McVeigh's Final Chapter

June 11 -- More than six years after committing the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil, Timothy McVeigh was lead to a federal execution chamber this morning.

The execution of McVeigh, 33, was scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. ET. He will become the first federal prisoner executed since 1963.

Three hours before he was scheduled to die, the Oklahoma City bomber met for the final time with the lawyers who tried to save his life. He had also received a 30-minute briefing from the prison warden on the rigid procedures that took place leading up to the execution.

McVeigh accepted the information "cordially," said prison spokesman Dan Dunne.

Early today, McVeigh was strapped to a gurney under the gaze of bombing survivors and victims' relatives who watched him die from behind the glass in the death chamber in Terre Haute, Ind., and on closed-circuit television in Oklahoma City.

Ten journalists chosen by their peers also watched the execution.

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As prison officials quietly and methodically followed the letter of the federal prison protocol that detailed how McVeigh was to die, reporters and protesters gathered outside, swelling the usually quiet town of 60,000 residents. Members of the media have maneuvered around the expansive prison grounds on golf carts.

Although the atmosphere might seem circus-like at a glance, prison officials have taken great steps to maintain order and dignity. After all, the execution marks not just the end of one man's life, but recalls the deaths of the scores of others who perished in the 1995 bombing.

Getting What He Wants

If McVeigh was to be believed, he got exactly what he wanted.

He had legal challenges available to him that would have taken years, but he ordered his attorneys to withdraw the rest of his appeals last December. Since then, he has expressed no remorse for the bombing, and called the 19 children killed in the blast "collateral damage." He admitted in a book that he and Terry Nichols carried out the 1995 blast that killed 168 people with no one else's help.