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==Media reporting==
Ninety minutes after the explosion, Timothy McVeigh was pulled over by an [[Oklahoma Highway Patrol]] officer for driving a car without a license plate. During the stop, a weapon was discovered, and McVeigh was booked into jail on a weapons charge. Before he was released, he was identified as John Doe #1 in the sketches and was taken into federal custody. Terry Nichols, a known friend of McVeigh's, turned himself in soon afterwards. One of the most extensive FBI investigations ever undertaken has failed to implicate any militia group or any group of any kind. The FBI agent in charge of the Oklahoma City Bombing Task Force recently said:
Ninety minutes after the explosion, Timothy McVeigh was pulled over by an [[Oklahoma Highway Patrol]] officer for driving a car without a license plate. During the stop, a weapon was discovered, and McVeigh was booked into jail on a weapons charge. Before he was released, he was identified as John Doe #1 in the sketches and was taken into federal custody. Terry Nichols, a known friend of McVeigh's, turned himself in soon afterwards. One of the most extensive FBI investigations ever undertaken has failed to implicate any militia group or any group of any kind. The FBI agent in charge of the Oklahoma City Bombing Task Force recently said:
{{Cquote|The investigation, as thorough as it was, was not able to identify other individuals involved other than those who admitted their knowledge or were convicted through two trials. <ref>Diana Baldwin, Some Still Hunt For John Doe 2, ''Sunday Oklahoman'', 13 December 1998, A-8.</ref>}}
{{Cquote|The investigation, as thorough as it was, was not able to identify other individuals involved other than those who admitted their knowledge or were convicted through two trials. <ref>Diana Baldwin, Some Still Hunt For John Doe 2, ''Sunday Oklahoman'', 13 December 1998, A-8.</ref>}}
==Media reporting==
Following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 the Southern Poverty Law Center gave the FBI a list of several thousand alleged members of militias and “hate groups” culled from its files. None of them had anything to do with the bombing. These names came from letters to newspapers expressing right-wing political views, lists of “members” supplied by informants, names from license plate numbers collected outside public meetings, pilfered mailing lists, and so on.
During the early days of the media feeding frenzy following the bombing, militia organizations were widely suspected and even charged with complicity in the crime. Watchdog groups were regularly quoted by the media as “experts” on the militias and made fantastic claims of vast membership and influence.
Militias had absolutely nothing to do with the bombing, but the incredible media onslaught had a part in further marginalizing them, and changing their composition in the process.
The SPLC’s Klanwatch Intelligence Report of June 1995 claimed that “over 200 militia and support groups operate nationwide.” <ref>Southern Poverty Law Center, “Over 200 Militias and Support Groups Operate Nationwide,”
Klanwatch Intelligence Report (June 1995).</ref> Three months later, in September 1995 the SPLC issued a report that identified seventy-three “militias or militia support groups nationwide, with a total of 30,000 to 40,000 members.” The SPLC also claimed that about forty-five have “ties to the Ku Klux Klan.” <ref> Dick Foster, “10 Militias at Home in Colorado” Rocky Mountain News, (6 September 1995).</ref> 127 “militia and support groups” suddenly disappeared.
As for militia complicity in the bombing itself—after more than three years of intensive investigation neither the FBI nor any other law enforcement agency has produced evidence that the perpetrators were members of or in any substantial way connected with any militia, anywhere, anytime. <ref>Diana Baldwin, “Some Still Huntfor John Doe 2,” Sunday Oklahoman 13 December 1998, A-8.</ref> A county grand jury arrived at the same conclusions. <ref>Ron Jenkins, “Oklahoma Bomb Jury Rules Out Conspiracy,” Associated Press, 30 December 1998.
</ref> No militias were implicated by government prosecutors at Timothy McVeigh’s or Terry Nichols’ trials. Militias had nothing to do with the Oklahoma City bombing. The perpetrators were acting entirely on their own. The only organizational “links and ties” they shared was service in the U. S. Army.
Writer Adam Parfrey observed after the Oklahoma City bombing some watchdog groups information was absorbed whole into mainstream news sources as unimpeachable and objective news sources, whereas the watchdog organizations coffers bulged when constituents were led to believe they were fighting an enemy of enormous evil and mounting strength. Despite their altruistic claims, the watchdog organizations
{{Cquote|profited directly off the sensationalism that acts as a sparkplug for Hollywood and the weekly tabloids. <ref>Adam Parfrey, Cult Rapture: Revelations of the Apocalyptic Mind (Portland, OR: Feral House, 1995), 327.</ref>}}
== Charges, Trials, Convictions, and Punishment ==
== Charges, Trials, Convictions, and Punishment ==