Oklahoma City – An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th

It’s April 19th 1995, the 220th anniversary of the start of the American War of Independence, and two years since the violent end of the Waco, Texas siege. In Oklahoma City, a disaffected army veteran named Timothy McVeigh leaves a truck outside the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building. Inside the truck is a bomb. At 9am, McVeigh lights the two minute fuse. When the bomb explodes, it kills 168 people and wounds 680 more. 

In An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th, Marc Levin retraces McVeigh’s footsteps, showing how he went from being a war hero to a terrorist. Rather than look at McVeigh in isolation, however, Marc places his actions in the context of the evolution of political violence in the US. It is an evolution that continues to the present day.

In this episode of Factual America, Marc and Daphne discuss the making of the film. They look at how the bombing has become an almost forgotten moment in American history; the economic and military as well as historical background to the outrage; whether McVeigh acted alone; and how views that in the 90s were regarded as being extreme have now entered the mainstream.

As we head towards the 2024 US presidential election on November 5th, An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th reflects upon the dangerous journey of American democracy and the high price Americans have had to pay for their freedoms.

“He may be dead but the ghost of McVeigh lives, and there are lots of people out there that subscribe to some of his thinking.” – Marc Levin

Time Stamps

00:00 – Trailer for An American Bombing: The Road to April 19
01:44 – Matthew Sherwood introduces this episode’s guests, Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson, and their film: An American Bombing: The Road to April 19
03:46 – Marc Levin explains what An American Bombing is about
05:40 – Marc explains why the Oklahoma City bombing has been largely forgotten about in America
09:35 – Timothy McVeigh: The man behind the attack
11:29 – The economic history of the Oklahoma City bombing
15:17 – How war helps extremism to flourish
17:22 – Marc on how easy it was for Timothy McVeigh to become radicalised
20:49 – The significance in American history of the April 19 th date
25:38 – Discussing whether McVeigh acted alone
32:39 – Discussing whether we have learnt any lessons from the Oklahoma City bombing
39:40 – How long term economic restructuring has helped extremism to flourish
42:51 – Daniel Coss: from the April 19 bombing to January 6 insurrection
44:58 – Marc on why they made An American Bombing
48:05 – Feature film vs. docu-series
50:25 – Marc and Daphne’s upcoming films
52:58 – Discussing the closure of Participant films
54:39 – Discussing the current state of documentary filmmaking in the UK
57:37 – Matthew Sherwood on his point-of-connection with Waco, Texas and Oklahoma City

Resources:

An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th
MovieMaker Magazine
Innersound Audio
Alamo Pictures

Connect with Marc Levin

IMDb

Connect with Daphne Pinkerson

IMDb

More from Factual America:

Against All Enemies: US Veterans Fighting Their Own Country
God Save Texas: Life in the Land of Oil and Gas
Finding Hope amidst Hate in A Town Called Victoria

Transcript for Factual America Episode 161: Oklahoma City – An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th

Matthew Sherwood 00:00 (01:44)
This is Factual America. I'm your host, Matthew Sherwood. Each week, I watch a hit documentary and then talk with the filmmakers and their subjects. Why would a US military veteran decide to blow up a Federal Building in Oklahoma City, taking the lives of 168 innocent people in the process? This is one of the questions that the Emmy winning filmmakers Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson try to answer in their film, An American Bombing. Some of the answers might surprise you, with roots in the economic upheaval of the last 50 years, heavy handed policing by the federal government, and a string of forever wars, all on the watch of both Republican and Democrat administrations. Join us as we talk about the Oklahoma City bombing and its relevance 29 years later. Stay tuned.

Matthew Sherwood 00:53
Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson, welcome to Factual America. How are things with you?

Marc Levin 00:58
Very well. Very well.

Daphne Pinkerson 01:00
Getting great reaction to the film, I have to say.

Matthew Sherwood 01:03
Oh, that's great. Well, just to remind our viewers and listeners, we're talking about An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th. Today is April 17, and it released yesterday on HBO, and you can stream it on Max, certainly for those in North America. And we were talking beforehand, and we'll google it to see where it might be showing in your own locale. We're not quite sure about the whole Max streaming element to this. But it's great to have you on. Thanks again. And what we - how we usually start is we ask our filmmakers to tell us what's their film all about? Maybe you can give us a synopsis. So, Mark, maybe if you kick us off. What is American Bombing all about?

Marc Levin 01:54 (03:46)
An American Bombing is about the evolution of domestic political violence in the United States using the Oklahoma City bombing as kind of a lens to look backwards, and to look at what's happening now. So, Daphne and I actually did a film back in 1995, after the Oklahoma City bombing, it was on NBC, called Oklahoma City: One Year Later. And we stayed in touch with some of those people we met back then. And we started talking about this idea. They were the ones that said, Now is the time for a film like this. It's important, because believe it or not, the Oklahoma City bombing is not in the curriculum of any high school in American history except in the state of Oklahoma. And a lot of the younger generation is really not aware of what really happened then and its significance.

Matthew Sherwood 03:00 (05:40)
Yeah, that's very interesting. And why has this become a forgotten bit of US history? Why do you think that's, you know - and that's, you know, same way when I heard they were gonna have a doc on about the Oklahoma City bombing, I was like, Well, sure, there's been one and then find out no, they're really - well, except for what, you know, the immediate aftermath, no, there hasn't been one. We're nearly 30 years on, and I know it left an incredible scar in Oklahoma City. Literally, and figuratively. I mean, I know they've now built the monument and everything. I was last there in the late 90s, and it was still, like, almost it had happened the day before. But I know that it takes a while for these things to heal, but - so, these people are still living this on a daily basis in their lives. But why has the rest of the country been so quick to forget about it?

