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May devote as much as two weeks of testimony to painting a picture of McVeigh as a hate-filled radical. Lawyers will call to the stand McVeigh's former Army comrades, who remember him talking paranoically about the federal government and its desire to take guns away from American citizens. They will present hundreds of letters written by McVeigh, along with testimony by Michael Fortier and McVeigh's sister, to confirm McVeigh's zeal for a novel called The Turner Diaries, in which a group of white supremacists blow up FBI headquarters at 9:00 one morning - a fictional incident eerily reminiscient of the Oklahoma City bombing. They will draw direct parallels to show that McVeigh used the book as a model for how he might retaliate against the government for its raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. They will also present a videotape showing McVeigh in Waco at the time of the raid.
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Will poke holes in the prosecution's claims by stating that McVeigh's political views are inconsequential and do not prove that he blew up the federal building. The lawyers will present evidence pointing to unidentified accomplices to argue that the real culprits are still at large. And if allowed by the judge, they may float their own explanation for the bombing, suggesting that it was the result of an international conspiracy in which McVeigh played only a small part. For months, lead defense attorney Stephen Jones has talked about a German named Andreas Strassmeir, who met McVeigh in 1993; about Richard Snell, a white supremacist, who was executed on April 19, 1995; and about Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the man accused of organizing the World Trade Center bombing, who was in the Philippines when Terry Nichols was there.
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