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"Oklahoma City" is about more than just the bombing of the federal building in that city in 1995.

The "American Experience" film, which premiered last month at the Sundance Film Festival and airs Tuesday on PBS, spends two hours taking viewers through the events of the 1992 standoff at Ruby Ridge in Idaho and the 1993 standoff with the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. It ties Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh to the white separatist/supremacist movement linked to those earlier events.

Filmmaker Barak Goodman does not allege a massive conspiracy behind the bombing, which killed 168 people — including 19 children. There's no evidence that anyone other than McVeigh and his two accomplices was involved.

But the idea that Timothy McVeigh was a lone killer is wrong-headed because it absolves the movement from which it all sprang, says Leonard Zeskind, president of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, in the film. "Timothy McVeigh was not on his own," he says. "He was the creation of the white-supremacist movement."

Goodman's film shows viewers how McVeigh was incited to murder not just by Ruby Ridge and Waco, but by his frequent visits to gun shows attended by white supremacists and his association with neo-Nazis.

"The idea that there was no connection between the white-supremacist movement and the events in Oklahoma City is patently false," says Zeskind, the author of "Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream."

The film includes the recorded words of McVeigh himself, drawn from interviews authors Dan Herbeck and Lou Michel ("American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing") did with the convicted mass murderer while he was on death row. And writer/director Goodman said he was "sort of shocked" by McVeigh's "lack of remorse" and "complete conviction of the rightness of his own cause."

"They're very, very revelatory of who this guy was and specifically the fact that he was part of a larger movement. … McVeigh was convinced that his action would precipitate another American Revolution."

While some believe the bombing was the work of a madman, Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center who is interviewed in the documentary, said it is "a terrible mistake to think of Tim McVeigh as mentally ill."

"I think there's a lot more to McVeigh and this whole movement than that," added Potok, who covered Waco, Oklahoma City and the McVeigh trial for USA Today.

The documentary does not exonerate the government for the outcome at Ruby Ridge, where an attempt to arrest Randy Weaver on gun charges resulted in the deaths of his wife, teenage son and a federal agent. And it doesn't shy away from mistakes the authorities made in Waco, where a raid-gone-wrong resulted in the deaths of four agents and six Branch Davidians. (But blame for the 76 who died in a fire when authorities tried to use tear gas is laid directly on cult leader David Koresh, who ordered the fire set.)

Goodman said it is possible to be "critical of the federal government's response" at Ruby Ridge and "maybe to some degree at Waco" but "at the same time hold responsible this [white separatist/supremacist] movement for what happened at Oklahoma City."

While working on "Oklahoma City," Goodman did an extensive interview with Sara Weaver, who was 16 at the time she lost her mother and brother in the standoff at Ruby Ridge. The interview isn't included in that film, but spawned a second, hourlong documentary, "Ruby Ridge."

"It was the power of her interview that pretty much compelled us to create a whole separate film," Goodman said.

Weaver agreed to be interviewed because "she feels very strongly that she wants something positive to come out of her own experience and her family's experience."

Namely, to prevent anything like that happening again.

Law-enforcement officials are also interviewed, and what emerges is a picture of miscalculations on both sides.

"We are honest about what Randy Weaver did and how he helped create the situation," Goodman said. "[Sara] can't see that even to this day. "

Together "Oklahoma City" and "Ruby Ridge" present the terrifying truth that there are "red-blooded Americans" who are determined to bring down the U.S. government with violence. And it ends with a graphic telling viewers that, according to the SPLC, "548 militant white supremacist groups are currently active in the United States."

Twitter: @ScottDPierce —

On TV

P The "American Experience" documentary "Oklahoma City" airs Tuesday, Feb. 7, at 8 p.m. on PBS/Ch. 7. "Ruby Ridge" airs Tuesday, Feb. 14, at 8 p.m.