The 1990s Government, Politics, and Law: Topics in the News

PERSIAN GULF WAR

On August 2, 1990, the Iraqi army moved into neighboring Kuwait and seized control of the oil-rich nation, claiming they were rightfully reclaiming their own territory. The unprovoked and unexpected action surprised the United States and Western Europe. Kuwait supplied oil to Europe and Asia; Iraqi control of Kuwaiti oil fields, along with Iraq's own immense oil resources, would put much of the world at the mercy of its highly unpredictable leader, Saddam Hussein. The invasion threatened not only the world supply of oil but also political stability in the Middle East.

Western allies immediately sought a United Nations (UN) resolution condemning the action of Iraq. Hussein was surprised by this reaction because scarcely a week before, U.S. ambassador to Iraq April C. Glaspie had told him that the border dispute between Iraq and Kuwait was an Arab issue. Hussein thought he had been clear about his intentions; the ambassador thought Hussein was merely restating an old territorial dispute. Once Iraq acted, however, the West did not ignore the situation.

President George H. W. Bush (1924–) contended that Iraq's action threatened U.S. political and economic positions in the Persian Gulf region. First, Iraqi militarism threatened the balance of power in the Middle East. For decades, the United States had tried to find a peaceful balance in the hostile relations between the region's Arab states and Israel. The Iraqi invasion could upset that balance, uniting Arab states in opposition to the West and Israel. Bush recognized the need for a swift response and dubbed his plan Operation Desert Shield.

On August 19, 1990, the UN declared the Iraqi takeover of Kuwait invalid, and on August 25 it authorized military action. Bush also worked quickly to support Saudi Arabia, which was threatened by Hussein's action and which Bush needed as a staging area for military actions against Iraq. Ultimately Bush was able to get not only Saudi Arabian cooperation, but also help from most Arab states in the region. Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Syria all contributed soldiers and munitions in the fight against Iraq. Jordan, which felt particularly vulnerable because of its geographic location between Israel and Iraq, chose to remain neutral.

The United States told Iraq that if it did not withdraw its armies from Kuwait by January 15, 1991, the United States and UN-backed alliance of nations would retaliate. At this point the coalition moved five hundred thousand land, air, and naval forces into the Middle East and prepared to fight.

Iraq was well prepared for war. Many observers considered the military might of Iraq to be the strongest in the Arab world. Hussein's elite Republican Guard had a fearsome reputation as a first-rate fighting force. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also had evidence that Iraqi agents were developing biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons. It was assumed that Hussein would not hesitate to use them.

After the U.S. Congress passed a resolution supporting armed intervention in Kuwait, the next phase of the effort—Operation Desert Storm—began. On January 17, 1991, U.S. missiles and warplanes launched attacks on Iraq's capital city, Baghdad, and other military targets. The army had projected that the war would last many months and cost thousands of lives. Luckily, the estimates were greatly overstated. The missile attacks were very effective; by the time ground troops invaded Iraq and Kuwait on February 24, 1991, they met little resistance. On February 28, President Bush ordered a cease-fire, and on March 3, Iraq formally accepted a peace agreement.

The peace agreement imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq (forbidding Iraqi aircraft from flying over the area), installed economic sanctions, and required inspections of military installations by UN teams. It also allowed Hussein to remain in charge in Iraq. Unbowed, Hussein continued to test the resolve of the United States and UN by failing to cooperate with UN inspection teams as they looked for evidence of nuclear, biological,

or chemical weapons of mass destruction and generally resisting all efforts to undermine his power. In his eight years in office, Bush's successor President Bill Clinton (1946–) was no more successful against Hussein's resistance than Bush had been. The decade ended as it had begun, with Hussein still in power in Iraq.

PEACEKEEPING MISSIONS: AMERICA AS THE WORLD'S POLICE FORCE

The belief that a United Nations (UN) peacekeeping coalition was the best way to control world unrest was strengthened immediately following the 1991 Persian Gulf War. However, that belief was constantly tested throughout the remainder of the decade. With the collapse of the Communist Soviet Union, the United States became the world's only remaining superpower. The role of world's police force—leading and coordinating international intervention in conflicts around the world—increasingly fell to the United States. Sometimes these so-called peacekeeping missions led by the United States under UN sponsorship succeeded. Often, they did not.