Marc Levin 03:55
Well, I think there are a few reasons. First, 9/11 obviously eclipsed. You can see Ground Zero from where we're sitting right now. So, that's one reason. Second reason is I think it's very hard for us to accept that it was an American, not a Muslim fanatic, but it was one of our own, even a war hero. And I think in the popular imagination and a lot of popular culture, it was kind of digested as the act of a lone bomber who just kind of lost his way after the Gulf War. And it was never connected to a wider movement, which is what we tried to do in this film, is to contextualise it, that McVeigh was inspired by, nurtured by, encouraged by a movement of anti-government extremists who declared war on the United States back in 1983, and actually targeted the Murrah building a good 12 years before...

Matthew Sherwood 05:10
Right.

Marc Levin 05:10
... McVeigh blew it up. So, I think that, you know, made it easier for Americans the idea that it's just a lone crazy to kind of move on, let's move on, as, unfortunately, many of these horrible incidents that we've lived through here of violence. But given where we're at the hyper partisanship and the rise in threats of political violence, especially as we count down to this upcoming election, I think it's more relevant than ever, and that's kind of what motivated us.

Daphne Pinkerson 05:50
But what's amazing is that it was the single deadliest attack against the government in US history. So, for that not to be covered to me indicates maybe it was just, we couldn't process that it was one of our own, but it was shocking.

Matthew Sherwood 06:13
I mean, or is it - do you also think it's one of these things where - I hear exactly what you're saying - I also wonder, is there an element to, like you said, the whole human processing even as a society, the fact that the guy was caught almost immediately, you know, he's put on trial. We can have a discussion later about whether he acted alone or not, but, you know, done and dusted, right, we've sorted it out, kind of, almost, you know; we can box it and shelve it almost.

Marc Levin 06:44
I think that's a good point because he was executed. Not only found guilty, but he was executed. And it all happened as the Clinton administration promised: swift and severe. They were successful in that. I think you're right. For a lot of people with the execution of McVeigh. It's like, okay, let's move on. So, I think that's a good point you raised.

Daphne Pinkerson 07:10
And maybe they didn't want to humanise him or glorify Him. His personal story is pretty interesting, because he was a pretty bright guy, very articulate, a true believer, you know; he spent time in prison. We've done a lot of prison documentaries, and usually people they change when they're in prison...

Matthew Sherwood 07:31
Right.

Daphne Pinkerson 07:31
... and he really stuck to his guns to the very end. You know, whereas Terry Nichols, his accomplice, is repentant.

Matthew Sherwood 07:39 (09:35)
Right, right. And, in fact, yes, I mean, I think that's - so we haven't even mentioned his name, but, you know, we're talking about Timothy McVeigh. I mean, he, you're right. And almost this whole issue of - I think someone said, he stared - you know, he kept his eyes open right to the very end, even when he was on the gurney and being executed. I mean, in your - there's one view that he was not going to reveal anything, because he didn't want to reveal his collaborators, if you will. And then there's also another element of he wanted, you know, and as you said, you've done prison docs, you know, have done documentaries on people in prison, but also an element that he wanted to take full credit for it, and almost get that, hate to use the word, but the glory from it, or is there an element of truth to both those sides of things?

Marc Levin 08:43
I think there's an element of truth to both of those. I don't think he disclosed everything.

Matthew Sherwood 08:48
Yeah.

Marc Levin 08:50
And I think that as his lawyer says, in our film, Stephen Jones, he wanted the infamy. He wanted to be seen as a martyr, who kind of lit the fuse for the second American revolution. And what's so scary is that there are people today who actually see him like that.

Daphne Pinkerson 09:12
He felt that he didn't have any options, I think, economically; so, he sort of painted himself into this role. And in many ways he may have felt that there really was no turning back, you know?

Matthew Sherwood 09:28 (11:29)
Well, I think that's very interesting, Daphne, and as you were saying earlier, as well, Marc, I mean, what the film also tries to do is contextualise all this. And what I found int - you know, one of the many things I found interesting was that you take this all the way back to the economics of the 1970s and 80s, and I had never quite looked at it that way. And then that has relevance to today as well. But maybe you could say more about it. Especially the hollowing out of sort of rural America, and what was going on with the farming crisis at the time.

Daphne Pinkerson 10:01
I thought that was fascinating. You know, you sort of, you know that the family farms went under, but [don't] really think that much about it and just thought, well, it's unfortunate, but, you know, I guess we're moving on as a culture, we're not going to do that anymore. And then, you know, we outsourced the factories, because supposedly people didn't want to do those jobs anymore, and we're moving into a post-industrial service economy. But we actually did a film on what happened in manufacturing in this country through the story of the garment industry, and what we learnt is that it wasn't just, you know, people bent over sewing machines, elbow-to-elbow. I mean, these were vibrant industries that were diversified, and there were a lot of little businesses and accountants and, you know, seamstresses, and there was so much opportunity and upward mobility. But, you know, there was that shift to globalisation that didn't really take into account how it was going to affect these small businesses, and, you know, working people.

Matthew Sherwood 11:19
I mean, those factory jobs you're talking about a lot of them are unionised. A lot of them are quite well paying. And, you know, we've moved to - US moved to a services economy, but there's services and then there are services and the type of services jobs that were often brought in, if they were, to replace them weren't - didn't nearly pay as well, and certainly didn't hire as many people.

Marc Levin 11:42
McVeigh faced that. I mean, his grandfather worked in the GM battery factory for 30 years with good benefits, good union pay. His father worked in the same factory for 30 years. But that wasn't available to him as he came of age. In fact, he ended up for a while doing a service job as security, low pay. So, there's no doubt that the economic dislocation, the incredible inequality that we see now, you know, the greatest since the Gilded Age, really.

Matthew Sherwood 12:16
Right.

