know,

this anonymous, unknown guy,

in a little jail in Oklahoma, waiting to go before a judge.

And all indications were that this young man,

the next day, would see a judge and then be released.

Most people do bond out of jail on misdemeanor

or traffic offenses by the next day.

♪♪

After probably about 45 minutes of having this life

flashing before my eyes, come-to-Jesus meeting,

I hear voices, and they've come back.

There was not a second bomb.

Everybody started screaming at us, "Go back in."

They give us the all clear.

Downs: They came back, and they began working to get me out.

But I was stuck.

Back in 1995, I weighed over 355 pounds.

So, I'm sure it wasn't for them to get me out.

And the area of the building where I was was very unstable.

There was an emergency physician on standby

that kept stopping to ask if they should amputate.

If they amputated my leg,

they could all get out quickly and safely.

Instead, these men, these firemen, kept saying,

"give us 20 more minutes. Give us 20 more minutes."

Finally, they said, "we're gonna count to 3,

and we're gonna pull. This is probably gonna hurt."

I came out from under the rubble for the first time,

and every nerve in my body came alive.

But I didn't care because I was free.

I was buried alive 6 1/2 hours.

I'll never forget that first breath of fresh air that I took.

And I remember looking up at the sky and promising God,

"I will never live my life the same."

Man: In Oklahoma City, a possible breakthrough in the case.

That one interview was a quantum leap in the investigation.

Man: The FBI released composite drawings of two suspects --

white males of medium build.

♪♪

Clinton: Let there be no room for doubt.

We will find the people who did this.

When we do, justice will be swift, certain, and severe.

We have had hundreds, if not thousands,

of leads from individuals

calling in to reputed eyewitnesses.

Each one of those is treated very seriously.

From the very start, people thought this was

a Middle-East connection.

The Alfred Murrah -- this was following

the World Trade Center bombing in New York City

in February of 1993.

And that, in fact, was an Islamist attack.

Woman: So, your assessment, then,

probably is a Middle-East connection.

I think there's a real possibility

it was a Middle-Eastern group.

I knew it was a truck bomb because of the crater

in front of the Murrah Building.

If you got a big hole in the ground,

you know it was delivered there by a truck.

So, the FBI start looking for pieces of the explosion.

And the first thing we turned up was the axle for that truck.

A twisted axle of what may have been the car with the explosives

was found two blocks from the Federal Building.

Clark: There's a VIN number on the truck axle.

So, they're able to find out the make and model

and find out where the truck came from.

That's a huge lead for us.

And within an hour, we knew it was rented by Ryder.

Ryder gave us the location where it was rented.

A place called Elliott's Body Shop in Junction City, Kansas.

Man: Sources tell CNN that the vehicle used in the explosion

was rented in Junction City, Kansas,

about a 300-mile drive from Oklahoma City.

We went to Elliott's Body Shop. Dispatched agents up there.

Potok: They're trying to get a description and a name,

hopefully, of the person who rented the truck.

Ronan: They found out that the truck had been rented

by a guy by the name of Robert Kling.

But all of his information was bogus --

his address, his phone number, and the like.

Potok: The FBI at Elliott's Body Shop, of course,

interviews the employees,

who believe they've seen whoever it was who rented the truck.

Coulson: The interviews where the truck was rented

revealed two people came into the establishment

and rented a truck.

Man: The day after the bombing of the federal building

in Oklahoma City, a possible breakthrough

in the case.

The FBI released composite drawings of two suspects --

white males of medium build.

Coulson: So, we called them John Doe number 1 and John Doe number 2.

Kenney: Both of these men should be considered armed

and extremely dangerous.

Coulson: After we got the pictures, agents go out

all over that part of the world

and show the picture at every road stop, every hotel.

Potok: One of those teams

winds up at a place called the Dreamland Motel,

which is run by a woman named Lee McGowan.

Coulson: When the agents went to the motel,

they showed both pictures.

The FBI came in and showed me some drawings, and I stated,

"This picture looks similar like a client who stayed here."

The only one that the manager identified

was John Doe number 1.

