by Leslie Lytle, Messenger Staff Writer

“What I hope comes across from the documentary “Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror” is how the toxic stew of extremist rhetoric and anti-government propaganda that inspired Timothy McVeigh in 1995 is not fringe anymore,” said Lee Hancock. “It’s mainstream. And that’s horrifying. The Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh has been cited as a hero and inspiration.” Hancock, a Sewanee resident and Sewanee grad (C’81), is the Associate Producer of the documentary. One hundred and sixty-eight people died from the explosion at the Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. The nine-story structure housed offices for the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, military recruiters, and a credit union. “They were just ordinary people serving as federal employees,” Hancock insisted. The Murrah Building also housed a day care center. The casualties included 19 children.

“McVeigh said he was inspired to take revenge because of Waco,” Hancock observed. In 1993, a gunfight with federal agents resulted in the Branch Dividian religious cult holing up in their Waco, Texas, compound for 51 days. The siege ended on April 19 in a fiery inferno fulfilling the prophecy of cult leader David Koresh, with over 70 Branch Dividians dying, 28 of them children. Hancock, then a reporter for the Dallas Morning Star, covered the Waco tragedy from day one. “The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms made terrible mistakes trying to end the thing,” Hancock acknowledged. “But in the end, the Dividians set fire to their own building. They committed suicide rather than coming out, because that was what their messiah David Koresh told them, ‘You’ve got to go through the fiery end times.’ Waco has inspired horrible misinformation and conspiracy theories.”

Hancock’s role as a consultant for the 2023 documentary, “Waco: American Apocalypse,” led to her involvement in the Oklahoma City project, both directed by Tiller Russell. The day of the bombing, when it dawned on her the fiery inferno at Waco happened the same day, April 19, the lightbulb came on: “This is about Waco.” But Hancock stressed other influences impacted McVeigh, as well: the NRA, anti-government rhetoric from extremist groups, gun show propaganda. “They’re taking away our guns, our rights,” McVeigh complained in taped interviews following the bombing. McVeigh’s bible was white-supremist William Pierce’s “The Turner Diaries,” a novel portraying an attack on the FBI headquarters in Washington with the same kind of truck bomb Timothy McVeigh would use.

Some refer to him as Saint McVeigh according to Hancock. McVeigh served in Desert Storm and earned a Bronze Star, yet he would later comment, “I have no choice what my government uses me for.” The statement, cited by those who revere him, stands in contradiction to lesser-known facts about McVeigh. Following the Iraq War, McVeigh applied to become a Green Beret. McVeigh dropped out of the program, but based on what Hancock learned from her research, he would have been rejected, regardless. The military psychiatrist who interviewed McVeigh concluded, ‘He’s not made for this program.’

McVeigh called the children killed in the bombing, “collateral damage.”

The 84-minute documentary “Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror” is fast paced and painful to watch. Hancock interviewed Oklahoma City residents and first responders for the project. “It was a privilege talking to those folks,” she said, “hearing their stories of loss and recovery. The remarkable resilience demonstrated by the community has come to be known as the Oklahoma Standard. People from all walks of life, all creeds, all political persuasions came together to help with recovery and find survivors.” Particularly poignant are the testimony of a mother whose infant son died in the explosion and the account of rescuers who returned to the building, midst threats of yet another bomb, to free a woman buried alive beneath the rubble. The explosion blew off the entire front half of the building, from the roof to the ground floor.

With smoke still billowing from the structure, law enforcement officer Charlie Hanger stopped McVeigh for driving a vehicle without a rear license plate and ultimately arrested him for carrying a concealed weapon. “For the same traffic stop today, because of changes in gun laws, they would have let him go,” Hancock said.

Equally jarring, McVeigh would have bonded out and been released before anyone connected him to the bombing if it had not been for court delays. In custody for the weapons charge, he watched the rescue efforts on TV, his first glimpse of the devastation he caused. The VIN number from a truck axle found blocks away traced back to a Ryder rental truck, the truck that housed the bomb, a truck rented by McVeigh, although under an assumed name. Initially, investigators believed a natural gas leak caused the explosion, then suspicion turned to two middle easterners driving a brown SUV. “The FBI threw everything they had at the case,” Hancock said. The agency eventually connected the truck to McVeigh and connected McVeigh to two accomplices.

“It became the largest FBI investigation in history until the Jan. 6, 2020, riots,” Hancock stressed. “And it’s still playing out. It’s still resonating in really scary ways.” On her list of domestic terrorism events which make reverent reference to the Oklahoma City bombing and the hallowed day of April 19 are painfully familiar names: the Atlanta Olympic bomber used ‘April 19’ as his media-contact code; the Columbine shooters planned their attack for April 19, but an ammunition delivery delay caused them to postpone; the Michigan militia founder who took over a national wildlife refuge proclaimed, ‘McVeigh died for your sins.’

Hancock cited statistics from the Center for Strategic and International Studies showing that from 2020-2024 the number of domestic terrorist plots almost tripled compared to the previous 25 years. “McVeigh visited Waco,” Hancock said. “And Waco was where Donald Trump launched his reelection campaign. The rhetoric Trump used then is extremely reminiscent of McVeigh’s anti-government talk about how out of control and terrible the government is. Normalizing this extremism and hatred and divisiveness and the politics of division can have horrific consequences.”

The documentary is available on Netflix <https://www.netflix.com/title/...;.