Marc Levin 12:17
These are seed beds for, you know, extremism. And that's what happened starting with the farm crisis in rural America, as you said; it was demagogues of the right that were able to capitalise and exploit that frustration, that anger, that rage at times against the federal government. And as you saw on the film, we were lucky enough to meet up with a former extremist, Kerry Noble, who sadly passed away last year, but who really gave us an inside perspective on how that trickled down to these groups that all of a sudden, were ready to take up arms and declare war on the government. And that again, had targeted the Murrah building, the same building McVeigh did 12 years later.

Matthew Sherwood 13:08
Yeah. Now, I mean, let's be fair, a lot of people, most people who have found themselves in these situations didn't become so radicalised or extreme, obviously, you know...

Marc Levin 13:20 (15:17)
But it doesn't take much, and also it's Kathleen Belew's thesis, which is intriguing, is that, actually, it's in the wake of war...

Matthew Sherwood 13:35
Right.

Marc Levin 13:35
... that the most recruits for violent extremism happens. So, not only did you have this economic dislocation, then you've got the Gulf War where McVeigh was a hero, but he turned bitter because two things: one, he saw America as a bully, that it was overkill. He witnessed some of those horrors. And the other was that he didn't make the Green Beret tryout because he was so worn out, right after coming back from combat, and that left him very, very angry.

Matthew Sherwood 14:10
I mean, it's a very interesting point, because only just a few episodes ago, we had Charlie Sadoff on who did the Against All Enemies, I don't know if you've seen that documentary...

Marc Levin 14:19
Yeah, it's very good.

Matthew Sherwood 14:20
... so very much a companion piece I would say with this.

Marc Levin 14:25
I would love to see those doubled up somewhere, you know, I think that would be a great double bill.

Matthew Sherwood 14:31
So, obviously, she - I forget her name, the expert you were talking about, is it Belew?

Marc Levin 14:38
Kathleen Belew.

Matthew Sherwood 14:39
Yeah, so she's on there as well, and I think says similar things. And so, we had a lot of discussion, too, but I thought what was good, what was - what you added to it as well, because, as he's pointing out nowadays, some of these groups that are now the successors to the groups of the 80s, and 90s are actually actively targeting military veterans, but one thing I hadn't picked up on was previously was McVeigh's experience during the Gulf War, and as you said, what he saw, and even though he won a gold - I think he got a gold star and I think...

Daphne Pinkerson 15:16
A bronze star, yeah.

Matthew Sherwood 15:16
... bronze star, yeah. You know, all this was like a recipe, if you will, for someone of his whatever personality, demeanour to become radicalised.

Marc Levin 15:32 (17:22)
And then one thing I would add, the final thing which we tried to kind of cinematically recreate in a certain way, with his car, the road warrior, which appears at the beginning of the film, the end of the film, a few places, was that - the being bombarded by talk radio and hate speech and tapes of violent rhetoric, The Turner Diaries, that, you know, of course, we have a First Amendment, which is important, but to think that, as you just said, when you have this recipe, and then you have people just throwing this at you, and then for two years, he kind of travelled the country in that road warrior, which is almost like a behaviour modification chamber...

Matthew Sherwood 16:24
Right.

Marc Levin 16:25
... so, I think that's important, because today, you don't have to be in a road warrior, you can be right at home at your computer like this, and you can, you know, kind of be conditioned.

Matthew Sherwood 16:36
You just brought a lot of memories back for me, I will say, oddly enough, in that, I used to travel across the United States quite a bit, going back and forth between home and school in the 90s, and travelling late at night, and before satellite radio, before ever all this, you know, these new innovations we've had, and so you were just beholden to whatever radio signal you could get. And in the middle of the night travelling across and yes, the stuff that was coming over the air, I mean, that - and also the way you, I mean, not to get into - yet or so much into the art of the filmmaking, but also the way you - the sound that you use and created, it sounded like my old radio in my car from the 90s, you know, I felt like, yeah, I remember this. I remember that guy. I tried to move on to another station, but, you know, I didn't stay on those stations, but they were quite - and they were daily; they were on daily; they were just like pounding this message on a daily basis. And I can see, you know, that must be - yeah, I can't imagine what I would have turned out if I'd kept listening to that kind of stuff. But so, I guess, you know, he's - there's this other thing, too, and then - we're talking about this, to carry the metaphor further, probably further than it should - adding to this is also these events, right? So, you had Ruby Ridge, right, that you talk about, and then you had Waco and the Branch Davidians, and we know it's no coincidence that Timothy McVeigh bombs - sets the bomb on April 19, because that's the two year anniversary of what happened at Waco with the Branch Davidians. And, you know, it was, I think you're very upfront about this, there was some, you know, heavy handed police tactics being used, both Democratic and GOP administrations at the time, you know, especially with the ATF, not trying to finger point at the ATF, but there were, you know, it - in some ways the government didn't do us any favours in a way.

Marc Levin 18:56 (20:49)
Absolutely. I wanted to just say one thing, since we are talking to the UK. April 19 is the day the famous first shot of the Revolutionary War against Great Britain. Here, the rebels in the United States at Lexington Concord. So, it's been called Patriots' Day, but it's in this recent mix of extremism in the post-Vietnam era, that that day has been embraced, you know, by the so-called patriot movement. And it's a significant day that Americans should be aware of. You name two of the significant things happened, actually, The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord another one of these extremist groups in the 80s. They were busted on that day, April 19 also, and amazingly enough, the Columbine tragedy was originally the two of those young men, who didn't live far from Denver, which is where the trials were moved. They had planned to blow up the school on April 19 but they couldn't get all the explosives and everything. And then they did their shooting rampage the next day, April 20. So, the date is significant. There's no doubt about it. And that was part of - I think the film's message is just this is a date we should know. Certainly every high school student should know just like, you know, 9/11 and December 7, Pearl Harbour.