McGowan: And he was, very friendly, very outgoing, smiled,

and he paid in cash.

And then comes this remarkable moment,

really, the break in the case,

where Lee McGowan shows the agents her guest register,

and, lo and behold, the man who had rented the Ryder truck

had signed the register "Tim McVeigh."

Coulson: So, it was a huge jump in the investigation.

Now we know who we're looking for.

Why he used his own name there I will never know.

But sometimes we hope that the people we're chasing

are not as smart as they should be.

Ronan: Investigators found another clue on the register

at the Dreamland Motel, one that put Terry Nichols,

the man who helped Tim McVeigh build the bomb, on the radar.

Coulson: We had an address based on his registration card

at the Dreamland Motel.

Potok: McVeigh had put down on the register

as his home address the address in Michigan

of Terry Nichols' brother.

Rowan: McVeigh had actually lived there

with the Nichols brothers a while back.

Coulson: We immediately dispatched agents

to Decker, Michigan, to see where it's gonna lead.

♪♪

Potok: Terry Nichols is at home in Herington, Kansas,

and sees this on TV and is frightened to death.

You know, Nichols somehow thought

he was just gonna kind of slide away from this thing.

Coulson: He's thinking, "I better go talk to these guys.

He rushes into the police station and gives himself up.

Man: He came into the station at approximately 2:30 today.

He identified himself as Terry Lynn Nichols

and that he had seen his name on TV.

So, at this point, the FBI agents are thinking,

"could this be our John doe number 2?"

Coulson: The agents took his picture back to the same place

that the Van Was rented from.

The guy said, "No, that's not the guy."

♪♪

He was not John Doe number 2.

♪♪

At that point, of course, they had no idea

where in the world is Timothy McVeigh.

Ronan: They don't realize that their guy,

their suspect, is sitting in a jail in Perry, Oklahoma,

less than two hours away.

Potok: He is about to be brought before the judge,

who is, undoubtedly, going to make

some kind of bond arrangement

and let him drive off into the sunset.

But for the FBI, they're man hunters,

and the first thing they did

was do a national crime information center search to see

if he'd contact with law enforcement.

And we found out shortly after the bombing,

an Oklahoma highway patrolman, Charles Hanger, arrested him.

Man: He was in the process of being led to the courthouse

for a bond hearing when that phone call was made

and could have walked free in as little as 30 minutes.

♪♪

We jumped in the helicopter

and flew up there as fast as we could get there.

So, we went in and confronted him.

They said, "Do you know why we're here?"

And he says, "it's about that thing in Oklahoma City."

Clark: Had this whole investigation

been delayed a few hours,

Timothy McVeigh probably would have been gone.

Hanger: I've always said that it was divine intervention

that put all those things in place.

♪♪

Clark: The word gets out that the person arrested for this

is in the jail in Perry, Oklahoma.

And people start gathering in the area

outside the courthouse, waiting for him.

Man: The Noble County Courthouse in Perry, Oklahoma,

was ringed with police officers and several hundred spectators,

all in anticipation of seeing Timothy McVeigh.

And then the door opens, and out walks Timothy McVeigh

in an orange jumpsuit.

Potok: This wasn't evil Muslims.

These weren't people who believed in some religion

that we don't like.

A blue-eyed, fair-haired American boy

had been found to be the perpetrator.

This was, you know, the neighbor of all of us.

Downs: I remember being in the hospital,

and the nurses were all crowded around a TV,

and the realization hit me that...a person did this.

Like, a person did this.

I really could not wrap my mind around that.

I was just in disbelief that somebody would want to cause

so much destruction and ruin so many lives.

Man: A nationwide search is continuing

for a second suspect in the bombing.

He's known only as John Doe number 2,

a white male, medium build, with brown hair

and a tattoo on his left arm.

In the course of the following months,

there are people all over the country

who claim they know who John Doe number 2 is.

[ Telephone ringing ]

FBI hotline.

Man: The FBI continues to receive leads phoned in by the public.

This winds up being an incredible pain for the FBI.

In the end, the FBI finds that a particular soldier

went to Elliott's Body Shop on the day after McVeigh

was there to do his own business.

