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 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