Matthew Sherwood 20:34
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's - the other point is, surely the gov - I mean, two of these things happened at the government's instigation, right. And I'm not trying to be a government conspiracist or anything, but surely you could have just moved it back one day, or done a slightly different day; it didn't have - were they that clueless? Were they just not thinking, like, with that group you were talking about, the...

Marc Levin 20:57
You talking about the execution of Richard Snell?

Matthew Sherwood 21:00
Yeah, exactly. The execution of Richard Snell, they try to - they go in against his organisation in the 80s. You know, I think, surely there's gotta be a better day.

Daphne Pinkerson 21:18
I mean, they say it's a coincidence. But, you know, the government was warned not to execute Richard Snell on that day. That it was a dangerous thing to do. In fact, Reverend Millar, the spiritual leader of Elohim City, you know, spoke publicly about it, it's in newspaper articles, you know, set, you know, like imploring government not to execute on that day.

Marc Levin 21:47
Also, like you said, it's like, you know, the Trump administration - the Trump campaign kicked off in Waco, of all places. Again, they claimed they didn't realise it was the 30th anniversary of the tragedy there and...

Matthew Sherwood 22:03
Right.

Marc Levin 22:04
... and what it symbolised; so, yeah, I, you know, I don't know, just incompetence, or if it's like, Okay, we're gonna make a statement, too.

Matthew Sherwood 22:15
Right, right, right. Well, I think, actually, let's give our listeners and our viewers a quick break. So, just to say that we'll be right back with Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson, the award-winning filmmakers behind An American Bombing: The Road to April 19 on HBO, and streaming on Max.

Factual America Midroll 22:39
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or X to keep-up-to-date with new releases for upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the programme, our guests, and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.

Matthew Sherwood 22:57
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm here with Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson, the filmmakers behind An American Bombing: The Road to April 19. It's already broadcast on HBO, and you can find it streaming on Max. And if you don't have access, google it; I'm sure you'll have ways of accessing it at some point in the near future.

Marc Levin 23:23
I saw somebody's already got it.

Matthew Sherwood 23:25 (25:38)
So, Marc and Daphne, we were talking about, well, we we're talking about April 19. Originally the shot heard around the world, from Lexington, Massachusetts, that's now got a different resonance. So, the film also focuses on how McVeigh did this. And we were talking a little bit about this earlier. Obviously, he had his co-collaborator in Terry Nichols. And we know others were involved. But was he really a lone wolf, do you think. I mean, because that's something you do explore a little bit. I know you want the viewers to kind of come to their own conclusions, but do you think he did act alone? Or is it just impossible that he could have just done this all on his own in terms of this bombing in Oklahoma City?

Marc Levin 24:24
It's one of those eternal questions. I would say this: where I land is, I don't know. I know Mike Boettcher at our screening, you know, felt very sure that it was difficult to imagine that he did it all alone. 22 people saw him that morning with somebody else, so that's pretty compelling. I mean, obviously eye witnesses can be wrong. Many are wrong, but 22 people in the FBI 302s say they saw him with somebody else. It certainly raises questions and makes it, you know, more probable. For me though it always goes to the cover up. In other words...

Matthew Sherwood 25:12
Right.

Marc Levin 25:12
... it seems - and again, this is just conjecture, speculation as you said; in the film, we try to present all perspectives and you make your conclusions, but my conclusion is that law enforcement, FBI, ATF had sources in this world...

Matthew Sherwood 25:35
Right.

Marc Levin 25:36
... but those sources, confidential informants, undercover assets, they can go bad, they can double cross you, and there were screw ups. Now, of course, it's on the record that Carol Howell was a source for the ATF, but there may have been others, and it's always cover up that we could have stopped it, we screwed up somehow, or the competition between the ATF and the FBI - you just mentioned Ruby Ridge and Waco, there was a lot of heated animosity between those organisations. They may have both had undercovers or sources at Elohim City. So, I'm just saying, the Andreas Strassmeir connection, you know, he's that German that happened to be living at Elohim City for three years and then McVeigh called two weeks before the bombing. He's a mystery character. We spoke to him off the record. And it only further left me feeling that he was potentially a source to some - whether it was German, Israeli, US intelligence. My sense is we don't know the whole story, whether we'll ever know it. And how much McVeigh was a loner in the end, you know, I don't know.

Daphne Pinkerson 27:04
And it could have been that he was inspired by people like Louis Beam, who recommended using, you know, leaderless resistance as a methodology...

Matthew Sherwood 27:16
Right.

Daphne Pinkerson 27:16
... [...] Bob Sands explains in the film, that, you know, they came to realise that having these compounds, sort of paramilitary compounds, is not the way to go, and that, you know, there needed to be a sort of plausible deniability to protect believers.

Matthew Sherwood 27:33
Right.

Daphne Pinkerson 27:33
Yeah.

Matthew Sherwood 27:35
And so you - and you still had - so, I mean, one area - one place he could have gotten help, which is sort of also what you're alluding to, it's this organisation we talked about before, this Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, right, and these people - I think it was interesting, I hadn't known - I don't know if I was aware of the bank robberies, and, you know, the interesting fundraising techniques that they had.

Marc Levin 28:02
Right, right. Well, that's another good one. The Aryan Republican Army, also known as the Midwest Bank Robbers. Daphne and I also had a conversation with the leader of that group, who used to be Peter Langan and has now transitioned to Donna Langan, first sex change operation that I know of in federal prisons, where he's serving a life term. But it certainly again, left us thinking that there may be more connections there than most people know. They had modelled themselves after a group called The Order, which in the 80s, you know, committed the assassination of Alan Berg...

Matthew Sherwood 28:51
Right....

Marc Levin 28:51
... you know, DJ, and did the big bank armoured car robberies. So, yeah, that's a fascinating lead. And then, of course, in the film, as you saw, Terry Nichols has his own theory...

