An American Bombing: The Road To April 19th Review – Poignant, Emotional, Impacting

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Category: Haute This Issue
Published on Tuesday, 16 April 2024 19:31
Written by Janet Walker

An American Bombing: The Road to April 19th, from HBO, presents a story 29 years in the making and investigates the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal building that killed 168 including 19 children.

The documentary begins the morning of the April 19, 1995, in the home of Kathy Sanders, the grandmother to Chase, 2, and Colton, 3, who seemed like happy, contented, normal little boys, on their way to daycare at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

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Within minutes the early spring morning turns tragic. A bomb had exploded and demolished one side of the building. From top to bottom, the building was a debris field of twisted metal, cement, death, and chaos.

An American Bombing pieces together the immediate investigation, and presents a deeper backstory of home-grown hate, and those encampments where sedition lives, breathes, takes root, and grows.

We learn more from the survivors. Their stories of post struggles, the inability to function, an inability to do anything except sit in a chair, some who self-soothed with alcohol, and others who visited the site daily. The stories align with signs of those who have experienced aggravated PTSD, the shock of shattered lives, ripped apart and there is no where to go to pick up the pieces.

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Former FBI Investigators also provide background information into the immediate reactions, which is when we travel back in time, two years, to April 19, 1993, to the 51-day standoff between the FBI and ATF and David Koresh and the Branch Davidian.

We find that Timothy McVeigh, the convicted Oklahoma City Bomber, was at Waco. And even further back a decade when another supremist group had its sites on bombing the Murrah building, which for some reason, was the focus for militias and domestic terrorists.

An American Bombing explains that this mindset of racial supremacy is actively proselytized and even as the FBI appears to be diligent in infiltrating these hate groups, actionable evidence for prosecution is bartered.

Former President Clinton, a featured, participant, explains early on that his home state of Arkansas is a beehive for these groups, and the bombing had all the earmarks of home-grown domestic terrorism. He also explained that McVeigh believed our differences, as Americans, were more important that what we have in common.

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The story circles back to our survivors, those who have climbed up the other side of the mountain from that deep, nearly bottomless, ravine that the events of April 19th, dropped them into and we meet them again, warriors for truth, hoping to find something, that will mark the end and a finality. For some it is befriending the McVeigh Family, for others it is starting a support group, and others it is dedicated research and investigation.

An American Bombing: The Road To April 19th is an American true crime story that captivates from the beginning. Mention the Oklahoma City bombing to those old enough to remember and inevitably it will elicit an exact response of where you were when you heard, just like 9/11, the January 6 Capitol Siege, and for those somewhat older the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Even as some believe there are other individuals who played a part in the planning, encouragement, funding, or implementing of the Oklahoma City bombing, and should be prosecuted, justice is elusive and for those who have experienced great and irreparable loss, they were fortunate to have some justice. Many never receive justice.

Poignant, effecting, and emotional An American Bombing: The Road To April 19th premieres of HBO/HBO MAX April 16, 2024. See it.

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Country: U.S.

Language: English.

Runtime: 104 minutes.

Release Platform: HBO/HBO MAX

Director: Marc Levin. 

Executive Producer: Katie Couric. 

HBO Executive Producers: Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, Sara Rodriguez.

Featured Participants: Former President Bill Clinton; bombing survivor Nancy Shaw; investigative reporters Mike Boettcher and Bob Sands; former Oklahoma police officer Daniel Coss; former FBI special agents Danny Coulson, Michael Liwicki, and Bob Ricks; former domestic terrorist Kerry Noble; McVeigh's childhood friend Mollie McDermott; authors Stuart Wright, Jeffrey Toobin, Lou Michel, Dan Herbeck, and Kathleen Belew; attorneys Stephen Jones, Asa Hutchinson, Aitan Goelman, Beth Wilkinson, Clark Brewster, and Steven Snyder; investigator Richard Reyna; and victims' family members Kathy Sanders, Marsha Kimble, LaDonna Battle-Leverett, and Bud Welch.

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