For decades, war and strife had plagued the African country of Somalia, which lies along the northeast coast of the continent. In 1991, a rebel group in the north announced its secession from Somalia and proclaimed itself the Somaliland Republic. The ensuing civil war combined with the worst African drought of the century created devastating famine. Public health officials estimated in the fall of 1992 that up to one-third of Somalia's population was in danger of starvation; the dead already numbered tens of thousands.

In December 1992, the United Nations passed a resolution to deploy a U.S.-led international military operation to Somalia to safeguard a massive fifteen-month relief effort. By the end of December, faction leaders had pledged to stop fighting. Operation Restore Hope, as the relief effort was labeled, quickly spread throughout the country, and violence decreased dramatically. By early 1993, more than thirty-four thousand troops from twenty-four UN member countries (75 percent of them from the United States) were deployed in Somalia. Starvation was virtually ended, and some order had been restored. Yet little was done to achieve a political solution or to disarm the rebels.

Although the UN effort solved the problem of distributing relief supplies, Somalia still had no central government and few public institutions. Local warlords and their forces became increasingly bold. Danger to U.S. troops and other relief workers remained high. In October 1993, eighteen U.S. Army Rangers were killed and seventy-five were wounded in a firefight with rebel factions. President Bill Clinton (1946–), under pressure from the American public and other politicians, withdrew U.S. troops. After the withdrawal of the foreign peacekeeping troops, faction leader General Muhammad Farrah Aideed became the country's self-declared president. However, his rivals refused to bow to his authority, and unrest in the country continued.

Haiti is the world's oldest black republic and the second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere (after the United States). It occupies the western half of the island of Hispaniola, the second largest in the Caribbean Sea. In 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti. Upset by Aristide's popularity and his foreign policy, the military, under General Raoul Cédras, ousted him in October 1991. The United Nations then forged an agreement to return Aristide to the presidency in October 1993, but the military stalled and Cédras remained in power. Aristide appealed to the United States, and the Clinton administration responded with economic sanctions (penalties imposed as a result of breaking a law or violating an international policy) against the Haitian regime in May and June 1994.

In September 1994, as a last resort, the Clinton administration secured international support for a military invasion of Haiti to force Cédras from power. A U.S. invasion force was assembled and war seemed imminent. However, Clinton sent a special delegation composed of former president Jimmy Carter, Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, and retired U.S. Army general Colin Powell to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis. As U.S. fighter planes were about to take off for Haiti, the Carter-led team reached an agreement with Cédras and war was averted. American forces peacefully took control of the country and, in October 1994, restored Aristide to power.

The resolution of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia was not so peaceful. The collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe in 1989 had a deep impact in Yugoslavia. By 1991, Yugoslavia was dissolved, and its former provinces of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia declared their individual independence. This left only Serbia and Montenegro together as a new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The coalition government of Bosnia-Herzegovina had a very difficult time maintaining a spirit of ethnic cooperation with its neighbors. The Serbian and Croatian governments each wanted a temporary confederation with Bosnia as a transition to unification with their respective "mother states." The Bosnian Muslim party favored an independent united Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ultimately war broke out in Bosnia in mid-1992. While Serbs took over some 70 percent of the province, Croats kept control of western Herzegovina. The Croat's Muslim allies tried to resist Serbian attacks on predominantly Muslim cities and towns full of Bosnian refugees. The war destroyed over 60 percent of the homes in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, along with many historic buildings. Bombing and fires also damaged the environment.

Peacekeeping efforts in the region were made by the European Community, the United States, the United Nations, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In July 1995, Bosnian Serbs overran areas under UN protection. In retaliation, NATO forces began air raids on Bosnian Serb positions in August 1995. The Bosnian Serb forces then started lifting their siege of Sarajevo, and agreed to negotiate over Bosnia's future.

