PETA's Ingrid Newkirk

Will you follow McVeigh's advice and solicit Ted Kaczynski's opinion on animal rights?

I think we will take that into consideration. But at the moment we would like to work with McVeigh in his final days.

What more can be done with McVeigh?

Bruce has written back to him. And we're hoping to continue the dialogue. Because he wouldn't be the first hunter who has been convinced that there is something wrong with what he did -- hunting people or hunting other beings. He's raising questions in his correspondence that the average person who eats meat raises: "Where do you draw the line?" Obviously McVeigh has trouble knowing where to draw it at the top, and where to draw it at the bottom, with bugs or what have you. These are typical responses of someone grappling with a new idea.

When you say drawing the line at the top, do you mean categorizing all humans as worthy of moral concern?

Yes, and I only mean that in our social context. You know, there are recent studies that show a lack of empathy can be a physical condition of the brain. Some people definitely have their brains wired in such a way that they are more able to be empathetic [than others]. And it may be that McVeigh is not capable of putting himself in the shoes of a person who is a victim, or the animal in the sights of his rifle. But something is going on there, as he acknowledges the fear and the horror of the slaughterhouse, though there is an irony in that he obviously hasn't related that to taking the lives in Oklahoma.

Much of the media coverage of the McVeigh correspondence has accused PETA of exploiting McVeigh's crime. Why do you think it's acceptable to compare one human tragedy to another, like Chinese forced labor camps to Nazi concentration camps, whereas, to many, it is totally unacceptable to use the killing of innocent humans as a way of starting a conversation about the killing of innocent animals?

Historically we've always had the problem of looking at what we're doing now as a society and finding it much more comforting than looking at what has happened in the past. By that I mean we now acknowledge that you can't do horrible things to human beings. That was not always the case -- look back at the Holocaust or the treatment of African-Americans in this country. We can watch specials on television and read about it and we can have discussion groups in our schools about it because it is in our past. So we can feel superior by condemning it. What is extremely hard for us to do is anything that challenges current habits.

So people who speak for animals, like us, have to find ways to make comparisons when there is uproar over a violent act. What the viewer and listenership are doing is condemning violence by being upset at what Timothy McVeigh did. So if the underlying principle is the condemnation of violence and needless slaughter and the causing of suffering, then we say, "Here actually is something that you can do to reduce that violence, pain and slaughter."

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