In 1993, the FBI raided the Branch Davidian compound in Waco resulting in the death of 76 cult members. Two years later, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols killed 168 people and wounded more than 500 when they bombed Oklahoma City’s Murrah Federal Building out of vengeance and in protest of the U.S. government. McVeigh expressed no remorse and cited the Declaration of Independence: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it.” Drawing on previously unreleased tapes, photographs, and document communication between McVeigh and his lawyers, Jeffrey Toobin looks to the intricate web of the past and its reverberations into contemporary society to find the roots of what he argues is a rise in homegrown domestic terrorism.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Jeffrey Toobin is the bestselling author of True Crimes and Misdemeanors, The Oath, The Nine, Too Close to Call, The Run of His Life, which was made into the critically acclaimed FX series American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson, and A Vast Conspiracy, the inspiration for Impeachment: American Crime Story. He a former chief legal analyst at CNN.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

Richard Shaffer is a journalist, now retired, who for decades was an editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and Fortune. His work also appeared in The New York Times. As the boom began in venture capital, personal computers and the internet, he founded Technologic Partners, which provided information, analysis and events for investors and executives in high technology. He sold that company to Dow Jones & Co. then ran its private-capital markets division. Later he consulted for several years to institutional investors on technologies for the developing world.