McVeigh Says He Weighed Assassinating Reno
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WASHINGTON — Timothy J. McVeigh said he considered assassinating former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and others instead of bombing the Oklahoma City federal building to retaliate against the government.
“I considered, among other things, a campaign of individual assassination,” McVeigh said in a letter to Fox News released Thursday.
McVeigh said “eligible” targets included Reno, “making her accept ‘full responsibility’ in deed, not just word,” for the deaths in the federal raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.
Other targets included federal Judge Walter Smith, who presided over the Waco trial, and Lon Horiuchi, an FBI agent involved at a shootout at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
McVeigh said he bombed the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City to strike against a government he believed had waged violence against its citizens.
McVeigh, 33, is scheduled to be executed May 16 for the 1995 bombing, which killed 168 people.
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