Pressured by the air strikes and intense diplomacy, Serb officials joined leaders from Bosnia and Croatia on October 31, 1995, in Dayton, Ohio, for a round of peace talks. On November 21, 1995, the presidents of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia finally agreed to terms that would end the fighting in Bosnia after four years and an estimated 250,000 casualties. The agreement called for sixty thousand UN peacekeepers to prevent future conflicts. Despite the Dayton peace accords, the fighting in Yugoslavia continued into 1999, forcing peacekeeping forces to continue to patrol the embattled region.

CONTRACT WITH AMERICA

The 1994 congressional elections resulted in a Republican landslide as many voters across the country, angered by President Bill Clinton's agenda, turned en masse to more conservative candidates. (Conservatives, often represented by the Republican Party, favor preserving traditional values and customs. They oppose any sudden change in the balance of power, and they believe the federal government should have limited control over the lives of average Americans. On the other hand, liberals, usually represented by the Democratic Party, favor a stronger central government. They support political reforms that extend democracy, distribute wealth more evenly, and bring about social progress.)

Much of the credit for the Republican success in that election can be attributed to Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich, the Republican representative from Georgia who rose through the ranks after his election to the U.S. Congress in 1978 to become Speaker of the House in 1994. That year, he seized the opportunity for leadership by promoting a conservative legislative agenda: the "Contract with America."

The Contract with America promised to pass eight legislative reforms in the first one hundred days of the 104th Congress and ten new laws in the following one hundred days. The Republicans promised to clean up Congress by reducing the number of committees, opening committee meetings to the public, requiring a three-fifths vote on tax bills, limiting the terms of committee chairs, and cleaning up budgeting processes.

Tobacco Under Attack

For decades, tobacco companies rarely lost health-related lawsuits. This trend changed in the 1990s as the tobacco industry paid out hundreds of billions of dollars in settlements, losing lawsuits filed by individuals, groups (class-action suits), cities, and states. As a result, cigarette prices soared. Smoking was made even more expensive as sales taxes on cigarettes were increased in an effort to discourage smoking and to raise revenue. State and federal agencies launched antismoking campaigns, primarily targeted at youth. Although adult smoking consistently declined during the decade, tobacco use increased among individuals under the age of eighteen. Smoking and tobacco use caused more than 430,000 deaths each year, and generated associated annual health costs of $100 billion.

On November 14, 1998, four of the largest American cigarette manufacturers and attorneys general in forty-six states reached an historic settlement. In the largest civil suit award in U.S. history, Philip Morris, R. J. Reynolds, Lorillard, and Brown & Williamson agreed to pay $206 billion to cover the medical costs of smoking-related illnesses. The states were scheduled to receive twelve billion dollars up front over the first five years. The rest would be paid in annual installments until 2025. In addition, the cigarette makers agreed to spend $1.7 billion on research aimed at discouraging smoking, especially among teenagers. The settlement also required that tobacco companies halt advertising on billboards and in transit stations, such as bus terminals and subways. Further, the companies were banned from selling clothing and merchandise that carried cigarette brand logos. This meant that cartoon characters such as Joe Camel could not be used in advertising. While the settlement was aimed at reducing smoking, it did not include any specific penalties if smoking did not decline. There were also no penalties if underage smoking increased.

While these congressional reforms were rather sweeping, the proposed legislative agenda was even broader. It included bills supporting a federal balanced-budget amendment, an anticrime package, programs to discourage teen pregnancy, stronger child-support enforcement, income tax reform, and congressional term limits.

Each of these areas struck a chord with the American people. There was general agreement that the federal government had become too big, although there was little agreement on which areas should be cut. The Contract had the advantage of putting many pet projects of the Republican leadership into a framework that was easy to understand. Even congressmen who did not support a balanced-budget amendment or congressional term limits found it difficult not to sign the Contract. Democrats in the House were forced into the uncomfortable position of seeming to favor crime or teenage pregnancy if they opposed the Contract with America.

Americans with Disabilities Act

Disabled Americans celebrated when President George Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990. Affecting people from all walks of life, the bill prohibited discrimination against and provided support for the transportation, access, and telecommunication needs of the country's physically or mentally impaired population. Hailed as a major civil rights victory, the ADA provided guidelines on how schools, private businesses, and public institutions could accommodate the disabled. Although the new law was hailed as a positive step, schools and businesses everywhere had to begin planning adjustments to facilities, and services adversely affected their budgets.

