HBO has released on its Max streaming platform a new documentary about the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
“An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th” was released Tuesday. Here is the trailer:
Katie Couric, executive producer of the film and an NBC-TV reporter at the bombing, and Kathy Sanders, whose two grandsons died in the attack, talked about the film on the “Today” show.
The Oklahoman newspaper, based in Oklahoma City, published a long, well-done article about the film. It also talked to Sanders and the film’s director, Marc Levin.
“The goal, originally, was to bring this story to a new generation, because shockingly, when we started, one of the executives at HBO said her own children, who go to very good colleges, had no idea what the Oklahoma City bombing was. And we were like, ‘No, that’s impossible,'” said Marc Levin, who directed and produced the film.
“Obviously, 9/11 eclipsed everything. … But it remains the deadliest domestic terrorist attack on the U.S. government in American history, and it is shocking that a lot of people don’t know (about it).” […]
“An American Bombing” features interviews with former U.S. President Bill Clinton; investigative reporters Mike Boettcher and Bob Sands; former FBI special agents Danny Coulson, Michael Liwicki, and Bob Ricks; authors Stuart Wright, Jeffrey Toobin, Lou Michel, Dan Herbeck and Kathleen Belew; attorneys Stephen Jones, Asa Hutchinson, Aitan Goelman, Beth Wilkinson, Clark Brewster and Steven Snyder; and investigator Richard Reyna.
Plus, the film features Nancy Shaw, who survived the 1995 bombing; Mollie McDermott, a childhood friend of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh; and former domestic terrorist Kerry Noble; a one-time member of The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, a far-right militia organization that was active in the 1970s and ’80s.
Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted and put to death for lighting the fuse on the truck bomb that killed 168 people, is a part of Route 66 lore. He stayed in a room at the Hill Top Motel in Kingman, Arizona, not long before the blast. The motel still exists, but it now is long-term lodging.
The Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum near the bombing site remains a common side trip for many Route 66ers. It’s about 1 1/2 miles south of the Northwest 23rd Street alignment of Route 66.
A woman in Oklahoma City directed me to the bombing site about 18 months after it happened, well before the memorial was built. I recall my knees shaking as I approached.
On a chain-link fence that surrounded ground zero, people left photographs of the victims, crosses, messages and, lastly, teddy bears that symbolized the children killed in the attack.
The construction of the memorial changed the look of the site drastically. But one thing that remained is the so-called Survivor Tree, an American elm badly damaged by the blast. Each year, many people — including a fair number of survivors — collect the tree’s seeds to plant them in remembrance of a loved one or as a gesture of resilience.
(Image of the Oklahoma City Memorial by jpellgren via Flickr)
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols betrayed their country took something something very special from us. On the day McVeigh was executed, in Terre Haute, Indiana, I thought to myself, “It’s over.” Then 9/11. And now, this. Will it never end?