City Bombing

OKLAHOMA CITY -- When a bomb pulverized the federal building a few blocks from the branch office of Southwestern Bell, the company quickly offered the building as a rescue command post. Within a couple of days, the company decided that wasn't good enough. It followed up with a $1 million donation.In California's Silicon Valley, a financial analyst pledged his entire $53,000 salary to a college fund for the children who lost parents in the blast. New York financier Henry Kravis kicked in $200,000.

Baltimore police declared a bomb scare at City Hall safe Monday morning, and reopened the surrounding streets. Police received a call around 7 a.m. about a suspicious package at City Hall, and closed the nearby streets, according to police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. It was later revealed to be a food container wrapped in a T-shirt with the word "bomb" written on it, and streets were reopened at about 8:30 a.m. There were no suspects. Government offices were closed Monday in observance of the Christmas holiday.

In the days since the Oklahoma City bombing, employees of the Defense Investigative Service at Fort Holabird have been filling a plastic pretzel jar with money to send to the families of five agency workers lost in the explosion.So far, they've collected $1,100, plus $1,200 from the sale of ribbons of remembrance -- clusters of yellow, white, blue and purple strands similar to those worn by President and Mrs. Clinton at last Sunday's memorial service in Oklahoma City.When the idea of selling the ribbons was proposed, William A. Hughes, the DIS chief in Baltimore, thought it was great, according to Susan Marshall, a project manager at the Baltimore center.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Yousef Badr stood among dozens of fellow laborers who rose early and gathered on a grimy street corner in the Sadr City neighborhood with their battered hand tools and hopes for a day's pay. The bomb blast that shattered their morning ritual, killing 31 people and injuring more than 50 yesterday, was the first large-scale attack on the predominantly Shiite neighborhood in more than a month, and stoked fears that a wave of retaliatory killings...

WASHINGTON -- Even after the Oklahoma City bombing, Americans' concerns about terrorism are strongly bounded by fears that a crackdown could endanger civil liberties, a Los Angeles Times poll has found.Although the survey found strong support for specific measures to tighten surveillance of suspected terrorists, it also suggests that Americans are ambivalent about signing over individual freedoms in the quest for greater security from terrorist violence.Americans say they would be willing to give up some civil liberties to bolster the fight against terrorism.

Paul Howell's vigil is over.For days after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, the retired National Guard recruiter prayed outside the damaged structure, speaking softly to his youngest daughter trapped somewhere inside.On Sunday, forensic specialists identified the body of Karen Howell, 27, a mother of two who would have celebrated her third wedding anniversary yesterday."They found her. Thank God for that," said Mr. Howell, who was profiled in a front-page article in The Sun April 23. "When they called and said they found my baby, about 100 pounds came off my back."

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican, said yesterday that the Senate terrorism panel he chairs will hold "long overdue" hearings on raids by federal agents in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, -- events that have become rallying points for citizens' militias and other anti-government groups."

It's too early to adopt a line or a take on the Oklahoma City bombing -- except that it's driving a stake into the heart of the O. J. Simpson trial -- and it's certainly too soon for the line that it's the end of innocence for America.The story is breaking too fast to even ask, let alone try to answer, who's innocent, who's guilty or who's guilty with an explanation.Still, the newsweeklies have to commit and they do.The best single piece of writing/reporting is this week's Newsweek's misleadingly mildly headlined "The View from the Far Right" by Tom Morganthau and collaborators.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- This is a city trying to comfort itself.Eleven days after the nightmare bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the funerals go on. The rescue workers -- by now certain they are not going to rescue anyone more -- continue their struggle to recover bodies.The families who have heard nothing still wait, as volunteers -- strangers -- hold their hands.This is a place where 300 clergy members signed up to counsel families and another 300 volunteered to talk to the hundreds on weary search teams, where schoolchildren decorate pillowcases for the rescuers' cots with thank-you messages.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- During a day filled with personal sorrow, public grief and religious reflection, President Clinton remembered the victims and survivors of the bombing here a year ago, offering comfort in the Good Friday celebration of rebirth and resurrection.Aided by his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and six children who lived through the deadly blast, Mr. Clinton arranged a huge wreath of seasonal flowers in the barren field where the Alfred P. Murrah federal center once stood.The massive building was destroyed on April 19, 1995, when a truck bomb exploded, killing 168 people, including 18 children at a second-floor day-care center.