In the 1994 elections, the Republicans picked up several governorships and won an additional fifty-four seats in the House of Representatives and four seats in the U.S. Senate, gaining control of both chambers. Gingrich wasted no time in pushing his colleagues to implement the Contract with America. During the first one hundred days of the 104th Congress, nine out of ten proposed articles were adopted into law. Only the issue of term limits did not pass. Even President Bill Clinton (1946–) admitted defeat. He spent the next two years drafting moderate economic policies, which led to a booming economy, and softening his earlier liberal positions on such items as health care and homosexuals in the military.

TRIALS OF A PRESIDENT: SCANDALS AND IMPEACHMENT

The administration of President Bill Clinton (1946–) was plagued by scandals and allegations of corruption. Clinton's alleged abuses of women, money, and power led to his 1998 impeachment hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives and a subsequent 1999 trial in the U.S. Senate. Although he became only the second president in U.S. history ever impeached by the House of Representatives, he was not convicted in his trial before the Senate.

1992: Year of the Woman

Women stormed onto the U.S. political stage in 1992. That fall, female candidates across the nation ran for Congress in record numbers. Five Democratic women were elected to the Senate: Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein from California, Blanche Lambert Lincoln from Arkansas, Carol Moseley-Braun from Illinois, and Patty Murray from Washington. This influx increased the total number of women in the Senate to eight, while the House female membership rose to forty-eight representatives. Women across America also used their power in the voting booth to help elect Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton. The press quickly labeled 1992 as the "Year of the Woman."

Nonetheless, the media still tended to focus on trivial stories about first ladies Barbara Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton rather than on serious issues related to women candidates. Election coverage often focused on male candidates. When so many women swept into Congress and Clinton was elected, many feminists thought that significant women's issues would at last be addressed. These hopes were short-lived, however; in 1994 the Republicans won a majority of seats in both the House and Senate. Their conservative members announced their "Contract with America," including significant new restrictions on abortion rights and welfare benefits.

From the beginning of his 1992 campaign, rumors swirled about Clinton's extramarital affairs. The first scandal concerned a woman named Gennifer Flowers, who alleged that she had a twelve-year affair with Clinton while he was the governor of Arkansas. She also claimed that he got her a job in the state government because of their relationship. Clinton refused to admit to the affair and went on national television with his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, claiming that even though they had had problems in their marriage, they loved and supported each other. The appearance defused the rumors and seemed to end Clinton's personal problems, at least until after his inauguration.

The second scandal broke shortly after President Clinton's first inauguration in 1993. His political opponents convinced a young woman in Arkansas, Paula Corbin Jones, to go public with an allegation of sexual harassment that allegedly had occurred in 1991. Jones claimed that at a political function held at a hotel, Clinton had invited her up to his room and then sexually propositioned her. Clinton denied the allegation. Rather than disappearing, however, Jones filed suit in federal court on May 6, 1994, initially seeking seven hundred thousand dollars in damages for malicious conduct. Clinton's attorneys wanted the suit dismissed on the grounds that a sitting president could not be tried in a civil case. Both sides contested the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in May 1997 that the trial could proceed. Finally, in November 1998, an out-of-court settlement was reached in which Clinton agreed to pay Jones $850,000 while not admitting to any wrongdoing.

Presidential Election Results: 1992

Other alleged scandals, involving money and power, also stained the reputation of the Clinton administration. Chief among these was White-water, an Arkansas land development project in which Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton had invested money during the late 1970s. Ten years later, the project fell through, and the federal government spent $60 million to rescue investors in a failed savings-and-loan institution that had ties to the project. Throughout the next decade, federal investigators tried to determine whether and to what extent the Clintons were involved in the failure of the savings and loan.

