Ellen Gray: MSNBC's 'McVeigh Tapes' just a bit creepy

THE McVEIGH TAPES: CONFESSIONS OF AN AMERICAN TERRORIST. 9 tonight, MSNBC.

MSNBC TONIGHT marks a grim anniversary in a grimly fascinating way with "The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist."

It's been exactly 15 years since the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City took the lives of 168 men, women and children, and nearly nine since Timothy McVeigh died by lethal injection in June 2001 for what - for a few months longer, at least - was considered the worst act of terrorism ever committed on U.S. soil.

McVeigh, who chose the date carefully, might also have noted that today is the 17th anniversary of the deadly end to the federal government's siege of the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, and the 235th of the Battle of Lexington and Concord.

McVeigh's victims were silenced forever, but their killer, it turns out, lives on in 45 hours of audiotapes from interviews he gave for Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck's 2001 book, "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing."

The cable network has married the previously unreleased audio from the interviews with McVeigh to what MSNBC describes as "state-of-the-art computer re-creations" - resulting in footage that at times looks a bit too much like video-game animation for comfort.

I don't care where you fall on the use of re-enactments in news documentaries: There's something a bit cold about most computer animation and superimposing an impassive McVeigh-like mask on the face an actor only adds to the chilling effect of hearing the Oklahoma City bomber describe how he killed all those people and suggesting that victims' families need to "get over it."

But then graphics aren't the only aspect of MSNBC's presentation of "The McVeigh Tapes" that left me a little queasy.

In introducing the special, host Rachel Maddow can't resist an attempt to peg the Oklahoma City bombing to current events.

"Nine years after his execution, we are left worrying that Timothy McVeigh's voice from the grave echoes in a new rising tide of American anti-government extremism," she says.

You want to go there, Rachel? Really?

What happened in Oklahoma City wasn't some tea party - it was mass murder. Invoking the name McVeigh in the face of some angry rhetoric is (and we can only pray will remain) overkill.

But CGI and Maddow's flick of her atomic flyswatter aside, "The McVeigh Tapes" tells a stomach-twisting tale of a plan that could have gone awry a number of times, but didn't.

It's also as close as we're likely to get to an explanation from the man with the plan, a veteran of the first Iraq war who'd been bullied in high school and whose anger at his government seems to have been born in part from his service to that very government.

Assuming, of course, that you can take the word of a killer for anything.

ABC, out to find out just what it takes to get "Dancing with the Stars" fans to change the channel when the last dance is over, does everything it can tonight to get those thumbs moving.

Well, not everything - the network hasn't yet stooped to giving Kate Gosselin a sitcom. At least not yet.

Instead, it's mired the far more appealing Alyssa Milano ("Charmed") in "Romantically Challenged" (9:32 tonight, Channel 6), a show about a divorcée and mother (Milano) starting over after 15 years, which is just about how long it's been since a show like this might have been considered even mildly funny.

Did I mention she has wacky friends? Had you not already guessed?

My guess is that nothing that I or anyone else will write or say will keep millions from hanging through "Challenged" in order to get to the increasingly wonderful "Castle," so I'm not even going to bother making fun of the show's title, no matter how it begs for it.

But I watched tonight's and next week's episodes, inexplicably labeled on ABC's media Web site as the fourth and the third, and beyond wondering what the first and second must've been like, all I could think was: If they really must stick something in between "DWTS" and "Castle," wouldn't it have been easier to just keep "Samantha Who?" *

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