I also think of the rescue worker I saw sitting dangling his feet in the pool at my hotel the next day, just exhausted. And of course the tears for the children and the normal people like us just trying to work for a living will never stop.

I had been down there a lot that spring, and the transformation from sleepy, friendly, kind of boring town to international media center was something to behold. All of a sudden all the flights were full of media people, mostly producers and technical folks. Some of my coworkers and I went and saw the site a couple of weeks later. I don't think TV captured the damage in the whole neighborhood, all the broken windows, etc.

Honestly, my predominant thought after learning who did it was that it is a miracle things like that do not happen  more often. It is truly a testament that the things that unite us as a nation are overwhelmingly  stronger than those which divide us.

Would that all those who stand accused be afforded the level of representation that was afforded to McVeigh; I venture to guess there are a lot of people in jail because they could not afford adequate representation, or were represented by a public defender so overworked and underfunded that the outcome was all but certain.

Or perhaps you are worse than that.

In the first instance,  the client a lawyer undertakes to defend is accused of going beyond the bounds of society, of having done something which at a minimum is disapproved.  Or perhaps it's something that will sell tabloids and made-for-TV movies for years to come.  He (or she) is already held up as a piece of sh*t, not worthy of even being deemed human.  Nancy Grace is in full-on harpy mode, shrieking out her pathology for all to see and join.  According to you, it takes no courage at all to step into that maelstrom and say - "Wait a minute.  Let's see what you've got.  Prove that you've got the right defendant - and not just some schlub you decided to lay all this on so as to give the public who pay your salaries, benefits and pensions some entertainment and a satisfying feeling of "case closed" in time for the next commercial break.

If you'd have spent any time around the criminal side of the courthouse, you would know this as its first principle:  "the system does not require the right defendant be convicted.  It only requires a defendant be convicted.  Because the system abhors few things more than an unsolved open case."

Either you haven't spent time there, never learned that when you did, or just don't care.

According to you, it takes no courage to stand up in a courtroom against an array of immaculately uniformed police, smooth-talking experts spouting the jargon du jour (helpfully sounding just like the experts on TV), lawyers trained on the government dime, and judges who got to be judges on the strength of having been those prosecuting lawyers and then promising to be tough on crime, all of whom suckle at the teat of political patronage (to one degree or another) in order to get, keep and advance in their respective professions.  And, in so suckling, respond first and foremost to the whimsy of politicians who demand that they get a conviction, no matter what, so the pol can intone sagely about "justice being done" and then win re-election.  

And, according to you, it takes no courage to then go against the word and story of these cops, experts, the arguments of these lawyers and prejudices of these judges to point out that their story has holes - big gaping holes that cut the guts out or little tiny ones all in a row that pull the whole structure down as they unzip.  All while doing so gets you turned away from service in a coffee shop, your car vandalized, and yor kids made fun of at school.

According you it takes no courage to go into a courtroom and face and explain to a jury that just because the police and prosecutor say it, doesn't make it so.  And that just because they brought a charge, doesn't make anyone guilty.  This, when anyone with eyes knows that the jury is prejudiced along the lines of "they wouldn't have brought a charge if the defendant wasn't guilty of something", even though innocent people get charged every day.

According to you, it takes no courage to do all this while knowing that not only are the police, prosecutors and judges trying to convict your client, but that they'd like few things better than to give you, personally, or your family (because they are related to you) a good taste of the medicine they deal out to your clients.  That's right - defense lawyers walk around with a big target on their backs because if there is one thing a cop can't abide, it's someone who questions the authority he exercises.  Even when the cop is a drunken pig beating the sh*t out of some schlub because the schlub is there.

But living under that is something which takes no courage, you say.

I've heard it from defense lawyers more than a few times: "I've got to live in this town".  This was always in response to "why didn't you cross the cop harder and why did you pass on slamming him with this or that credibility-buster?"  Selling out the client seems, after a while and a good bit of that abuse, the reasonable thing to do.  That, you tell us, is the way defense law should be practiced.

And, of course, it takes no courage at all to get up, stand in the well of a courtroom and speak to the assembled, hostile audience of judge, jury, prosecution team, families of the victims wearing pictures (not working the jury, nooo), all glaring you down, and saying "I represent the defendant."  This, in the face of the fact that the number one fear, survey after survey, is not dying, being maimed in a horrific accident, or even going broke and winding up living in a washer box under a freeway bridge.  Nope.  Fear Number One: "Speaking in public."

I hope one day to be there when you need a lawyer to defend you (or perhaps just to make sure the government really proves its case) and the Bar remembers your insult to the courage they exercise every day in defending the poor, oppressed, reviled, abused and maligned, and they stand back saying "Me?  Oh, no.  I don't have the courage for that." and then watch the police take you out back and do their worst to you.

As a Vietnam veteran it took me about three weeks in country to observe an extraordinary different obvious ancient sovereign attachment that are truly conservatoire to the Vietnamese that honor their past Dynasties.

This remains in my mind to draw conclusions that determine the pitiful political corruption and stubborn red neck philosophy that had taken place for change in the war in Vietnam. Even after decades, other counties to intervene, Vietnam is today a Socialist Republic, one rule party. Essentially a dictatorship accepted by the International community. This maybe evidence to what will happen in Iraq.

Upon my return bitterness for our Government, its representatives and the general population, with America's stubborn out reach for military intervention catalyzed my anger to a level that went either way, to endorse the war as necessary, or look upon it as a huge tragedy. For me and obviously was a huge tragedy where in a military way Americans attempted to colonize Vietnam. My argument is this same pattern is expressed in the Middle East. My anger is still there; worse, but my personal actions will not go the level of Timothy McVeigh's.

Starting to read about the past with the Internet as a huge resource and selected books from watching C-span book week and authors talking about their books has guided me to new understandings that the Mainstream Media has not reported government actions or military interventions honestly for decades likely complicit with government political greed, secrecy, and corporate entities have brought America to the point were we are at now. Likely the reason we the electorate are begging for transparency no matter what.  

As Eisenhower had said the Military Industrial complex will break us.

It has, with its open actions embedded media commercial patriotism complicit with wide spread corruption, terror, torture; simple Juris Prudence in America's ability of leadership is not in jeopardy it is failed, for me a fundemental win for the Wahabbi.

To try to shorten my story, Timothy McVeigh was executed to bury secrets. Timothy McVeigh should have been kept alive. For me a flag stands out in the PDF file labeled the massive case. For what I know now those secret agents in your notes, killed, are a problem for me. I would be on a Sherlock Holms relentless for inspection to make sure that absolutely no foreign influence is present. Just as Valerie Plame outing by Cheney is a monumental cover up by our justice department and Patrick Fitzgerald. For Fitzgerald is not a hero he is a partisan agent to a massive cover up. Holding back insider knowledge of leaks.

...the father, my dad now 78 yrs old, is an arch conservative and the son, myself now 56 yrs old, is a liberal.  We've argued about everything political since Nixon and Viet Nam, up until the time about 20 years ago when I stopped engaging, plus I moved to Italy at that time.

The day McVeigh received a 30-day stay of execution I was visiting my father in Las Vegas. The family was gathered around the TV, my pop was drunk and yelling and pointing at the television in a threatening manner, "Burn the c*ck-s*cker, burn the c*ck-s*cker."

At a certain point in this classic family scene, my father turned to me and said in the most hostile tone, "You don't agree with a f**king thing I say, do you?"  

I didn't have to answer.  

McVeigh may have been a monster, but he was a human, and if he, as a human, was able to become a monster then any one of us has that same in us...