As the first reporters and protesters begin to descend on federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind., prison officials said McVeigh will be limited to 300 minutes of telephone calls, lasting no more than 15 minutes per day, for the remaining month of his life. No jailhouse interviews will be permitted, and reporters will be asked to honor a ban on recording phone calls. Please do not help him inject more poison into our culture. He's caused enough senseless damage already. Ashcroft said the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and the FBI will use encryption software and other technology to thwart any attempts to tap into a closed circuit video feed of McVeigh's execution, which will be broadcast live over digital phone lines for survivors and relatives of the dead assembled in Oklahoma.
Federal law prohibits the broadcast from being recorded.
The heavy restrictions underscore the struggle by federal officials to provide access to an event with global interest, while remaining sensitive to victims of the deadliest terrorist act on American soil. Thousands of journalists, activists and spectators are expected to swarm Terre Haute for McVeigh's death by lethal injection, the first federal execution since 1963. The meeting will be held soon and no later than the July summit in Italy of the Group of Eight industrialized nations, U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said after breakfast talks here with Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov. His statement indicated a noticeable shift in attitude. The Bush administration has kept the Russians at arm's length since coming into office Jan. 20, in effect demoting Moscow's standing in the new U.S. government's foreign policy agenda.