A TWO-BIT CONSPIRACY

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No wide-ranging conspiracy. No criminal masterminds. Not even any hardened zealots dedicating their life to the disciplined terrorist pursuit of an ideological cause. Just two drifters and misfits with a rented truck and a homemade bomb. That is the story behind the killing of 168 people in Oklahoma City last April, so far as it can be drawn from a federal grand jury indictment of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. The indictment, issued last week, contains only a bare-bones description of how they allegedly built the bomb that blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19; six of its 15 pages are devoted to naming the victims.

That very sparseness, however, indicates that the alleged conspiracy was a small-time affair in everything except the horror of its results. Only one alleged helper is named: Michael Fortier, who according to the indictment helped McVeigh case the Murrah building. Fortier pleaded guilty to a separate indictment charging him with transporting stolen property (guns sold to raise money to buy explosives) and perjury; he is committed to testifying against McVeigh and Nichols. Meanwhile, in an exclusive interview with TIME, McVeigh's father and sister detailed the FBI's intense, successful campaign to persuade her to cooperate with its investigation.

The indictment does speak of "others unknown to the Grand Jury" who may have been in on the plot. But that language seems intended at least in part to counter defense arguments that the government chose McVeigh and Nichols as scapegoats without exhausting the possibility of finding a broader conspiracy--a contention that McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones, is already pressing. The government is continuing to look for possible accomplices, but, said Attorney General Janet Reno, "most of these leads have been pursued and exhausted." Investigators generally think that if any additional plotters do turn up, there will be only a few and they will prove to be mere "facilitators." In particular, some investigators have come to doubt that the far-famed John Doe No. 2 actually exists; others think that even if he does, he is only a minor figure in the plot.

All of which makes the horror that much more chilling. FBI officials say even if they had had the legal authority and had hired enough agents to infiltrate every extremist group in the country, they could not have prevented the Oklahoma City bombing. McVeigh and Nichols may have shared the government-hating ideology of many armed militias, but they were such fringe figures that even intense surveillance of organized militia groups would probably have failed to identify them as potential terrorists.

The government, of course, must still prove that they committed the terrorist acts charged in the indictment, and it will be at least six months (one prosecution estimate) before the start of a trial gives it a chance--more likely nine months to a year. Jones estimates that the defense's demands to hold the trial someplace other than Oklahoma City will take three or four months to settle. Then come discovery proceedings, which involve each side disclosing what witnesses will be called and what evidence may be presented.