McVeigh Mini-Series Due

By Stephen M. Silverman

06/15/2001 at 11:23 AM EDT

CBS has purchased rights to authors Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck's "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing," with plans to use the controversial book as the basis for a mini-series, reports Variety. The deal was closed three days after McVeigh, 33, was executed in the Terre Haute, Ind., federal penitentiary death chamber for having blown up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. He killed 168 people in the single worst act of terrorism ever perpetrated on American soil. Financial details of the TV-book were not divulged and an airdate has yet to be announced. Gerry Abrams, one of the producers, said that the telefilm would follow the approach taken in last year's Oscar-winner "Traffic," about the U.S.-Mexican drug wars, in which "seemingly unrelated people are involved in a common crisis."