Life After the Firestorm:

Did Tim Win Or Lose?

It's a question I have been meaning to deal with, but somehow, over the seven years following Tim's execution, I've either ducked it completely, or felt that it really shouldn't be dealt with at all. Call it trepidation, call it uncomfortable, or be honest and say, "What if the conspiracy faction was right after all. Was Tim McVeigh nothing but a government patsy, the designated driver of the truck and its horrible contents? Could it be that Tim was very good at taking direction, but had a tendency to follow rather than lead? And most striking of all, McVeigh spent hours upon hours talking to Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, painting himself as the "lone wolf" who needed no help whatsoever in executing his deadly plan in the turbulent 1995 of April when many lives were to be changed forever. Indeed, Tim knew that this book, "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing" would be read by many and taken at face value.

Then why did Tim engage in a dramatic "jailhouse confession" to two fellow death row inmates that refuted almost all of the material in "American Terrorist"? Surely he knew that David Paul Hammer and Jeffrey William Paul would eventually go public with what they had learned and indeed they did, together penning the book, "Secrets Worth Dying For" that cast McVeigh in an entirely different light than the one so carefully cultivated for the eyes and ears of Michel and Herbeck.

I suppose McVeigh had a change of heart, although I have no idea why. He was so adamant that he needed no-one's help. He even made a point of telling anyone who would listen that he had fronted the money himself, that he had done all the mixing of the fertilizer and nitrate himself and that he professed to be the consummate freedom fighter; a true American Patriot. It appeared that this was what Tim wished as his legacy. Then came "Secrets Worth Dying For." This blew the lid off the lone terrorist theory and painted Tim in an completely different shades of grey.

I am in the process of reading that book by Hammer and Paul and I must say, it certainly appears to be a case of McVeigh coming clean at last. Did Tim have an attack of conscience and wanted his loved ones to realize the bombing wasn't all his doing? I would imagine his family and friends were relieved somewhat. Of course, we will never hear the whole truth, as Tim has been silenced by the horrific execution. So did the FBI have even more evidence that they brought forth during Tim's trial? There are a group of individuals who have been pursuing this for years and they just might have been right after all.

I will be adding more to this story as I finish "Secrets Worth Dying For." It does give credence to the overall crime as being perpetrated by disgusting skin heads in the Elohim City compound and some guy nicknamed "Andy the German" who would have been a damned good Nazi. I am appalled that Tim would have anything to do with those dangerous idiots in the first place. I despise racism, so this is an area of Tim's psyche that I would just as soon not think about.

Story To Be Continued.