HAVE WE FORGOTTEN?

OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING 30TH ANNIVERSARY

M. Scott Carter

The Oklahoman USA TODAY NETWORK

Thirty years ago, that particular day began like any spring day in Oklahoma – sunny and bright. Winter was over. Small flowers and redbud trees bloomed across the landscape.

Then, at 9:02 a.m., a truck bomb exploded in Oklahoma City.

Black smoke filled the sky. The shockwave was felt across the city. The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building had been destroyed. Hundreds were injured, and 168 people, including 19 children, would perish.

It wasn’t long before investigators learned that two men – both furious with the federal government – had used ammonium nitrate fertilizer to create the bomb.

The destruction of the Murrah Building and the resulting deaths were meant to be an exclamation mark on a long-running political argument that hung over the nation like a dark cloud. Timothy McVeigh and his co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, planned the bombing because they wanted to send a message.

Two events left McVeigh and Nichols enraged with the federal government – a 1992 standoff in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and the 1993 siege of a religious compound near Waco, Texas. The incidents had created fear and anger among far-right extremists over perceived intrusions on freedoms around guns and religion.

Those events also coincided with a rising conservative political movement that saw the GOP take control of the U.S. Congress in the 1994 election cycle. In Oklahoma, Republican Gov. Frank Keating had barely settled into his job as governor. Keating, a staunch conservative, had a good understanding of the difficult political atmosphere. He acknowledged that anger directed at the federal government had led to the election of Republicans across the country.

McVeigh hoped the bombing would go well beyond a political movement.

He hoped it would start a revolution. For a moment, it did the opposite.

Then-President Bill Clinton said Oklahoma’s reaction to the bombing and the state’s ability to embrace those who were grieving and those who were helping, demonstrated a level of compassion that became an example for the entire country; today it’s known as the Oklahoma Standard.

“Sure there are differences of opinion and policies, but they didn’t tear the fabric of the community,” Clinton said in a recent, exclusive interview with The Oklahoman. “Because what you went through taught you the fundamental decency and goodness of people could transcend their political party and allow us the space we need to reach out and live in an atmosphere of mutual respect and honorable compromise. That’s the sort of thing that gives life to a democracy.”

A presidential problem

Clinton had been up early that morning. He’d gone jogging with the winners of the Boston Marathon, then returned to his office for a national security briefing. Just after 9 a.m., the normalcy of his day was shattered: The president received the first reports on the bombing. A scheduled meeting with the Turkish prime minister would be put on hold.

“I had a staff meeting scheduled for 9, but as soon as the bombing happened everything else stopped,” Clinton said. “But something didn’t feel right. It just felt a little off for me. I felt like there was more to it.”

Clinton’s instincts were on target. Later that day, he would make his first of many statements about the bombing.

“I got my briefing, and I went out and made my remarks. I thought this was important because I didn’t want to jump to the conclusion that it was a foreign attack,” he said.

That morning the president also would make a telephone call. Clinton, a Democrat, called a friend and former classmate at Georgetown. One of the president’s first questions to Gov. Keating: “How can I help?”

The bombing and ugly politics

The GOP’s 1994 gains – on the federal level and in Oklahoma – helped intensify the political environment across the nation. As accompanying rhetoric grew uglier, those who embraced the extreme came out of the shadows, political expert Keith Gaddie said.

“Conservative Republicans had just found their feet in Oklahoma,” said Gaddie, a Texas Christian University political science professor. “Initially, the Murrah bombing really drove away conspiracy theory thinking in Oklahoma as being politically legitimate. In an incident like this, the knucklehead people quickly go underground.”

McVeigh had hoped to leverage that changing political environment. Setting the bomb off would draw attention to how bad government was and make people want to change their government, he thought.

Instead of a revolution, the hateful politics stopped. Images from Oklahoma City replaced the ugly political rhetoric – if only for a while.

Instead of bringing down the government, the bombing and Oklahoma City’s reaction to it pushed McVeigh’s message of hatred aside, said Ron Norick, then the mayor of Oklahoma City.

“I’ll never understand what Nichols and McVeigh had in their minds,” Norick said.

Norick said the behavior of Oklahomans, and the way they demonstrated their caring and concern for their community, changed the nation’s perception of the state.

“I think people around the country didn’t know anything about Oklahoma City and very little about Oklahoma,” he said. “By the way we responded to the whole event and such, in a caring and professional way, I think the nation realized there were a lot of really good people in Oklahoma, and they knew what they were doing. It’s made an impression with people all over the world.”

Do we still remember the past?

There was no bloody revolution.

Instead, volunteers came from across the nation to Oklahoma City, and donations flooded the mail. People pulled together. The intense debates and the political arguments ended.

But it didn’t last, said former Oklahoma Senate President Pro Tem Cal Hobson, a Democrat from Lexington.

“We moved pretty quickly back to politics,” he said. “By 1996, things had again gotten pretty difficult.”

Hobson pointed to today’s current political rhetoric and the intensity of both the state and national elections as examples.

“We’re now back to where we were before,” he said. Clinton agreed. “I hope we learned we should act together,” Clinton said. “But I’ve been stunned to see the way things like Jan. 6 is being totally rewritten as if it were a picnic outing where poor, honest protestors were banged around. Anyone who saw the pictures of what actually happened understood what it was. It was a serious attack.”

Clinton said he was sensitive to the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol because of Oklahoma City, and, he added, he’s concerned the country has forgotten the lessons learned in 1995.

“Next year, we’re having our 250th birthday,” he said. “We are the longest-lasting, continuous democratic republic in history, but even President (Dwight) Eisenhower said he was worried about whether we would maintain the mental energy and discipline to hold a democracy together. That’s what we’re facing again.”

Clinton said he’s observed how Norick and his successors embraced Oklahoma City and the way they have worked together with different groups of people to help one another. But when it comes to future leaders moving beyond today’s harsh political rhetoric and remembering the lessons of events like the Oklahoma City bombing, the former president said he remains concerned.

“I’d say we can’t tell you yet, where this is going,” he said. “But the values and the thinking of what Oklahoma City has shown through a tragedy are highly relevant to this current moment. I think it’s important to remind people that cooperation almost always works better than conflict.”

REMEMBERING

Those Who Were Killed

MemorialMuseum.com