The case of the century

Whitefish attorney Chad Wold had one

week left in law school at the University of Montana, three months

before the bar exam, and three and a half months before his wedding

when he found himself drawn into one of the most important trials

in U.S. history.

It was summer 1996 when Wold listened

to a phone message from Stephen Jones, an Oklahoma attorney he had

met earlier that year, asking Wold if he wanted to join the Timothy

McVeigh defense team in Denver.

McVeigh, who by then was called “the

most hated man in America,” was charged with bombing the Alfred P.

Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. The

explosion killed 168 people, including 19 children under six,

injured more than 680 people, and destroyed or damaged 324

buildings in a 16-block radius. It was the largest act of terrorism

in America until 9/11.

“In an instant, three years of law

school flashed before my eyes,” Wold recalled in one of the dozens

of lectures he gave after the McVeigh trial concluded. “I have no

idea what I’m doing, I told myself. Criminal law, death sentence

... what are the elements of murder? Then a gentle calm came over

me as I realized that a thousand others had come before me with the

same gut-wrenching feeling, and I found myself without even

thinking reaching for the phone, with my school bag around my

shoulder, calling Stephen Jones.”

Wold made the call and ended up

spending about four months working for Jones on the McVeigh trial.

The effort involved 16 attorneys, five law clerks and eight support

staff working 24/7 in law offices with attached apartments, guarded

by U.S. Marshals and federal security agents.

His personal story is now slated for

film production. Wold’s brother, Clay Wold, wrote the script for

what’s being billed as a political thriller called “OKC.”

Well-known Hollywood director Barry

Levinson has agreed to direct the film. Levinson, who began his

career with TV comedy, including “The Carol Burnett Show,” went on

to make hit films such as “Tin Men” with Richard Dreyfus and Danny

DeVito and “Rain Man” with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Most

recently, he made “You don’t know Jack,” about Jack Kevorkian, for

HBO.

Wold, who grew up in Whitefish and

Polson, did his undergraduate work at UM and attended law school at

the University of Buckingham, in England. He was taking conversion

courses at UM’s law school when he got the call from Jones.

His brother also attended UM,

graduating with a degree in business finance. Wold said his

brother, who lives in Whitefish and Los Angeles, was always

involved in script-writing.

“Clay had long been interested in doing

an adaptation of my story,” Wold said. “It took about a year and is

just wrapping up.”

While the details of the script are not

public, as is often the case with new film projects, Wold wanted to

make one thing clear — he, his brother and the film’s producers are

not endorsing any particular opinion about the Oklahoma City

bombing. The incident is quite controversial and, as Wold

discovered during his trial work, has spawned numerous conspiracy

theories.

In the course of the government’s

investigation, FBI agents conducted 28,000 interviews and gathered

about 1 billion pieces of information weighing 3 1/2 tons. The

prosecution team presented 137 witnesses during the trial.

In turn, the defense team presented 25

trial witnesses over a one-week period. Wold and others in the team

read more than 30,000 witness statements, studied more than 15,000

FBI lab sheets and reports, examined more than 100,000 photographs,

and reviewed hundreds of video and audio tapes, as well as 156

million phone records and 1 million hotel registrations.

That doesn’t include the global travel

Jones undertook — Jones traveled to China, the Philippines, Macao,

Hong Kong, Germany, Scotland, England, Syria, Jordan, Israel and

South Korea, meeting in secret locations with members of Jewish

organizations and even the provisional Irish Republican Army.

“For me personally, the experience was

professionally challenging,” Wold said. “I cannot remember a day

when I was not tinged with some element of adventure, either of

hope or disappointment, or of failure or achievement.”

Immediately after Wold arrived in

Denver, he was given responsibility for all calls to a special red

phone in the office.

“It was the initiation, the

crazy-conspirators and death-threats phone,” he said. “For the next

18 hours, I would answer roughly 45 calls, ranging from witnesses

saying they knew who the real bomber was to the claim that the

military had placed chips in all of our heads and controlled our

every move.”

The next day, Wold was reassigned to

legal research, preparing demonstrative exhibits and helping care

for McVeigh’s family. At one point, he found himself shopping for

diesel fuel, fertilizer and a small film canister so a defense

witness “could build a mini-bomb in our coffee room.”

At the end of the trial, Wold was

charged with escorting McVeigh’s family to the court room to hear

the jury’s death sentence verdict. He recalled the unusually quiet

hallway outside the court room, usually teeming with media and

friends or family of the victims, following the jury’s verdict.

“The victims seemed as stunned as Tim’s

family,” he said.

Although the jury convicted McVeigh and

sentenced him to death — he was executed by lethal injection on

June 11, 2001 — Wold feels he received a zealous defense, proof

that the American justice system was working.

“If our forefathers could have seen

into the future when constructing the infrastructure of this great

country, they would have been saddened by the bombing,” Wold said,

“but they would have been walking proud to see how we handled such

a volatile situation.”

Wold said “OKC” will be the first movie

ever made about the Oklahoma City bombing, and it should be

thought-provoking.

“It will allow viewers a chance to

think about the case,” he said. “In most trials, the majority of

evidence never gets to a jury. The movie will let viewers see a lot

of that.”