June 26, 1995: Former Soldier Discusses Recent Interview with Suspected Oklahoma City Bomber

Retired Colonel David Hackworth, a columnist for Newsweek, talks to PBS interviewer Charlie Rose about his recent interview with accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and April 21, 1995). Hackworth’s interview will result in a brief column (see July 3, 1995) and a cover story (see June 26, 1995), both of which engender tremendous controversy; critics have said that Hackworth has played into McVeigh’s lawyers’ efforts to “soften his image” (see June 26, 1995). Hackworth says that while he “expected to find a monster,” he found a normal young man, “disarming… laid back,” and a “very cool” person. “He came across as the boy that lived next door.” Hackworth says he set up the interview after sending McVeigh a copy of his book About Face, which interested McVeigh enough to have him and attorney Stephen Jones agree to the interview, McVeigh’s first after being arrested. McVeigh is “nothing like I had read in the press.” Rose asks how much of McVeigh’s presentation was “spin” to affect the press, and Hackworth says, “One hundred percent.… He knew that Newsweek talks to 20 million people, he knew that if he could project this kind of ‘boy next door’ image, it would hit the, uh, it might present a new twist on where he is coming from.… He handled himself very well.… He’s so smart that he’s capable of masterminding the operation, which a lot of people in the press said” he was too unintelligent to have done on his own. People in the Pentagon have told him, Hackworth says, that McVeigh could have been a brilliantly successful officer had he stayed in the military. Hackworth says that McVeigh refused to answer direct questions about his carrying out the bombing, instead saying, “We’re going to trial… we’re pleading not guilty.” He calls the bombing a “precise… military operation” that “wasn’t something a militia type, frothing at the mouth, could have put together.” The bombing was handled well, he says, up until McVeigh’s “bug out,” or escape: “To jump in that old car… and get stopped (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995) was a minor charge.” Asked what that says about McVeigh, Hackworth replies, “It was almost one of those odd coincidences that we saw in the Lee Harvey Oswald case [the purported assassin of President John F. Kennedy], you know, it was perfect except he’s got the wrong ammunition or something.” Hackworth reiterates his characterization in Newsweek of McVeigh suffering from a “postwar hangover,” a depression that ensued after the war ended and he lost his battlefield comrades (see November 1991 - Summer 1992); his judgment became clouded and his thinking became skewed. Hackworth says that McVeigh denies any miltia ties whatsoever, and denies ever claiming he was being held as a “prisoner of war,” as news reports have alleged. Hackworth says that McVeigh told him he was treated well by his jailers, but says that McVeigh asked why he was not given a bulletproof vest on his short walk from the Noble County Courthouse to his transport to the El Reno federal facility. Hackworth says that the blank, grim look on McVeigh’s face that has characterized him in the news is actually the “thousand-yard stare” that soldiers get when they are expecting to be shot. Hackworth says he expected to “push a button” by asking McVeigh about the Branch Davidian standoff and ultimate tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After), but McVeigh was not rattled. He concludes that when he interviewed accused Iran-Contra conspirator Oliver North (see May-June, 1989), he caught North in “a hundred lies,” but he did not catch McVeigh in a single lie. Either McVeigh was telling the truth, Hackworth says, or he is a masterful liar. [PBS, 6/26/1995]