Wounds remain for bombing victims six years later
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The Oklahoma City bombing was the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
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OKLAHOMA CITY (CNN) -- When you wonder about the lingering effects of the bomb blast here that claimed 168 lives, including a rescue worker, consider Diane Leonard.
Six years after a fuel oil and fertilizer bomb ripped apart the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, her wounds remain fresh.
"My heart looks like that building did ... with a hole in it that can't be fixed," she said.
Leonard's husband, longtime U.S. Secret Service agent Donald Leonard, was killed in the April 19, 1995, bombing, which also took the lives of 19 children.
Diane Leonard made sure she saw her husband's remains. As painful as it was, Leonard said, it was necessary to help her come to grips with the tragedy.
"I had to deal with reality," she said.
After the bombing, Leonard said, her family wanted her to leave the area to try to heal. She decided to stay. Leonard embraced activism as a way to help her cope with her loss: She acted as a liaison for Oklahoma crime victims and lobbied to lessen the time for federal death sentence appeals.
Leonard also has advised law enforcement agencies and funeral directors on how to talk with trauma victims and continues to counsel Oklahoma City bombing rescue workers at monthly workshops. Leonard herself also receives counseling.
Oklahoma City memorial
In Oklahoma City, part of the healing process has included the construction of the Oklahoma City National Memorial. The memorial has a shimmering reflecting pool bordered by 149 chairs representing each of the adult victims and 19 smaller chairs for the children killed in the bombing.
The Survivor Tree, an American elm that withstood the powerful truck bomb, overlooks the scene. Part of the fence that surrounded the original crime scene still stands and holds individual remembrances, including photographs, hats, handwritten notes and T-shirts from visitors paying personal tribute to those lost. Walls at either end of the memorial depicting the minute just before the bombing, 9:01 a.m., and the minute after the blast, 9:03 a.m., represent lives changed forever.
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The Survivor Tree, which withstood the blast, remains as a tribute to those who survived and lost loved ones in the explosion.
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Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating said the entire country can learn from the pain experienced by Oklahomans.
"This community found that out of evil, good can come ... how a community without regard to race, color, sex and nationality can hold itself together. Especially at a time when you didn't know who did this and why," Keating said.
At first, suspicion focused on overseas terrorists, given the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But when authorities arrested a homegrown boy, Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh, it shook the country to its core. The notion that someone from within could have wreaked such destruction was unthinkable.
Even FBI special agent Danny Defenbaugh, who led the U.S. team investigating the bomb attack on a U.S. military facility in Beirut, Lebanon, and carried out the Oklahoma City investigation, was stung by the viciousness of the blast.
"The damage and devastation, I guess, didn't bother me as much as knowing that here we were in the heartland of America ... and we had been attacked," Defenbaugh told CNN in a recent exclusive interview.
McVeigh was convicted in 1997 of the bombing and sentenced to death. He now tells the authors of "American Terrorist," a biography of the bomber by two reporters for The Buffalo News, that he carried out the bombing largely alone. McVeigh said America needed to be taught a lesson because of the government's actions during the 1993 standoff with the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, and the 1992 siege of white separatist Randy Weaver's cabin at Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
McVeigh has declined further appeals and said he is ready to die by lethal injection rather than live out his days on death row in Terre Haute, Indiana. His convicted co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, has been spared the federal death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison.
A lasting effect
The Oklahoma City bombing has had a lasting effect on security awareness at federal installations worldwide. At federal courthouses, for example, the U.S. Marshals Service revoked parking privileges in front of those buildings. Could an attack happen again? "We're making every effort to prevent it," said spokesman Drew Wade.
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Timothy McVeigh told the authors of "American Terrorist" that he carried out the bombing largely alone.
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The tactics of U.S. law enforcement agencies, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, also were different during the 81-day standoff with the Freeman group in eastern Montana, which came after Oklahoma City and the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents. The Freeman standoff, which lasted longer than Waco and Ruby Ridge, ended peacefully.
Militia groups who were under the microscope after the Oklahoma bombing have been silent in the years since the McVeigh trial. Defenbaugh said the children's deaths put the Oklahoma attack "in a completely different light for a lot of people."
McVeigh told Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, the authors of "American Terrorist," that he was unaware there was a day-care center inside the federal building and referred to the children killed as "collateral damage."
But Defenbaugh said he has no doubt McVeigh knew the day-care center was there.
"No matter what ... if you look at the building, you're going to see all the little cutout hands, all the little apples and flowers showing that there's a kindergarten there -- that there are children in that building," Defenbaugh told CNN.
McVeigh was scheduled to die by lethal injection May 16, but the date was delayed until June 11 after the FBI acknowledged that it had withheld more than 3,000 pages of documents from McVeigh's defense team. The material was discovered during an archival search of materials relating to the case.
No matter when it happens, Leonard said she would like to watch the execution, either in person, if selected as one of 10 witnesses in Terre Haute, or via a closed-circuit television feed that will be set up for survivors and family members of Oklahoma City bombing victims.
"It's something I want to do," she said.
CNN Correspondent Susan Candiotti covered the Oklahoma City bombing and the trial of convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh.
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