Matthew Sherwood 29:06
Right.

Marc Levin 29:06
... and how credible that is, is, of course, a question since, you know, he has repented for what he did, and regrets it, but he still obviously has strong anti-federal government feelings. But he does bring up this character, Roger Moore, who is another one of these mystery characters; he's passed away, but who McVeigh had an alliance with, a friendship with, spent time with; they worked together on the gun circuit, but he's got a very shady path, just like Strassmeir's got. You know, was in the German army, his family, his father was the aide to Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor of Germany. I mean, he wasn't just a nobody.

Daphne Pinkerson 29:47
And he lived on a kibbutz in Israel.

Marc Levin 29:49
Yeah, he lived on a kibbutz in Israel. Yeah. And Roger Moore also had connections to the FBI, had been part of an FBI sting trying sell illegal weapons to people. So, yeah, there are legitimate questions at the same time as Daphne said, and Bob Sands summed up, I think the federal government saw what happened in 1988, in Fort Smith, where they did try to round up, you know, 10 to 12 of these leaders, and everyone was acquitted. It was such a stunning setback, that they didn't want to make that mistake again. So, they really honed in on McVeigh, obviously, and he was more than willing to accept that. In fact, he, you know, chose to forfeit his appeal rights, so that he would be executed quicker.

Matthew Sherwood 30:49 (32:39)
So, very fascinating. And just recommend everyone to go watch this, to have a little bit more, if you haven't already, and have more insight in terms of what we're all talking about. But if we bring this to the present, I mean, and that's also what your film's about. Have we learned any lessons from Oklahoma City, do you think?

Marc Levin 31:13
No.

Matthew Sherwood 31:16
Okay.

Marc Levin 31:16
I mean, here, a few things are happening right now. But just today in The New York Times, there's an op-ed by Ross Douthat about how this film that came out by a UK director, Civil War, you know, had a big opening weekend. I haven't seen it yet. We want to go see it. But he wrote an op-ed piece in today's paper that, you know, Oh, that really couldn't happen. And, you know, he's thinking, why. I wanted to just reach through the paper and say, You better watch this film. He saw Civil War. And of course, he didn't like the film, because he felt it didn't in any way, look at the causes, where this would come from, what the ideologies behind it were [...] with the correspondents as the heroes. And our film obviously tries to show where some of this ideology that it's legitimate to use violence against the state and to have an insurgency and if you read The Turner Diaries, you know, how a small group can cause chaos. Just think, the CSA, which you mentioned, they had barrels of cyanide. Can you imagine if one city, New York City, LA, a huge city was poisoned, and hundreds of thousands of people die? The chaos? So, a small group of people, there was just a Homeland Security Warning that we got a message this morning about fibre optics infrastructure as a target of new extremist groups. My point is just simply that you look at this film, and you see this movement and the fact that it's - I say, No, what I mean is, a lot of these ideas, which we thought were fringe back then and so extreme that we didn't have to worry about, maybe there was just one or two crazies, now it's mainstream. Now you got people in governor's mansions, in Congress, even in the White House, kind of repeating some of this ideology and amping up this sense of we're in a battle to save the Republic. And sometimes violence is needed, as in the American Revolution. So, that's why I say, No. And that's why I think the film is important. But the idea that the conditions, yeah, we have this American exceptionalism: Yeah, it can't happen here. It can happen in Ukraine, you know, it can happen in Yugoslavia...

Matthew Sherwood 34:02
Right.

Marc Levin 34:02
... but not here in the United States. Well, unfortunately, you know, I'm not so sure of that anymore and that, you know, when you say, have we learned lessons, I think, as we were talking earlier, just saying, okay, he's dead, let's move on. He may be dead but the ghost of McVeigh lives, and there are lots of people out there that subscribe to some of his thinking.

Matthew Sherwood 34:30
Yeah, and I was gonna ask you the Civil War question because I think also - I haven't read the column yet. I do read Ross Douthat - but I think it's also how people - I mean, I think for some of us who are - I'm naturally sceptical of everything - but I think anyone who's sceptical is kind of like - well, I asked this question of someone else, actually, on the programme, and he's like, Well, I don't think there's going to be literally like, armies lining up like you had in the American civil war, but do I think there's going to be - is there a real chance for political violence in the near future? Yes. And I think that's probably, you know that - and, I guess, what you'd say is, Look, we only have to look back less than four years ago, and we had it.

Marc Levin 35:20
That's right. Well, luckily, you know, look, I accept that 168 people were killed in Oklahoma City, and the riots at the Capitol, you know, one person was shot and killed, and a number of police obviously had injuries and died, which is a tragedy, but the body count's not the same.

Matthew Sherwood 35:43
Right.

Marc Levin 35:43
So, I get that. But the symbolism of attacking the federal government, that's the idea, and the illegitimacy of the federal government, and the legitimacy of using violence, to in some way, make your point. And in polls, and this is what I found stunning about Douthat's article, the polls actually contradict what he says. There's more of an acceptance now than there was then, of political violence as being legitimate to change certain policies. Now, we did a whole film on the abortion, the anti-abortion movement, which had already made that same claim, that it was legitimate to kill doctors, and others who were providing abortion services. And they had an underground; we didn't know about them training the next shooter. So, you know, this has come in and out of the American experience. But now when you just hear people on mainstream outlets kind of saying so blithely, like maybe we need a civil war, or like you said, it's more of the idea of an insurgency...

Matthew Sherwood 36:55
Right.

Marc Levin 36:56
... you know, a small group that's willing to put their life on the line; you know, you just mentioned that other movie, which I think was very effective in looking at some of the groups today that are using that leaderless resistance, the idea that you don't need armies, you just need to hit - you know, what if somebody hit a nuclear power plant? I mean, you know, it's scary. And then you create this chaos and fear that people want a strong leader, and demagogues can move in. And that's kind of the blueprint of The Turner Diaries, which was McVeigh's Bible.

