To Some, Case Is Open and Shut: McVeigh’s Innocent

Timothy J. McVeigh remains today an innocent man.

That concept is as old as America.

And just as surely as he is entitled to his right to a fair trial, set to begin Monday, there are a number of people in this country who believe he will still be innocent when the trial ends, regardless of its verdict.

They contend McVeigh did not blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in April 1995, that he did not kill 168 people, including 19 children, that he did not injure more than 500 others, that he did not commit the worst terrorist attack in the United States.

Some of his supporters are fellow patriots on the hard right of U.S. politics. Some are members of weekend militias. Some are conspiracy theorists who believe it preposterous that one seemingly irrelevant young guy from upstate New York could create such horrible devastation.

At a recent survivalist exposition in San Diego, for instance, with the McVeigh trial fast approaching, the buzz at the show booths was that he is nothing more than a “stooge,” a “fall guy” planted by others to take the blame for the explosion.

His defense camp, now ensconced in Denver where the trial was moved because Oklahomans so dislike the sound of the name McVeigh, regularly receive mail encouraging them to fight for their client’s life. Many of the letters insist that McVeigh has been railroaded.

In addition, there are polls, some touted by the McVeigh defense team, suggesting that here in Colorado as many as 55% of the respondents have not yet formed an opinion about McVeigh. Of those who have, said chief defense counsel Stephen Jones, half of them believe he is not guilty.

McVeigh, a former army soldier who served in the Gulf War, made no secret of his deep hatred for federal law enforcement. It was a pair of FBI gun battles that particularly incensed him, one at the Randy Weaver home in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, another at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.

Prosecutors say he turned his hatred into vengeance at Oklahoma City. But they have a case built on circumstantial evidence--a situation that has fed the conspiracy believers’ contention that McVeigh is falsely charged.

John Trochmann, a general in the Militia of Montana and a leader in the national anti-Washington movement, is convinced that McVeigh is a victim of what he calls the “Oswald syndrome.” He insists that McVeigh and, likewise, Lee Harvey Oswald in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, were fingered in high-profile criminal cases that allowed the real assassins to go free.

“McVeigh is a patsy,” Trochmann said rather dismissively. “He was given up to provide deep cover for the CIA. After all, who trained him? The military.”

“He was set up to take a fall,” said Clay Douglas, a New Mexican who edits a magazine that focuses on conspiracy theories. “The problem is that the American people have been so brainwashed, they can’t see the truth anymore.”

And then there is McVeigh’s mail. While much of it in the early days after his arrest called for his head, much of it now is decidedly more sympathetic. Kinder, even. Supportive.

“Hope you are able to get some fresh air and see some of Colorado’s beauty,” wrote “a friend” from Lakewood, Colo., on the back of a picture postcard of the Denver skyline. “I still believe in your innocence.”

One man sent McVeigh copies of news articles on Waco and Ruby Ridge that he said “truly anger me.” He then ended his letter on a personal note to McVeigh:

“You poor guy. Shut up behind bars. . . . It truly anguishes me.”

An 82-year-old Christian woman felt maternal instincts for McVeigh.

“I don’t know if you have a grandmother living,” she wrote. “But I am a grandmother, and I wish you to know that you have been on my mind almost daily and I ask God to give you strength.”

She added: “I feel in my bones that you did not do what they accuse you of.”

She ended her letter “with kindness and friendship, and hoping for fairness.”