President and Mrs. Clinton eventually were found to be innocent of any charges in the Whitewater case—the investigation of which cost American taxpayers million of dollars. But the independent prosecutor, Kenneth W. Starr, began to examine unrelated charges that Clinton had committed perjury when he testified in federal court during the Jones hearing, possibly lying under oath about an extramarital affair he was alleged to have had with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. A grand jury (a panel of jurors called to decide whether sufficient grounds exist for criminal prosecution) was convened to hear testimony about these allegations.

Presidential Election Results: 1996

On August 17, 1998, Clinton appeared before the grand jury (via closed-circuit television monitor) to answer questions about his relationship with Lewinsky. It was the first time in American history that a sitting president had to testify before a grand jury. That evening, Clinton gave a televised speech to the American people in which he said he had had an "improper relationship" with Lewinsky. This statement contradicted what Clinton had told the public emphatically some seven months before: that he " …did not have sexual relations with that woman [Lewinsky]."

Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton dominated the U.S. political landscape for most of the 1990s. He was the first president born after the end of World War II (1939–45) and the first elected after the end of the cold war. Clinton began his two-term presidency intending to tackle several high-profile political issues including national health insurance, the budget, civil rights, and education. His presidency was forever tainted, however, by his personal behavior. Clinton evaded questions about his draft status during the Vietnam War (1954–75), whether he had smoked marijuana as a young man, his numerous extramarital affairs, and his lies and half-truths about his sexual behavior that led to his impeachment. His presidency succeeded in many ways, yet Americans believed he could have accomplished even more.

William Jefferson Blythe IV was born in Hope, Arkansas, on August 19, 1946. Three months before his birth, his father Bill Blythe, was killed in an automobile accident. When he was four years old, his mother married Roger Clinton; her son took the Clinton name when he was in high school. Clinton was an accomplished student and saxophonist, talented enough to earn music as well as academic scholarships. He attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., graduating with a degree in international affairs in 1968. After graduation, Clinton was awarded a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University in England.

After two years abroad, Clinton returned to the United States and began his legal studies at Yale University. While there, he met Hillary Rodham, also a promising law student (the couple married in 1975). After graduating from law school in 1973, he briefly taught law, as did Rodham, at the University of Arkansas. His first run for public office was an unsuccessful try at the Arkansas Third District congressional seat in 1974. Two years later, Clinton was elected state attorney general of Arkansas, and in 1978 he was elected governor when he was only thirty-two years old. He was defeated in his 1980 reelection bid, but came back and won the governorship again in 1982. He held it from that point until his 1992 run for the presidency.

In many ways, Clinton's two terms in office were successful. He presided over rapid and sustained economic growth, balanced the federal budget (after three decades of deficits), reformed welfare, and reduced crime. He also negotiated peace accords in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, implemented free-trade agreements including NAFTA, and created a national service program (AmeriCorps). Unfortunately, Clinton will be remembered as the president who was impeached by the House because of improper conduct with a young White House intern, and who was forced to admit publicly to embarrassing indiscretions, lies, and partial truths. Throughout the entire impeachment process, though, public opinion polls repeatedly indicated that while the American public had serious reservations about Clinton's character, they emphatically did not want him removed from office.

After some debate, on October 4 the House Judiciary Committee voted along strict party lines to recommend a full inquiry against the president into the allegations of perjury (lying under oath) and obstruction of justice (using his influence to cover up the alleged perjury). Four days later, the Republican-controlled House followed the committee's recommendation and voted to begin hearings investigating possible grounds for impeachment (formally accused of serious misconduct). On December 19, the House, again voting along party lines, approved two articles of impeachment against the president: that he had lied before the grand jury and that he had obstructed justice.

Once a president is impeached by the House, the U.S. Senate then conducts a trial, with the senators serving as jurors, to determine whether the president should be convicted of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and removed from office. A two-thirds vote (sixty-seven senators) is required to convict. On January 7, 1999, the impeachment trial began in the Senate. On February 12, after closed hearings, the Senate found Clinton not guilty on both articles of impeachment. Article I, alleging perjury, was defeated on a forty-five to fifty-five vote. Article II, charging obstruction of justice, failed on a fifty-fifty tie. Polls taken during the trial had shown that most Americans neither supported impeachment nor a Senate trial of the president.

