Oklahoma City bombing bombing, and other political dignitaries attended the service and gave speeches in which they emphasized that "goodness overcame evil". The relatives of the victims and the survivors of the blast also made note of it during the service at First United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City. President George W. Bush made note of the anniversary in a written statement, part of which echoed his remarks on the execution of Timothy McVeigh in 2001: "For the survivors of the crime and for the families of the dead the pain goes on." Bush was invited but did not attend the service because
Timothy McVeigh Methodist University who was writing for the school paper. McVeigh expressed his objections over what was happening there. McVeigh frequently quoted and alluded to the white supremacist novel "The Turner Diaries"; he claimed to appreciate its interest in firearms. Photocopies of pages sixty-one and sixty-two of "The Turner Diaries" were found in an envelope inside McVeigh's car. These pages depicted a fictitious mortar attack upon the U.S. Capitol in Washington. In a 1,200-word essay dated March 1998, from the federal maximum-security prison at Florence, Colorado, McVeigh claimed that the terrorist bombing was "morally equivalent" to U.S. military actions against Iraq