John Ashcroft documents related to the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing. Ashcroft granted a 30-day stay of execution for Timothy McVeigh, the man convicted and sentenced to death for the bombing. After the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, Ashcroft was a key administration supporter of passage of the USA Patriot Act. One of its provisions, Section 215, allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to apply for an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to require production of "any tangible thing" for an investigation. This provision was criticized by citizen and professional groups concerned about violations of
Timothy McVeigh the building. It killed 168 people, including nineteen children in the day care center on the second floor, and injured 684 others. McVeigh said that he had no knowledge that the federal offices ran a daycare center on the second floor of the building, and that he might have chosen a different target if he had known about it. Nichols said that he and McVeigh knew there was a daycare center in the building, and that they did not care. McVeigh's biographers, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, quote McVeigh, with whom they spoke for 75 hours, on his attitude to