TERRORISM: THE GROWING HATE MOVEMENT

The 1990s saw an increase of extremist demonstrations and violence across America, from marches by the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan to murders and bombings. Tens of thousands of Americans joined various antigovernment and hate groups. Early in the decade, domestic terrorism rose to a level not seen since the activities of student radicals during the late 1960s and early 1970s. There were about five hundred active militia groups across the country, some with only a few members and others with thousands. Many of these militias were antigovernment, racist, and anti-Semitic (prejudiced against Jews). While most groups did not use violent tactics, some provided tragic examples of how far extremist individuals and organizations were willing to go in waging war against the government and other targets of their hate—racial and ethnic minorities.

One of the longest-running violent-crime cases within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), active for seventeen years, involved a series of fatal bombings. It was called the Unabomb case, a code name selected because one of the bombs exploded aboard an airline with a similar name (although most of the bombs were set off on university campuses). Beginning in 1978, the serial bomber, later identified as Theodore "Ted" Kaczynski, mailed or concealed sixteen homemade explosive devices, killing three people and injuring twenty-three others.

A crucial development in the Unabomber case occurred in early 1996 when the bomber sent a manuscript to the New York Times and the Washington Post. With FBI approval, both papers published the thirty-five-thousand-word treatise. The Unabomber argued that the purpose of the bombings was to call attention to, among other things, the ill effects of technology on modern society and traditional values. Publication of the manifesto led David Kaczynski to link it with earlier writings of his estranged brother Ted, who was living as a recluse near a small town in Montana.

On April 3, 1996, Ted Kaczynski, a former mathematics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was arrested by FBI agents at his cabin. On June 18 he was formally charged with ten counts relating to the transportation and mailing of explosive devices that killed or injured victims in California, New Jersey, and Connecticut. In January 1988, he confessed to the bombings and was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

As millions of television viewers watched on April 19, 1993, a massive inferno erupted in Texas between federal agents and a well-armed religious fringe group known as the Branch Davidians. After a fifty-one-day siege, the exchange of gunfire and subsequent blaze killed eighty people, including four federal agents.

Events leading up to this fiery conclusion began on February 28. Ninety heavily armed Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents unsuccessfully attempted to serve a warrant on the leader of the Branch Davidians, David Koresh, at their residential compound outside of Waco, Texas. The search-and-arrest warrant, resulting from nearly a year of investigation and surveillance, alleged that the Davidians possessed illegal firearms and were converting semiautomatic rifles into machine guns. (Later investigations found that the group had indeed stockpiled almost four hundred firearms, including forty-eight machine guns.) During the seven-week standoff, the activities at Waco dominated national news, and Davidian leader Koresh became a household name.

After months of negotiations, the standoff finally ended when agents drove federal tanks and armored vehicles through the walls of the compound and fired dozens of gas canisters into the building, attempting to force out the Davidians. Following the assault, smoke poured out of the structure and within minutes the entire compound was engulfed in flames. Seventy-six group members died, including twenty-five children under the age of fifteen. At least two dozen victims, including Koresh, were later discovered to have died from gunshot wounds, either self-inflicted or caused by someone else in the compound. Nine Davidians escaped by fleeing the building.

On April 19, 1995, exactly two years after the final assault on the Waco compound, a homemade bomb, made with ammonium-nitrate fertilizer and hidden in a rented truck, exploded at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The explosion killed 168 people and injured more than 500 others—the most deadly domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history. The Murrah Building housed a variety of federal agencies, as well as a day care center for the children of federal employees. Nineteen children under the age of five were killed in the blast. Because of the timing, federal prosecutors speculated that the bombing likely stemmed from strong antigovernment feelings that had been inflamed by the Branch Davidian debacle.

An hour and a half after the blast, Timothy James McVeigh was arrested on an unrelated weapons violation during a routine traffic stop. On April 21, McVeigh, a U.S. Army veteran of the Persian Gulf War and a Bronze Star recipient, was charged by federal authorities in connection

with the bombing. Terry Lynn Nichols, also a former soldier, was charged as an accomplice on May 10. On August 11, both McVeigh and Nichols were charged by a grand jury with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction, and use of a weapon of mass destruction. The murder charges pertained to the eight federal agents who were killed in the Oklahoma City explosion. In October, U.S. Attorney General Reno authorized federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in both cases.

