August 9, 1995
From CNN Correspondent Robert Vito
OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (CNN) -- "One, two, three, four... Kill! We will!" The seeds of destruction that brought down the Oklahoma City Federal Building may be traced to a day in May, seven years ago, when the Army brought together three men in basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia. Those men were Timothy McVeigh, tall, lean, a loner, Terry Nichols, the older man who enlisted because of a bad marriage, and Michael Fortier, with the billiard-ball look of boot camp.
"Move it, push it, push it!" The sounds of young men and women preparing for war ring out across the training fields of Fort Benning. Nichols was named platoon leader, but he wasn't seen as a leader by some. Franklin Whidden, a former soldier says of Nichols, "Everybody knew he was a little different. Nobody really looked up to him." Within a year, when his marriage broke up, Nichols dropped out of the Army.
It was McVeigh who emerged as the natural leader, who saw combat in the Gulf War and won the Bronze Star. Former soldier Jim Spencer says McVeigh was "really hardcore, (a) dedicated soldier." Tim Euliss, another fellow soldier says McVeigh had a penchant for weapons. "He was a gunner. He loved the guns."
Even after McVeigh left the Army, the Army left its mark on McVeigh, in his friendships and way of life. McVeigh showed up in Fortier's hometown of Kingman, Arizona, then at the home of Nichols' brother in Michigan. If he had any other real friends, they have not been found.
Like the other men, McVeigh had a deep distrust of the federal government. A former co-worker, Rick Burkett, heard McVeigh denounce the government. "He said they didn't know what they were doing, they had no business trying to tell the people of America what to do, and he pretty much hated the government as a whole."
Nichols sent a letter to Kansas officials trying to renounce any duties as a citizen. County Attorney Keith Collett says of the letter, "Typically, when these things are delivered to my office, I stick them in an assorted nuts file."
Fortier was a changed man when he came home from the Army. He flew a "Don't Tread on Me" flag over his house trailer in Kingman. Joe Russo, Fortier's former high school teacher, says, "He seemed more more serious now, more intense, more intense type of a guy than he used to be."
Two years ago, when an F.B.I siege of the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco ended in a deadly inferno, it fanned the flames of McVeigh's hatred. Burkett says, "It disturbed him. It was wrong, and he was mad about it. He was flat out mad. He said the government wasn't worth the powder to blow it to hell."
In April, McVeigh drove away from Fortier's hometown, to Kansas, to hook up with Nichols. The F.B.I. says McVeigh is the man in this sketch who rented the truck that carried the bomb to Oklahoma City. The explosion came on the second anniversary of the Waco fire. The bombing left 168 people dead.
By the end of this week, a grand jury is expected to join the three former Army buddies forever in infamy, charging them as the men behind the worst mass murder in the nation's history.
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