Martin Kettle in Washington Monday May 7, 2001 The Guardian
Relatives of the victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing reacted with outrage yesterday to news that the novelist Gore Vidal has been given permission to attend the execution next week of the convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh. Vidal was invited by McVeigh as a "friend" to watch him die by lethal injection at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on May 16. The "fanatically anti-death penalty" author intends to write an article about it for Vanity Fair magazine.
The decision has been denounced by relatives of some of the 168 people who died.
A media circus already surrounds the execution. Six US networks are squabbling over which of them will get the two witness seats allocated to national television. A decision to show the execution to the relatives of victims on closed circuit television has raised fears that hackers will capture the pictures to show on the internet.
McVeigh, who has said he has no regrets about carrying out the bombing and regards himself as a martyr for the cause of American freedom, is entitled to choose six witnesses to the execution.
Vidal said yesterday that he had begun corresponding with McVeigh in 1998 after the bomber wrote to him about an article in which Vidal said the FBI's actions in breaking the sieges at Waco and Ruby Ridge in the early 90s had shredded the US bill of rights.
McVeigh has said he bombed the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building on the second anniversary of Waco as revenge. He described his victims as "collateral damage".
"The boy has a sense of justice," Vidal said at the weekend. "That's what attracted me to him. We've exchanged several letters. He's very intelligent. He's not insane."