For a long time, the people of Oklahoma City knew it was coming -- the day that Michael J. Fortier would get out of prison after serving time for his role in the 1995 bombing of the federal building that killed 168 people and injured 500. But as Fortier's release tomorrow approaches, the deal cut to secure his testimony against Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols is again gnawing at some of the survivors and relatives of the victims. They worry about a possible future threat posed by Fortier, 37, and the undisclosed terms of his release -- in particular whether he will gain federal witness protection.

OKLAHOMA CITY - There is a reflecting pool now where the horrifying shell of the bombed federal building once stood, and a museum displays photographs of the 168 people killed that April day 10 years ago, along with small reminders of the lives they lived - a young woman's red lipstick, a doctor's stethoscope, a baby's pacifier. But the remembrances of what happened at the Alfred P. Murrah building on April 19, 1995, which until Sept. 11, 2001, stood as the worst act of terrorism on American soil, do not only look back.

McALESTER, Okla. - A surge of complex and contradictory emotions coursed through Oklahoma yesterday, a day after a jury weighing the fate of Terry L. Nichols announced that it could not agree whether Nichols should die for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. There was anger among some people who had hoped for a death sentence. There was relief among those who wanted to see the end of nine years of motions, hearings and trials. There was a sense of victory among those who are pleased that Nichols was convicted of murder, even if the jury could not agree on a sentence.

McALESTER, Okla. - A jury convicted Terry L. Nichols of 161 state murder counts yesterday, rejecting defense claims that he had been an unwitting accomplice to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The jury, which deliberated for five hours, instead branded him a full partner of executed bomber Timothy J. McVeigh. Next week, prosecutors will try to persuade the same 12 jurors to do what a federal jury would not six years ago: sentence Nichols to death. As District Judge Steven Taylor announced the decision, Nichols, 49, looked wan but remained stone-faced.

At the top of WBFF-TV's late newscast Wednesday, Jon Lieberman appeared to report a big break in the story of the terrorist attacks: "Multiple people" from Baltimore were being interrogated that day by law enforcement officials "in connection with" the World Trade Center attacks, he said. But city police say Lieberman, one of the station's newest and most promising reporters, was wrong. Late in the newscast, citing "multiple sources," Lieberman said three men from Hampden were being interviewed by police and thought to be "mid-level players" in the terrorist campaign carried out Tuesday.

WASHINGTON -- Five years ago, in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing, Congress passed one of the toughest anti-terrorism laws in history. It was designed to make it easier to prevent terrorist acts and to punish the perpetrators. Known as the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the law came under heavy criticism from lawyers who claimed it infringed on constitutional rights and provided little real protection against terrorism. Several provisions of the law have never been enforced, and in recent years there has been a movement to repeal some of its harsher elements.

FORT RILEY, Kan. -- The 16th Infantry Regiment here boasts a long and distinguished combat record. It fought at Manassas and Gettysburg. It was the first unit to hit Omaha Beach on D-Day in 1944. It has earned its motto: "Always Ready."But the 16th's storied history is in the process of adding an embarrassing footnote. For the last week, a small army of FBI agents has swarmed over the tree-lined, campus-like setting of Fort Riley, interviewing soldiers about a former sergeant who is the prime suspect in the worst civilian bombing in American history.

The Militia of Montana would have you believe it condemns terrorism. The group's leaders say they are appalled at the Oklahoma City bombing, and they have encouraged other militia members to contact authorities if they have information about the explosion.They have even advertised the telephone number of the FBI's tip hot line.Most of the year, however, the Militia of Montana peddles another another line.Just send for its catalog, with the cover of a sniper perched in a tree.This 12-page pamphlet offers a variety of material for the everyday militia man or woman, from the primer on how to activate your own unorganized citizen militia to training manuals on "unconventional warfare devices and techniques" and "sniper training and employment."

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - His eyes wide open and his face betraying no emotion, Timothy J. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection yesterday, six years after the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. Inside the death chamber at the federal prison, the last words McVeigh heard were spoken by U.S. Marshal Frank Anderson: "Warden, we may proceed with the execution." With that, a combination of three chemicals was injected into a vein in McVeigh's right leg. The first left him unconscious.

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - With the clock moving ever closer to his scheduled death by lethal injection this morning, Timothy J. McVeigh spent yesterday participating in the grim rituals of execution. He moved in shackles to the death house at the federal prison here. He ate his last meal. He met with the lawyer who will disperse his cremated remains in a place McVeigh wants kept secret. And he prepared for the moment when he will be asked to deliver his last words. "He is calm," said lawyer Robert Nigh Jr., one of two attorneys who met with McVeigh yesterday.