Daphne Pinkerson 37:39
But I think you have to look at the why. I mean, in a way, the, you know, the insurgency is the what, and the symptom and the reaction.

Matthew Sherwood 37:49
Right, right.

Daphne Pinkerson 37:50 (39:40)
It's been 30 years of economic restructuring in this country, and in many Western European countries, the, you know, support for right wing governments has been increasing as the economies have gotten worse. And there's a bigger gap between rich and poor. And, you know, the cultural divide is, really, it's manufacturing and agriculture on one side, and then on the other side, it's high tech industries and professional services, you know, people with college degrees and higher who prioritise the government, and they don't care if, you know, you put a tax on diesel and the rural areas can't get to work, right. I mean, the depth of, I think, resentment are really not fully appreciated, and it somehow drops out of the conversation, and it's focused on, you know, immigrants, you know, but that is, I think, exploited by these right wing politicians. And then on the so-called left wing, they're saying the economy is doing great, you know, vote for me, but really the economy is not doing great for most people. They're, you know, they're employed, but they're working part-time jobs for, you know, little pay, and they're resentful. I mean, we also did a film with Sanjay Gupta called One Nation Under Stress that looked at the spike in the mortality rate in the United States. And it was discovered by these, you know, two Princeton economists, their formulation was that people were dying deaths of despair based on their dashed expectations of what their lives were going to be like. And these were mostly, you know, blue collar workers who didn't have college degrees, and they were dying from opioid overdose, cirrhosis of the liver, from, you know, alcohol and suicide, you know, so, I think it's important - to me, that should be the biggest focus, the biggest emphasis, because if we don't reach out to those people and stop sort of making it seem like all Trump supporters are exactly the same, it's going to be the end of us. And, you know, there's this interesting book written by [the] academic Barbara F. Walter. She's an expert on civil wars and the signs that civil war is possible. And one of them is that the government is not representing a huge swath of people.

Matthew Sherwood 40:31
Yeah.

Marc Levin 40:33
I think that that's summed up at the end of our film by a kind of homespun line of Daniel Coss when he says 'poke a dog long enough and the dog's gonna bite back'. I mean, you know, you mistreat, humiliate, and subjugate people, and at some point, things are going to erupt. So, that's our warning.

Matthew Sherwood 41:00 (42:51)
Okay. And that takes us full circle, right, because Daniel Coss, if I recall correctly, is the - he's the - is he the uncle of, yeah, he had nephews die in Oklahoma City. He had been in the military, just like McVeigh. He'd been on Oklahoma City Police. And then he's a security consultant to the Capitol on January 6. I mean, when you, as filmmakers, when you uncover something like that, this is film gold, isn't it. I mean, not to make light of the situation...

Marc Levin 41:31
Thank you for saying that. Can we quote you on that? That is so true. When I - when we went down to Arkansas and got together with Kathy again, Kathy Sanders who's a main character in the film, and she revealed this, I was like, No, you couldn't script this. The man who found her two little grandbabies that he would end up on January 6, with the Capitol Police. It's just so - what a twist of fate. And he's an incredibly interesting character. Also, with his own parallels with McVeigh as you said, you know, serving in the military. So, yeah; no, that was gold. You're one of the few people we've spoken to that has really used that term, because that's how I felt when I heard that. I was like, That is gold!

Matthew Sherwood 42:30
Right.

Marc Levin 42:33
But I'm glad. I appreciate that you picked up on that.

Matthew Sherwood 42:36
Well, it's a - I mean, it's just this, whether April 19 was a coincidence in all these other cases, I mean, to come across something like that, is just - and we do tend to - we tend to focus a bit more on the filmmaking side of things and not just talk about the subjects, but yeah, it was, I mean, I was - I couldn't believe that myself when that came out. I was like, wait a minute - I even paused it - I was like, Wait a minute, who is this - that guy; how did that happen?

Marc Levin 43:07 (44:58)
But, look, I'm really glad because it goes to - on the filmmaking side, let's talk about that for a second, because I think that was the key to a certain strategy that was not easy to execute, meaning, we wanted to tell the story, what we kind of jokingly refer to as the Tik Tok, you know, the crime story of this horrible event for a new generation that was not aware of it and didn't understand the significance. At the same time, there were these people we had met back 30, 29 years ago, and their stories and the resilience and even the sense of purpose, some of them got in the wake of the tragedy: Marsha, with the victims' rights movement, Bud with becoming a human rights activist and anti-death penalty advocate. And then finally, the idea of forgiveness that some of the characters like Bud and Kathy are capable of, I'm not sure I would be, but...

Matthew Sherwood 44:09
Yeah.

Marc Levin 44:09
... that human side what I call - yeah, everybody wants to hurt, and that's the crime and the horror. But where's the heart. And there was tremendous heart from the people we knew in Oklahoma back then. And we wanted to find a way to weave those together into a whole, and it wasn't easy to kind of make that one. But that moment of finding out that Daniel Coss was there at the Capitol, January 6, that was the key to being able to a create a structure where we could weave in and out of the big story, and then this human story comes in and out, and it all comes together. So, it took some time.

Matthew Sherwood 44:58
Because what did this film look like before you came across that, I mean...

Marc Levin 45:02
Well, that was very early on.

Matthew Sherwood 45:04
Oh, was it early on? Okay.

Marc Levin 45:05
So, that - the idea for the structure, and one of the things that Daphne and I, you know, again, on the filmmaking side, the first assembly was like, you know, three and a half, four hours. And there was a discussion with HBO, obviously, should we make it a series?

Matthew Sherwood 45:20
Right.

