Chris Matthews
Attorney General John Ashcroft asked for a delay
in the Oklahoma bomber's execution to determine
whether the FBI's failure to give McVeigh's lawyers
more than 3,000 documents cost him a fair trial.
Smart move. To kill McVeigh after denying him
access to the very evidence used to nail him would
be to validate his motive in the mass murder of April
1995: exacting revenge for what he saw as the
overzealous, police-state tactics of the FBI and the
Bureau of Alcohol and Firearms.
Ashcroft's decision is smarter than his earlier one -
denying media access to McVeigh. That decision,
which presumably still stands, strikes me not merely
as overzealous law enforcement, but as a gratuitous
attempt at thought control. McVeigh is thoroughly
bound. Does he have to be gagged as well?
To that, Ashcroft offered a hearty "Yes!"
"He's caused enough senseless damage already,''
Ashcroft said. " I would ask that the news media
not become Timothy McVeigh's co-conspirator in
his assault on America's public safety and upon
America itself."
I have a problem with Ashcroft's smug use of the
word "senseless." This is a political crime being
punished here. McVeigh was not driven by a motive
so deranged as John Hinckley's in shooting
President Ronald Reagan. He succeeded in an
attack on a federal government he had come to
detest.
Is this free country of ours serving its own best
interests and values in preventing McVeigh from
expressing his motive publicly? Even if the desire for
such a gagging reigns as the majority opinion, does
the grave unpopularity of this ex-soldier's act justify
the decision to attempt to silence him?
Unlike Ashcroft, I think it is the country that suffers
when anyone, especially a guy like McVeigh, is
kept in any way from speaking his mind.
Like it or not, agree with it or not, his motive was
political.
That puts him in the same category as an assassin.
Whether he is executed in 30 days or 30 years, I
want him to have the right to declare his motive
loudly, clearly, unmistakably Ð not so much for him
as for us.
Lee Harvey Oswald loved Fidel Castro and hated
John F. Kennedy for trying to topple him. Sirhan
Sirhan hated Bobby Kennedy's all-out support for
Israel. James Earl Ray hated Martin Luther King's
historic crusade for civil rights.
How much better it would be for us, the legatees of
their crimes, had this trio been grilled by the media.
How much preferable it would be to have their
recorded words available for scrutiny instead of
having to suffer the endless conspiracy theories
hawked by the likes of Oliver Stone.
I want these public killers talking till they're blue in
the face.
Timothy McVeigh exploded that building because
he wanted a "body count" to show his anger at the
actions of the federal agents at Ruby Ridge and
Waco.
Let's hear him explain on camera. Millions of people
remain troubled by such episodes as Ruby Ridge
and Waco, in which the federal government used
ends-justify-the-means tactics.
The critical point here is that the jury that sentenced
McVeigh to death agreed that the defendant acted
out of outrage over Ruby Ridge and Waco and
believed that federal law enforcement officials were
using military tactics to turn the U.S. into a police
state.
His was a political crime for which he faces a capital
punishment.
Whatever happens to McVeigh, there's no
justification for levying the added political
punishment of denying him a final and full public
explanation of his political deed - no matter how
heinous the crime, no matter how self-serving his
words.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
BASED on U.S. Census data,
an estimated 6,400 Americans will die on
Wednesday. Timothy McVeigh, now being held on
the new federal Death Row in Terre Haute, will not
be one of them.
JWR contributor Chris Matthews is the author of Hardball. and hosts a CNBC show of the same name. Send your comments to him by clicking here.