The judge overseeing the trial ordered the two men to be tried separately. McVeigh's lawyer argued that the evidence against McVeigh was weak and that another man, known only as "John Doe 2," actually carried out the bombing. The jury did not believe the defense and convicted McVeigh on all charges on June 2, 1997. McVeigh later was sentenced to death by lethal injection. He was executed on June 11, 2001.

Although investigators never placed him at the bomb scene, Nichols also was convicted on December 23, 1997, as McVeigh's accomplice. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Not all terrorist attacks on United States soil were perpetrated by American citizens. On February 26, 1993, an explosion rocked the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six people and injuring more than one thousand. When the bomb went off, more than fifty thousand people were inside the 110-story complex. The bomb, placed in a parking garage beneath the structure, contained approximately twelve hundred pounds of explosives. The attack caused $500 million in damage. At the time, it was the most heinous act of foreign terrorism on American soil.

Federal investigators arrested four men—foreign nationals from the Middle East belonging to various Muslim fundamentalist groups—within a few weeks of the attack. These religious extremists claimed to be pursuing a jihad, or holy war, against America—defining the term in a violent way that horrified most mainstream followers of Islam. In March 1994, each of the suspects was convicted and sentenced to 240 years in prison. Just over three years later, two other men were tried and convicted on charges of conspiracy and murder. They, too, received 240-year prison terms. The bombing investigation began to reveal the wide extent to which anti-American foreign terrorists lived and operated in the United States.

RACE RELATIONS ON TRIAL: RODNEY KING AND O. J. SIMPSON

High-profile court cases dominated the headlines during the 1990s, but none captured the nation's attention more so than two racially tainted cases in greater Los Angeles, California: the Rodney King beating trial and the O. J. Simpson murder trial. These cases also demonstrated that relations between black and white Americans were still strained, even three decades after the civil rights movement began.

On March 3, 1991, Rodney Glen King, who had served a year in prison for theft and aggravated assault, was driving on a California freeway with two friends. When Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers attempted to stop him for speeding, King, who had been drinking and was still on parole, led the police on a high-speed chase and was finally forced off the road. During his arrest, several officers used excessive force against King. They claimed that the six-foot-three-inch King had charged them and resisted arrest; King contended that he was afraid of the armed white officers and had attempted to defend himself.

While the arrest was in progress, unknown to anyone at the scene, residents of a nearby apartment complex were awakened by the noise. One man videotaped part of the incident. Excerpts from the tape, showing a group of white police officers beating a black man lying on the ground, played repeatedly on television news programs around the world. King became an international symbol of police brutality and of the deep divide between white and black justice.

Less than two weeks after the incident, four LAPD officers were charged with unlawful assault and use of excessive force. The trial, which was moved out of Los Angeles at the request of defense attorneys to Simi Valley, a nearby suburban city with a predominantly white population, began in February 1992. After six weeks of testimony and six hours of deliberation, the jury found the officers not guilty. The end of the trial, however, only sparked more violence.

Between April 29, when the verdict was announced, and May 3, south central Los Angeles, a low-income area populated largely by minorities, was engulfed in chaos. Violence, looting, and mayhem ensued, as enraged roving black crowds attacked passersby—whites, Latinos, Asians, and other blacks, many of whom lived and worked in the area. Order was restored only after California's governor called in the National Guard. The toll from the civil unrest was devastating: more than fifty people dead, more than four thousand injured, more than one thousand businesses destroyed, and an estimated $1 billion in property damage.

In response to the King verdicts and the subsequent outrage of the south central Los Angeles community, the U.S. Justice Department filed federal charges against the four officers for violating King's civil rights. In April 1993, two of the four officers were found guilty of this charge and sentenced to serve thirty months in a federal correctional camp.

