Before her two grandsons died with 166 other people in the Oklahoma City bombing, Jannie Coverdale thought terrorist acts were committed only in foreign countries by people whose names are hard to pronounce.
"Before the bombing, we didn't know there were Timothy McVeighs and Terry Nichols and all those stupid people in this country," Coverdale said. "After the bombing, we found out that we didn't have to go overseas to find those people. They're right here."
Eleven years after the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, survivors, terrorism experts and law enforcement authorities fear that lessons learned from the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing are being forgotten as the nation focuses on international threats.
"The minute we forget, some of those people are going to strike again," Coverdale said.
Six years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a cargo truck packed with two tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil was detonated in front of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people -- including 19 children -- and injuring hundreds more.
"The loss of life there and the children -- it was a staggering crime and a staggering attack," said former FBI Director Louis Freeh, who headed the agency during the bombing investigation.
The number of organized hate groups in the United States has risen 33 percent since 2000, and the potential for another domestic terrorist attack is on the rise, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which monitorshate groups.
"One of the great lessons of the Oklahoma City bombing is that the domestic radical right poses extremely serious threats," Potok said. "It taught us that not all terrorists speak different languages, wear turbans or speak to different gods."
