OKLAHOMA CITY To an angry nation, he's a scowling face emergingfrom a country courthouse, surrounded by police.
Those who knew Timothy McVeigh before he became a suspect in theAlfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing offer a complex,contradictory portrait: a canny boy who would surely "go somewhere,"then an unremarkable student, and later a straight-arrow soldier butalso "a subdued loner" in his Gulf War infantry unit.
In recent years, acquaintances say, he befriended tax protestersand other anti-government types and his politics turned to the farright. He claimed that the Army had implanted a computer chip in hisbuttocks.
McVeigh visited Waco, Texas, and returned angry. And he neverwent anywhere unarmed.
"He's always looking over his shoulder," said Carl Brocker ofDecker, Mich., where McVeigh spent time off and on in recent yearswith Army buddy Terry Nichols, now being held as a witness.
Neighbors said McVeigh often drove his car around town loadedwith guns and ammunition for sale.
"He was a drifter," said Mary Ann Saenen. "He was very militantand always carried a weapon."
Timothy James McVeigh, arrested on a weapons charge in Perry,Okla., within 80 minutes of Wednesday's bombing, was born on April23, 1968, and grew up in the suburbs of Buffalo, N.Y.
A neighbor during his boyhood, Pat Waugh, recalls McVeigh as achild with promise.
"That kid is going to go somewhere," Waugh said to herself, watching his neighborhood money-making schemes, a gambling casino orhaunted house to draw the kids down the block.
When he was about 10, McVeigh's family split up, his mothermoving away with a younger sister. He, his father and an oldersister moved to a smaller house, Waugh said.
His father still lives in Pendleton, N.Y., where McVeighgraduated from high school in 1986. He was described as a goodstudent and in his high school yearbook, he listed talking, computersand cars as his interests. He also played basketball. Classmate Wendy Stephany said he was quiet and friendly.
McVeigh entered the military after high school and left thearea. Military records have been closed as the investigationproceeds, but his comrades say McVeigh was in the Army from around1989 to 1992, serving at Fort Riley, Kan., and in the Gulf War, wherehe was a Bradley vehicle gunner and a sergeant.
"He was a good soldier. If he was given a mission and a target,it's gone," said James Ives, another sergeant in his Army infantryunit.
Ives agreed with the recollection of another soldier, Robert Copeland of Aurora, Colo., who describedMcVeigh as a loner who rarely joined others after hours, but didn'tseem strange. And he was a hard worker, they said.
During the Gulf War, McVeigh had seen what explosives can do,Ives said. "I remember Kuwaiti and Iraqi villages that had beenblown away . . . little kids, women, children," he said.
Training on his own time, marching with a pack weighing up to100 pounds, McVeigh hoped to join the Army Special Forces but wasinjured during his tryout, failed, and was "extremely disappointed,"Ives said.
He said other ex-comrades told him McVeigh became involved withoff-post political groups with strong anti-government views towardthe end of his military career.
Ives could not identify the groups, saying only, "militias . . .cults is what I call them."
Phil Morowski, an acquaintance, said that when McVeigh returnedfrom the Gulf War, he complained that the Army had implanted acomputer chip in his buttocks, apparently to keep track of him.
One of McVeigh's fellow servicemen was Terry Nichols, and afterliving for a time in Kansas - a Fort Riley address appears on hisdriver's license through November, 1993 - McVeigh went to Decker,Mich.
In Decker, McVeigh worked on a farm owned by Nichols' brotherJames, who also is being held as a witness by the FBI.
There, acquaintances say, McVeigh's anti-government views fit inwell.
An unidentified member of the right-wing Michigan Militia grouptold Detroit-area station WXYZ-TV that McVeigh was at a MichiganMilitia meeting in Jackson, Mich., in January. Speakers talked ofthe need to take action against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco andFirearms, the station said.
Officials of the Michigan Militia said neither Nichols norMcVeigh belongs to their group. They said they were unsure there hadbeen such a meeting.
McVeigh "was known to hold extreme right-wing views . . . andwas particularly agitated about the conduct of the federal governmentat Waco, Texas, in 1993," said an FBI affidavit attached to thecharge against him.
It said he visited the site of the gun battles and siege betweenfederal agents and the Branch Davidian sect, and expressed anger atthe deaths there.
In McVeigh's old haunts, anger about the bombing runs as deep asanywhere.
In his hometown, resident Jim Argo said, "Put him out in thewoods, and we'll hunt him down."
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