60 Minutes arguments, such as questioning the legitimacy of Native American sovereignty – much of the racial focus of the segment was later reported to have been either unfounded and/or misinterpreted. On March 12, 2000, "60 Minutes" aired an interview with Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. At the time, McVeigh had already been convicted and sentenced to death for the April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and subsequent deaths of 168 people. On the program, McVeigh was given the opportunity to vent against the government. Following the program, a federal policy called the Special Confinement Unit Media Policy
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