Three years after the King beating, Los Angeles and the nation once again faced racial divisions over a jury verdict. This time, however, the individual found not guilty was Orenthal James "O. J." Simpson, a retired African American football star, sports announcer, and popular television personality. Many Americans were shocked to learn of Simpson's arrest on June 12, 1994, as the prime suspect in the brutal murders of his former wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman outside her suburban L.A. home. The victims, both white, had been repeatedly stabbed, but there were no witnesses to the assault. Simpson claimed he was en route to Chicago when the crimes were committed.

Nonetheless, five days later police charged Simpson with the murders, citing a trail of evidence linking him to the scene of the crime. The evidence included a bloody glove found outside the murder scene that allegedly matched one found at his estate. Simpson did not surrender immediately. Instead, he and his lifelong friend Al Cowlings led police on a chase down a Los Angeles expressway while the nation watched the drama unfold on live television. The two men led police on a 60-mile,

low-speed chase through southern Los Angeles that ended at Simpson's Brentwood estate.

By the time the trial began on January 23, 1995, Simpson had hired a team of celebrity lawyers—including Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., F. Lee Bailey, Robert Shapiro, and appeals expert Alan M. Dershowitz. The media referred to this group of attorneys as the "Dream Team." The prosecution portrayed Simpson as jealous, controlling, and abusive (several years earlier he had pleaded no contest to abusing his wife). Evidence linking Simpson to the crime, however, was largely circumstantial: There was no murder weapon and no witnesses placed the defendant at the crime scene. The prosecution did introduce several experts who testified that DNA (the genetic material in an organism) samples from blood found at the crime scene matched Simpson's DNA profile.

Simpson's lawyers argued that he did not have the opportunity to commit the crimes and that the evidence presented was not only circumstantial but also may have been planted by racist LAPD officers. Lawyer Johnnie Cochran then went even further, suggesting to the majority-black jury that there was a widespread conspiracy against African Americans in the justice system. He compared Simpson, a murder defendant, with Rodney King, a victim of police brutality.

He Said, She Said

In 1991, renowned U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) retired. To fill the vacant position, President George H. W. Bush nominated another African American—conservative federal appeals court judge Clarence Thomas. Democrats in the U.S. Senate (which has the power to accept or reject the nomination) viewed the nomination with dismay. Although they favored another justice who was a member of a racial minority, they also realized that Thomas was not the liberal jurist that Marshall had been. Republicans tended to support Thomas's nomination while Democrats did not. The bipartisan U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee was therefore divided when it sent Thomas's nomination to the Senate floor for a final vote.

Just as the full Senate was about to vote, the committee reopened its hearings because charges of sexual harassment had been leveled against Thomas by University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill. Testifying before the all-male committee and a nationwide television audience, Hill described in graphic detail Thomas's inappropriate statements and advances. She claimed that Thomas had sexually harassed her in the early 1980s while both had worked in the Office for Civil Rights—ironically, one of the chief federal law enforcement agencies for combating race and gender discrimination. For nine hours, Hill maintained her composure while answering questions from the senators about intimate and embarrassing details of the sexual harassment.

When given the opportunity to respond to Hill's allegations, Thomas denied all the charges. He then accused the Judiciary Committee of a "high-tech lynching" and denounced committee Democrats as racists for reviewing the issue. He further claimed that Democrats had targeted him for political reasons because he was a black conservative.

On October 15, 1992, the full Senate voted fifty-two to forty-eight to confirm Thomas's nomination—the narrowest approval margin for any Supreme Court nominee in American history.

On October 2, 1994, three hours and forty minutes after receiving the case, the jury informed the presiding judge they had reached a verdict. Fearing a replay of the civil disturbances after the 1992 King verdict, the judge delayed the reading until the next day to give the police department time to prepare. On October 3, with millions of Americans watching on television or listening to the radio, the verdict was announced—Simpson was found not guilty. The verdict shocked many white Americans who had become convinced of Simpson's guilt. It elated many African Americans who were equally convinced he had been framed by a racially biased justice system.

The following year, the families of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman filed a civil suit against Simpson, charging that he was liable for their deaths. The burden of proof is lower in a civil case than in a criminal case, and the victims' families wanted Simpson held accountable for what they saw as his clear guilt. In February 1997, the jury in the case ruled against Simpson, awarding the families $8.5 million in damages.