IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
                 FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO
 Criminal Action No. 96-CR-68
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
     Plaintiff,
 vs.
 TIMOTHY JAMES McVEIGH,
     Defendant.
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                      REPORTER'S TRANSCRIPT
             (Trial to Jury - Volume 1 - Excerpt)
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         Proceedings before the HONORABLE RICHARD P. MATSCH,
Judge, United States District Court for the District of
Colorado, commencing at 9:00 a.m., on the 31st day of March,
1997, in Courtroom C-204, United States Courthouse, Denver,
Colorado.







 Proceeding Recorded by Mechanical Stenography, Transcription
  Produced via Computer by Paul Zuckerman, 1929 Stout Street,
    P.O. Box 3563, Denver, Colorado, 80294, (303) 629-9285
                          APPEARANCES
         PATRICK M. RYAN, United States Attorney for the
Western District of Oklahoma, 210 West Park Avenue, Suite 400,
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 73102, appearing for the plaintiff.
         JOSEPH H. HARTZLER, SEAN CONNELLY, LARRY A. MACKEY,
BETH WILKINSON, SCOTT MENDELOFF, AITAN GOELMAN, and VICKI

BEHENNA, Special Attorneys to the U.S. Attorney General, 1961
Stout Street, Suite 1200, Denver, Colorado, 80294, appearing
for the plaintiff.
         STEPHEN JONES and ROBERT NIGH, JR., Attorneys at Law,
Jones, Wyatt & Roberts, 999 18th Street, Suite 2460, Denver,
Colorado, 80202, appearing for Defendant McVeigh.
                         *  *  *  *  *
                          PROCEEDINGS
    (In open court at 9 a.m.)
         THE COURT:  Please be seated.
         We're convened in 96-CR-68, United States vs. Timothy
James McVeigh, which is called for trial.
         Appearing for the Government?
         MR. HARTZLER:  Good morning, your Honor.
         THE COURT:  Mr. Hartzler?
         MR. HARTZLER:  Seated with me at the front table is
Ms. Wilkinson, Mr. Ryan and Mr. Mackey.
         Your Honor, there is a second table which is outside
the sight of the jury.  Seated there is Mr. Mendeloff,
Mr. Connelly, Ms. Behenna, and Mr. Goelman.
         THE COURT:  Good morning.
         MS. WILKINSON:  Good morning, your Honor.
         THE COURT:  And for Mr. McVeigh, Mr. Jones?
         MR. JONES:  Good morning, your Honor.  The defendant
is present and ready.  Seated with me at this table to my left
is Mr. Nigh.
         THE COURT:  All right.  Good morning.
         MR. NIGH:  Good morning, your Honor.
         THE COURT:  The -- there is a motion here that
Mr. Jones filed this morning with respect to some exception to
the sequestration rule.  Is that objected to?
         MR. RYAN:  No, your Honor.
         THE COURT:  All right.  That motion is granted.
         I'll -- I think I should begin with some explanation
of the procedures that will be followed for the selection of
the jury of 12 persons and 6 alternate jurors for the trial of
this case.
         We followed the usual procedure here of sending out
jury summonses in accordance with the jury plan which provided
for the random summoning of jurors pursuant to the usual
program whereby the names of persons were taken from a database
that included voter registration and driver's license
information from the 23 counties that constitute the Denver
jury pool; and along with the summonses went the usual
qualification questionnaire.  The difference was that the
persons summoned were told what trial it was that the summons
was issued for.
         And the responses to those questionnaires, as is the
usual case, were reviewed for the statutory qualifications.
Some persons were excused because they didn't meet the
statutory qualifications, some for medical hardship.  The usual
type of exclusions were considered.
         Then a second step was that a -- members of the jury
pool were gathered together at a nonpublic meeting on March 19
at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds, at which place and time I
met with the pool in two sections, one in the morning, one in
the afternoon.  At that time and place, I explained the case,
the charges, the background of the case, and distributed rather
lengthy questionnaires to the persons in the jury pool.
         This is a questionnaire that was developed by the
lawyers for both sides and by me to obtain rather detailed
information about the persons who were in the jury pool.  And
the proceeding there was essentially an administrative one to
get these questionnaires completed.
         Then when they were completed, copies of them were
made and distributed to counsel for both sides and to me under
a protective order that directed that these questionnaires and
the answers not be made public and be used solely for the
purpose of this jury selection process; and that, of course,
was necessary because the information asked was rather invasive
of privacy.
         And after receipt of the completed questionnaires, we
went through another randomization process whereby all of the
persons, names, and numbers of the jurors were, through a
computer process, gone through what I'm told are called
"loops," so that the names were shuffled, I guess you could say
in more prosaic terms, over 800 times, so that we get a
randomization, a chance process here.  And then as a result of
that, we have available to us, to complete voir dire here,
jurors selected in an order, as I say, through this chance
process.
         Now, we're going to proceed with individual
questioning of these persons, and their names will not be used.
It is my belief that some privacy is still an entitlement of
persons who are not volunteers but who are here under their
responsibility as citizens to perform their duty of jury
service; and consistent with that, I believe that they are
entitled to some protection of their privacy.
         Now, their names and information about them are known
to the counsel here; but as I've already indicated, they're
under restrictions that they may not disclose them.  So as
these people come in this morning, we will be referring to them
by a number that is assigned to them as members of the jury.
         This questioning will proceed with me doing the
questioning based on these questionnaires and some other
questions that I have of them, and then counsel for the
Government, counsel for the defendant, will be entitled to ask
additional questions.  The persons will then be excused for the
day after their individual questioning is completed.
         This process will, of course, be reported, as all
trial proceedings; but different from what has happened here in
motions and other pretrial proceedings, where transcripts of
the proceedings have been made available on the same day as the
court hearing, that will not be done with the -- as we call it
the voir dire, the questioning of these individual jurors.  In
fact, those transcripts are not going to be made public.  This
proceeding will be conducted in public, but the transcripts are
not going to be provided.
         Now, these trial proceedings, this part of it, as well
as the entire trial, are being and will be transmitted by
closed circuit television link-up to the auditorium at the
headquarters building at the Mike Maroney Aeronautical Center
in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, for viewing by persons shown to
have a compelling interest and/or otherwise unable to be here
at the trial by reason of the order changing venue of this case
to this location.
         This procedure is being carried out in compliance with
a federal statute which amended Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of
Criminal Procedure, which prohibits the taking of photographs
and broadcasting of trial proceedings in Federal Court.
         Now, the statute that is being implemented is very
limited, both with respect to the purpose and the scope of it.
The Congress designed this for a particular purpose; that is,
as already announced, for the persons who are in the original
venue and who for whatever reasons are unable to attend at the
changed venue and who will also have a compelling interest in
viewing the proceedings.
         Essentially, the matter is designed, or the procedure
is designed to give those persons an opportunity to observe
these proceedings insofar as we can do so in the same way as
those who are seated here in this courtroom -- in the public
area of this courtroom this morning.
         So there is a camera at the back of the room in the
wall, and it is a camera that's in a fixed position and a fixed
focus.
         There will be no closeups, no changes in the focus.
You'll see, or you are seeing, I trust, there in Oklahoma City
what the people here in the courtroom in Denver are seeing;
that is, the well of the court, the lawyers, Mr. McVeigh, and
me.  You will not be viewing the jury; and there is here in the
courtroom in Denver a jury box that has partial screening,
which is again designed to attempt to accommodate the privacy
interests of the jurors.
         The -- as I say, the effort here is to simply extend
the courtroom electronically to accommodate your interests
there in Oklahoma City.
         Now, if I may address a moment the people who are
there in Oklahoma City, we ask that you follow the directions
in the March 21 letter for making reservations, using the
reservations system that you were advised about from the United
States Attorney's office there and Ms. Anderson and also
consult the information packets that have been provided to you
and follow the instructions there.
         Judge Gaspar Perricone is there with you, and he will
preside there in the auditorium, which is for now
recharacterized as a courtroom instead of an auditorium; and
this is not -- although that's a sort of theater-type
arrangement, this is not theater, this is a trial.  And we
expect that you will conduct yourselves just as those who are
here in the courtroom conduct themselves with appropriate
demeanor and courtroom manner.
         Judge Perricone is authorized to enforce the Court's
orders, and I'm sure he will do so.
         This is a relatively new technology that is being
employed to transmit the audible and visual parts of this trial
proceeding.  There are procedures that are in place to protect
the integrity of this transmission.
         Congress provided that it would be closed circuit and
available only to the persons who have the compelling need, as
have been determined by the Court.
         Additionally, it is not to be recorded; and of course,
closed circuit means it's not available for retransmission or
rebroadcast.  To be candid, I am concerned that the signal not
be pirated, as they say; that is, intercepted and rebroadcast
or retransmitted by anyone, and there are procedures in place
to avoid that.
         Several different organizations are involved in this
process to be able to send and receive the signal; and also, we
are receiving a signal back from Oklahoma City so that we can
see you there as well; but I want to emphasize that if
something goes wrong with the technology -- and we hope it
doesn't; and of course, a lot of people have made a great

