McVeigh defense archive shows bomber viewed blast as failure

Timothy McVeigh considered the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building 20 years ago somewhat of a failure, viewed himself as a “Paul Revere-type messenger” and even suggested his defense team should receive $800,000 from the government, according an archive of documents donated by the convicted bomber’s lead attorney.

The estimated 1 million pages of paper documents from Stephen Jones now fill 550 file cabinet-sized boxes at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, where the Enid, Oklahoma, attorney received his undergraduate degree. The trove, delivered to the school in three phases since 1998, only became fully organized late last year.

It includes a confidential report from a polygraph examiner, who wrote that McVeigh had wanted to ‘take out’ the Murrah Building on April 19, 1995. Although the blast killed 168 people, including 19 children, the examiner concluded that “In McVeigh’s mind, he believed that he had definitely screwed up because he left the building still standing.”