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This is Later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you

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hear weekday afternoon is on the Drive. You know Jeffrey Tuban as the former

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CN and legal analyst. He's also
a best selling author, True Crimes and

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Misdemeanors, The Oath, the Nine, Too Close to Call, among some

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of his creations. His newest piece
is called Home Grown, Timothy McVeigh and

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the Rise of right Wing Extremism.
As you can imagine, Jeffrey, this

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hits very close to home. You
know, there's not much pleasure in writing

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about the Oklahoma City bombing, but
the chance to fall in love with your

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state again was one of them,
and just the opportunity to spend so much

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time in Oklahoma was great. I
had a lot of authentic Oklahoma experiences,

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including getting caught in a speed track
between Enid and Oklahoma City, which I

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understand is a real right, which
is apparently a real right of passage for

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a lot of people in Oklahoma.
But I did have a great time in

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Oklahoma, even though ultimately this is
a very sad story. Of course that

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it is now contrary to what many
in Congress would want us to believe,

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January sixth was not the worst thing
to ever happen to the United States since

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the Civil War. No, indeed, and the Oklahoma City bombing, you

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know, just to remind people,
I mean, it's just a long time

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ago. There's a generation of people
in Oklahoma and everywhere else that has grown

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up before since since it happened twenty
eight years ago, one hundred and sixty

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eight kills, including nineteen children.
It's a haunting story. The Oklahoma City

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Memorial in Oklahoma, in Oklahoma City, I think, is a really fine

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institution that keeps the story alive.
But my book was an effort to do

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that as well. Well, let's
go back to that end and look at

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some of the common and least common
denominators with Timothy McVeigh. We all know

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what Timothy McVeigh did, But at
what point did the seeds of all of

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his rage begin to sew? Well, there's I guess I can enter that

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in two ways. In one way, you know, this was an unhappy

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life that that Timothy McVeigh led.
You know, he grew up outside Buffalo,

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New York, with a family that
was falling apart, with his father

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and grandfather having worked in a General
Motors plant that was shrinking over the course

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of his life. But there was
nothing really extraordinary about his background. He

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was not poor, he was not
ill, he was not abused, so

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there is nothing that suggested he would
become the monster that he did. You

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know, he really became radicalized after
he flunked out of the Special Forces tryout

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in the army. He wanted to
be a Green Beret, didn't make it,

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became alienated, and he became obsessed
with hating the federal government of Bill

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Clinton. You know, I think
one of the one of the mistakes people

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make about mcveighs to think he was
some kind of loaner outside or lone wolf.

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He was not. He was part
of the anti Clinton movement of the

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of the nineteen nineties. He obviously
went much farther and did much more horrible

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things than the vast majority of the
people in that movement, but he was

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part of that movement, and that's
where he became radicalized. I think many

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people remember that he was very angry
about the FBI rate of ECO and he

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timed the assault on the Murrah Building
for the second anniversary April nineteen, nineteen

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ninety five. But he was just
as angry about the assault weapons fan that

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Bill Clinton signed on September thirteenth,
nineteen ninety four. So it wasn't just

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Waco. It was a political agenda
that was much broader than that. Jeffrey

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Tuban is with us. You remember
him as CNN's legal analyst. His book

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is called Homegrown, Timothy McVeigh and
the Rise of Right Wing Extremism. One

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of the most common denominators between January
sixth and the Mura Building bombing is a

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man by the name of Merrick Garlands. True enough, Americ Garland was a

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mid level of high mid level appointee
in the Clinton Justice Department, and just

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two days after the bombing was put
in charge of the bombing investigation. He

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you know, I think people sometimes
have a hard time remembering the things that

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were going on at the same time. In January of nineteen ninety five,

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the OJ Simpson case, the criminal
case started in Los Angeles, and Marrick

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Garland was appalled by what he was
seeing in Los Angeles with the OJ case

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and made a very specific decision to
make the Oklahoma City bombing prosecution a different

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affair, much slower profile, no
publicity for the prosecutors, and that aversion

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to publicity that aversions to the pal
the entertainment aspect of law enforcement is something

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that we continue to see in Merrick
Garland now that he's the Attorney in general.

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He has been a low profile attorney
general. He has not talked about

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the Trump investigation, for example,
in a way that he might have.

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But I think the lessons for him
of Oklahoma City was to keep prosecutors comments

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inside the courtroom, not outside the
courtroom, and for better for worse,

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that's the way he's conducting the investigation
well. And then it also seems like

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that is what spawned many of the
conspiracy theories. I mean, I had

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a reporter working for me that had
covered the bombing and he was working on

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a book. He believed that the
provocation of the actual bombing came from an

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infiltration and sting operation by the FBI
that went wrong, and that Timothy McVeigh

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jumped the gun on all of that
to get back of the FBI. For

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what it's worth, I don't doubt. I mean, just can we just

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say how wrong wrong that is?
You know, I mean, the the

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conspiracy theories. You know, it's
interesting, um um, there are conspiracy

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theories on both the left and right. You know, the conservatives have tried

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to make Timmothy McVay somehow affiliated with
U Islamic terrorists like Steps who was involved

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in the first World Trade Center bombing. Totally false. People on the left

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have tried to make this a broader
right wing conspiracy involving perhaps people in Elohim

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City, which was a compound UH
in eastern Oklahoma, also not true.

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You know, the facts are bad
enough. But mc bay and Terry Nichols

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acted alone in this bombing. They
had some um, not assistance, but

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at least knowledge by the friend Michael
Fortier. But they were the only people

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who knew who were involved in this
conspiracy. And after spending a great deal

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of time looking into this story,
that's the conclusion I drew, and I'm

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confident it's right. And you can
hear and read that confidence in his new

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creation, Homegrown Timothy McVeigh The Rise
of Right Wing Extremism. Jeffrey Tuban,

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New York Times bestselling author and CNN
analyst. I thank you for joining us,

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Thanks Lee, thanks for listening to
Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews

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Podcast, and remember to listen to
the Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to

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seven and Ihearts Media Presentation