How the Oklahoma City bombing case prepared Merrick Garland to take on domestic terrorism
MATT ZAPOTOSKY AND ANN E. MARIMOW
The Washington Post
FEB 21, 2021 6:30 AM
The truck bomb leveled a section of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, killing 168 and injuring hundreds more in one of the deadliest domestic terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. But as Merrick Garland huddled with the lead prosecutor on the case, he urged caution in presenting the massive amount of evidence from the wreckage.
Do not bury the crime in the clutter, he said.
Judge Garland, then a top Justice Department official, was encouraging prosecutors to speed the trial along and jettison superfluous findings in their case against Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of carrying out the 1995 attack and executed in 2001, said Joe Hartzler, the teams lead attorney. Mr. Hartzler said he found the advice so compelling that he wrote the words on a sheet of paper and hung it on an office wall as a rallying cry for his team.
More than two decades later, Judge Garland, 68, is preparing to lead the Justice Department as attorney general and facing a domestic terrorism threat that has metastasized, with white supremacists and conspiracy-minded anti-government types.
Those who worked with him on the Oklahoma City case and the prosecution of another notorious domestic terrorist known as the Unabomber say the experiences shaped him, and make him well-positioned to confront the current threat.
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https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-nation/2021/02/21/How-the-Oklahoma-City-bombing-case-prepared-Merrick-Garland-to-take-on-domestic-terrorism/stories/202102210107