Marc Levin 45:21
Or do we do it as a single feature documentary. We decided to go the single route because of this, what you just said, in other words, if that had been in Episode Four, and we stretched it out...

Matthew Sherwood 45:37
Right.

Marc Levin 45:38
... I don't know that it would have had the same emotional impact. And we wanted the film to have a heart and emotional impact. There were lots of rabbit holes - we raised a few here in the discussion a few minutes ago - that could have been: the ARA could have been an episode, Elohim City could have been an episode...

Matthew Sherwood 45:56
Right.

Marc Levin 45:56
... you know, that we could have really, you know - and others will, you know, explore, but we didn't want to lose that heart. And so, we felt, if we could put it all in under two hours, you know, that will work. And that's why we made that decision.

Matthew Sherwood 46:14 (48:05)
I know we don't have much time left together, but I will - if I may follow up on that. Do you have a preference? Or do you prefer series over, or feature, over series? Or is it back to this whole, what other filmmakers have always told me, as long as you do what it takes to tell the story, and if that's a few episodes, you do it that way, or if it's a feature you do it, you know, in 90 minutes or so, that's the way to go about it. Do you have a view on that? Or is - in terms of series...

Marc Levin 46:48
I have [...] and done, thankfully, both. I think the one thing about the feature is it's more evergreen. It's easier, you know, twenty years from now, to go back to Oklahoma, you know, An American Bombing: The Road to April 19, than it is a four hour series; it just - it has more of a shelf life, I think. And also, on the educational front and the non-theatrical, you know, special events, you know, things like that. But look, you know, a series can be great, too, there's no doubt about it, there are a lot of great ones, and we've been lucky enough to do some really good ones. But right now, that's where my head is at.

Matthew Sherwood 47:40
Okay.

Daphne Pinkerson 47:41
I mean, this, you know, the 30th anniversary is coming up, and there's gonna - we already know, there are, like, a raft of films and series in production. And when we started, we didn't even really think about the fact that it was, you know, the 30th was coming up and...

Matthew Sherwood 47:54
Right.

Daphne Pinkerson 47:55
... and so, you know, we figured we're going to be sort of the first out of the gate. And this is a big picture film that puts it in historical context. It really would have lost the sweep of that, I think. You know, we're really going to keep, like, bringing up the farm prices and outsourcing, every episode?

Matthew Sherwood 48:12
Right, right.

Daphne Pinkerson 48:13
I think it was better to do it this way. But I would certainly watch a series that, you know, digs into the ARA and Strassmeir, Howell, and, I mean, there's just so much circumstantial evidence that McVeigh was intersecting with other people, you know, in the years leading up to the bombing.

Matthew Sherwood 48:35 (50:25)
Okay. Well, speaking of your career and what you've been able to do and continue to do, what's next for you after this project?

Marc Levin 48:47
Well, first of all, we have a film that's coming out, being re-released in two weeks. So...

Matthew Sherwood 48:53
Oh great.

Marc Levin 48:53
... that's called Slam. It was released in the UK, and is being re-released thanks to the Academy of Motion Pictures, Sundance Institute and UCLA, who started a restoration and preservation programme for cinema around the world, really, but now they're also including independents. And this was one of the indie films chosen. So, the film is opening at the Roxy, a new art house in Tribeca, Manhattan. So, we're on to that. We have another film that's out now, you know, just kind of making the rounds. It just played the Cleveland International Film Festival. It's called It's Basic. It's on the whole guaranteed income movement, the universal basic income movement. It's out now. We have a film we're finishing on Halim Flowers: Super Predator to Superhero, a character we met in a DC jail 25 years ago. It's interesting how these stories that we stumbled into 25 years ago are coming back. And then we're starting another historical documentary about what's been called the Hard Hat Riot. I don't know if you've ever heard that. It's a best selling book about the week of - the first week of May in 1970, when Kent State happened and Nixon invaded Cambodia, and here in New York City that Friday, the construction workers working on the new World Trade Centre, you know, came down and beat up all the anti-war protesters...

Matthew Sherwood 50:27
Right.

Marc Levin 50:27
... and its author, David Kuhn has done a great job in kind of showing how that was an inciting incident in this movement of the white working class, away from the New Deal, away from the Democratic base, and this split that Daphne was talking about that, you know, between college educated, and then blue collar, how that became kind of symbolic and inciting incident, that the reverberations, we're still living with now. So, that's another one.

Matthew Sherwood 51:00
So, not much on then!

Marc Levin 51:07 (52:58)
We're lucky. I mean, you know, because we saw yesterday, as we were talking earlier, that Participant films is closing, you know, I assume you saw that news from Hollywood, although we never really, we did do one, we did that New Jersey thing. They were, you know, an outpost for social, political, environment, obviously, you know, with the Al Gore film Inconvenient Truth is how they launched...

Matthew Sherwood 51:38
Right, right.

Marc Levin 51:38
... but the idea that they're closing their door now, because the marketplace is so hostile to films like that. I mean, one of our colleagues, which they gave a sneak preview to, and he came out and goes, This may be last real documentary. And, you know, we just kind of laughed and said, What do you mean, but I think what he meant was, what the Participant folks said yesterday, they're just - right now is a hostile environment. You know, the joke is that you need the three Cs: crime, celebrity and cult. Now, you could say this film has some of that. I mean, obviously, mass murder. It's got a cultish angle. And we do have a celebrity that we should acknowledge: Katie Couric was executive producer...

Matthew Sherwood 52:27
That's right. That's right.

Marc Levin 52:28 (54:39)
... who helped us tremendously in getting to President Clinton and some of the other high profile characters. And she actually originally brought an idea about Oklahoma to HBO, which then they brought us all together. But yeah, that's kind of the joke. You know, if you have anything outside that, it's just, you know, very difficult right now. I don't know what the atmosphere in the UK is. But, yeah, it's tricky. We've been lucky, you know, as a boutique, you know, to be able to navigate, but it's trickier and trickier.