And he matched that John Doe 2 picture.

Ronan: There was never any John Doe number 2.

Turned out it was just a case of mistaken identity.

But there were many people who believed that

for something as diabolical as this act

was that there had to be more people involved.

After McVeigh was arrested, we were assigned to learn

everything we could about his background,

his family, his friends.

I was immediately sent over to Tim McVeigh's home,

where his dad lived.

There was a horde of federal agents,

state police, surrounding Bill McVeigh's house.

And there was dozens and dozens of members of the media,

and nobody was getting to Bill McVeigh.

Everyone was in a state of shock.

They did not believe that Tim McVeigh,

this all-American kid,

was capable of something that horrible.

It's just -- It's unbelievable.

He was never a harmful person.

He was -- He was pretty much to himself.

He was very quiet and liked children.

Neighbors would bring up the fact

that "He would babysit for me."

It didn't seem that there was a mean bone in his body.

He had a deep sensitivity about him,

and that sensitivity would later play against him.

His dad worked in a factory. His mother was a travel agent.

He had two sisters, and they were all close in a sense.

But Tim McVeigh did not have an idyllic childhood.

There was a lot of fighting going on.

And they tried to provide a good, stable home,

but Tim's mother had moved out and moved to Florida,

and she took the two girls with her.

He stayed with his father, who he was not close to.

His father was a very taciturn, kind of shy, interned man.

McVeigh was hassled, bullied by other kids.

He was a kid who spent all of this time by himself,

immersed himself in science fiction, in comic books,

"Star Trek"-type stories.

And that really seemed in a way to kind of become his world.

You know, so, this is an alienated kid,

someone who doesn't get much from either of his parents

and doesn't have many people in the world at all.

But McVeigh did have one person in the world

he could confide in.

That was his grandfather, Ed McVeigh.

And I think some of Tim McVeigh's happiest moments

of his childhood were being out in the woods

with his grandfather

and the grandfather teaching him all about guns.

Potok: His grandfather, Eddie McVeigh,

was a hunter who initially introduced Tim McVeigh

to guns and to hunting.

Ronan: Tim McVeigh learned how to hunt and fire a rifle,

and he became quite a good shot at a young age.

Potok: So, McVeigh, as he got older,

began to read all kinds of radical literature.

He got more into "Soldier of Fortune" magazine

and kind of survivalist ideas,

and a lot of that was through his grandfather.

Ronan: After McVeigh graduates from high school,

he does manage to find himself a couple of part-time jobs.

He's working now for an armored-car company,

and he's doing overnight shifts at the zoo in Buffalo

as a security guard.

But nothing is really clicking with him,

and he decides that he needs some direction.

One day he comes home, and he tells his father,

"Dad, I'm going in the Army."

And his father says, "When?" "Tomorrow."

McVeigh looked at it as free ammo to shoot guns.

He is fascinated by weapons.

And the Army is the ultimate storehouse for weaponry.

He really kind of flourished in the Army.

He was the ultimate gung-ho soldier.

He'd get up an hour early, before anyone else,

and start getting ready for an inspection.

When other soldiers were finished for the day,

McVeigh would throw on his knapsack.

He'd be hiking around the base.

And more than anything else, McVeigh is a good shot.

For the first time in his life,

he really belonged to something that he was proud of.

♪♪

Then the first Gulf War happens, and he goes over there.

And the script is kind of flipped on him.

Herbeck: He started to realize that America,

in his mind, was the biggest, meanest,

cruelest bully in the entire world.

Potok: More and more, he's getting wrapped up

in their conspiracy theories.

♪♪

After Timothy McVeigh was arrested,

deputies found a packet of anti-government literature

in his getaway car that he claimed he left behind

to help shed light on his motive for the bombing.

But years later, McVeigh decided to explain everything himself.

In a shocking prison interview,

he describes his twisted interpretation of justice.

So, what was it that McVeigh says

turned a high-school misfit into a monster?

That's coming up in the second hour

of "How It Really Happened."

I'm Hill Harper.

Thanks for watching.