Timothy McVeigh and other foreign countries. The handwritten essay, submitted to and published by the alternative national news magazine "Media Bypass", was distributed worldwide by the Associated Press on May 29, 1998. This was written in the midst of the 1998 Iraq disarmament crisis and a few months before Operation Desert Fox. The essay, which marked the first time that McVeigh publicly discussed the Oklahoma City bombing, continued: McVeigh included photocopies of a famous Vietnam War-era picture showing terrified children fleeing napalm bombs, and of nuclear devastation in Japan. He said in a preface that the essay was intended to "provoke thought
Timothy McVeigh 1980s, and a membership in the National Rifle Association while in the Army, and there is no evidence that he ever belonged to any extremist groups. McVeigh was raised Roman Catholic. During his childhood, he and his father attended Mass regularly. McVeigh was confirmed at the Good Shepherd Church in Pendleton, New York, in 1985. In a 1996 interview, McVeigh professed belief in "a God", although he said he had "sort of lost touch with" Catholicism and "I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs." In McVeigh's biography "American Terrorist", released in 2002, he stated that