Daphne Pinkerson 53:02
Is the same thing happening there?

Matthew Sherwood 53:03
Well, it's - in a way. I mean, what you have is - if you're getting something commissioned here in the UK, you don't have the budgets that you have in the US, that's always been the case. But budgets are even tighter than they were and different - you have a smaller number of sort of broadcasters, if you will, and others, and they are cutting their staffs and they're, you know, they're happy - my understanding is in talking to some filmmakers here and there - they're happy to come in at the end, maybe provide some finishing funds, that kind of thing. But they're not - I mean, there are exceptions to this, obviously, I think. You never know because...

Marc Levin 53:53
Isn't BBC doing a series on the Oklahoma City bombing? Isn't that one of the - or is it ITV?

Matthew Sherwood 54:00
I wouldn't be surp-...

Marc Levin 54:00
I know somebody out of London is doing already talking to people, you know, that we know, right?

Matthew Sherwood 54:05
Yeah.

Daphne Pinkerson 54:07
Definitely a British series being done.

Matthew Sherwood 54:09
So, I wouldn't be surprised if they are. But I do know also that the people I know who are pitching films and things like that, they're just finding - these conversations are just taking forever, right? You just - and then you think you've got - you think everyone's on the same page, and then someone higher up, comes back and says no, we need this. We may need one of the Cs that you're talking about, you know, or we need to get a celebrity attached to this, even as an exec. I mean, I feel like I should bring some of the people I know on to answer this question better than I can but I do think everyone is saying it's difficult, and I mean, it always has been I guess, but it just seems - it's difficult in a different way, I think.

Marc Levin 55:02
Right, right, right. Are you gonna have Alex Garland on your show? The director of Civil War?

Matthew Sherwood 55:09
You know, we haven't - I don't know if we've reached out to him. So, I work with some people who are finding people like you, or people like your PR firm find us. So, that's always nice. And that works out quite well. I don't know if anyone's reached out to him. But you know what, it would be the perfect triumvirate, trilogy here.

Marc Levin 55:11
You did the other film....

Matthew Sherwood 55:32
Done this film.

Marc Levin 55:34
And those are the films that people need to see before seeing Alex's film or after, I'm not sure what order since we haven't seen it yet. But I would love him to see our film, that's for sure.

Matthew Sherwood 55:46
All right. Well...

Daphne Pinkerson 55:47 (57:37)
You said you had a particular intersection?

Matthew Sherwood 55:50
Well, okay, you know, not to bore people; it's not about me, it's about you and your film and the interesting things we've been talking about. So, I was born and raised in Texas, and in 1997, I flew back to meet up with my brother, and we were going to drive up to Oklahoma City, because that's where my sister was living, and she was about to give birth to her first child, the first grand baby in the family, my first niece, and along the way - my mother's family's from the Waco area - so we met up with my aunt and uncle, and we went for dinner. And they're like, Would you like to drive by the Branch Davidian compound? And we're like, when you're in your 20s, well, of course, you say, yes, let's do it. So, we got in the car, and they drove by, and of course, this is, well, would have been four years later. Yeah, yeah. So, there was still - there was someone still living on a trailer on the compound at the time. And so, and then, within 24 hours, I was standing there, in front of where the Murrah building used to be looking at the site there, and that fence that you showed where - I found that interesting. Is that fence still up that had all the different - peoples had left notes, I mean, very similar to what we saw on 9/11, you know, a few years later. So, all those notes were still there, and the stuffed animals and the teddy bears and stuff, people. And it was just, I mean, it was just - I mean, not - we didn't joke about it, but my brother and I were just like, it's the, you know, it's the right-wing extremist tour or whatever we're doing. But, you know, we'd gone to Waco, now we've gone to Oklahoma City, what's next, you know, on the list, right, you know. But it was very poignant, because you talk about some people - I mean, like you said, people forget their history. I knew the connection. I definitely knew there was a connection there, in terms of those dates, and why McVeigh was doing - and I mean, it came out at the time, certainly, but it's one of these, when you talk about connecting the dots, a lot of times, I guess you would say, a lot of times those dots have been connected in the past, but then someone's rubbed them out. You know, and we forget, right, you know. So, that's my connect - and the other connection being, a distant cousin of mine, owned a farm near the Branch Davidian compound, and he did okay for himself; he's my granddad's cousin, because he had all that - his farm was on a bluff that overlooked the compound, and so he was able to charge all the media people to set up their trucks and everything when they were filming the standoff. So, I didn't know about this but I was visiting my granddad and he's like, Oh, you know, so-and-so he's done all right for himself, he's, you know, he got CBS and NBC and all these people camped out at his farm. So, that was my - that's the - it's not that interesting, it's just the world we live in. You have all these connections that you don't expect, just like you've come across that in your filmmaking. So, thanks again so much for being on, we really enjoyed it. Thanks. I'm glad you're continuing to make movies. We'd love to have you on again some time. And just to remind our viewers and listeners, we've been talking to Marc Levin and Daphne Pinkerson, the award-winning filmmakers behind An American Bombing: The Road to April 19, on HBO and streaming on Max, do check it out.

Matthew Sherwood 59:22
Thanks again for joining us on Factual America. A big shout out to everyone at Innersound Audio in York, England for their great studio and fine editing and production skills. A big thanks to Amy Ord, our podcast manager, who ensures we continue getting great guests onto the show and that everything otherwise runs smoothly. Finally, a big thanks to you our listeners. Please keep sending us feedback and episode ideas, whether it is on YouTube, social media, or directly by email. And please also remember to like us and share us with your friends and family, wherever you happen to listen or watch podcasts. This is Factual America, signing off.

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