In a 2001 article , " The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh " , Gore undertook to discover why domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 . He concluded that McVeigh ( a politically disillusioned U.S. Army veteran of the First Iraq War , 1990 – 91 ) had destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building as an act of revenge for the FBI 's Waco massacre ( 1993 ) at the Branch Davidian Compound in Texas , believing that the U.S. government had mistreated Americans in the same manner that he believed that the U.S. Army had mistreated the Iraqis . In concluding the Vanity Fair article , Vidal refers to McVeigh as an " unlikely sole mover , " and theorizes that foreign/domestic conspiracies could have been involved
Oklahoma City bombing
Oklahoma City bombing
Gore Vidal