Oklahoma City Bombing

Cultural  

1. The destruction of a federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995 by a truck loaded with explosives; the blast killed 168 people. Timothy McVeigh, a former U.S. soldier, and two conspirators were convicted of the crime; McVeigh was executed.

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Many Americans initially assumed that this act of terrorism was the work of Arabs in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel and were shocked to learn that the perpetrators were Americans. McVeigh and his conspirators had vague ties to the militia movement of the 1990s.

Example Sentences

I recall that after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, a Republican congressional staffer accosted me with the hypothesis that Timothy McVeigh was a scapegoat, and the bombing had been an inside job by the Clinton administration to justify oppressing conservatives.

From Salon

Agency leaders focused considerable energy on organized crime — which Hoover had mostly ignored or tolerated — from the mid-’70s onward, and were reluctantly compelled to acknowledge the rising threat of white nationalist and anti-government terrorism after Waco, Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1994.

From Salon

The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, an earlier but still notable example, killed 168 in the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history.

From Salon

We could go on and on, and the reaction in the country to these acts of political violence, and I think that’s what we’re seeing now, feels very much like the reaction in the ’60s where acts of violence generated more division, rather than, say, the Oklahoma City bombing.

From Slate

I remember watching the news on that horrible afternoon when the Oklahoma City bombing took place.

From Salon