What is the full name of McVeigh's target, which he and Fortier visited to inspect in December 1994?
McVeigh later said that he had contemplated assassinating Attorney General Janet Reno, Lon Horiuchi, and others in preference to attacking a building, and after the bombing he said that he sometimes wished he had carried out a series of assassinations instead. He initially intended only to destroy a federal building, but he later decided that his message would be better received if many people were killed in the bombing. McVeigh's criterion for potential attack sites was that the target should house at least two of three federal law enforcement agencies: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), or the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). He regarded the presence of additional law enforcement agencies, such as the Secret Service or the U.S. Marshals Service, as a bonus.A resident of Kingman, Arizona, McVeigh considered targets in Missouri, Arizona, Texas, and Arkansas. He stated in his authorized biography that he wanted to minimize non-governmental casualties, so he ruled out a 40-story government building in Little Rock, Arkansas, because of the presence of a florist's shop on the ground floor. In December 1994, McVeigh and Fortier visited Oklahoma City to inspect McVeigh's target: the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The Murrah building had been previously targeted in October 1983 by white supremacist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, including founder James Ellison and Richard Snell. The group had plotted to park "a van or trailer in front of the Federal Building and blow it up with rockets detonated by a timer." After Snell's appeal for murdering two people in unrelated cases was denied, he was executed the same day as the Murrah bombing.The nine-story building, built in 1977, was named for a federal judge and housed fourteen federal agencies, including the DEA, ATF, Social Security Administration, and recruiting offices for the Army and Marine Corps. The Murrah building was chosen for its glass front – which was expected to shatter under the impact of the blast – and its adjacent large, open parking lot across the street, which might absorb and dissipate some of the force, and protect the occupants of nearby non-federal buildings. In addition, McVeigh believed that the open space around the building would provide better photo opportunities for propaganda purposes. The attack was planned to take place on April 19, 1995, to coincide with the 2nd anniversary of the Waco siege and the 220th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building