On April 19, 1995, American anti-government extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols detonated a makeshift bomb stored in a rental truck parked near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in an act of domestic terrorism. The bombing killed 167 people, injured 684, and destroyed more than a third of the building, and remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. The building was later demolished due to its structural instability following the bombing, which also destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings and caused an estimated $652 million worth of damage. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated 11 of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers. During rescue operations after the bombing, a rescue worker was killed after being struck on the head by falling debris, bringing the total death toll to 168.

Within 90 minutes of the explosion, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for illegal weapons possession. Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested soon after the forensics linked him to the bombing, and within days, both men were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, a veteran of the Gulf War, rented a Ryder truck, which he later filled with the explosives used in the attack. Nichols had assisted McVeigh in planning the attack, and in making the bomb. McVeigh and Nichols were primarily motivated by their anger at the U.S. federal government, particularly its handling of the law enforcement sieges at Ruby Ridge in 1992 and Waco in 1993, as well as the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban. McVeigh had timed the retaliatory attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the end of the siege in Waco and the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first engagements of the American Revolution.

The official Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) report on the bombing, referred to as "OKBOMB," involved 28,000 interviews, 7,100 lbs (3,200 kg) of evidence, and nearly one billion pieces of information. When the FBI raided McVeigh's home, they found a telephone number that led them to a farm where McVeigh had purchased supplies for the bombing. The bombers were tried and convicted in 1997. McVeigh was sentenced to death; he was executed via lethal injection on June 11, 2001, at the U.S. federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. Nichols was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In response to the bombing, U.S. Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which limited access to habeas corpus in the United States, among other provisions. It also passed legislation to increase the protection around federal buildings to deter future terrorist attacks.