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 injection, the first federal execution since 1963. Ashcroft's request, coupled with the formal announcement of the closed-circuit broadcast, was cheered by many victims of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 149 adults and 19 children. It's time for him to sit down and shut up. Nigh said McVeigh has backed off earlier vows to push for a nationwide broadcast of the execution.