Timothy McVeigh, it turns out, was listening to William Cooper on his radio talk show  talking about Waco Texas and was struck by what he heard. He caught the sickness. He was inflamed like so many in the right-wing movement. He was lapped by the flames. He believed what he heard. It radicalized him.

Like to many other conservative Americans, Timothy McVeigh  always loved guns,. After High School though he became obsessed with guns. He read Soldier of Fortune magazine as if it was holy writ. He became a vocal proponent of gun rights. McVeigh was no dummy. He joined the army and graduated at the top of his class.

He was disciplined for buying a White Power shirt at a KKK rally. He was bathed in White Supremacist ideology. McVeigh was transformed by his role in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq. Even though he won medals for his job as sniper, he was traumatized by the war.  His attitude underwent a sea change while he was there. He began to wonder what right he had to go to Iraq and tell Iraqis what to do in their own country but he was actually told to hurt them for not doing it his way!

He was considered for Special Forces work but failed because of his physical condition.  This humiliated McVeigh. He began to blame the US military rather than the people of Iraq. He saw the army as part of the socialist takeover of America. And in 1993 he was at the Waco siege hawking bumper stickers. He was the young man radically affected by what he saw at Waco. After that he roamed the country attending gun shows wherever he could. He was also awash with theories by William Cooper. He bought a video on Waco made by Cooper.  As Justin Ling said on his CBC podcast series, “Flamethrowers”, he was listening to “the Big Lie.” That is an interesting expression in the history of extremism. It became even more interesting years later.

 Cooper in his tapes asked his listeners if they would stand up like a real man and a real woman? McVeigh heard Cooper say the time was near when everyone, including himself was going to have to make a decision. It was time to be counted and McVeigh was ready. Cooper asked, on the tape, “how  many more people are you going to allow to be jailed, persecuted, burned to death, murdered, because you are a coward.”

Later evidence  makes it clear that McVeigh took this message to heart. He was brave enough for the task at hand that brought him to Oklahoma City.