GMA: McVeigh Picks Vidal to Watch Execution

May 8 -- Timothy McVeigh, allowed to choose three "friends" to witness his execution, has picked the author Gore Vidal, who shares some of his critical views of the federal government.

Vidal has accepted the invitation and says he plans to write about the May 16 execution for Vanity Fair magazine, where he is a contributing writer.

The author and McVeigh have exchanged several letters since 1998, when McVeigh wrote to Vidal regarding his Vanity Fair article on the Bill of Rights.

Vidal says he's become fascinated with McVeigh through their correspondence. He told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America that he thinks McVeigh is a good, clear writer who knows a lot about the Constitution.

"So I started to study the case," said Vidal. "I welcome an opportunity to explain why he did what he did at Oklahoma City."

Vidal Sympathetic, But Disapproving

Vidal, 75, and McVeigh have similar ideas about the erosion of constitutional rights in America.

But the writer — who opposes the death penalty — says he does not approve of McVeigh's 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people.

He says, however, that McVeigh's act was a reaction against the federal government's 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. McVeigh holds former Attorney General Janet Reno responsible for that incident, which left 80 people dead.

Vidal says he is also against Reno's decision to raid the compound.

"She did a terrible thing, and in response to this, out of a sense of justice, he did the same thing," he said. "Do I approve of that? No."

Author Says U.S. Is ‘Sick’

Vidal said he wants to bring attention to the fact that America is "sick."

Mcveigh, he says, is a manifestation of that malaise.

"He is reacting to something that is going on in the country, as John Brown reacted against slavery," Vidal said, referring to the anti-slavery zealot who used violence in hopes of provoking a slave uprising in 1859. "And one year after he [Brown] was executed, we had a Civil War. I trust we don't have one; but we might have one."