OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Before her two grandsons died with 166 other people in the Oklahoma City bombing, Jannie Coverdale thought that terrorist acts were committed only in foreign countries by conspirators whose names are hard to pronounce.
“Before the bombing, we didn't know there were Timothy McVeighs and Terry Nichols' and all those stupid people in this country,” Coverdale said. “After the bombing, we found out that we didn't have to go overseas to find those people. They're right here.”
Eleven years after the most deadly act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, survivors, terrorism experts and law enforcement authorities fear that lessons learned are being forgotten as the nation focuses on international threats and the Oklahoma City bombing becomes a footnote in history books.
“It shouldn't be forgotten. The minute we forget, some of those people are going to strike again,” Coverdale said.
Six years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a cargo truck packed with two tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil was detonated in front of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people - including 19 children - and injuring hundreds more.
“The loss of life there and the children - it was a staggering crime and a staggering attack,” said former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who headed the agency during the bombing investigation.
“We were braced after that attack for what could have been more attacks and similar events. What were they going to do and were we prepared for this?” Freeh said.
In what remains the largest criminal case in U.S. history, FBI agents conducted 28,000 interviews and collected 3.5 tons of evidence and almost one billion pieces of information.
“When you target a federal building and indiscriminately target civilians and innocents, it represents an egregious kind of attack,” Freeh said.
McVeigh, apprehended less than two hours after the bombing, was convicted of federal murder charges and executed on June 11, 2001. Nichols, who met McVeigh in the Army, was convicted on federal and state bombing charges and is serving multiple life prison sentences.
Another Army buddy, Michael Fortier, pleaded guilty to not telling authorities in advance about the bomb plot and agreed to testify against McVeigh and Nichols. Fortier was released from a federal prison in January after serving about 85 percent of a 12-year sentence.
Prosecutors said the bombing was a twisted attempt to avenge the deaths of about 80 people in the government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.
Freeh said the FBI's response was repeated in investigations of other terrorist attacks including those of Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski, who pleaded guilty in 1998 to killing three people and injuring 23, the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 Americans and the 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 sailors.
“Prior to Sept. 11, we treated overseas acts of terrorism as criminal justice events...almost an extension of the Oklahoma City bombing,” the former FBI director said.
Since Sept. 11, the nation's attention has been riveted on al-Qaida, the militant international terrorist group that carried out the attacks on New York City and Washington, and military responses in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Any event now is assumed to have contacts with radical Islam,” said former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating, the state's chief executive when the bombing occurred.
“Oklahoma City is a lesson learned on what could happen.” said Keating, now president and CEO of the American Council of Life Insurers in Washington. “It wasn't immediately assumed it was radical Islam.”
The number of organized hate groups in the U.S. has risen 33 percent since 2000 and the potential for another domestic terrorist attack is on the rise, said Mark Potok, director of Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which monitors hate groups and extremist activities.
“One of the great lessons of the Oklahoma City bombing is that the domestic radical right poses extremely serious threats,” Potok said.
“We just don't have the luxury of ignoring these other groups in favor of the current threat of the day,” said Chip Ellis, research and program coordinator at the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism in Oklahoma City.
Potok said law enforcement authorities have foiled 60 domestic terrorism plots since the Oklahoma City bombing, including one in Texas in 1997 in which four suspects allegedly plotted to blow up a natural gas processing plant and rob an armored car.
“We can't just focus on the international side of this house,” said Danny Defenbaugh, who headed the Oklahoma City bombing investigation.
Potok said the Oklahoma City bombing “was a watershed moment. It taught us that not all terrorists speak different languages, wear turbans or speak to different Gods.”
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