Attorney Says McVeigh Has Warm Side

May 4, 2001 -- Timothy McVeigh is an "extremely polite" person with a good sense of humor who became hardened through war, according to Rob Nigh Jr., the defense attorney who is preparing to watch his client die.

McVeigh is set to be executed by lethal injection on May 16 for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. He will be Nigh's first client to be executed. As his attorney, Nigh will watch as his client draws his final breath.

For Nigh, who is profoundly opposed to the death penalty, it will be the final moment in a tragic chain of events.

Nigh: Hates the Action, Not the Person

The attorney tells ABCNEWS' Barbara Walters that McVeigh has spent a "lengthy period in thoughtful preparation," and has attempted "to reach out to the people he loves."

According to Nigh, McVeigh is ready to die — indeed, he would prefer to die at the hands of the government than to spend his life in a prison cell. "It is essentially providing him with the alternative that he wants to life in prison," says Nigh.

For Nigh, part of being a defense attorney is seeing the humanity in his clients in spite of their crimes. McVeigh has been no exception.

"He is extremely polite, he is courteous, he conducts intelligent conversations and he has a keen sense of humor," Nigh says.

McVeigh "expresses a great deal of care for other people," Nigh says.

In discussing his relationship with McVeigh, the attorney explains, "It is possible to hate an action without going a step farther and hating a human being."

A Product of War

Nigh believes that McVeigh learned to kill with impunity during his days as a soldier in the Gulf War. His reference to the children who died in the Murrah building blast as "collateral damage" is evidence that he is, in part, a product of the U.S. military, Nigh says.

"Those were military terms, that had been used to describe killing 350 civilians in Baghdad — women and children. Those were the words of his superiors," Nigh tells Walters.

McVeigh still considers his crime a heroic act carried out for the good of his country, according to Nigh. "In his mind, he has been a soldier," Nigh says.

Nigh's final negotiations for his client do not involve arguing his guilt or innocence, but rather the morbid facts of his death. He has been meeting with the warden and the county attorney to determine details concerning the removal and disposal of his client's body.

"It is surreal, discussing [it] as if you were taking a loaf of bread out of the oven — how somebody is going to go about killing your client — the nuts and bolts, of that process," Nigh says.