effort to avoid anything going wrong -- but if something does
go wrong and the signal goes down, the trial proceeding will
continue.  And we'll try to inform you there as to what the
problem is and who is assigned to correct it, whose
responsibility it is.
         But I'm not going to interrupt the trial because of
some glitch, if it happens -- I hope it won't -- in this
transmission.
         In addition, of course, if there were to be any
violations, if we discover that somebody has cracked the code,
as it were, found a way to rebroadcast what is happening here,
we will, of course, interrupt the closed circuit transmission
until whatever steps are necessary to stop that are taken and
then resume.
         In the examination of these persons now, the
questioning, we will complete the questioning of each
individual; and then, as I've already said, excuse that person
and go to the next person.  No rulings are going to be made
with respect to these jurors as they appear today.
         I will be meeting with the lawyers in the case on
tomorrow morning and early and each morning thereafter to
review the persons who were brought in as potential jurors on
the preceding day and determine whether there are challenges
for cause at that time.
         Decisions on challenges for cause will not be
announced until later.  We're not going to do this in a manner
in which these decisions are disclosed as we go.  There will be
ultimately, of course, a panel or panels of jurors who will
then be reviewed for the exercise of what are called peremptory
challenges.
         Now, peremptory challenges, which are 20 in number for
each side in this case because this has the potential for death
penalty sentence -- under the rules, there are 20 peremptory
challenges for each side.  And those are simply opportunities
for the sides in the case to excuse persons without giving
reasons for that, a very vital and important right that both
sides have in a criminal trial.
         We will also then be proceeding to the selection of
six alternate jurors; and with respect to that, each side has
three peremptory challenges; so that's the process that we'll
be following.
                         *  *  *  *  *
                    REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE
    I certify that the foregoing is a correct transcript from
the record of proceedings in the above-entitled matter.  Dated
at Denver, Colorado, this 31st day of March, 1997.

                                 _______________________________
                                         Paul A. Zuckerman