1.EugeneLuther ("Gore Vidal")Vidal, born October 03, 1925 in WASHINGTON D.C., UNITED STATES. He was the son of 2. EugeneLuther IVidal and 3. NinaGore.
Notes for Eugene Luther ("Gore Vidal") Vidal:
Coming Soon, Epilogue by Gore Vidal
By Linton Weeks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 7, 2001; Page C01
Gore Vidal has some questions for Timothy McVeigh.
A puffed-up-and-proud-of-it writer, Vidal, 75, is one of five people
selected by McVeigh to witness his execution on May 16.
Reached at his home yesterday in Ravello, Italy, Vidal said he
didn't want to talk about McVeigh's macabre invitation, which has
upset relatives of McVeigh's victims in the 1995 Oklahoma City
bombing. "Don't you think you should wait for my Vanity Fair
article?" he asked. He is planning to watch McVeigh, 33, die and to
write about it for the magazine.
Asked if he is concerned about looking vulturous or receiving
negative popular criticism, Vidal replied: "I've never been
concerned about public opinion."
The author -- best known for historical novels such as "Burr," about
Aaron Burr, and outrageous fiction such as "Myra Breckinridge,"
about a transsexual -- struck up a correspondence with McVeigh after
Vidal's story "The War at Home" appeared in Vanity Fair magazine in
November 1998. The correspondence, he said, consisted of three or
four letters apiece.
In the article, Vidal had argued that the Bill of Rights was under
attack by the federal government as it waged "spurious wars against
drugs and terrorism." Deep in the story, Vidal opined that McVeigh,
a veteran of Persian Gulf War, suffered "from an exaggerated sense
of justice" and that in Oklahoma City "he went to war pretty much on
his own."
Despite criticism of his accepting McVeigh's invitation, Vidal said
yesterday in the phone interview, "It's clear that, one, I am
against the death penalty; two, I'm against the arbitrary killing of
innocent people; and, three, I'm against the killing of innocent men
and women at Waco and Ruby Ridge."
Vidal said he would leave it to his questioner to remind readers of
the federal government's 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound
in Waco, Tex. -- which left 80 people dead, including 22 children --
and its 1992 raid at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in which the FBI killed the
wife and child of separatist Randy Weaver. After all, Vidal told the
reporter, you live in "the United States of Amnesia."
"I had hoped to go out and interview him," Vidal said of McVeigh.
"I'm not a journalist. I haven't interviewed anyone since Barry
Goldwater in 1964." But last month Attorney General John Ashcroft
decreed that inmates on death row cannot give face-to-face
interviews.
Such a decision "was worthy of the Third Reich," Vidal complained.
"How this can come out of the head of an attorney general who is a
nobody is beyond me. It seems unconstitutional."
He and McVeigh "share many ideas in common," he said, but stressed:
"I'm not, not, not talking about taking revenge on innocent people.
Especially Oklahomans because they are the children of my
grandfather's constituents."
Vidal's grandfather, Thomas Gore, was a U.S. senator from Oklahoma.
Until he was 10, Vidal lived in his grandfather's home on Rock Creek
Park, a house that is now the Malaysian Embassy. He recalled reading
aloud to the elder Gore because the senator was blind. Gore Vidal
said that though he never went to college, he did receive a great
education at the feet of his grandfather.
Vidal, a veteran of World War II, also pointed out that he is a
member of "the greatest generation."
McVeigh, Vidal said, is "very very bright." His spelling, his
punctuation, his grammar "are perfect." And he "quotes, from memory,
H.L. Mencken," Vidal said. "He is a junkie of the Constitution and
the Bill of Rights."
As for his crime, McVeigh "knows what he did."
Vidal hoped to write a "summing up" story. Though he isn't allowed
to meet McVeigh in person, Vidal said he was told he can speak to
him for 15 minutes on the telephone. Owing to a deep dislike of
telephony, Vidal hopes that McVeigh will use a fax instead. "I sent
him a number of questions," Vidal said, "which I'm not going to tell
you."
He would reveal one: He asked McVeigh why he chose to bomb a place
"where innocents would be killed?"
"I guess he's going to write out his answers," Vidal said. "It may
well be posthumously that I will hear from him."
The faxed exchange will serve "in lieu of a kind of wrap-up of our
mysterious three-year relationship."
Vidal said, "He is a very superior sort of young man."
