In late 1965, Truman Capote published In Cold Blood, a study of the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kan. Much of the book was based on Mr. Capote's lengthy, exclusive interviews with Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, who confessed to the murders and were hanged on April 14, 1965.

        There was initial outcry about the book. Some critics, led by London Observer reviewer Kenneth Tynan, charged that the author was a soulless mercenary making millions from the deaths of four innocent people and the gory reminiscences of their killers.

        “We are talking about responsibility,” Mr. Tynan wrote, expressing concern that Mr. Capote did not use some of his wealth to pay for appeals to attempt to save Mr. Smith and Mr. Hickock from the hangman.

        Mr. Tynan told friends that at a party he and Mr. Capote attended, Mr. Capote capered with joy upon hearing that Mr. Smith and Mr. Hickock were sentenced to death, because that would make the ending of his book much more dramatic than sentences of life imprisonment.

        Mr. Capote felt obligated to defend himself to the media. He told The New York Times that 70 percent of the mail he received about the book was positive: “(Readers) think of the book as a reflection on American life — this collision between the desperate, ruthless, wandering, savage part of American life, and the other, which is insular and safe.”

        Now Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, authors of American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh & the Oklahoma City Bombing (ReganBooks; $26), find themselves as Mr. McVeigh's execution approaches, probably next month, in a position similar to Truman Capote's. This perhaps shouldn't surprise the veteran Buffalo News reporters, who say their book was greatly influenced by In Cold Blood.

        “(Capote's) story made some sense out of a very horrific crime,” Mr. Herbeck said in a recent phone interview. “It was a crime very few people had known anything about before his book. We felt we were trying to do the same thing with a crime everyone knew about.”

        While much of American Terrorist is gleaned from hundreds of interviews the authors conducted with family, friends and acquaintances of Timothy McVeigh, most of the book's shocking revelations come from exclusive interviews with Mr. McVeigh himself. Just as Mr. Capote was criticized 36 years ago for allegedly glamorizing the actions of two killers, Mr. Michel and Mr. Herbeck have found themselves pilloried for providing a soapbox to Mr. McVeigh, and for making money by writing about tragedy. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has announced it will not carry the book. Both the Oklahoma City memorial committee and the city's Red Cross chapters have refused to accept a percentage of book royalties as donations from the authors.

        “After careful consideration, we looked at our community and the people we're still serving six years later and felt it was in everyone's best interests not to accept,” said Debby Hampton, deputy executive officer of the American Red Cross of Central Oklahoma. “We hadn't read the book, hadn't seen it. Our decision was based on our community.”

        Even before American Terrorist hit bookstores, callers into radio talk shows were criticizing it. A scheduled book-tour stop this week in Oklahoma City had to be canceled.

        “We did know there would be a very emotional reaction,” Mr. Herbeck said. “When we first heard some of the things Timothy McVeigh told us, we were shocked, too. That said, we really wish people would read the book before criticizing it. It is not a manifesto for Timothy McVeigh's beliefs. But we can't ignore something that happened, that we can perhaps learn from, because it is shocking or painful to think about.”

        Mr. Capote's book was far from the first to be attacked on publication because of subject matter, says former Philadelphia Inquirer and Fort Worth Star-Telegram books editor Larry Swindell.

        “In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf was a best seller in America, despite pressures asserted to prevent its availability,” Mr. Swindell says. “American readers weren't taken in by the Nazi agenda. Indeed, the reading of Hitler's manifesto alerted many Americans to the grim reality of the Third Reich's rule by hate.”

        Dallas writer Stephen G. Michaud, co-author of The Only Living Witness, the story of serial killer Ted Bundy (later cited by The New York Times as one of the all-time best “true crime” books), agrees.

        “If you apply the standard of not writing about evil people across the board, there would never have been books about Hitler,” says Mr. Michaud, who added that he was pilloried for his book and its subject when it was published in 1983. “Certain kinds of behavior may be morally reprehensible, but still worthy of serious journalistic attention.”

        That is what Mr. Michel and Mr. Herbeck said they tried to provide. The reporters became involved in the Oklahoma City coverage because Mr. McVeigh's father and sister live in a Buffalo suburb where Tim McVeigh was raised. Mr. Michel, assigned to interview Bill McVeigh, eventually won his trust.

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