The next day, Attorney General John Ashcroft delayed by one month the execution date for McVeigh, a rightist convicted of the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. While Ashcroft told reporters that McVeigh was "clearly guilty," he said a delay was necessary to "protect the integrity of the system of justice."

In response to the release of the new documents, lawyers for Terry Nichols, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing, filed a new appeal with the Supreme Court. McVeigh is said to be considering doing so as well.

Following Ashcroft's announcement, President George Bush held a press conference to express his support for the postponement of the state-sponsored killing, the first to be scheduled under federal death penalty laws since 1963.

The belated release of the documents tarnishes the efforts of the Bush administration, following in the footsteps of President William Clinton, to bolster the use of the death penalty for federal offenses and counter a growing sentiment and movement against capital punishment. The administration is preparing an elaborate showcase execution of McVeigh, who claims responsibility for the bombing that resulted in 168 deaths and hundreds of injuries, by inviting family members of those killed in the blast to attend a closed-circuit televised viewing of the lethal-injection killing.

There are more than 3,500 people on death row today. Since the death penalty was restored in 1976, more than 700 people have been executed, one third of them Black.

The postponement puts McVeigh's new execution date just eight days before the execution of another federal death row inmate, Juan Garza, a Latino. Garza is one of 17 Blacks and Latinos of a total of 20 people awaiting execution by the federal government.

In the wake of this fiasco for the FBI, Congressional leaders have been scrambling to call for reforms, and debating whether computer problems or management errors are at fault. U.S. senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, called for a "top-to-bottom review" of the bureau. Pennsylvania Republican senator Arlen Spector said, "If we find deliberate concealment, that's obstruction of justice, and people ought to go to jail." Republican senator Charles Grassley from Iowa said, "I think there's a management culture here that's at fault."

Part of the discussion among these politicians is how to appoint a replacement for outgoing FBI director Louis Freeh with the credentials to clean up the bureau's image. In an article titled, "FBI's lapses present a challenge for new chief: reassure public," the Wall Street Journal quoted Jeffrey Weiner, past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers as saying that if the FBI can make such a mistake in a highly publicized case, "it isn't a leap of logic to assume it happens in others."  
 
 
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