OFF/NOT MUSIC: more of a media celebrity than he ever oughta been...

[DASLUD at AOL.COM]

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (June 11) - The government Timothy McVeigh so despised
executed him by chemical injection Monday, taking his life in exchange for
the 168 lives lost when he blew up the Oklahoma City federal building six
years ago. He died silently, with his eyes open.

Instead of making an oral statement, McVeigh, 33, issued a copy of the 1875
poem ''Invictus,'' which concludes with the lines: ''I am the master of my
fate; I am the captain of my soul.''

He was pronounced dead at 8:14 a.m. EDT by Warden Harley Lappin, becoming the
first federal prisoner executed in 38 years.

In Oklahoma City, 232 survivors and victims' relatives watched a
closed-circuit TV broadcast of the execution, sent from Terre Haute in a feed
encrypted to guard against interception. Others embraced each other at the
memorial marking the bombing site.

The lethal injection was administered to McVeigh's right leg. McVeigh made
eye contact with his four witnesses, then with the 10 media witnesses, then
squinted toward the tinted window shielding the 10 victims' witnesses from
his view.

McVeigh, wearing a white T-shirt, khaki pants and slip-on sneakers, looked
pale as he awaited death. His hair was cropped short. A white sheet was
pulled up tightly to his chest as he lay on the gurney.

When the first drug was administered, he let out a couple of deep breaths,
then a fluttery breath. His head moved back, his gaze fixed on the ceiling,
and his eyes were glassy.

In a recent letter to the Buffalo News, McVeigh said his body would be
released to one his attorneys and cremated, and his ashes would be scattered
in an undisclosed location.

In Oklahoma City, Kathleen Treanor, whose 4-year-old daughter, Ashley, and
her husband's parents died in the bombing, watched the execution on
closed-circuit TV. Afterward, she held up a picture of her daughter and said:
''I thought of her every step of the way.'' She said there was no display of
emotion in the room as the execution took place.

She said some of the victims were chuckling that they knew McVeigh was dead
before the hordes of media outside did.

''I don't think anything can bring me any peace or anything from this. I'll
always face the loss of my daughter. I'll never get over that,'' said
Treanor, 38. ''When I die and they lay me in my grave is when I'll have
closure. That's when I'll stop grieving for my daughter.''

Larry Whicher, the brother of a bombing victim, said McVeigh looked into the
camera with cold, blank stare in the moments before he died.

''He had a look of defiance and that if he could, he'd do it all over
again,'' Whicher said. He added: ''I don't think he gave himself to the Lord.
I don't think he repented and personally I think he's in hell.''

Janice Smith, whose brother Lanny Scroggins died in the bombing, prayed with
her children at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, then left after getting
word that McVeigh was dead.

''It's over,'' she said. ''We don't have to continue with him anymore.''

The day before McVeigh's execution, his attorneys said that he was sorry for
those who suffered but that he didn't regret detonating a massive bomb at the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building - the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil.

''He never, I think, has been the type of guy to tell people what he thinks
that they want to hear,'' attorney Robert Nigh said. ''I think that he tries
to be honest about his true feeling of sympathy and empathy without being
inaccurate about them.''

The U.S. Bureau of Prison's 50-page protocol for the execution outlined every
detail, including the words the warden must say to the U.S. marshal before
the injection began: ''We are ready.'' Before that, McVeigh had four minutes
to make a statement.

McVeigh received a mixture of sodium thiopental, to sedate him, pancuronium
bromide, a muscle relaxant that collapses the diaphragm and lungs; and
potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Among those allowed to witness were 10 victims' representatives, 10 news
media members, including one from The Associated Press, and McVeigh's
personal witnesses - Nigh, defense attorney Nathan Chambers, former defense
team member Cate McCauley and Buffalo News reporter Lou Michel, who co-wrote
a recent book on the bomber.

No members of McVeigh's family traveled to Terre Haute, at his request.

Defiant to the end, McVeigh had told those close to him in his final days
that he still considered himself the victor in his one-man war against a
government he labeled a bully for its disastrous raids at Waco, Texas, and
Ruby Ridge in Idaho.

Prison officials said the decorated Gulf War veteran spent Sunday writing
letters, sleeping, watching television and meeting with Nigh and Chambers.

McVeigh was served his final requested meal at 1 p.m. EDT Sunday, eating two
pints of mint-chocolate chip ice cream.

Less than 24 hours before his death, McVeigh's mood had been upbeat, his
attorneys said.

''He continues to be affable,'' Chambers said. ''He continues to be rational
in his discourse. He maintains his sense of humor.''

McVeigh was transferred from his 8-by-10-foot cell to an isolation cell near
the death chamber at 5:10 a.m. EDT Sunday.

''He was able to look up in the sky and see the moon for the first time in a
number of years,'' Nigh said. McVeigh, he added, slept a few hours Saturday
night and planned to do the same before the execution.

McVeigh was born in Pendleton, N.Y., near Buffalo, in 1968 and raised Roman
Catholic in a middle-class environment. At a young age, he developed a keen
interest in guns from his grandfather.

As he grew up, he developed a distrust of the government, yet he joined the
Army and went on to serve in the Gulf War. He returned more disillusioned
with the United States, viewing its treatment of the Iraqi people as that of
a schoolyard bully.

Drifting across the country and taking on an increasingly survivalist
mentality, he stewed over what he saw as government encroachment on the right
to bear arms. The federal raids at the Branch Davidian compound at Waco and
the cabin of white separatist Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge brought his hatred
to a head.

He decided it was time for action, not words.

McVeigh set his sights on the Oklahoma City federal building. He packed a
Ryder truck with explosives, lit the fuses, parked it outside the federal
building and walked away without looking back.

He was condemned to die for the deaths of eight federal law enforcement
agents buried in the rubble, but jurors in the death penalty phase of his
1997 trial labeled him responsible for all 168 deaths.

McVeigh's original execution date was May 16, but it was delayed after the
FBI revealed it had withheld more than 4,500 documents from the defense
during McVeigh's trial. The Justice Department said nothing in the documents
cast doubt on the bomber's guilt.

Defense attorneys sought an additional delay but were turned down. McVeigh
then decided to halt all appeals.

After McVeigh's death, officials at the Terre Haute prison - which houses the
remaining 19 federal death row inmates - must prepare for another execution.
Drug kingpin and convicted murderer Juan Raul Garza is scheduled to die June
19.

 AP-NY-06-11-01 0923EDT